The south end of the Conference Table rests on stacked cinder blocks. Vic’s recliner failed this morning. It had been his command chair since the move. Getting it out of the apartment and the matching chair repositioned into the office nook became a major operation — one of those logistical campaigns that feels outsized when […]

Rocket was unexpectedly alert this morning, and he raised a hand at Miles to make a statement at the Morning Meeting. “The Buddhist monks are doing a Fifteen Minute County demonstration today. It took a while. They started walking northeast from Fort Worth, Texas, 108 days ago. The national media has been distracted by kidnappings, […]

Miles skipped the Monday meeting. That was a big deal. We don’t know why, since we may hae been dozing when things fell apart with the field goal kicking late in the second quarter, Eastern Standard Time. Splash drove the white company mini-SUV to Urgent Care after the accident, which he insists was nothing. Still, […]

1980 Special Edition at Lunch After the Super Bowl Daily Pyongyang, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) Editor’s Note: In 1980, United States Forces Korea (USFK) operated amidst intense political turmoil in South Korea, marked by the May 17 Coup d’état and the subsequent Kwangju Uprising. USFK maintained security as the ROK students rioted. We […]

Miles was frustrated this morning. No one could blame him. There was too much news, and it was ironic, since there had been excitement from the Olympics in Italy. He had deliberately not mentioned the Winter Games as they kicked off last week. Today, though, brought a story of triumph and tragedy, as Breezy Johnson […]

Before the shooting starts, the lifting does. That Iran Thing “While public attention rotated through spectacle — medals, commercials, halftime choreography — a different kind of movement continued largely offscreen: the slow, deliberate stacking of lift, fuel, and steel across the eastern Mediterranean and Gulf. Not the sound of war beginning, but of options being […]

Our Socotra Legal Section said we had to run a disclaimer first thing this morning. Leon got all puffed up about it. So, there it is, first and foremost. What we are disclaiming, specifically, had to wait until Section Leader Miles had something like a quorum in the Conference Room up on the 4th Floor […]

Miles frowned as he set down his iPad. There was a time when a “rara avis”—rare bird in Latin—meant he would have to amble around outside in the parking lot looking for the slightly less expensive rental car. This was not that, exactly, but it was enough to make him move the mug of Flat […]

Dick Nixon told us that “everything we knew about Vietnam was wrong,” except for the end of it. Our pal Jake served in Saigon in the waning days, and then as a promising young officer in the Intelligence Plot of the Chief of Naval Operations. By the spring of 1975, it was all over but […]

That was true in 1972, when a Jethro Tull album cover sat in a Chi Phi basement room and rocked hard, long before the Islamic Republic was a news item and before any of us imagined how strange the future would get. It’s still true now. There was a time when our curious carnival of […]