Gentle Readers, This special issue of The Daily does not mark a change in our editorial policy of restricting those irritating ads and random screen clutter. It marks something else entirely. A new adventure! As you may have noticed over the last couple decades, I have been fascinated by how the vast global system works. […]

I don’t know about you- one never can, on any particular issue these days. Particularly if there is something that sweeps over the fetid political sewer that so divides us these days. I have pals on all sides of all sorts of issues. Some of them have been fulminating about the current President since before […]

We talked about this a while back, as the current round of scandals was playing out as “new news.” It is hard to keep track, but I do my civic duty as I can, without leaving the farm, maintaining social distance when I have to and masking if I happen to be at home on […]

It is easier to predict the next scandal, which is determined by what day it is, than to try to sweep up the de jours of the last week of political maneuverings. Great fun, and thoroughly enjoyable. The State of New York continues it’s battle with the Federal Government. The valiant defenders of liberty have […]

Just a quick one today as the election looms. The information campaigns from both sides deserves a quick update. It is grand fun. I offer this synopsis only as a snapshot for what both sides hope will work as we line up for the dramatic conclusion. The “mostly peaceful protests” is still a chip in […]

Big strange year, isn’t it? I almost died near the beginning of it, then struggled with recovery amid the rational planning and lunacy of the pandemic response. All of it with politics in the background, slowly swelling to a continuous level of hysteria that is fun to follow. My fellow veterans already have a taste […]

The circus continues with wild abandon just up the road from Refuge Farm. Peace may be breaking out in the Middle East as the UAE makes nice with Israel. The echoes of all of the global events bounce off the unremitting and insistent downpour of rain. It is pretty neat. Earlier in the week, former […]

OK- I found the concluding line to the couplet that ends Uncle Pat’s obituary. I mentioned that it was more work than usual, but after some false starts, I was eventually able to find the publication in which it originally appeared. It was a curious thing, one I should have focused on at the front […]

(Artist Jerry McWilliams painted the scene above from the battle of Raymond, MS, in 1863. The figure on horseback is Colonel Randall McGavock, who was mortally wounded by Union fire and fell into Pat’s arms. He is depicted at the lower left. The great Rebecca Blackwell Drake, a former State Department player was instrumental in […]

The storms seem to have passed, and there are spurts of sunshine on a pleasant Virginia day. It would have been Dad’s 97th birthday today. Maybe better phrased, it is still his birthday, and I remember it that way. I had some plan to continue the story of Great Great Uncle Pat’s wild ride through […]