12 March, 1990 Editor’s Note: I am dragging this out not because I am too lazy to do original content, but rather because it is the missing third of a book I wrote 26 years ago about an interesting part of the world that is in the process of unraveling. One of the manuscripts once […]

HAIFA, ISRAEL: INTIFADA FOLLIES 11 – 17 MAR 90 Editor’s Note: I wrote a book composed of daily stories from the 1989-90 Med Cruise of USS Forrestal (CV-59). It was intended to document something that happens all the time, in excruciating detail, so that I could remember it. They say the human body can’t really […]

I was reading some pages from past Socotras and I marveled at how different the world was only short years ago. Or at least it seemed so. I’m having my doubts. I have mentioned before that things began unraveling, in my humble opinion, with the horror of President Kennedy’s assassination. I periodically revisit the era, […]

(This Toyota Camry started life as an-EPA ‘certified’ street-legal passenger car. Now, it is apparently a threat to the earth). I still have no idea what to make of the New Hampshire primary, nor the Iowa caucuses, for that matter. How does Bernie administer a historic defeat to his opponent and gain 13 delegates to […]

It was a red-letter weekend, featuring just about everything. Friday and Saturday were sort of like old times, approaching the bacchanalia of the Super Bowl, and Friday night’s excesses morphed into the grand adventure in the District on a chilly but brilliant Saturday, and a return to the scene of the crime at the Front […]

(The fabled Cardinal Stone of the North. Near 1850 East-West Highway, Washington, DC. Navigation by Jon-Without, transport and driving by Vic). Let’s see: I got a call about a birthday party at the Front Page and decided to stay in Arlington for the occasion. I get the feeling I might not be here that much […]

(Scenic View of the 11th Street Bridge heading into Anacostia in SE Washington DC. The new lanes hooking the highway to Maryland Rt 295 might have been the only shovel-ready construction project funded in the 2008 stimulus bill). I had occasion to be at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling (JBAB) yesterday. It was sort of an odd […]

It is a rainy winter day in Washington, and gray and the piles of snow that remain are dirty and weeping. Having been down the rapids of all the email and websites since rising, I am pretty sure I am not going to be able to make it through the rest of this extraordinary silly […]

(The late crooner Sonny Bono, right, and the sultry young Cher from a screenshot of their monster hit “I Got You Babe). Punxatawny Phil emerged from his burrow on Gobbler’s Knob and saw no shadow. The burly man in the top hat held the hefty rodent aloft, and proclaimed loudly: “There is no shadow to […]

(The view from the Gaylord Hotel at National Harbor outlining our course north under the new Wilson Bridge). Argo drove off that Spring morning and we both felt a sense of frustration. I motored back to the freeway and took the exit to National Harbor. The Potomac is one big ass river as it opens […]