(Natasha has brought the green thumb of Yalta in the fertile Crimea to the fields of Culpeper County. This basket she kindly game me includes corn, potatoes, cucumbers, tart pickles and dill from her garden. It is magnificent). I am torn between the desire to crank out a story about our worthless government, terrorists, the […]

(Wartime image of Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger, Comte de Saint Exupéry, in front of his P-38 Lightning fighter. Born in Lyons, France, in 1900, he learned to fly when he was twelve and became an adventurer in the French colonial empire and an aviation pioneer. He was awarded the Prix Femina for his book “Night […]

It was a hundred degrees outside, first of those squishy humid days here by the placid Potomac. Jiggs played golf down in southern Maryland- I didn’t attempt anything so rash after the Burger Bash in Rosslyn on Saturday. I contented myself with periodic plunges in the glittering blue waters of the pool where our Polish […]

(Team Willow. Clockwise from lower right, owner and executive chef Tracey O’Grady and assistant, Official Logo of the 2015 BRGR Bash; Legendary chef Robert, now of Tonic downtown; Brian Wolken and assistant; Heather Small and lower center, award winning Burger Bash champions with house made Tater Tots. Photos Socotra). I don’t normally have a burger […]

I don’t know how you are handling the week. I am not doing that well. I am challenged by another mass shooting by some whack-job, the fact that our Armed Forces are actually should be called the Dis-armed Forces, and that the lead story about the massacre in the NY Times is about the concern […]

Thought you’d escaped, eh? No chance, Buckaroos. I have been trying to distract myself of late, and climb into the Time Machine and bounce around some intimate American history to distract myself from the events of the day. I am not even going to get started on them, because then I couldn’t finish the litany. […]

I was doing something else at the farm. I find myself doing that a lot. I start on one thing and get caught up in something else and never arrive where I thought I was going to be. The rain had come in sheets dense enough to knock out first the satellite Internet connection and […]

April 2, 1903 Hotel “Cecil” Thursday evening We hired a two wheel carriage for 3 horses to attend to our business., secure staterooms, call at the store, Ludgate Circle, Cooks, Post Office, Cable home, sightseeing, and at this hotel- we have a fine large room, two brass beds and meals outside nme each for day- […]

(W. E. Socotra, left, with traveling companions on the SS Mesaba, 1903). You know what? I am going to throw you a curve this morning. We have been veering wildly through the saga of immigrants from Ireland caught up in the turmoil of the American Civil War, a conflict so vast and violent that it […]

(This is the fanciest document in the Service Record of my Great Grandfather. The Union Army thought the war would be over long before the three-year enlistments for Volunteer troops would be up. It wasn’t, and they needed veterans to re-enlist. James did, but had second thoughts a few months later). OK- this has been […]