There is nothing like walking a battlefield to understand what happened on it. The terrain is all, an imperative you can only feel with your own legs, and marvel at what was expected of the legs of ill-fed people in heavy woolen uniforms on a humid Mississippi day. And add the realization and the simple […]

  It was Mother’s Day, and I was headed for Hinds County, Mississippi, coming up from The Big Easy via Bay Saint Louis on the Gulf Coast. I passed through Hattiesburg in the mid-afternoon where the two city police officers, one white and one African-American , had been gunned down the night before. Flags were […]

I was seated directly under the 500-pound bomb on the trapeze release under the Douglas Dauntless SBD dive-bomber the Navy taught Dad to fly down at NAS Pensacola. He told me the principle was fairly simple. Pop the big speedbrake flaps with the circular holes in them, point the nose of the airplane at the […]

I was in New Orleans on the 70th Anniversary of Victory In Europe Day. I was at the ceremony to mark the occasion at a remarkable place, the World War Two Museum. I had a chance to meet with its President and some senior staff about what is coming next for what they call “New […]

It was almost noon before I could extricate myself from the farm. It had started to rain just when I was going to cut the front yard and ensure that the place didn’t look abandoned, so I thought I might get to make a pass with the Turf Tiger before the 0900 conference call, but […]

Clark Hall is the local historian for matters about the War Between the States, much of which happened right here in Culpeper. He has documented the astonishing amount of violence that happened in the tranquil rolling hills around Refuge Farm. I am traveling today and am going to borrow his words about the place I […]

It was too soon to start drinking for Cinco de Mayo, the day I celebrate my Mexican Heritage, so instead I had a couple entertaining hours at The International Spy Museum yesterday- it was a spur of the moment thing. The day was lovely, really no-kidding in the mid-eighties, low humidity, blue skies and a […]

When people come to visit the Farm, they often comment on the modern earth-sheltered structure that looms above the lane at the north end of Mt. Pony. It is the David C. Packard Center for Media Preservation, which I think I have talked about before. They show restored Hollywood films there every week in a […]

(The first race takes the jump in front of the Big Ten Tent at University Row. Photo Socotra) I was sitting next to K2 on the bus going out to Great Meadow for the Virginia Gold Cup. He has just returned from five weeks in Ukraine on behalf of the US Government, and he took […]

I am writing this on the 40th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon, one of the nadirs of a really bad decade that hadn’t even seen Jimmy Carter elected President yet. I have to get along to the Gold Cup festival today at Great Meadow, so I am writing ahead a bit. We were talking […]