Those barbarians are fighting their way into Kobani, a Kurdish town on the border with Turkey. Kurdish sources are telling Western media there are 50,000 Kurds, Christians, and Turkmen still in the town, and there is going to be something spectacularly ugly if- or when- it falls. The Turks has tanks and troops on the […]

It was a fabulous weekend with some long-deferred chores accomplished down at the farm. The pastures and yard were cut, the foliage around the house got trimmed and inside there was some housework accomplished- vacuuming and such to prepare for the First Fire and vacuumed inside and drank a bottle of good wine and a […]

A pal dropped a line yesterday when I was still considering the aftermath of our century of interaction with the people and government of Haiti. I think of the place with fondness: the people were nice, although their government was a curious thing. I largely felt they were better off when Smedley Butler’s Marines were […]

I have been down a few rabbit holes already this morning- sorry. The missing girl in Charlottesille and her accused abductor, the plague, the loony jihadis, all of that. Then I was trying to process the impact of the tweet that announced that Jean-Claude Duvalier, former dictator of Haiti, had died at exactly my current […]

OK, so the good news is that it wasn’t Ebola that appeared in the ER at Howard University Hospital. A patient who had recently traveled to Nigeria actually had the symptoms associated with malaria. Whew. That is one less thing to worry about for yesterday, and I checked and my head is still attached to […]

As you know, I normally let the mistakes in these things go- admitting error is almost the same as saying you were actually wrong, which like most things here in Washington- climate, public health, the budget, the nature of the terror threat (blah blah blah) we simply don’t do. I am making an exception this […]

(Limoncello, fresh from the fridge). So, the Ebola plague actually came through Dulles International Airport to get to Dallas. Duh, I should have realized that there are no direct flights from Monrovia to Dallas. I was hoping he changed planes in New York. Lone Star Health officials are saying the man may have come in […]

There are a couple things to be really alarmed about this morning, but I am pointedly going to ignore them. I am sure the people at CDC know exactly what they are doing. Let’s talk about what to do when the guests are gone and some great food is left over. What do you do […]

I had a query about what the hell it is that Chuck Miller distills at Belmont Farms. Simple, really. Moonshine- White Lightning- is fresh whiskey made from a combination of corn, barley, rye or wheat. The grains are ground up and mixed with water, then cooked, mixed with yeast and malt and left to ferment. […]

On Belmont Farm they grow their own corn, then they harvest the crop at this time of year, and store it in their two silos. When ready to handle it, they grind the corn and then they distill it into whiskey. You can’t miss it, and I was kicking myself about not going sooner. I […]