My alert reader in the Shenandoah Valley forwarded a link to an earnest practitioner of the art of herbal cultivation in response to some musings about the uses for the only crop I seem to be bringing in this year at Refuge Farm. Another reader enjoys dandelion tea. Life is good some places, though I […]

(One of the Ford F-250s headed north from Lake Ana on Virginia Rt 29 after the holiday.) The Holiday is over and the Red Wings could not put away the top-seeded Blackhawks last night, but damn, there was a lot of activity crammed into three calendar days. Motorcycles on Sunday, and the Great Rolling Thunder […]

The 26th annual Rolling Thunder rally brought motorbike enthusiasts out in their thousands. The gathering of riders in Washington D.C. aims to help turn the spotlight on the plight of military prisoners of war. It’s also intended to focus attention on troops missing in action. The bikers assembled in a parking lot at the Pentagon […]

(The Big Pink Pool Gate is open and the season has begun. Photo Socotra.) It is strange writing about Up There, when I am down here on the farm, with the big F-250 pick-up trucks rumbling down the farm lane early for the horse event at Rosemary’s Summerduck Run Farm just up the road. Damn, […]

I have to say that this is a novel time to be alive, wouldn’t you agree? I don’t know which of the seasons of our lives can be stranger, or how the ever-rising generations look at the times in which they live. Terrorism as a concept is not as scary as the notion that we […]

(A consolidated pile of…well…crap. Photot Socotra). I was up early, as usual, to try to scribble some words secular and profound and naturally with such lofty goals, failed. I could drink coffee, though, and I noticed that the books- Mom’s books, bless her- were looking at me accusingly. They had to be moved. And the […]

Jamie goes anonymous as The Lovely Bea arranges limes with her vodka. Photo Socotra). No story this morning, sorry, there is too much going on to talk about. I am constantly entertained by the antics of the White House, and have become accustomed to the ability of Jay Carney utter bald-faced lies from the podium […]

I have been bustling around, distracted, since about three-thirty. Can’t sleep. Too much to think about. I have to be in Gaithersburg to pick up a proposal to deliver tomorrow, the Bulgarians are coming to continue painting and demolish my front bathroom, and a crew is coming to take a load of assorted furniture that […]

(Screen capture of the intense tornado that scoured Moore, OK, and Oklahoma City yesterday. Screen capture from weather@aol.com) “Vast Oklahoma Tornado Kills at Least 91” -NICK OXFORD and MICHAEL SCHWITZ writing in the New York Times It is Spring, finally, which is good, but of course what comes with the change of season is unsettled […]

Peter, the leonine aquatic magnate who services the pool has been busy. The deck is power-washed, the gunk of the long long winter has been vacuumed out, the blue water is pristine once more, and the tables and chairs have emerged from storage down in the life-guard office in the basement. A tipping point in […]