I have been avoiding the weather forecast- it is out of my hands. The throttle of the Bluesmobile is not going to be under my right foot today. I could not bear the idea of driving that 800-mile hockey stick again so soon- the last trauma is just fading- and now I have to confront […]

Mac was waiting in the lobby as I pulled up in the Bluesmobile in the alley in front of The Madison. The service at the Old Chapel was scheduled for 0900- nine o’clock sharp- and with the competition of the daily commuters trying to get on post we were anxious not to be late. That […]

Normally I have to click the little time icon on the screen to see what the date is. The days go by so swiftly that it is hard to keep track. Not this morning. There is a scrawled note next to the computer that is stark and simple: “MAC, 0815- 0730 in the shower!” Checking […]

I have gone through a lot of napkins at Willow, between wetting them under a tulip glass of Happy Hour White and writing on them, but I was not writing on them last night. I was taking a break from recording stories and just relaxing. It had been a busy and fairly productive day at […]

  They say there is no such thing as a free lunch, but I am not sure that is true. You know they used to put out a big spread of pickles and salty food “for free,” to encourage the working stiffs to come in and get really thirsty. The additional sales of adult beverages […]

Not a good start to the day. Skies are gray and smell of moisture. The first enotes in the morning queue are about family and money- the inbound ones were written at the end of someone’s day, and my querulous responses are drafted at the beginning of mine, and not caffeinated enough. I should know […]

  I dunno. Maybe there is hope. Some rumblings have emanated from the super-secret Super Committee has precisely nine days to find a $1.2 trillion bucks in budget savings or else a draconian trigger whacks discretionary funding across the Executive branch. Should that happen, the government accounts in Defense and the Intel Community on which […]

So peaceful down on the farm. Heckle is so glad to see me. The grass is neatly trimmed- thanks, Frank!- and town was bustling with pre-pre-seasonal shoppers on the main drag. This is a great circle trip- down I-95 from the Capital, off on the strip-mall chaos in Fredericksburg and west on the Germana Highway, […]

  I am going to head down to the farm on this lovely Fall day. We had a front come through with rain at mid-week and when it cleared out it left all things clean-washed and chill. It is supposed to warm up later, and I want to hang out on the deck and see […]

The moment has passed here in Arlington, the real one. You know what I mean- two minutes of silence observed at the Cenotaph in Whitehall at eleven o’clock sharp, the symbolic moment that the Great War came to an end on the Western Front. A cenotaph is an “empty tomb,” or monument erected in honor of a person, […]