The isobars were all crammed together on the weather map, and that is not a good thing. They say we are going to get gale-force winds whipping the snow sideways and obscuring the church across the street from Big Pink.   The sound whistles on the sharp edges of the balconies and scours the […]

The County appears to have given up, but we remain indomitable.   Well, sort of indomitable. Jinny’s flight was cancelled at seven this morning and the cancellations are cascading. She managed to re-book on an earlier plane, but now it is asses-and-elbows to get to the airport or she is going to be stuck with […]

(The View from Tunnel Eight, 0800 Saturday, 06 February 2010. Photo by Socotra) The alarm did not go off. I wondered about that in the grayness. A curiosity. I did not know what to make of it, but I am sleeping in the guest bedroom to give Jinny some privacy, and I don’t have complete […]

Going Home Someone leaned over and said, “You live here. You must have gone to a lot of these things.” I nodded. The organist was warming up at the front of the Old Chapel at Fort Myer. “A dozen?” the man asked. I smiled enigmatically. “I wish it were just a dozen.” Death Junior told […]

(Soviet Echo II-Class nuclear Guided Missile Submarine) I had been sweating my part of the eulogy. Not hard, but it was something I needed to do and hadn’t got to. The pressure had some off, and as you probably know I work better with a deadline staring me in the face. Well, the deadline is […]

So the snow of yesterday has gone. It was slushy for a few hours, but the streets were clear enough, even if people were panicked.   The City is getting a little punch-drunk with the white stuff. We normally get one or two snowfalls a season, and it is a matter of high emotion and […]

(03 Feburary Snow at Tunnel Eight, Big Pink. Photo Socotra.) The snow kept up all night. When I got up I went straight to the balcony to judge the depth of the disaster and was impressed, though apprehensive. I could see black below the slush on Pershing Drive, and that meant cross-country travel might be […]

(Operation Homecoming Flight Arrives at Clark AB, RP, 1973)   I looked morbidly at the on-line edition of the Times this morning. It is just turning gray. There is stuff to do this morning at the office, and I have guests coming from a long way off. I need to do something about that, but […]

  Something quite ordinary happened in the wake of the great mobilizations required to ensure victory over the Kaiser and the Fuhrer and the Commissars, and a sad compromise in Korea and a defeat in Vietnam.   Dick Nixon told us that “everything we knew about Vietnam was wrong,” except for the end of it. […]

(H.Ross Perot exchanges views with President George H.W. Bush with candidate Bill Clinton of Arkansas. AP Photo) The clouds have blown over, now beyond the Chesapeake to the wide ocean. The “dusting of snow” they predicted is six inches deep on the balcony.   Dusting, my sorry butt.   The moon is closer than usual […]