(Boss Cherry 1970 AMC AMX Muscle Car) I just got back from the Bill Socotra Rambler Rally in Angola, Indiana. It will be Bill’s last appearance, or at the very least, the last one that Mom will drive him to.   She already said as much, weeks ago, when this loomed on the horizon and […]

Morning in Chi-town. Up crashing around trying to get in the rental car and down the road to Indiana. The cabbie we engaged for the trip down to the Webber Grill on Chicago’s Loop was from Lahore. He thinks this is a great town, and has been here for 25 years. He bummed a smoke, […]

(The Single Payer System I know and Love) You know I have tried to avoid this as long as I could. I have kept my voice down, and tried to be as polite as possible. But the time has come.   President Obama apparently had an afternoon chat vie teleconference with religious leaders yesterday, breaking […]

(“Event Horizon” Trailer, a film by Paul W.S. Anderson, 1997) I was not going to get dragged back into the issue again, but it is Rahm Emmanuel’s fault. He provoked me, just when the next event on my horizon was the Big Pink pool and the cool sweat on the outside of an icy-cold beverage. […]

(M1911 A1 Parts List, Exploded)   I had a little exercise in figuring out how things work the other day. Since my life has devolved into a series of counter-intuitive metaphors, I thought I would pass it along for what it is worth. Like volunteer labor, you get what you pay for.   Jiggs is […]

(1930 Isotta Fraschini Tipo 8A Cabriolet. Photo by Jim Mueller)   Time for a vacation. I got a wonderful note from a pal who did things right this morning and it made me more than a little bit wistful.   He kept the house he bought in Carmel, on the Monterey Peninsula, when he was […]

(Big Pink Puzzler Photo, 2009)   We are getting down to the short-hairs on this strange summer, yes we are. Despite the loveliness of the day, the crowd at the pool was small.   Cuba the Lifeguard is starting to get antsy to move on, and grab a chunk of America before returning to Poland. […]

(Loaded Words on a Belt Buckle) I had hoped to wrap this string up this pleasant summer morning. The Ornamental Concrete Workers were up early, blasting off to their weekly golf outing, and the view from the balcony across the blue pool and into the greenery was so captivating that I drifted off in contemplation. […]

(Original Goose Lake International Music Festival Poster, 1970) It is about forty years to the day, give or take, that the Woodstock Nation broke out the tokes and rolled like sweet smoke across the American consciousness.   I wasn’t there, not hip or mobile enough in 1969, but a lot of us jumped on that […]

(Cover of the 1971 Issue of Rules) There is enough about Saul Alinsky to write a damn thesis about.   Hillary Clinton did at Wellesley was kind enough to lock it up while she and her husband lived at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW. It was not as explosive as one would think, a little more […]