(IRS Logo)   Former Senator Daschle was a little contrite when he told his former colleagues on the Hill that his failure to pay $128,000 in taxes for the use of a friend’s chauffer and car service was “completely inadvertent.”   I can certainly understand. I was briefly in the business of providing Senators […]

(USS Pearl Harbor at Nevada Point, Pearl Harbor) Overslept. Stupid Super Bowl. Great game. Weird commericals. There was an edge to them that betrayed the unsettled times. The Boss was great at halftime. I stared blearily at the Blackberry on the desk, pressing the tiny buttons. The Government released three significant task orders just after […]

(Tim, Mac and John, Early this Year) “If the Army and the Navy Ever look on Heaven’s Scenes They will find the streets well-guarded by The United States Marines.” The word was passed later last week. Lt. Col. John J. Guenther, USMC (Ret), 79, passed away peacefully at his residence at The Jefferson in Arlington, […]

I slept well, considering the continuing crisis, and I slapped the alarm with a smug sense of Saturday satisfaction and turned over again. The news was not going to be good, and sleep is, they say, so back to z-land it was.   I dreamed of the Kit Kat Klub again, or what I imagine […]

(The Kit Kat Klub, Berlin)  I’m in the dental chair in an hour, spending way too much on teeth I am fortunate to have had this long. There will be time to think, looking up, waiting for the mysterious Persian dentist to apply a porcelain cap in the back of my mouth.   The temporary […]

  (Honor Guard at Arlington in the rain)   It froze again last night, all the water that had run off the Bluesmobile and onto the black asphalt is a neat white glaze, a natural process not unlike the making of an inverse holiday ham.   The studded cloves would be the dark chunks of […]

A sheen of diamond-clear ice cloaks the roads this morning. The rains did come in the night, and the sounds of scraping from down below came long before the light. The Schools closed early, all across the region, except for the contrarian District, which has decided to open late.   The Federal Government, located in […]

(Rabbit Ears Antenna) The snow-flakes are gigantic this morning, floating down past the tall windows at Big Pink like parachutes. The ground is cold, and the white stuff is sticking immediately. The roads are going to be awful, and this is one of those days I have to be out in the County early, and then across […]

  (Jacob Epstein Bust of Churchill- 1946)   “Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.” – Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill   You don’t have to forgive me, and I wouldn’t ask for it anyway, but I confess I am slipping my moorings. There are whispers in […]

  (How is it in Saigon?)   The 2008 edition of the Arlington Historical Magazine hit my box yesterday. The society issues it once a year, and it is a formal-looking journal on pale ivory stock. Dignified. That is what distinguishes us here in blue Arlington, with our 1930s houses and prim liberal attitude. We […]