It is down to the Final Four, and it is not even March Madness yet, and not even basketball. At least that is what it said in the e-mail from my Presidential Candidate this morning. I know we are all a little tired of pigs and ethanol, though the whole Iowa thing was pretty interesting. […]

Bayliner Ciera 245 Express Cruising: 22 mph @ 3200 rpm  Maximum: 30 mph @ 4800 rpm           o      LOA: 24′ 1″      o      BEAM: 8′ 6″ DRAFT: 2′ / 3′ 4″      o      YEAR: 2006      o      TOP: Soft top      o      HULL MATERIAL: Fiberglass      o      HULL: Deep Vee DISP: 5284 lbs      o      ENGINE HOURS: 75      o      TANKAGE (approx): […]

I had not seen Vic for many years, though I have often asked about him when I talked to my pal John. Vic was a towering presence in our youth, and I will never forget him. He Edna retired to Florida years ago, leaving the snows of Michigan far behind. We all have, except Kenny, […]

I have altered my usual route to the office. Instead of taking Henderson, on the far side of the Culpepper Assisted Living Center, I turn right on Pershing. It probably adds a couple hundred yards to the commute, which would be a laughable distinction to someone living in Loudoun County, but it is fairly significant […]

Enough of East Europe and ancient monstrous acts! I have a large stack of material documenting the horrors of the Japanese brutality at Nanking in 1936, and the six-week long massacre continued into their bold new year of 1937. I put it aside. It is not as if the anniversary will not arrive once more […]

Gateway to the former Royal Trakehner Stable, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia I wish you all a happy and prosperous New Year! I hope it is better than the last one, though 2008 begins unexpectedly. The story of my Ukrainian friend is incomplete, and is the last order of business from 2007, a sort of gateway to […]

I did not want to get dragged into the controversy. I have enough problems this morning, like why the picture that should be above is not there.   The controversy is not of my making, and the lingering bitterness over what is happening to the institutions I served for so long is something I have […]

Remember in the movie Jurassic Park when the mad scientist recovered the dinosaur DNA from the insects trapped in the hard golden orbs of ancient tree sap? It made a hell of a premise and a blockbuster film. Everyone loved the raptors and the T-Rex. In the script, everyone wound up very sorry, since the […]

I don’t know why the complete transformation of one distinct thing to another thing is so fascinating. Maybe that is why RuPaul does so well with the drag thing, Really, if I wanted to know about how a place can be transformed completely I could just ask someone from the Little Traverse Bay Band of […]

My Ukrainian friend Taag, 2007 I doubt if Elena Filatova ever met my Ukrainian friend Taag, although they certainly were in proximity in the newly independent state at the same time. Elena was born in 1974, in the Soviet Union, and she gets around. Taag was born in 1997, in what had become Ukraine. He […]