It is Veterans Day, observed, since we have an aversion to wasting a holiday on a Saturday when we would be off anyway. It is as good a day as any to salute the service of our military, and the sacrifice they have made. It is important to remember the source of this particular holiday, […]

It is too soon for some of us to act, but not too soon for all of us to think. One of the Beltway idea factories has done some of that, thinking, I mean, and their analysis of the Virginia Senate race concludes that the Jim Webb’s razor-thin margin will stand up, even after a […]

I was savoring the delicious feeling of unemployment in the lobby of Big Pink. If you have not felt it recently, it is composed of equal parts elation and nausea. I stopped to dissect the election results for Amare, the Eritrean man who has the evening shift at the Concierge desk at Big Pink. “The […]

I was the third in line at the polling station in the basement of the assisted-living facility kitty-corner from Big Pink. The building is for Dr. Charles Culpepper, who made his property available to build Culpepper Gardens in 1975, shortly after Big Pink began to rise adjacent to Route 50. Dr. Culpepper was a botanist […]

Everyone is doing some contortions this morning. The politicians are, of course, since tomorrow at this time I will be in a line with my fellow voters in the rain, squirming to stay dry. The rain is a factor in these events, particularly if the voting machines malfunction, and the people are wet and cold […]

NeoCons I set out this morning to capture the down-and-dirty politics at the microcosm level of Big Pink. Oh, it is a brutal struggle! The Old Guard on the board aloof, having tried everything in their long years of service, and now reduced to doing precisely nothing, except the anomalous acquisition of a billiard table […]

Local Politics Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neil, famed Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives, once observed that “All politics is local.” He was explaining how the concerns of towns and cities around the country affect the actions of the Congress here in Washington, D.C., my adopted home town. Another fine observation came from Chris Matthews, […]

Lucky Bastard Sixty-two years ago today, the black smudge on the horizon over Germany was getting bigger. Viewed from the cockpit it was an ink-print from an errant thumb, a curious little mushroom that contained tiny flashes. It was a man-made cloud, composed of the residue of high explosives thrown into the sky over the […]

Bandits The bomber stream bored east, a gigantic silver snake that spewed contrails across a rich blue autumn sky, heading inexorably into the rising sun. That is where the fighters would come from, out of the glare, appearing suddenly, flashing by as dark shapes and the guns that bristled from the upper turret and the […]

Ray Bradbury knew about the end of the last good month of the year. He called it the October Country, which is a state of mind as much as it is a time. All the harvests are in, the first frost has visited, and the ghosts walk in the chill night air. The ghosts are […]