It is back-to-school today for the students of Northern Virginia, and the Beltway is a mess. Surely this is premature, I think. It is tranquil here, high above the swimming pool at Big Pink. This aberration has nothing to do with the changing of the season. It is a problem generated purely by the human […]

Fort Hunt was wired for sound. The camp code-named “PO Box 1142” was located on the property, up a dirt road off the Parkway with a sign on the gate that read “No Trespassing.” The camp itself was screened by rows of trees from the manicured highway; it was a nest of complexes, each hidden […]

Battery Sheridan, Fort Hunt Park It is a fine highway that rolls down along the Potomac from the old colonial city of Alexandria to Mount Vernon. It is the road to George Washington’s estate, and for that reason it is an attractive, well-manicured four-lane Parkway, administered not by the Federal Highway Administration, but by the […]

I did not get in the pool until late. I was the fourth resident of Big Pink to take the plunge. It had been a gray day, dank, and not inviting. There had been a late afternoon business affair in Ballston, at the lovely Willow bar and restaurant. The Willow replaced an earlier watering hole […]

I was headed for a drink with a pal last week over in Arlington’s Ballston Canyon and I noticed the Flat Top grill was closed. Things are a little unsettled over there, the most concrete example of the change in the housing market. They have taken the chain link fence down around the old Immigration […]

You reap what you sow, and dinner is what you put in the pot on the stove.   Any farmer or cook knows that, but we are so disconnected from the world on which we walk that we forget. We live in the eternal “now.” Wiggling out of short-term problems with easy (and short-term solutions) sets […]

I got a call yesterday from a reserve colleague who was trying to drum up interest in what is going to be an Operation Paperclip re-union in October. I was interested, naturally, but a little confused by the news that it is going to be in Alexandria, Virginia. You can understand why. I always think […]

People who live in the high latitudes are a little nuts in the summer. The daylight hours peak in June, and the stimulation of all that sun and warmth upon the Northern brain is almost overwhelming. I knew people who lived in Nome, Alaska, and they said they thought nothing of cutting the grass before […]

I got a note on the box yesterday after wandering in from a volunteer Board Meeting. My participation had required getting up far too early on a lovely Saturday, and driving across the District to the Maryland border to a volunteer Board meeting. The area used to be a slum, but is blossoming with new […]

I had dinner with the Admiral last night at a nice place out in Great Falls. We drove out the Dulles Access Road, antiseptic as it slashes through the glass boxed operating units of the defense contractors. We bailed out just past the toll plaza and took Route 7, which is an old road that […]