I was standing in the corner of the main room that contains the dining table. My jaw hurt from the Persian dentist’s adventures in the back of my mouth. In front of me, a muted Duke basketball team was going down to defeat to the Louisiana State Tigers. Dinner was burning, I could smell it, […]

Pay for Performance Money makes the world go around. It was true in Cabaret and it is true in Washington. Money is the most interesting change I’ve ever seen, going from bureaucrat to capitalist. Of course there is more of it, which is quite a novelty. But what’s more, out here the amount you make […]

Brackets There is a basketball festival going on. You must have heard about it somewhere along the line, even if you are not a fan. Everyone across the land filled out the ladder chart of the brackets, hoping for a big payoff in the office pool. The NCAA tournament is scheduled at just the right […]

First Contact Three years and ten hours ago I still worked for Uncle Sam. I heard the news just before bedtime, and I called the Boys and told them it had begun. Then I went to bed, which seemed appropriate after having warned my children to be extra alert. At that time I had every […]

High Power I am not in synch with time in the Middle East. Events there come at me fully blown and contextualized by others. Being human, and thoroughly relative, my default values are set for the horizon around me. Despite all evidence to the contrary, I still tend to think of the here-and-now as being […]

I wore the green sweater. It took a little searching to find it, since it was right where I left it a year ago. I slipped it on, and it was a little tighter than I remember. But that seems to be the way of things, clothes shrinking mysteriously in the closet when you don’t […]

My grandfather Mike was the last full-blooded Irishman in the family, and his grandfather may have been the first of the family to land on these shores, leaving the forty shades o’ green behind, or the fields that still grew the wheat to make bread for the English table, even as the potatoes took the […]

Ides of March The wind is roaring outside, the Lion contesting with the Lamb, and kicking his butt. Wispy clouds are scudding across the face of the full moon that gleams with the reflected light of the coming dawn. Beware the Ides of March. The Latin word “Ides” means “to divide.” Each month of the […]

It was glorious looking down from the balcony. The men who use the feeding program at the church across the street came at the appointed hour, mostly Hispanic, though not all of them. They seemed to glory in the warmth, strolling back toward the garden apartments, lighting up cigarettes and laughing at the wonder of […]

In one of my last official missions for the government I was to lead a delegation to a prominent south Asian nation. I was not the best qualified person to do it, but the assignment had been a bit of a hot potato, and no one else wanted to do it. I volunteered, and with […]