The Wizard of Silver Hill The only time I actually talked to the Wizard was sometime after the end of DESERT STORM. I was in the Pentagon then, with an office window on the E-Ring overlooking South Parking, courtesy of someone else’s position. Uncle Jim was still alive and still mobile. I took him down-town, […]

I have wandered into the twilight land that humorist Dave Berry described  trenchantly: �There is a fine line between �hobby� and �mental illness.� I am not sure that I have not blundered across, but I will let you be the judge of that. It was raining in Arlington, and it was early on a Saturday. […]

Staff Work I have a hard time keeping up with the Admiral. Last night was no exception. He was still ready to talk as the hands on the clock slid past eleven. He is 88, and I am only moderately beyond half of that. He has the life force: I don’t know what it is, […]

SPADS The winter is not done with us. The temperature soared almost all the way to the top of the fifties yesterday, and with the exception of a few stubborn patches, the ice is gone. What has come with the change, though, are winds at tropical storm strength. They are hissing now outside, raking the […]

A story of the long war Episode One: Recall I heard this morning that the war is not lost, according to retired General Barry McCaffery, but it is sliding away from us. That was the sense of the note forwarded to me by a Dad who has two kids in the fight, one just coming […]

We were screwing around in the South China Sea when the word came, or maybe we were conducting voyage repairs at the sprawling naval complex at Subic Bay in the Philippines. Don’t get me started on the Philippines. It was a sad wonderland, and it always makes me think of pleasure and loss, almost simultaneously. […]

The Ice Age may be over today, or at least on its way to history. Warm air will arrive from the Gulf and will give us the warmest day in the last two-dozen. It will turn the hardedges of the mounds over the curbs to salty soup that will coat everything moving in gritty white. […]

L-L-I The sun had just set somewhere in the grayness to the west, but the dregs of the light still reflected off the sheets of ice on the yards and rooftops of Arlington Forest. I was pretty well set for dinner, which is more of an effort than I would normally make. My older son […]

Dog Years The Dog started to talk to me around five. I am not ready. It ia barely Saturday, and I am still exhausted, or perhaps better said, pre-tired. His low pre-bark carries a supplication and an implied threat, and that is how we presently found ourselves skating over the frozen crust over the earth […]

The ice mist has passed over the white marble buildings on the Mall, and the skies are blue above the hard frozen landscape. I panicked briefly when I looked at the calendar this morning. There is a morning activity listed, made with the optimism that the storm would have come and gone Monday, and the […]