Good as It Gets This morning, in this place, is the best that will be. Empires rise and fall, ice advances and withdraws. The fabric of the earth itself rends and lava flows. Weaving our small lives into the warp and weft of such a mighty tapestry is daunting, but the loom creaks on. We […]

May Sot is a sweaty little town, halfway up the Thai border with Burma. A correspondent was up there reporting on the misery of the Karen refugees, and I heard his words from the radio as I lay flat on my back on the 600-count sheets I put on the credit card and will pay […]

Under Whitehurst I am ducking the Quarterly as best I can, finishing the Spring issue has been weighing heavily on me, and eating another weekend. There is so much news washing over me, and my hands tremble as I edit copy. Air Force One flew into Islamabad with all the windows covered, completely blacked out. […]

The messages on the computer from overeas left me a little nervous. Two friends have just arrived overseas to play their parts in the Long War. One is in the Green Zone in Baghdad, and the other is in Bagram AFB in Afghanistan. I don’t know what accommodations are like in the Green Zone, though […]

It was a star-studded day at the Phone Company, the sort of day that makes you forget about nuclear deals with the Indians, and the President’s big adventure in South Asia. We were about to be bathed in the glow of reflected star-power. It started when The Turk called breathless from the office at the […]

Everything Old I was supposed to work when I got home, but I didn’t. Instead, I drafted an article about Japanese Float Planes instead of working when I got home. I should have worked on the PowerPoint slide presentation for this morning, and I am going to pay for my dereliction. Well, maybe it was […]

Cave Canem Visiting the digital equivalent of the Department of Motor Vehicles was not the last thing I wanted to be doing at the end of a trip. That would include a deployment, or something delicate and potentially nasty in my old professional life. I was just tired from the road, and still simmering about […]

Flurries The day was going to be too long. I did not want to stay downtown at the end of it for the speech, but the Boss asked me to cover it, and a fellow employee wanted to see if there would be some good contacts to work in the crowd. The radio said there […]

Ports of Entry The Golden Dome of the Tomb of Askariya is down this morning, as armed men stormed the shrine in Samarra, placed charges, and blew it up. The tomb is home to the remains of the tenth and eleventh Imams, successors to the Prophet, and holy to the Shia part of Islam. The […]

Taxman I was multi-tasking on President’s Day. It is not one of the official holidays the company recognizes, but we are a scattered lot. Base on our history as being part of the old monolithic Phone Company, we have operating locations all over. Telecommuting is part of the corporate cutlrue, and it is not unusual […]