Two If by Sea Before Congress got out of town for the holiday, the House Homeland Security Committee approved a sweeping bill intended to stiffen the nation’s border security. Sweeping measures make me nervous. It normally means that no one had a chance to read all the way through the Bill. I think they only […]

Quarantine It is wild and blowing out there, cold rain. It is a fine day for the memorial of President John Kennedy’s murder: dark and filled with raw power that is above any mortal’s ability to control. I do not recall the temperature in suburban Detroit that day, which is where I heard the news. […]

Old School It was the 41st time that mess dress and tuxedos had been dragged out of the closet, five decades of pleasure at seeing that the old uniform still fit, or dismay at the way the thing had shrunk while hanging at the back of the closet. It was the annual formal dinner, the […]

It seems to me that a Navy Captain is a grilled old fart, cunning in a feral sort of way, salty, worldly-wise. Admirals? Forget, it. Ancient history, Man. When I got to be one- the crusty old Captain, that is- I noticed that some of them were getting younger, even looking a bit damp behind […]

Mukhabarat The Jordanian security service- the mukhabarat- is an efficient organization. It has to be. When you serve a small country in a tough neighborhood, safety can only be assured by using every means necessary. Some say that the Service has become a law responsible only to itself, so powerful that the Chief actually lights […]

Keeping Track I got a note from a mother who lost her son. Neat lady. She suffers her loss in quiet dignity. She told me once that she wanted to have her son near her, so she could visit. But her son, a pal of mine, had said he wanted to be in Arlington , […]

PFIAB God, it is Saturday and the quarterly publication is lying all over my floor, pictures not associated with articles, the print cartridge is out of ink, and my heart is starting to race. How am I going to get this done? The weekend is shot already. The floor guy is coming, Michigan is on […]

Veterans I slept in on this day, originally dedicated to the dead of the World War. There was no number before those words then, and of course some tinkering needed to be made to make it fit the greater horror that began again sixteen years later in China, and twenty-one in Europe. So Armistice Day […]

The Wasatch Front The wind rose overnight, cold and blowing hard from the northwest. The leaves are rising in the gust, raking their dried points across the windows and doors. Fifty days to the bottom of the year, but the darkness is pervasive and the chill tells me that I must find where I placed my […]

Election Day It is the day of decision here, the dramatic show-down between two white men in the middle 40’s who will take the state either screeching to the right, or catapulting to the left. Actually, they will do neither. There are only two elections with national implications happening in the country today. There is […]