The call to jihad is on the front page of the New York Times this morning. It is not coming from the likely places of struggle.   The Marines are pulling back a little from Falluja. The oil is beginning to flow again from the terminals at al-Basrah. There has been no slaughter today, […]

  Paul Revere had it worked out, from an indications and warnings standpoint. If the British forces were coming to Boston by land, his surveillance and reconnaissance people were instructed to put one lantern in the spire at the Old North Church, which he probably just called the North Church.   If they were arriving […]

  It began for me in the evening hours of April 24, 1980. It was the chill of recognition that something profoundly bad had begun, and that there might not be an end to it.   The Brits might date it differently, perhaps to the shrieking ululation of an angry mob clutching at the landing […]

  I did not sleep well. Perhaps it was the persistent ache from my leg, or the pinched arches that are still getting accustomed to the heavy roller-skate boots. It is warm again, and it is time for blading around the perimeter of Big Pink.   I am listening to Dan Damon on the BBC […]

  There is no disaster from overseas this morning. At least nothing specific to comment on, except the Continuing Crisis.   I have my own little crisis. I have found myself having to rise from grim deliberations to stretch my leg. It is hurting almost all the time now, and not just with the weather. […]

  There is a poem on the refrigerator by Andrew Marvell. He has been dead a long time, and time is one of the things he wrote about. He wrote about the winged chariot at his heels, and is resonates this morning, the first of the year in which the sweat rolls down beneath my […]

  The buzz is that they are trying to force Jamie Gorelick off the 9/11 Commission. They are not stopping at that. Some people are e-mailing her office and her home and saying they are going to blow her up.   That is pretty cold, and is a symptom of our e-culture and the politics […]

  The birds are singing this morning and my door is wide open, where the 7th Day Adventists might look in. Like the birds, the religious proselytizers are out.   I saw two earnest young Latter Day Saints bicycling down Pershing Street the other day, headed for an objective on their two-year Mission for the […]

Rebel troops opposed to Premier Fidel Castro landed before dawn on the swampy southern coast of Las Villas Province in Cuba on April 18, 1962.   There was no good reporting of the action. Intelligence was a cruder and more personal business in those days. After daylight was gone, Premier Castro issued a brief statement […]

  It is the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs and I have finally got around to wondering what is up with the Red Wings, my erstwhile hometown team.   I have a vague fondness for the old hockey clubs from the Golden Years in the snowbound northeastern corner of the country. The National Hockey […]