Sturm unt Drang I was soaked to the skin by the time I climbed out of the car walked to get the golf umbrella out of the trunk. The remnants of Hurricane Jeanne ran over us, just in time for rush hour in the city. I left my desk a half hour early to see […]

Lingua Franca There was a time when the people came from the East and all the world spoke with one tongue, though there were few words. All the people could communicate. A wife from the most distant province could scold another’s husband right in the capital of Babylon Humankind was united, and if there were […]

NMAI There are hundreds dead in Haiti from flooding  and savage murder in Baghdad. There are  pitiful pleadings of the next to die. No one is in a position to negotiate, since there is no way to talk to the murderers except in the Arab television. Other foreign Arabs may have murdered the Italian women they […]

Concerned Citizens I was half-dozing in the audience in Salon Number Two at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Arlington. I had arrived there in sufficient time to get my name card and find a seat in the back. There had been people enjoying high teas in the elegant sitting room off the lobby, mostly women. I […]

The Hill was swarming yesterday with activity. Everyone is back and there is the frenzy of the second session of the 108 th Congress with a war on and an election looming. ‘�Tis the season, and all that. There are cops everywhere. The Authorities are busy digging it up, closing off streets, and trying to […]

There was a genuinely demented man around the corner from the uniform store at the corner of 11th and New York Ave. I separate the genuine from the artificial for the practical reason of personal safety, or at least unexpected dry-cleaning expenses. This man was just around the corner from the Greek property on I […]

For Official Use Only   The bad news is that they are coming back. They will be here in September, and I think we can expect a brief respite over Labor Day, but they are going to be here in earnest come the second week of the ninth month. H.L. Menken said one time that […]

  I was talking to a freind and just saw the closed caption under his boyish beaming visage. Accordingly, I was able to judge the words and not the rhetoric while matching it to his facial movements.   It was a pretty wild ride through the evening. There is no question that Al Sharpton brought his […]

  I am not an equestrian. It doesn’t make me a bad person. I am just a suburban kid who didn’t often run into the species who has faithfully carried us for millennia. There is a troika in the history of Man, and it involves the human and the horse and the dog.   We […]

  It has been a long time since I worked someplace that invited me to wander aimlessly at lunch.   When I worked at the Pentagon, I ran, but to run anywhere interesting you were a sweaty mess when you got there. I tried running to some of the historic places in the district, across […]