It is the Ides of September, by Roman tradition the marker from which the month is measured, forward and back. It is the 258th day of 2003 an there are 107 days left to go. For me, it is the day after the Big Pink’s pool closed. For the second consecutive year I claim the […]

OK, it’s the thirteenth and it is time to get over it for this year, let the memories recede and bury them till it is time to rip the scab off again next year. But I found myself in a funk last night, frozen in a capsule of travel time and the fumes of recall […]

The retired admiral from Naperville asked us to wear whites for the dedication of the monument to the dead. I’m fully and finally retired, I said, and Mark is just about offical, too. He said it was appropriate and fitting and it was completely appropriate. He had been retired for eighteen years and he was […]

It is a gray Monday. The sun is rising later and later and it is cool on the balcony. The President had addressed the Nation last night, and I watched him with curiosity, sound on mute. The radio was filled with commentary about what he had said, the new commitment to operations against Terror in […]

My life changed abruptly this week. Not as abruptly as it did for the riders on the Big Thunder Railway- at Disneyland out in California. That was a pretty good ride, as I recall riding it with my sons a few years back. It was as close an experience to jinking around in a little […]

I woke this morning to find the apartment filled with Pakistani eunuchs. They are called Hajiras. The BBC was running a feature on them. So it wasn’t my fault, it was a function of a slow news day and a certain fascination with the outr� and bizarre. I am prepared to confront my business day […]

The sky is a blanket of gray wool, cloaking Arlington in a soft, moist mist. There is no sturm and drang, though the weather channel is promising me that some of that Germanic vigor is in store for later. I am a civilian this morning, just as I was yesterday. It is a new feeling, […]

The Great Helmsman passed away today, taking his last swim up the Yangsi River. Last of the Big Boys, he was, last of the great generation of movers and shakers. I was about to join the Navy when he passed, the dust hadn’t settled over Vietnam and I and was driving a Chevy about the […]

My son called from college yesterday. I had told him he had to check in once a week and Sunday was a good day for him to do it. He said he had been out looking for a bike, since the distances on his campus are vast and he does not like to walk. He […]