(Lodge cast-iron skillet embossed with the Scout symbol. You can also get them in plain civilian. Photo Lodge Co.) So, town started to empty out for the long weekend on Thursday afternoon. I felt like joining the anxious motorists on the happy highway south, but I am tethered to the pool for the last four […]

(Professor Charles Severance of the Unvisersity of Michigan, aka Doc Chuck, takes a video of himself to post on the Coursera homepage of his history of the internet course. Photo Socotra.) I think I told you I am taking that Coursera internet class on the history of the world wide web. That is symmetry, for […]

(Imagine here a picture of the pool in darkness. Thank AOL for not being able to insert it) Montana was on a couchette with her ear-buds in on the west side of the pool deck. This is highly unusual. She normally sets up camp at the north end of the pool, by the scraggly shrubs. […]

OK, OK. I am sorry. I got lost again this morning on the way to something else. You love Mondays as much as I do, right? I think the only people who could possibly love it less are the Republican National Committee who are sitting in the rain in Tampa. But I got one of […]

  (Undated file photo of Apollo astronaut and hero Neil Armstrong. Photo NASA.)   “For those who may ask what they can do to honor Neil, we have a simple request. Honor his example of service, accomplishment and modesty, and the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling […]

  (RADM Donald “Mac” Showers, USN-Ret. Photo Socotra.)   It is Mac’s 93rd birthday today. I am hoping we get to celebrate in a low-key manner, perhaps tomorrow. The Admiral says that he only commemorates the divisible birthdays these days. 95 might be the next big one, but I think I will observe this one, […]

I am stunned. Now that I am up and about again, the summer has become a chimera- a missing chapter. I am tempted to put on my Sherlock Deerstalker cap and go look for where it went. All the time spent flat on my back was not wasted: I managed to fill it up with […]

(Then-LT Joe Rochefort. A Great American, like Mac). I have to tell you, Mac’s bottle of chardonnay was not a modest vintage. It had woody notes, and was inviting in aroma and crisp in presentation. So was President Reagan when he gave the Distinguished Service Medal to Joe Rochefort. The years fell away as I […]

My pal Mac has been having a course of radiation treatments for reasons I will leave for him to say, and I thought I would drop by to see how he was doing. When I talked to him over the weekend he was tired, and attributed it to the massive blasts of x-rays. I checked […]

Those bastards at Comcast are still letting me down, Gentle Readers, but I found an open for-pay network in the building and I am sort of on and sort of off. It is irritating to have to pay a daily access charge, I have to say, and between trying to generate a story that is […]