(General Carter Ham, USA. Photo US Army). There is nothing particularly spooky about this Halloween, though it was painfully close when I rolled home from Uncle Julio’s last night. Willow had given up and was closed, so the Mexican place was jumping with deferred energy. It was strange watching the bartender mixing chocolate milks for […]

(The view from the balcony at Big Pink. The wind is starting to rise this morning as the capital braces for shock. Photo Socotra). Alrighty, then. Yesterday was the day to get organized and maybe feel a grim, tingling sense of predestination. I have eggs, batteries, alcohol and a bad attitude all in place, ready […]

The Russians were over for dinner at the farm last night. It has been two weeks since I was on the property and a lot has changed. The scarlet leaves out the kitchen window have dropped from the branches and their color is a forlorn brown in a heap near the roots. Fall fell. So […]

(The Piper of the 46th Naval Intelligence Dining In. He’s an acoustic physicist in his day job.) The storm is coming, so we will drop any pretense at literary devices, cute asides of extended metaphors. This is going to be a wet week, at a minimum, and the maximum…well, it could really suck. Hurricane Sandy- […]

I was trained as a worst-case analyst of military capabilities and human nature. Accordingly, I knew things were going to get worse. Sure enough, they have. I have veered over into denial over the performance of the Tigers. They got body-slammed by the Giants again last night, and are going back to Detroit two games […]

Our Boss at THIRD Fleet, Vice Admiral herb “The Superb” Browne used to say “nothing good happens after midnight.” He was usually referring to the arrests or incidents in Tijuana at the Monday morning staff recitation of human failure. I would expand it to other events on the Left Coast, last night’s case in point […]

(The Citadel at Ankara, Turkey.) This has been a tumultuous week, hasn’t it? I don’t know about you, but between the loss of old friends and the impressive come-back of the San Francisco Giants to meet the Detroit Tigers tonight in Game One of the World Series my emotions have been whip-sawed quite effectively. I […]

Thank God. The Debates are over. Four of them, if you count the AAA-ball version of the Battle of the Veeps, Smokin’ Joe versus Paul Ryan. I made the mistake of clicking over from the ballgame to the debate last night once I got back from Willow. I was watching the St. Louis Cardinals unravel […]

(Poet Andrew Marvell). “The Grave’s a fine And private place. But none, I think, Do there embrace.” -Andrew Marvell, 1650 I fell asleep watching the Giants-Cards game last night. The brown chair seemed to reach around me and carry me to a private place of contemplation on the inside of my eyelids. It was a […]

(Mac Showers at the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor this last June on the 70th Anniversary of the Battle of Midway). I did not know that the Tigers had swept the Yankees, a first for anyone against the titans in Pinstripes in 32 years. I rose at 0300 on Thursday morning to catch a connecting […]