(Ms Maureen Bridgid Dowd, 60, in 2008. Photo Denise Williams.) I have no sense of what Mr. Boehner and Mr. Obama discussed yesterday behind closed doors. I hope something is happening that will enable cooler heads to prevail, and some compromise can be found to accommodate something short of complete disaster, but I have no […]

How the heck did this happen? Two weeks to Christmas? Maybe it is because we don’t call it that, anymore. I think we are just being polite, you know, don’t want to offend anyone, after all, and inclusive is a good thing to be. Still, just calling it “the holidays” sort of robs it of […]

(A view of the abandoned Eddystone Hotel near the Detroit Masonic Temple, largest in the world, and sort of threadbare. Photo Socotra.) There is such a lot not to talk about this morning. I am piling up crap to take to the farm and to the dump and am not completely sure which pile is […]

(Pearl Harbor, 0755…While the Giant Slept. Image copyright Dru Blair.) You know what day it is. National Public Radio played a few bars from the old song that advises us to remember before they got on with some wild assertions from the President of the World Bank, Dr. James Kim, and analysis of the Right […]

(PR photo of Dave Brubek in 1956. Photo AP). I was thinking about the passing of Dave Brubeck, whose astonishing syncopated time-scales links me back to the little dining room in the house on Chester Street in Birmingham, Michigan. Dad was an aficionado of cool jazz, and I recall dancing with my brother and sister […]

I am shivering a little this morning with mental exhaustion. I just finished the tribute issue of the Quarterly for Mac Showers and shipped it off to lay-out, and it was both emotional and hard, since I had to scoop up some representative stories from our long collaboration to illustrate some of his remarkable life. […]

(Great-Great Uncle Patrick, the loveable rogue of the 10th Tennessee (Irish). Photo Griffin Archives.) One of the things that appeals to me most about Refuge Farm is the sound of the night, which is to say, not much of it, except the barking of the dogs up the road and the sound of the trains. […]

(Mrs P’s opening holiday volley. She is a good neighbor and doesn’t yell much. Photo Socotra). I had spied several trees trussed up within an inch of their lives atop SUVs coming back from Refuge Farm. The stores along Rt. 29 were all selling piney things, and it looked like the season was getting serious. […]

(England’s iconic John Bull is often joined by his mustachioed compatriot, Colonel Blimp. We were the same rank. Photo courtesy Amazon.) I am up late this morning at the farm, and there is a reason for my slacking. I managed to get the bed set up in the back room and no longer have to […]

(Screen Shot of the People’s Daily English edition with Dear L’il Kim as Sexiest Man Alive. Images courtesy People’s Daily). It is easy to get distracted these days. I have no idea what Mr. Geithner, the alleged Secretary of the Treasury, was thinking when he took the new plan to avoid the fiscal cliff up […]