(The Panzer waits patiently in the designated space by the main gate check-point at Refuge Farm). Mattski and Natasha stopped by the farm yesterday. We had been emailing back and forth across the pasture all morning. They were more alarmed than I was at a near fall I took trying to horse around some furniture […]

OK, OK. It is late, not even morning any more, but I am going to get to it. I actually wrote you a story this morning already, but decided not to do anything with it. Who needs dyspeptic commentary anyway? There is real stuff going on, some of it downright tasty. So, I am not […]

(Indian men supporting female demonstrators in Delhi). Have you wondered what was in that Kool-Aid we all drank? It is hard to make sense of it. I feel it in the air. A Pope quits, first time in 700 years. The first runner with no legs goes from the Olympics to prison for murder. In […]

(State of the Union Word Cloud. Image courtesy The Atlantic.) “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.” V. I. Lenin I took a great amount of hope from the State of the Union Address from the President. Mr. Obama can give a great speech. […]

(A pal is running a caption-this-picture contest from the State of the Union address last night.  Any suggestions?) I made a point of staying away from Willow last night. I wanted to have a clear head for the President’s remarks, and although I think I succeeded, I did not come away from the address with […]

(Sabrina the Fortune Teller. Photo Socotra) You don’t need a fortune-teller to see the future. It is plain and laying right there in front of us, obvious as the level of crisp happy hour wine in the tulip glass in front of us. That is one of the reasons that Sabrina has gone over from […]

It was a great weekend. The snow missed us, the farm was delightful, and there was a thoroughly surreal encounter with a component of Real America that is terse, determined, and making a concerted effort to be ready for whatever comes next. I don’t count myself in that number, at least not completely. I was […]

(The gutter that was crushed by Snowmaggedon 2010 has been repaired and painted. The work continues at Refuge Farm. Photo Socotra). I fell asleep in front of the fire after the Russians departed last night, and the marvelous food I procured at Croftburn Farms on the way down got cooked down into a darkened mass […]

(Sabrina the Gypsy Fortune-teller behind the Amen Corner at the Willow Bar. Photo Socotra). I was hunched over the computer yesterday, in bunny slippers, as the day slowly crept along. I never made it into work clothes, nor to the Willow, as I listened to the gathering storm hitting New York City and points north […]

(The Derrick Barge D/B Cappy Bisso. Photo Bisso Marine.) The Japanese government has revealed that its Japan Oil, Gas, and Metals National Corp. has dispatched a mining ship that will begin the world’s first offshore test to extract methane hydrate from the seabed…The oil, gas, and metal company’s deep-sea drilling ship Chikyu set sail last […]