(There are only four ornaments on the tree, so far. Two I found in a plastic tray that must have been in Big Mama’s mud room, and commemorate the Central Building and the Rose Hill Schools where she was educated in the little Ohio River Valley town of Belleaire, and was the first of her […]

  (The Official Refuge Farm tree, 2013, courtesy of the Methodist Church yard sale in Arlington, circa 2009. I had not looked in the box until I started work on cleaning out the office attached to the garage yesterday). I glanced at the watch yesterday afternoon and realized daylight was going to run out on […]

I have been mystified by the numbers game as played by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. I mean, we all know the jobs report is bogus and played for politics. Still we are expected to believe it all, and it continues, like so much else in this Progressive media society, without question or critical thinking. […]

(This image of Building 213 at the Washington Navy Yard is an overhead image with one-meter resolution, which is to say that a skilled photo interpreter can distinguish objects measuring about a yard in length or width. Such a capability was pretty cool, back in the day, particularly when you could not fly over head […]

Free Nelson Mandela Free free Free free free Nelson Mandela Free Nelson Mandela 21 years in captivity Shoes too small to fit his feet His body abused, but his mind is still free You’re so blind that you cannot see Free Nelson Mandela Visited the causes at the AMC Only one man in a large […]

Well, I blew off some steam this morning with a flash of exchanges with the usual suspects, starting long before dawn. I will not burden you with the spleen. Catharsis is good, though I have found it is not necessarily good for reading. Anyway, there is a story on which I am working that is […]

I have taken a certain solace in writing about things that have nothing whatsoever to do with politics, but when you hang around a place that is all politics all the time, it is hard to avoid tripping over it. You have heard the talking points already this week. I was talking about it with […]

During the time I was doing the 800 mile round trips to Petoskey, I began to get muscle memory of little places like Cranberry, PA, and Strongsville and Elyria, OH, as refuges from the Turnpike. It was always a relief to get clear of those pesky low Appalachian mountains, punching through Hole in the Wall […]

There was a time in my life, a long time ago, when I thought I might have a talent for stratigraphy. It was a lower-level geology course in which the concept was introduced to us through analysis of sedimentary and layered volcanic rocks. Looking at the folds and thrusts in the rock was like being […]

Cattywampus: ADV. Performed in a non-straightforward manner; approached from an unexpected angle; askew; askance. “Poets may go at the big truths a little cattywampus, but sometimes they do get to them” (Ted Kooser writing in The Poetry Home Repair Manual, University of Nebraska Press, 2005. 141) (Ready for the snap in a game between arch […]