There is some crazy stuff going on out in the wide world. Mr. Putin’s troops appear to be maneuvering to take the eastern Ukraine, just as they did the Crimea. Chemical weapons have been used again in Syria, according to the regime in Damascus, by the good-guy-bad-guy rebels. The big stand-off at the barren Bundy […]

The primal scream from comic or deranged man Sam Kinnison back before he was famous might be the way one would describe Lewis Black, who is in town with his 2014 “The Rant is Due” tour. I say might because I didn’t see it. I had the fifteen seat, in the middle, in the Warner […]

(This is what O’Sullivan’s looked like when I worked across the street. I have no idea what Sam was selling out of his place on the corner, but I never saw a soul there. Ever. I wonder if he was surveilling the building where we worked? We were the Government, after all.) I don’t eat […]

The Republican running as an independent here in Blue Arlington won handily in the special election, 57% to 41%. The remaining votes were me and the Wiccans. We tried, but could not prevail. Some folks are apparently pretty upset with what is going on in the County: the last openly Republican candidate elected to the […]

Tough transition day yesterday and I missed the production schedule completely. It is hard to veer between the Country Mouse stuff- bees, country culture, heritage tomatoes, good neighbor stuff- and city mouse madness of legal nonsense and urban chaos. I had to do some city things yesterday- I had not glanced at the city “to […]

I don’t know if I will get to a story today- the relentless rain and the one o’clock meeting up north have me a little edgy and I need to get out the door. If I did have something to tell you , it would be about yesterday, out in the front yard in the […]

(Still life of an improvised Spring country salad , featuring the first thing to emerge from the garden. Photo Socotra). It is often far easier in this business to simply leave the dead on the field and move on, day-by-day. Still, a shred of obligation to truth remains with the vestiges of honor, and periodically […]

Gentle Readers, Sometimes something comes over the transom that is worth passing along. For example, my Cajun pal Boats often chimes in with some interesting commentary from Louisiana, a component of what he calls “Greater Texas,” a mysterious world in which the follies of Washington seem completely dispensable. In the case of the below article […]

The excitement was building all morning as the weather guessers tried to determine if the crowd was going to need umbrellas at Nationals Park. There were the usual promotions to help whip up the emotions of the fans- dollar hotdogs and free wifi- though the t-shirts were held back to give out at Saturday’s game. […]

So, Old Jim called and asked if I was coming out to play- I had been home all day, and decided it would be nice to get out in the open air on the way to a dark bar. Jim said he had a late lunch at Willow for business purposes and was still there, […]