It was nice yesterday down at the farm, and the reality of people working to get things done: Andrew, the proprietor of Croftburn Farms and a glass of wine while picking out the local food on which I subsist down here, Junior the pert high school senior with the dreams of college swirling- why she […]

Q: What is the Gadsden “Don’t Tread on Me” flag? A. (1775): A banner designed by Continental Colonel Christopher Gadsden, using colonial rattlesnake imagery popularized by Benjamin Franklin, that accompanied the first-ever mission of the nascent U.S. Navy. A. (2009): According to law enforcement officials “the most common symbol displayed by militia members and organizations,” […]

They tried their best to get me going this morning. Slow news day- no update on the possible aircraft wreckage in the southern Indian Ocean. Russia is consolidating its annexation of the Crimea, and there doesn’t appear to be a darned thing that will be done about it. Don’t get me started on Venezuela- thankfully […]

    Spring arrives here on the East Coast at 12:57 today. I may still be on the wrong side of the Anacostia River, but I am confident that this will signify the official end of this awful winter. It was something to hope for through this last storm. I have a pal back in […]

I was sitting in the Bluesmobile, looking up the slight rise from the barn to the circular drive next to the fence around the farmhouse. “I am a Michigan-trained driver,” I said. “Why did you do this to yourself?” I had been driving around the property to put tire tracks in the pristine snow to […]

(The Diamond Hotel, Manila. Photo DH). I enjoyed the snow day. For fun, I got the Bluesmobile stuck in the snow down by the barn, and got some exercise shoveling out the decks. They say there is another kick-ass storm heading this way for next week, and I am thinking a lot about the tropics, […]

(Refuge Farm triptych: porch rails, back table and trees. Images Socotra). It was Saint Patrick’s Day eve as the late winter snow began to smother the Capital of the Free World, the mysteries continued. I am choosing to view them as farce, since no one can take this stuff seriously, right? Where have the grown-ups […]

I joined Old Jim and Foggy Bottom John-with at Willow’s Amen Corner last night. I had been futzing with taxes, though my heart was not in it, and I needed to talk to people about the increasing feeling of weirdness I am getting. Chanteuse Mary got off work in The Chamber early and was ready […]

So, it is the Ides of March, the murder of a man on the Rostrum in Imperial Rome that now marks the transition from the Roman Republic to the Empire. I am suspicious of metaphors, and think they are way too pat a way to make a point. I had this nice story going that […]

(The amazing new Club House at Army-Navy Country Club that replaced the stately and crumbling old one that had its roots in the original 1924 structure. Photo ANCC.) It is not the Ides of March until tomorrow- you know, the one in which the Bard commended us to beware, due to lean and hungry look […]