Year: 2017

Life & Island Times: The Day After Is No Longer The Day After

Dozens may die and hundreds may be injured today, but tomorrow we’ll be shopping online and eating dinner out. And a day or maybe a week later, we’ll be watching if not be consumed by yet another record breaking catastrophe. Thank heavens, yesterday’s, last week’s, last month’s and this past spring’s nightmares in Las Vegas, […]

Why?

I will try to cover it unemotionally in the Swamp Postcard tomorrow- short words, bullet points. Take away the urge to rail about the madness of men and the complete absence of conscience and compassion. I love the way the sun comes up down in Culpeper. The fields illuminate first, and then the golden light […]

Japan-Gazer Update

Hello from Yokosuka, and welcome to the “retired gaijin” version of Japan-gazer, which I think will continue to morph over time, but just wanted to get it started and see where things go through what’s ahead. This short “Update” version, I hope to send once in a while, using Japanese internet news blurbs/sources to follow […]

Arrias on Politics: The Truth Sometimes Hurts

A famous world leader once said: “The facts as they are to-day cannot change the facts as they were last September. If I was right then, I am still right now.” Conversations are almost certainly now taking place in South Korea, Japan, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran that would have been considered impossible […]

Bunny Years

I am going to step away from the crises de jour this morning. There are reports that Pyongyang is moving some rockets around, and China and Russia are starting to actually get serious. Who knows? Perhaps this will work out. But I recall that pinching the Japanese with sanctions on oil, steel and rubber exports […]

Life & Island Times: Vanishing Key West

Editor’s Note: I am deeply sympathetic to Marlow’s views of one of the most remarkable cities in America, a place so zany and fun that it once “seceded” from the United States to form an independent Conch Republic- a sort of Mouse That Roared moment in between drinks at the Green Parrot or Captain Tony’s. […]

High Anxiety

I had two separate conversations over the last few days that summed up a lot about what is going on and how people are reacting to it. I was working on the astonishing litany of events that have occurred over the last week for the Swamp Postcard feature I have fun with each Wednesday and […]

Postcard From The Swamp #15

The hits just keep on coming. The Eastern Seaboard breathed a sigh of relief as Hurricane Maria arced to the northeast, sparing us the wind and rain. Unfortunately, Maria has linked up with Hurricane Lee and is intensifying again. Great Britain may be directly in its path. The power of nature is a poignant reminder […]

The Interstate Wizard

Editor’s Note: The rhetoric flying around these days contains a lot of archaic terms- “White Supremacist” seems to be a favorite, which makes me remember when such despicable creatures actually existed, attacking children of color during integration times, and “KKK,” of whom there may be a few hundred sprinkled in a population of 320 million. […]

Life & Island Times: Stewpot Images of The Voodoo Two

Author’s Note: I wrote this over the weekend. I delayed sending it out this morning with the expectation that they would dial it back or at least pause. Oh well . . . . – Marlow Stewpot Images of The Voodoo Two It started during last year’s summer heat wave during the mirage of an […]