Year: 2017

Secrets

(Heather and Liz-S enjoy the Willow reunion at Front Page). I am really agitated at the moment. I had composed a nice story that combined a Front Page reunion of Willow regulars, the DARPA office party going on around the bar, that Agency’s contribution to Amazon’s latest innovative technology that will put cameras in all […]

Life & Island Times: Westsiders

I had not yet found a new job by the next Saturday night, when the A&P’s office phone rang. Gene picked it, listened and asked only one question before hanging up. He called out to me at the registers, “Marlow, clock out and go home. NOW! There’s trouble at your place. Ride your motorcyle out […]

Postcard from the Swamp #20

Well, you can’t say this hasn’t been an interesting week in the fetid marsh along the Potomac we call the Capital of the Free World. Of course, we have been saying that for nearly a year now. After throwing mud on all things Russia and dark mutterings about alleged collusion, there are some strings that […]

Life & Island Times: Battle Hymn

Author’s Note: Yesterday’s decalarations by two Senators in the halls of Congress and the well of the Senate certainly looked like the opening salvos of a civil war. If so, the country needs a battle hymn. Or a crazy train. – Marlow Trump’s words reveal the crazy of the theories of Freud He rails about […]

Japan-Gazer Update

平成29年10月25日 = (25 OCT 2017) Japan-Gazer Update – – – – – = This week’s poem: OJT Folks do things the hard way Their experience is earned Same lessons in their history Books unread and unlearned https://carllafong.blogspot.jp/ – – – – – U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday (23 OCT) congratulated Prime Minister Shinzo Abe […]

Postcard from the Swamp #19

Well, you can’t say this hasn’t been an interesting week in the fetid marsh along the Potomac we call the Capital of the Free World. Of course, we have been saying that for nearly a year now. After throwing mud on all things Russia and dark mutterings about alleged collusion, there are some strings that […]

Life & Island Times: Bread

It was a typical bitterly cold, slate gray skied, late December 1969 afternoon in South Bend, Indiana. I was working at the downtown A&P store stocking shelves and running a cash register, when I came upon something that affected me profoundly. A small unkempt child had torn and bitten open a plastic wrapped loaf of […]

Life & Island Times: Cleveland Avenue Tenacity

Author’s note: With the recent respite from the Asian war drum rolls, I waded through my faded memories, mementos and few surviving photographs of the streets of South Bend, Indiana, dating from 1969 through 1971. They opened a window for me to revisit the America of my past and present. The next few pieces are […]

Brunch at Mylos

This was a special morning at Mylos, a fine little pub in a McLean that I passed every day driving to the CIA campus at Mclean but never stopped to sample. JPeter convinced me otherwise, and I am glad he suggested the event. We were the only Willow Refugees who could make it, but we […]

Life & Island Times: Competing Uncle Sam-I-Ams

Editor’s Note: We just wrapped up the ‘Red Death’ saga on Friday. To avoid confusion on the part of our alert readership, we deferred this one from The Coastal Empire until today. I am posting late, due to an unexpected chance to have bunch with a retired 92-year-old Lieutenant General at the fabulous Mylos Grill […]