Back to School It was a sad, sunny afternoon on the pool-deck at Big Pink. Ivan the Terrible, the lithe young Czech who had ruled the pool with a hand of iron, is done with us and headed back to Mittleurope. The women of Big Pink liked him. His skin was bronzed by the sun, […]

Johnnie White’s It is morning here and the dog has dragged me around his course. He is a good boy and now sleeping quietly by the screen door, his major accomplishment of the day is history now, and he is taking a break. I’m unsettled. I want to lie by the pool and bake, and […]

I do not think the aftermath of the storm bothered the dog in the slightest. As far as he is concerned, the weather has broken, the pre-dawn sky is clear, and the temperature is exactly that: temperate. He Almost time to open the windows and let the clean fresh air inside, communicate with the outside […]

Home Grown Well, we are done with August, finally. It seemed to stand still at the end of it. Almost done with the summer, one last fling at the season coming up, two days of decent commutes downtown. Summer almost gone, but it did not leave without making it the most memorable in a century. […]

Beauvoir I got three phone calls while I was in the dentist’s chair yesterday. The hygienist was kind enough to take her hands out of my mouth so I could answer them. Two were about money, and one was about the disaster on the Gulf Coast . It did not look good for the survivors […]

The Flood My stomach is in a knot. I don’t know what this affliction is, though the symptoms are familiar enough. It must be something picked up on the road last week that has turned my innards to jelly. I had a call from my old life around dinner last night. The conversation made my […]

Priority Passengers The Big Storm is coming ashore in New Orleans this morning. It looked like it was going to be gigantic, the Chairman of the Board of Gulf storms. But it has weakened a bit, and has had the grace to stay offshore until the light came again. I am a linear creature, and […]

The Shape of Things Money is starting to flow in response to an increased perception of vulnerability in the nation’s mass transit system. The additional resources will create an intelligent network that will permit unprecedented monitoring of activity in the New York subway system. There are already 5,700 cameras in place, but they are old […]

Bumper Stickers The bumper-stickers around town are entertaining to read, since there is little else to do when stuck in the gridlock. The Kerry people have defiantly kept theirs, and some ask about a village that is missing its idiot. There are admonitions for both World Peace and Whirled Peas, smug ones from the Victors, […]

Business Travel It has been a long time since I had to arrange a group trip. More than a decade, I think. The last big intercontinental goat-rope in which I got to ride was one that included Tokyo , Shanghai , Seoul , Honolulu and Anchorage . I knew that one was my last, unless […]