‘Easy reading is damned hard writing.” – Nathaniel Hawthorne Not that what I write is easy to read. I will leave that to the old dead white guys of the pantheon. It is the Fourth of July. It is a magic day in this slow-starting summer season. This feels more like Memorial Day than the […]

It is drizzly in town this morning, which is the way we could sum up the spring. It is not cool, but it is definitely not hot. This is almost the Fourth of July and we have had exactly two days that got into the nineties. Tom Cruise is 42 and Dave Barry is denying […]

It is gray here as the moisture from Tropical Depression Bill sweeps over the southeast corner of the United States. The folks on the radio are predicting an eighty percent chance of rain. I don’t want to go to work today. The Boss is back and the madness will begin all over again down at […]

Tropical Storm Bill, the second-named storm of the young season, waded ashore down in Louisiana yesterday. We got hourly updates on the progress of the storm surge on our Blackberry PDAs just in case we had to deploy the resources of the Department in response. Although I think that mission belongs to some other Department […]

I woke this morning from the running dream. You may know it. It is the one where a sea of adversaries of fantastic shape, both known and unknown oppose you and you flail at them, sometimes landing a good one but it doesn’t matter. The motion continues and the scenes roll on and at some […]

It is Saturday morning, the only time in the week to think about what is next, not that I obsess about it. It is just the only time when there is no work and no dread of what is coming tomorrow. Sort of like the old Fleetwood Mac song “Don’t Stop (Thinking About Tomorrow).” I […]

On June 26, 1963, President John F. Kennedy visited West Berlin. While there he visited the Schoenburg town hall in the American Sector and uttered the words that framed the whole decade of Cold War, and presaged the robust commitment to democracy that became the adventure in Vietnam. He made his famous commitment to the […]

Something has happened to the BBC this morning. I have a bit of a panic attack. Can Bush House have gone dark? Has something happened to the people and institutions of Great Britain? The alarm went off just fine. I have the clock set twenty minutes fast in the bedroom so that it will scare […]

It was the longest day of the year and the first day of summer and I nearly froze my ass off down on the pool deck when I got out of the water. This is the strangest of years. It was so cold on Saturday that I actually forgot about the solstice. This is a […]

I am pleased to report to you today the resolution of the late unpleasantness with Iran. Goodness knows it has been going on long enough. The naked greed, the endless negotiations, the denials and the obfuscation. The last discussion has concluded, the possibility of the return of the old regime dispelled. It is finally over, […]