I was across the table from the Germans so late in the afternoon it was almost evening. My medical associate, a slim aesthetic ER physician, had spaced out a commitment, remembered only late that he had agreed to a meeting. The delegation arrived at the building promptly at five. It had been a slow day, […]

It is a cool gray morning of indeterminate size. I cannot tell how deep the heavens will be this day. Not yet. The light is still soft and the air cool, though moist. Those who follow the air currents opine that we will return to the mid-seventies in temperature. The peculiar nature of this Spring […]

I have not told you about my talk with my older son Friday night, the rambling dinner conversation about the nature of time and the possibilities of time travel. It was related to Pink Floyd and the way Dark Side of the Moon synches up to The Wizard of Oz. That is too bizarre for […]

It is Friday the Thirteenth and I am hoping for a great day. I may not get it. It is leaden gray again out there and threatening to rain once more. I swear I am living closer to Edgeware Road in London than slightly north of Route Fifty in Arlington, Virginia. The atmosphere has weight […]

I am a little frustrated this morning. I couldn’t log on to AOL- nothing unusual in that, but there was a pop-up prompt box at my screen-name sign-on that said to “log-on as the master user “for an urgent message from the Service.” I had to think for a moment. The master account screen name […]

It is Monday morning. It is drizzling again, very soft. The clouds are low and dark and pools of water have accumulated on the balcony. My sources tell me there was a hell of a thunderstorm last night and the humidity came in behind it. I don’t know and can’t testify to it. I was […]

“The province of Darfur was given to Rudolf Slatin, and fell to the Dervishes under the Mahdi. Slatin spent fourteen years as personal slave to the Mahdi and his successor, eventually escaped, helped the British Army reconquer the Sudan, and headed the Austrian Red Cross in World War I.” It’s morning and I check the […]

Well, it D-Day again for the 59th time, and I always think of my Uncle Dick launching out of his base in Lincolnshire in support of the troops going ashore. It was not a long-range mission, just over the Channel and back. But he lost one of the four engines on his B-17 on take-off. […]

I was not surprised to emerge from the interior of my shoe-box apartment and see from the balcony that it is raining again here in the nation’s capital. It feels like London here, moist and chill and dark. It is another aseasonal aberration. It should be warm and coming up sunny. It is not, though […]

It is the anniversary of the Battle of Midway, the first Naval encounter fought entirely by airplanes between two fleets who never came within sight of one another. It was the beginning of the end for the Empire of the Sun, and at Stalingrad, Marshall von Paulus was about to surrender his 6th Army to […]