I don’t recall much about local coverage of the Carter Administration. I joined the Navy in March of 1977, and spent a year in an assortment of entry-level training. The most memorable figure in that interlude was Drill lnstructor hSSGT Ronald C. Mace, USMC, who remains one of the most memorable characters in any of […]

Exciting week, right? You should see the pile of digits reflecting the thoughts and raw emotions of people who have dealt with the litany of memorable actions with which America has played a major role down through the years. Some of the Writers Section participated in the evacuation of Saigon, now 46 years in the […]

There was quite a flurry of anguish in the stack of electronic mail yesterday. Last week everybody seemed to be on vacation, and the summer breeze was laden with moisture and seasonably warm. The crop of corn and barley are coming up in the fields, a joyful linkage between natural bounty and human engineering to […]

(Alexander of Macedon visited Afghanistan, 300 years Before the Current Era). There is some talk this morning about the end of the twenty-year American experience in Afghanistan. For some of us it goes back a little further. For others, a lot further. Some of the Writers Section participated in one. I got to watch two, […]

Afghanistan is falling to the Afghans, or some Afghans, this morning. The images of hundreds of young people squashed against US Air Force transport aircraft trying to board surpass the old standard established on the Embassy roof in Saigon. This is a new graphic summation of bad decisions. It includes reports of stowaways on the […]

In the Piedmont of Virginia the dawn mimicked dream nicely. It mingled with the warmth of decent coffee. Low gray skies, dark things flitting across the limited view from under the dark green awning of canvas surrounded by the rich green of pasture grass. The birds in the bright dark colors of night echoed the […]

Author’s Note: There was one spark of good news in the mail today. Some good people may have helped get an Afghan translator and family out of th disaster that has a lot of Veterans pensive about the collapse of a nation. And Education…this is not a polemic, just an attempt to describe a system […]

The Styx River passes through our lives, carrying away family and dreams, lovers and comrades in its slow but inexorable and mighty flow. We watch the vast eddies in the immense course of the mighty current that separates our existence from one reality of human joy and pain to the endless wonders of eternity. We […]

(Morning! Sad day yesterday- the passing of an old friend, the end of something long and hard in a place far away where many had served. Emotional. I was going to run portraits of Messrs Sunstein and Ayres to go along with this piece. They are architects of the new ruling class, and to recognize […]

It is a muggy morning here in the Piedmont. A few puffy clouds are evident under the rising sun, but there is that warm moist blanket of air that is predicted to send us over a hundred degrees by noon. I forgot to check if that is “actual” or “heat effect” temperatures, but that does […]