Here in Virginia’s Piedmont, and that includes Ruckersville, we slipped past 0537 this morning to abandon Winter and awake in Spring. Poet Bill Wordsworth did something a while back that greets this particular dawn nicely. He called his attempt “Lines Written in Early Spring.” It starts like this: Through primrose tufts, in that green bower, […]

Socotra House is firm and resolute on matters pertaining to public health. We will not waver on the key points of the great national Emergency and all the factors of emergency rule. You can check our phone logs. The locational information stored at Verizon we were nowhere near anything on 06 January. It is available […]

(L-R: Ancient decorative thermometer, Eddie Layton’s scrimshaw tooth and that lovely girl the Japanese Navy presented in commemoration of heroic events by different peoples). Sorry. I got dragged into the past this week putting together a slide-show for the good people at the ex-USS Midway Library. The theme of the pitch was to be how […]

Ah. Had a touch of Spring last week, but March has not quite had its last “roar” before we depart the winter and welcome official Spring this Saturday. It is gray on this late (official) Winter day in Virginia’s Piedmont. We honor President Biden’s aggressive Rescue Tour of the Battleground States with 3-minute stops by […]

(LT Mac Showers at War’s end). I am supposed to give a pitch on some history related to the great gray ship now permanently moored in the harbor at San Diego. For all of us who have gone down to the sea in ships, she is a special reminder. Her status is protected, for a […]

The Ides of March: When the Madness Blooms Like you, Refuge Farm is dealing with the Spring Ahead as best it can. There was a vigorous discussion of the moment of discontinuity, the one where a cursory look at the baleful blue light of the clock announced one thing, while the tiny solid black letters […]

Sorry to bother you with this, but it is illustrative of the life of a geezer in the country. It is something that has been troubling for several years and for a variety of reasons. Refuge Farm is a project of love in a lovely place. You have heard about it in endless paeons of […]

I know, I am as startled as you about all the amazing things going on around us. I got a suggestion that the continued use of the term “Swamp Postcard” didn’t actually convey what is going on within and emanating from our Nation’s Capital. I had to agree. It has been a year of curious […]

So, in the course of an accidental career, I was briefly attached to the staff of the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. It was an odd thing for a career intelligence guy, and quite interesting. Secretary Thompson was interested in what the well-manicured briefer from the three-letter-agency had to tell him […]

(Former HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson). We have shared an interesting year, haven’t we? There is more to it than what we are told, of course, and there are several large moving components to the madness. One of the latest new wrinkles is an old one, and brings back memories. You might be interested in a […]