Lingua Franca There was a time when the people came from the East and all the world spoke with one tongue, though there were few words. All the people could communicate. A wife from the most distant province could scold another’s husband right in the capital of Babylon Humankind was united, and if there were […]

NMAI There are hundreds dead in Haiti from flooding  and savage murder in Baghdad. There are  pitiful pleadings of the next to die. No one is in a position to negotiate, since there is no way to talk to the murderers except in the Arab television. Other foreign Arabs may have murdered the Italian women they […]

Concerned Citizens I was half-dozing in the audience in Salon Number Two at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Arlington. I had arrived there in sufficient time to get my name card and find a seat in the back. There had been people enjoying high teas in the elegant sitting room off the lobby, mostly women. I […]

The Hill was swarming yesterday with activity. Everyone is back and there is the frenzy of the second session of the 108 th Congress with a war on and an election looming. ‘�Tis the season, and all that. There are cops everywhere. The Authorities are busy digging it up, closing off streets, and trying to […]

There was a genuinely demented man around the corner from the uniform store at the corner of 11th and New York Ave. I separate the genuine from the artificial for the practical reason of personal safety, or at least unexpected dry-cleaning expenses. This man was just around the corner from the Greek property on I […]

For Official Use Only   The bad news is that they are coming back. They will be here in September, and I think we can expect a brief respite over Labor Day, but they are going to be here in earnest come the second week of the ninth month. H.L. Menken said one time that […]

  I was talking to a freind and just saw the closed caption under his boyish beaming visage. Accordingly, I was able to judge the words and not the rhetoric while matching it to his facial movements.   It was a pretty wild ride through the evening. There is no question that Al Sharpton brought his […]

  I am not an equestrian. It doesn’t make me a bad person. I am just a suburban kid who didn’t often run into the species who has faithfully carried us for millennia. There is a troika in the history of Man, and it involves the human and the horse and the dog.   We […]

  It has been a long time since I worked someplace that invited me to wander aimlessly at lunch.   When I worked at the Pentagon, I ran, but to run anywhere interesting you were a sweaty mess when you got there. I tried running to some of the historic places in the district, across […]

  The word is that the U.S. is starting the long pull-out from South Korea.   It is about time, I thought, and ordered a glass of the house Chardonnay. We have left most of the cool places in Asia. It is an appropriate time to give back Camp Red Cloud under the long range […]