It is well and truly summer now. Sweat is rolling down my torso and the fan is roaring, vainly trying to shred the humid air.    ï¿½Sixteenth today it is,” thought Leopold Bloom in 1904, or at least bespeckled James Joyce would have us believe that he did. One century ago a young Joyce […]

  I am confronted by the prospect that I must work five consecutive days in a row.   I am filled with horror at the prospect. The diversions are all gone. I think I have to be in New Jersey toward the end of the week, which means travel and work. There is not enough […]

  We were picking through the plastic bags, trying to sort out whose groceries were whose. There was a report of a car bomb in Baghdad, and the assassination of another government minister. The former wouldn’t have blipped the scope on the daily violence here in the capital, except for the implications of the latter. […]

  It was the second day of the Weekend of National Mourning for President Reagan.   I was exhausted from hauling the golf-bag with my son over the Old Course in solemn commemoration. He is now a government employee, of a sort, an intern at my old agency. Since we were now both at enforced […]

I arose for the first time to hear the news in the background about the end of the week of mourning for Mr. Reagan. He was interred as the sunset gathered the rolling hills in blue, and the Reagan kids, as George the First called them, told tales of a smaller scale than he musings […]

I find there is a curious side to this national bereavement, which is another three, almost four day weekend, and a carnival atmosphere of celebration downtown. Because it is a celebration, in a way. Dutch Reagan is freed from the awful clouds of his disease, and the legacy of his passing, for good or ill, […]

I must have been in the grip of one of those periodic delusions when I re-set my alarm to wake at 0245 this morning. When it went off my eyes flashed open, realizing what I had done. I fumbled for clothes, and realized I had to shower. I fumbled through the ritual of making the […]

We are in the business of doing business with the Government, but that is going to be hard today. It is the start of the sultry summer here on the Potomac, and our first heat alert of the year. Bu that is not all. The Government is going to shut down at two this afternoon […]

  I was listening to the BBC reporting live from the ceremonies to commemorate the D-Day landings, sixty years ago today. The weather is not cooperating today, and more than it did then. Tom Brokaw had looked relaxed in the sunshine on the Nightly News when he arrived, but now the clouds with the prospect […]

  George Tenet handed in his resignation just before the President took off for Italy last week. He is going home, and so it Jamie Pavet, his Operations Chief. Washington is all abuzz with speculation, which is mostly what we do for a living here. Buzz. And speculate.   There isn’t anything else to do […]