Mickey Mantle’s Birthday The panhandlers were pushy on 11th Street, doing that passive-aggressive thing with a little more urgency. It took me a buck to get past the old African-American woman on the bench in front of the building. The hood of her sweatshirt was drawn tight around her face and her jaw jutted like […]

Abingdon I was dropping my best friend off at the airport yesterday. Not Dulles, thank God, which is in another county altogether, and requires a major expedition and a compass to get to. It had been another one of those weekends, too short and filled to the brim. A fellow officer had appeared by chance […]

Eine Reich When the Germans were crazy they had a saying: One Nation!. One People! One Leader! They said it in German, of course, and it must have been chilling to hear it shouted by thousands carrying torches, or sputtered by that strange man with the odd mustache from the podium. I get the willies […]

Sturm unt Drang I was soaked to the skin by the time I climbed out of the car walked to get the golf umbrella out of the trunk. The remnants of Hurricane Jeanne ran over us, just in time for rush hour in the city. I left my desk a half hour early to see […]

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 […]