There is a poem on the refrigerator by Andrew Marvell. He has been dead a long time, and time is one of the things he wrote about. He wrote about the winged chariot at his heels, and is resonates this morning, the first of the year in which the sweat rolls down beneath my […]

  The buzz is that they are trying to force Jamie Gorelick off the 9/11 Commission. They are not stopping at that. Some people are e-mailing her office and her home and saying they are going to blow her up.   That is pretty cold, and is a symptom of our e-culture and the politics […]

  The birds are singing this morning and my door is wide open, where the 7th Day Adventists might look in. Like the birds, the religious proselytizers are out.   I saw two earnest young Latter Day Saints bicycling down Pershing Street the other day, headed for an objective on their two-year Mission for the […]

Rebel troops opposed to Premier Fidel Castro landed before dawn on the swampy southern coast of Las Villas Province in Cuba on April 18, 1962.   There was no good reporting of the action. Intelligence was a cruder and more personal business in those days. After daylight was gone, Premier Castro issued a brief statement […]

  It is the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs and I have finally got around to wondering what is up with the Red Wings, my erstwhile hometown team.   I have a vague fondness for the old hockey clubs from the Golden Years in the snowbound northeastern corner of the country. The National Hockey […]

  Paul Wolfowitz was out in Korea last year, taking a look around for his Boos, Don Rumsfled. Paul is the Deputy Secretary of the Department of Defense, the number two official, and a very smart guy.   Some think he hs been a little preoccupied with Iraq, and has been since the first Gulf […]

  There is a marvelous confection of fried dough called the Krispy Kreme. Perhaps you have seen the green and white boxes. The yeast-risen sugar-glazed snack comes in dozens, and some places they are ubiquitous as Girl Scout Cookies. They sell them by the dozen in bright green boxes to raise funds for neighborhood organizations. […]

  In order to get a boatload of bucks, I said “yes” to an aggressive technology company that wants my services.   But that means I have to quit my current job. I went to the office yesterday and typed out a contrite resignation and slipped it under the door of my erstwhile boss. He […]

  War Department, Washington, D.C., April 9, 1865- 10 o’clock P.M.   Ordered: that a salute of two hundred guns be fired at the headquarters of every army and department, and at every post and arsenal in the United States, and at the Military Academy at West Point on the day of the receipt of […]

  By the time I finally got to the Hot Box at the end of the day I was not at my best.   It was business and I hate doing business after dinner. Normally my day would be done. I had been up early and writing frantically, traveling to the Arctic in my mind, […]