Half a World Away I was listening to the radio in my bed. It is dark and there is a chill in the breeze through my open window. It is 0500 on Sunday, a travel day, the end of which will not come for me until I am more than half a world away. I […]

The Agreed Framework   The North Koreans lied to us.   Imagine that! Last night the very self-possessed State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told the nation that the Agreed Framework had been abrogated by the North, that they had continued an offensive weapons program to develop nuclear weapons. He stunning revelation came in the midst […]

Target The morning dawns brilliant today. We are celebrating our Italian heritage and have taken the day off from the busy affairs of the Government. Other Governments and Non-Governmental actors have not. I hear from London that Joint Rule in Ireland has been suspended, and Mr. Blair has reasserted direct rule from the old imperial […]

Life in the Big City   I don�t know what that means. We are following the sniper story with a certain detachment and grim fascination. The seventh and eighth shootings have not brought our boy to closure. I am presuming here, but I’m fairly sure our “boy” is just that. A hunter who has graduated […]

Cabin in the Woods   Michigan is playing Notre Dame today down at South Bend. I wish it was at the Big House in Ann Arbor. That would be the place to renew the rivalry. They haven’t met in a few years, schedules and contracts and all that. Michigan goes in ranked number seven in […]

Saturated The nice people on NPR tell me this will be a fine day, high seventies, breezy and pleasant. Another wonderful day. I left work early yesterday and went to Arlington. I stopped at the Harris Teeter over at Pentagon City to buy flowers and drove up to the  front gate at Ft. Myer.   […]

Little Traverse Bay   The sun continues to flood the Northland. I was lazy, and lay abed until nearly quarter of nine. When I emerged from my suite Dad asked if I wished to go to the flea market out in the country, north of Harbor Springs. I told him that sounded fine and when […]

The Green Flash   It didn’t happen tonight. It rarely does. I’ve been looking for it on five oceans. I�m not smart enough to know what the traditional seven seas are. But I can count the ones I have steamed on and looked at the horizon.  but I got it last night. Nailed it. Right […]

IThe Tuesday lunch group meets at a public house on US-131 just north of town, past the old Methodist encampment of gingerbread Victorian homes called Bayview. It is my favorite thing here in town, the fanciful campus of frame cottages that date to the 1880s. Some have been restored in astonishing detail, all the filigree […]

I am on one of the school machines in the library in the Basement of the John F. Kennedy School of Government. This is last official act before heading to the airport. I write as a recent graduate of the shortest course (three weeks) which officially qualify you as a Graduate of Harvard University. That […]