(The late Christine McVie, noted composer and vocalist. She became famous as a member of the band Fleetwood Mac. Her public obituary cited her ‘passing from a short illness.’ Image courtesy Wikipedia). Someone rose in the darkness and screwed around with the coffee maker and the bacon. We like the bacon crisp and as flat […]

Amen to short-illness-syndrome being quick to kill you. We caught the early OG version in January 2020 at a Chinse soup dumpling place down on South Florida’s Dade County where the servers were from mainland China. How did we know where they were from, you might rightfully ask. Well, at our table was our guide […]

Traditionally, this is a pivotal week in the average year. We have celebrated a joyful holiday replete with good food and fellowship with family and fellow citizens. Then, Friday dawned with a traditional surge toward the malls to commence the frenzy of Christmas shopping, to be followed by a gigantic buzz on Cyber Monday. We […]

(Reports this morning are that China’s former leader Jiang Zemin has died at the age of 96. He came to power after the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, an event that echoes some of the growing frustration with China’s response to the Covid virus. Image from our friends at Reuters). We have veered from our […]

There was a vigorous discussion about Latin out on the balcony this morning. A bit chill and gray skies that suggest the onset of moisture falling from the sky.  Well, actually the vigor was more about something called ‘grammar.’ That would normally start with a lower-case letter unless it referred to your Mom’s Mom, both correctly […]

Morning! We glanced in the mirror this morning and saw everything reflected back in a weird amalgam of shifted shapes. Attempting to unscramble them took the first cup of coffee on a new week. Slow on getting to the laptop, we found a cool set of headlines on one of the sites the group scans […]

(This caricature of a sailor named “Salty” was found in the piles of paper shipped from The Farm to Arlington. It was drawn in 1945, and we are 99% sure of the year. We also believe he has been 99.71% of the way around the world). We are not confused this morning. We are addled. […]

(In order to restrain a dog with an unruly streak a short leash is sometimes required to keep them close. Today we are going to explore what may be coming in the New Congress, and what length of leash they may require. Photo Old Mill Store). OK, the Midterms are sort of done, and the […]

We have been in the new place for a little more than a week. Thanksgiving has passed, as has the seasonal restraint on celebrating Christmas in September or October. There are other significant milestones in the calendar, of course. Down on The Farm, there would be the urge to get the daily observation on the […]

Happy Thanksgiving! Some of us around the Fire Ring are from Great Lakes upbringing, so the recent snow up in Buffalo didn’t evoke much surprise. There were a couple grins that they are not having to deal with it this time. Some places got five and six feet of Lake’s Effect snow. Sometimes at this […]