(Culpeper National Cemetery, Memorial Day, 2022) It was a brilliant clear morning, cool at dawn but likely to soar to ninety on this Memorial Day under bright blue sky. There is a National Cemetery right here in town. It is not far off the main drag, and well posted. I had never stopped despite it’s […]

There is a brightness in this Piedmont morning. It is not unusual, since this is a lovely place with new bright green illuminated by the equally brilliant heavens above. It contrasts with the gloom of the past week, the perfectly natural parade of clouds and rain that in their time nurture the growing foliage that […]

Editor’s Note: We got something precious in the inbound traffic this morning. Well, there was more than that and it reflected the collision in currents in which we all sail. Our shipmate Marlow rang in from his Coastal Empire with a cautionary and lyrical allegory on social and nautical consequences of large things carooming with […]

So here we are. A major holiday is impending, one that used to be a bigger day than rotating what is appropriate to wear in what marked “winter” and “summer” clothing. Should the occasion arise, the Writer’s Section will drag the old seersucker out of the closet. Our Shipmate Marlow has some thoughts about Memorial […]

We were going to make the usual attempt at some commentary on the events of the week. There are several of significance. We did the research and were ready to present the developments in complex, evolving and potentially dangerous situations. They span the globe, across broad oceans from Ukraine to India. That effort was left […]

Doing the weekly forecast- the Weather Report- is normally fun with the crowd from the Writer’s Section at Refuge Farm. It includes a lot of banter about real truths that are no longer permitted for public release. Amanda is the company attorney, and she is just back from sequestration from one or more of the […]

(This fair-use non-commercial low-resolution screen-capture is from The Atlantic Magazine e-edition on an article regarding evangelical dissolution by Mr. Tim Alberta). Goodness, what a morning! Faithful correspondent Arrias weighed with with some considerations on the balance of nuclear terror on this vast but finite spinning world. It would be tempting to casually reach back into […]

(Nina Jankowitz official picture) It’s a new world, all right. Our panel of Fire Ring experts and hacks was naturally energized by a bunch of stuff. We are at swirl in the latest lunacy, some of it bringing up old mysteries in the swirl of a more recent one reaching its expiration date, and others […]

Summer is still three weeks away, but Virginia’s Piedmont has the moist rag of heat waving across us for the first taste of the season of warmth and perspiration to come. It was a bit of languor on the deck above the Fire Ring, a coolness of night still emanating from the siding, intermingling with […]

MapDescription automatically generated Locating: Otsego Ski Club was just east of town. West ten miles was the cabin on a little lake in the woods near tiny Elmira. Two miles to M-131 and north past Boyne Mountain, big-time Michigan skiing, and eventual to Petoskey, where Dad was Mayor pro tem and I thought I was […]