Miscellaneous

A couple of years ago, shortly after we moved back to Arlington, I decided to stroll by our old house, just a mile or so from where we live now. I was standing in front of the house, admiring the improvements the new owners had made to the front yard, when the woman drove up [...]

In The Passage of Power, Robert Caro’s fourth book in a five-part series on The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Caro describes Johnson’s actions upon assuming the presidency after the Kennedy assassination. Here is a brief excerpt from the book describing the Oval Office. And, at last, he was in the President’s office. There hadn’t even [...]

Taken into custody under suspicion of shoplifting, your client is escorted to a back office in the pharmacy to wait for the police to arrive.  The loss prevention officer handcuffs her to a chair and readies the camera. Maybe it is vanity.  Maybe it is habit.  Although time may change the way she remembers this, [...]

From Palermo the perfect destroyers pass these ashy islands where the fires of nature show   a random glow, and turning to more useful purposes propose to Palmi and to other   sleeping villages a pure intent whose bright trajectory so changed by circumstance   comes down to more than pin-pricks on a grid, or [...]