"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter." —Mark Twain
Is air power the new face of successful war-fighting? Much to the dismay of the boots-on-the-ground zealots … the answer for today’s democracies may well be “yes.” During the summer, while U.S. ground forces in Iraq were distracted investigating potential war criminals in their midst, air power delivered a major success. … When thousands of troops […]
I know, who the hell wants to read about work . . . or write about it, for that matter? But I’m on the intra-hospital run for a month, shuttling patients between Tucson and Phoenix, and it’s been an interesting first week. It started with a homeless man who soiled himself at a rest area where […]
Our friend Darrell celebrated his 59th birthday with us last night. Here we are at the dining room table: So here’s to Darrell, and good friends! I’m feeling especially fond of Frank (2nd from left in the photo). Frank, like Donna and Mary Anne, is Italian-American. After tasting the sauce and polenta I cooked, he pronounced […]
This is the real stuff, a meat sauce recipe from the Veneto region of Italy, handed down through generations of my wife’s family. I’m sure the recipe changed as it adapted to life in the United States, but when Donna and I visited the old folks in Vittorio Veneto back in the 1980s, we thought their sauce tasted just […]
Donna and I went to a party today. At one point our host put on a DVD his son sent from Iraq, where he’s serving with the US Army. We’ve known our friend’s son since he was in junior high, and we’ve seen him grow up into a fine young man. The DVD he sent […]
We’re sending out the old year with leftovers, crappy movies on cable TV, and iced tea, hunkered down in our warm house. We probably won’t even stay up to midnight, and that’s okay with us. Maybe some New Year’s resolutions will come to us in our sleep tonight. Maybe not. There’ll be plenty of time to […]
. . . or gratitude, or something. Donna called me at work today, opening the conversation with “I did a dumb thing.” Whenever I say that, what I really mean is that I’ve done something urecoverably disastrous. My heart plunged. Donna’s dumb thing was to place a small bowl of Hershey’s Kisses on the coffee […]
Since there have been so many cooking entries on this blog lately (it being the season for cooking and eating), I thought I’d post one more. In an earlier entry I mentioned smoking a brisket of beef for Christmas dinner. We did, and it was good . . . really good. Here’s how we did […]