I remember most warmly an Updike story the New Yorker published in the eighties. In it, he described a New England weekend trip. Several apparently successful couples sharing a large country house. In the morning, he captured the tenuous space between the professional and the deeply personal by describing how, in spite of every doctor's best advice (at least one of these vacationers was, I seem to remember, a doctor), the house was filled with the illicit smell of bacon. Slip over here for more ...

Five and a half years ago, when the departing administration was, it turns out, just getting started, I traveled to Washington DC to do some research in the Library of Congress. The purpose of that trip, it turns out, was not the library research, but something else. Call it a full immersion experience. I post this story here today in remembrance of those days and in deep gratitude for the days to follow. However we traveled, we ended up here! Cheers! Slip over here for more ...

Today would have been my father's 86th birthday. The first one I've ever known him to miss. But then he 86ed in September.

I've been working to clean out the old family place these last few weeks. Organizing for an uncertain future. I honor his memory today and the context he created, and the one I'll leave behind. Slip over here for more ...