29 December - Trail Cat



Sunnier, not as warm as yesterday, but a good day to go scouting for

26 December - The Young Visiters


Daisy Ashford, Author of The Young Visiters

In another example of the world run mad with innovation, we watched

25 December - The Annual Catwalk; Not Available in Stores



The Annual

24 December - Nelson and the Bear



And now, a dramatic tableau vivant taken from the life of Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson -

Or, if you prefer, it's another in our ground-breaking series of thought-provoking counterfactual histories: What would have happened if... in 1773, the young Midshipman Nelson of His Majesty's Ship Carcass, instead of tangling with a polar bear, had encountered a giant land-dwelling octopus? History might have turned out very differently. Or not. Probably not, land-dwelling arctic octopi being so very unusual. Still, it makes you think. Nelson is shown above with his faithful cat Leroy; a walrus looks on in the background and wonders what he's going to have for dinner.

Previous Counterfactual Essays:

Huguenots vs. Maxim Guns at La Rochelle, 1627-28
Nelson's Cat vs. Fokker D.VIIs at Trafalgar, 1805
Richelieu's Zeppelin

24 December - The Menace of Seasonal Cheer


Cat Tucker, waiting for Santy Claws, Christmas 2004.

As another year draws to a close, let me take this opportunity to collapse on the Fellows' Common Room couch and whine pathetically - it's the hideous painful sore throat that came to me yesterday, like an unwanted gift. But I am to be allowed in the FCR, and may wallow on the couch, and may even make

21 December - On the Scout



Cat Natasha has kindly agreed to do a bit of aerial reconnaissance in order to help me find a spot to pitch

20 December - Seasonal Update



As in

13 December - Nitro Nostalgia


Hank Burchard of Pecker Wood

The Sage of Tappahominy County, the Squire of Pecker Wood,

Katie Couric of CBS has her knickers in a twist because American teenage boys are building bombs. I think teenage boys have been building bombs since the Chinese inwented gunpowder. I would be worried about any teenage boy who didn't like to blow up stuff, and since the gummint nannies have taken cherry bombs, M-80s and even, for all love, ladyfingers out of circulation, kids have no choice but to make their own explosives, hair-spray cannons and whatever.

Of course I come from a time when my ol Daddy would send me to the general store at the remote crossroads of Tysons Corner VA to pick up Purina Layena chicken mash, scratch, horehound drops and, occasionally, half a dozen sticks of 15% dynamite. He did like to blow up stumps and stuff although, having in youth bailed from a nitro wagon he was driving in the West Texas oilfields when the brake burned out on a long slope, he had a decent respect for things that went boom. Which the wagon did when it overran the four-mule team and flipped end-for-end. They found the iron wheelbands and a couple of mule shoes with hooves attached.

I compounded my share of gunpowder in my garage loft laboratory at our home in Arlington, and once had a backyard rocket launch fail so spectacularly that half a century later the crater still collects rainwater and the windowpanes of neighboring houses, upon close inspection, will be seen to be slightly mismatched. But the high point of my youthful aboominations was when Harry Zackerson and I brewed up a liter of nitroglycerin in the basement of his apartment house, which only through the apparent and unwarranted intervention of providence still stands. Nitro is tetchy all the time, but particularly when it's being compounded, which requires slow admixture of the ingredients in exact proportions and in proper order, with close control of the temperature. We had Pyrex measuring cups, a kitchen thermometer and some ice cubes. But however we succeeded better than we knew.

We used an ounce or so of the stuff, with a Chinese firecracker for a detonator, to blow open a Coke machine in the adjacent laundry room. I believe some nickels still are imbedded in the walls and ceiling. We decided we needed a more private place, so Harry wrapped the bottle in a sweater, nestled it in his bike basket, and we rode off, lickety-split and bumpety-bump, to the shores of the Potomac across from the Army Corps of Engineers water treatment plant above Georgetown. I also carried my single-shot .22 slung over my shoulder, which I suppose these days would initiate deployment of a SWAT team.

When we got to Forty-foot Rock, a sheer-sided cliff above the river which we had ambitions of reducing to thirty feet, we noticed that the jar of nitro was sensibly warmer and was giving off evil-looking fumes. Our long dormant self-preservation genes finally kicked in, and Harry hurled the the jar into the river. We crouched expectantly but there was only a splash. After a few seconds the jar bobbed to the surface. We took turns shooting at it, and on about the third shot I connected. The resulting column of water rose well above our heads and briefly blinded us with mist. The concussion was so thunderous that for the first few moments of our capering joy we couldn't hear each other's exultations.

13 December


Rita Keith Taylor, 1930-2008

Yesterday, I was out to Luray, Virginia to bid farewell to an old friend, Rita Taylor - boxer whisperer, mistress of llamas, and a fine and funny lady.




I paid my respects to

6 December - Cephalopodic Haberdashery



Thanks to old friend

5 December - Fragility


Potomac near Difficult Run

Feeling a bit fragile at the end of a long week - tired, of course - maybe somewhat overfull of dumplings, noodles, crispy shrimp, roast pork. Why not have