Unsettling
Unsettling 2025 There’s unsettling data from the Natural Resources Conservation Service on the Rocky Mountain Western Slope snowpack. This is the lifeblood of the Colorado River. We’re looking at the lowest snowpack on record since 1941. A winter that’s been warm and...
Foolishness
Foolishness 2024 Foolishness rarely strays far from any bureaucracy, in any organization, in any culture, in any era. The raw foolishness of swapping reason and scientific research for ideology seems to be the current fashion in Washington, where something or other...
Pockmarked
Just A Smidgen
Just a smidgen, perhaps only a vague shadow of a smidgen, a pittance, a number buried deep in the monied mists of Capitol Hill. The National Park Service receives less than 1-15th of 1 percent of the federal budget, according to park advocates. Washington DC...
Quicksand
Quicksand 2025 There it lies, timeless quicksand, ancient and devious, disguised and poised to devour, terrible quicksand that swallows empires, dreams and innocent explorers alike. There it is, savage, silent quicksand mushrooming across parts America’s parched...
Home Front II
Home Front II 2025
Bahrain
Bahrain 2025
Home Front
Home Front 2025
Hormuz
Hormuz 2025
Dubai
Dubai 2025
Inviting
Inviting 2026 At first he spoke so softly I had to lean in close to hear him. His speech was lightly accented and formal, with a faint suggestion of something inviting in an illicit way that intrigued me. There was nothing condescending about his manner and to the...
Cautious
Cautious 2025 Mr. Aziz gave me a practiced nod, cautious and restrained as if attached to well-worn reins. He smiled softly, seemingly in approval of the intentions of this waiting room décor. I invited him into my office where he continued to take stock of things,...
Persian
Persian 2025 One morning shortly after I moved in, Mr. Aziz came to my office and carefully surveyed my efforts at decoration. The Persian rug from my father’s study fit nicely in the waiting room. Four dark leather chairs were grouped on opposite walls with a small...
Khaled
Khaled 2025 I first knew Khaled Abdel Aziz as a landlord, then as a client and finally, after accompanying him through shadows, deceptions and blood, as a friend, the most unlikely of friends. In 1974, wedged between late winter’s rain and late spring’s marine layer,...
Unassuming
Unassuming 2025 In unassuming offices prosperous enterprises may be easily masked. Conversely, in more impressive offices in more fashionable or august neighborhoods, the showmanship required from tenants to display the trappings of success could be difficult to...
Clandestine
Clandestine 2025 My second floor neighbors were an insurance agent, an immigration lawyer, an accountant and my landlord. I had the feeling none were especially skilled or prosperous. Whether their clandestine careers were ascending or descending was difficult to...
Armenians
Armenians 2025 Armenians were starting to move in and forty year old apartment buildings, once home to aspiring screenwriters, and afterward industrious Hispanics, were again in transition. My office was a second floor walkup on the north side of Sunset. The four...
Raffish
Raffish 2025 With a plump out of court financial settlement and a full head of steam I was issued my California private investigator license. I set up shop on the eastern fringe of Hollywood in a two story building on Sunset and Normandie, a neighborhood appreciated...
