Reports surfaced today that President Donald Trump is considering Jim Webb, former Secretary of the Navy and later Senator from Virginia, to replace Jim Mattis as Secretary of Defense. Mattis, famously, resigned in protest a few days before Christmas due to the president’s abrupt announcement of a troop withdrawal from Syria. Webb would be anContinue reading “The Next Secretary of Defense Will Be…?”
Author Archives: Allyn
An Unwelcome Notice
Monday afternoon, before leaving home to attend a New Year’s party, I checked my mailbox. There was nothing of importance. Nothing, that is, but a letter from my apartment managers. The news that my rent was going up wasn’t a complete surprise — it’s gone up all but one year since I’ve lived here —Continue reading “An Unwelcome Notice”
A Long Way Down
Yesterday afternoon I was cleaning up my bookshelves, and I took a moment and looked at my shelf of Nick Hornby books, as one does: his novels (except the latest, Funny Girl, which I’ve not picked up), his screenplay for An Education, his book on music, even some of the Polysymphonic Spree books. As IContinue reading “A Long Way Down”
A Christmastime Visit to the Cemetery
Earlier last week I took a short trip to Baltimore’s Loudon Park Cemetery, where my great-grandparents, three of my great-grandfather’s siblings, and his mother are buried. The Baltimore area received about three and a half inches of rain over the weekend (from mid-day Friday to Sunday evening), and, since the cemetery floods, I wanted toContinue reading “A Christmastime Visit to the Cemetery”
Winter Solstice Moon
The Winter Solstice coincided (roughly, by about twelve hours) with the full moon this year. I thought, at work, that I’d miss the full(-ish) moon due to heavy rain storms that passed through all day, made work feel quite bleak every time I looked out the window, and made the drive home an adventure, but,Continue reading “Winter Solstice Moon”
Is Vince Guaraldi’s “Linus and Lucy” a Christmas Song?
Vince Guaraldi’s “Linus and Lucy” is a staple of Christmas radio stations this time of year. It appears memorably in A Charlie Brown Christmas, but is it actually a Christmas song? A look at the evidence.
Christmas in the Shire
Last night, for no particular reason, I watched the first of Peter Jackson’s Hobbit film, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. (Thoughts on the trilogy as a whole here.) Watching it brought to mind a satirical video I’d seen years ago of the Rankin-Bass Hobbit Christmas special that should have been. Was it still online? AContinue reading “Christmas in the Shire”
The Downton Abbey Movie Teaser Trailer
The teaser trailer for next autumn’s Downton Abbey movie dropped yesterday. Let’s take a look, shall we? There is not much there. Lovely shots of Totleigh Towers… err, I mean, Downton Abbey there. Lots of shadow, lots of light. Shots that could have been stock footage from the original television series. Some crane pans (orContinue reading “The Downton Abbey Movie Teaser Trailer”