by admin | Dec 17, 2009 | News
It started so simply. I just wanted some old bricks. So I did what people do these days when they’re looking for something on the cheap: I cruised Craigslist. And right there, in the “building materials” section, I came across an ad for salvaged...
by admin | Dec 10, 2009 | News
“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall…” I have to disagree with the poet Robert Frost on this one. Something there is that does love a wall, especially if it’s one of the beautiful stone walls you see along hedgerows and under old...
by admin | Dec 3, 2009 | News
It seems like a million years ago, but there was a time when my friends and I would go to a five and dime called G.C. Murphy on Wisconsin Avenue in Washington, D.C., where I grew up, and play pinball. We were good boys. Choirboys, actually, at the National Cathedral....
by admin | Nov 26, 2009 | News
It was an auctioneer’s dream. The contents of a historic estate on the block. Nearly four hundred eager bidders. Christmas looming on the horizon. A tent full of antique dealers and holiday gift-shoppers, all willing to go to the mat. The tent had been pitched...
by admin | Nov 19, 2009 | News
In one of the great feel-good, swords-into-plowshares stories of our time, the New York Times recently reported that something like 10% of American electricity is generated by old Russian nuclear bombs. No joke. That’s more than all our hydro, solar, biomass,...
by admin | Nov 12, 2009 | News
I recently wrote about two sets of friends from England, and their obsession with American popular culture. Their interests ran deeper, too. They were keen to talk about health care in this country. From the British point of view, our system seems fairly barbaric. Our...
