The gibbous moon waxes to full phase Monday, February 25. Early evening Thursday the 21st, the moon is between Castor and Pollux of Gemini to the north and yellow-hued Procyon in Canis Minor to the south. The Little Dog Procyon is the eighth-brightest star, with the brightest star Sirius, the Big Dog, trailing 20 degrees to the southwest.     Seen from night to night against the backdrop of stars, the moon shifts westward a dozen-plus degrees, toward bright Regulus, the heart of...

Danny’s 12-gauge pump boomed out twice off to my left as a streaking gray rabbit cut in and out of a long, narrow copse of briars parallel to us. Raising my 20-gauge and trying to track the tricky rabbit as it neared my position, I fired twice as well, also to no effect.     Then the cottontail melted into cover. He was gone. Dejected, I opened my over-under to reload when out of the corner of my eye I caught a small motion. The rascal had cut back out of the briars and...

Chesapeake Bay waterman were coming close to extinction in 2010 when a group of Chesapeake non-profits got innovative. The bright idea: Training captains who make a living on the Bay to give tours of the water and their craft.     Now, 80 watermen guide tours through the Bay where they make their living, earning extra cash during the slow seasons.     The idea is so bright that the Watermen Heritage Tourism Training Program has won the Maryland Historical Trust...

As one who thinks Die Hard one of the best action films ever, I must with a heavy heart urge all fans of John McClane to skip this movie.     In 1988, off-duty cop John McClane (Bruce Willis: Looper) walked into an office Christmas party and became a terrorist-killing legend. Twenty-five years later, McClane has dispatched baddies in office buildings, airports, the burroughs of New York and the streets of D.C.     The fatigue is starting to show.   ...