Pye Chamberlayne, Requiescat in pace.

Pye in heaven

Godspeed to longtime UPI newsman Pye Chamberlayne, a former resident of Old Town Alexandria who died this past weekend at his country home west of Washington.

During his 50-plus-year career, he covered the White House and Congress. And when he retired in 1999, he still covered the occasional breaking story, albeit for the rural Clarke Times-Courier -- like the dump truck that flipped upside down on a gravel road near his house.

Mr. Chamberlayne also kept a Web log, where he posted everything from a family scrapbook (his son is serving in Iraq) to his personal observations, often in verse. Like this post-September 11 take on the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) confusing threat level:

Whenever I feel paranoid,
I really must confess,
My attitude gets greatly buoyed
By the Web site of DHS

There's a little thingy there
I call the threat-o-mat
That lets the DHSers share
Where the threat level's at.

If the threat-o-mat shows red
You'll be alarmed to know
You're just this side of getting dead
So to the shelter go.

But if the threat-o-thing is green
To hide I'm sure is no more use.
What worries me is what t'will mean
If that damn thing should display puce.

(With apologies to that poor underpaid devil, Tom Ridge.)
Chrs, Pye
(Thanks to John McCaslin of The Washington Times.)