16 November 2007

The Four Seasons: Winter

Relax, Gentle Readers. Do not be alarmed. This is part of the Big Pink book, and only shows what is to come through what has gone before.

December 2002

Freezing Rain



TV Weatherman Bob Ryan was right. This is going to be a nasty, messy winter. It is raining cold and hard on the Buckingham Neighborhood, and coating the pavement and the once-white frozen drifts left over from last week. It is dark, of course, and later it promises to be a reprise of yesterday's raw gray bluster, adding only a penetrating damp chill. I hate it when Bob is right, and we aren't even to the end of December yet.

That is what I gathered from the battlements of the 5th floor balcony of Big Pink. Inside, the BBC reported that the Spanish had discovered North Korean Scud missiles on a freighter bound for Yemen. The captain said his ship was carrying cement. It was. And more.

This is adding to the tension in South Korea, where the riots continue, and Deputy Secretary of State Dick Armitage is in Beijing to try to manage the affair through daddy-rabbit China. I like Dick. He had an in-country tour in Vietnam after the Naval Academy with John McCain. He got out, sensible fellow, and has a connection to Arlington through some ancient scandal associated with people he helped to escape to liberty. He doesn't seem embarrassed about it in the slightest.

He is the only State official I can recall that looks like he could break you in both hands. I think that is a good thing in a diplomat, managed properly. Bob Edwards, the other of my critical morning Bobs, tells me there are 70 weapons inspectors in Iraq now, a nation the size of Texas.

He also mentioned that Jimmy Carter accepted his Nobel Prize, linking it to the continuing crisis in Iraq, but ever the iconoclast, said that armed force was not always bad. Meanwhile, Caracas Venezuela is abuzz with people marching, beating pots and pans as protest against the government of President Hugo Chavez. Oil is weak, the economy failing.

Chavez champions the poor, and the middle class is rising against him. So East and West, North and South the din is rising.

The local commentators are babbling gently about the CIA and FBI and the establishment of the new Undersecretary of Intelligence in DoD. Intelligence failure and the Kissinger Panel are the topics de jour, with missiles in the background, missile sure to be used for something awful, just a matter of time before they come here, say the talking heads, but will we lose our liberty before? The growing intrusion at the airports is cloying, and I feel like the terrorists have stolen something precious.

I remember when there was no security at the airports, and on my first flight on a DC-3, Mom walked the little ones from the gate at the terminal to the rolling stairs at the back of the airplane.

I have lost my liberty to the lawyers. They are still tugging at the carcass of Socotra v. Socotra, government worker and spouse, known better in Fairfax Chancery Court as file 157889. Amid the bitterness and bile, I find my only ally is my almost-ex, who does not want any more $100 letters from her rapacious lawyer. My rapacious attorney is much more reasonable. Her letters only cost $75.

I am so far in the hole that I cannot see the upper limit of it, and this little postage stamp apartment in Big Pink is the only comfort I can take. The view across Route 50 is commanding, looking out over the trees and the Unitarian Church on the other side of the concrete gully.

It is rented and the door to the balcony is sprung on its frame. The wind scours this side of the building, rushing from west to east with urgency caused by the massive bulk. It claws at the edge of the door, which opens toward the District, and hurls it open like a sail with sudden gusts. There are only so many times it can crash open like that.

Based on the ghosts of old hardware mountings on the frame, it is not the first door to fit that frame.

Meanwhile, the rain comes down and the government goes on, though the treacherous roads are stopping life in its tracks. Schools across the region are closing. Big Pink is literally on the edge of the fall line of the watershed, the last highland before the rivulets drop sharply down Lubber Run to the Four Mile stream that courses nearly at sea level into the Potomac.

Fairfax County sprawls westward from the edge of Arlington County to the foot of the Blue Ridge, so the western part of the school district is literally in a different climatic zone. The radio reports spin-outs and wrecks all across the metro region, and I suppose I am going to take the back-roads up to Langley to avoid the mad Virginians and their motorcars.

The mail was late when I trudged in from the parking lot. It was dark, of course, and had been dark since a little after four. Dark in the morning, dark at night, dank and chill. No wonder they invented the holidays to distract us.

There were some invitations in the mail, and some from the other people on the Fifth Floor, who are very nice. I don't know how they fetched up in this building, but there are only so many variations on the theme of misery.

It is an odd day and I need to work. An ominously large package had arrived from my pal Snidely Whiplash down south. He had major surgery earlier this year, the real kind, not the metaphor, and I think the gift I sent him is inadequate.

The almost ex is dragooning the kids out of town for The Day, just as she has hi-jacked all the holidays since we split up, part of a campaign for justice in the world. So the wind is a bit out of the sails on the whole holiday spirit thing. I feel like the weather this morning, cold and grim.

I checked the OPM Home Page on the computer, a new feature for government workers, to see if they had granted late arrival this morning. They hadn't. Everyone was supposed to be on time, critical and non-critical employees alike.

The metro area is a mess, and I am thankful that Big Pink is in the middle of everything.

Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com


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