2017 – Page 39 – Vic Socotra

January 12, 2017 Vic Socotra

Life and Island Times: Hill Climb

The sun had passed overhead and the afternoon had turned pleasant. The road was fairly straight almost placid. The motorcycles were running fine with engine RPMs lowering after each upshift. The feel of the road started to take hold of the bikes and then their riders. The sound of the tires on the pavement was […]

January 12, 2017 Vic Socotra

Operation Starvation

Editor’s Note: I had a rare opportunity to see something completely new in Washington. Retired CAPT Ted Bronson took me on a tour of the Cold War Museum at the Navy Yard. He has been instrumental securing the funding and obtaining the necessary permissions to modify the history structure that houses the collection of artifacts. […]

January 11, 2017 Vic Socotra

Iron Pants And Cherry Pie

Editor’s Note: I am stunned this morning. Not that the condition is either unexpected or unusual, but this morning features the weirdest ‘news’ and a special hour last night curled up with the most surreal farewell address I have ever witnessed. I don’t know which of the two was more disturbing. It is a comfort […]

January 11, 2017 Vic Socotra

Life and Island Times: Vanished World

After Ricetown, their route took the bikers further off the beaten path on narrow two-lane roads connecting various settlements in the coastal low country. The roads wound through seemingly endless green hills, past occasional working farms and several stone churches perched on small rises. Their path became increasingly tree-lined and woodsy as they rode north. […]

January 11, 2017 Vic Socotra

Life and Island Times: Liberation

Four motorcycles pulled into Ricetown. It was a discouraging place, typical of remote small towns. The long term effects of the modern world’s uncaring showed with weed-fields abounding to the edge of the two lane road that had led them there. There were no souls in evidence. It was on the edge of a small […]

January 10, 2017 Vic Socotra

Pear Pie

10 January 2017 Editor’s Note: The President is jetting off to Chicago to give what many are hoping is a glorious speech of farewell, accounting for his eight years in the Oval Office. I have come around to the idea that the Brits might have this better than we do. It was in the middle […]

January 9, 2017 Vic Socotra

Nimitz Hill

Editor’s Note: Confirmation hearings for the new Administration’s cabinet are supposed to start this week in the Senate. This should be interesting, and the name calling and Twitter Wars have already laid out some of the battle lines. I was clearing out the old year’s stack of magazines, and riffling through the cover art of […]

January 8, 2017 Vic Socotra

Jasper, Mush and Mac

(Legendary skipper of USS Wahoo, LCDR “Mush” Morton) I don’t think Lizzie or Meghan knew the details about the spy swap- the one in which a Russian sleeper cell of agents had been rounded up by the FBI, and ultimately exchanged with the Kremlin, just like the bad old days on that Bridge in Berlin. […]

January 8, 2017 Vic Socotra

Mr. Trump and the Astrophysicists

When I woke up this morning it was very cold, only 256… Okay, that’s the Kelvin scale, which starts at absolute zero, the point where atomic motion stops, -459 degree (Fahrenheit) or -273 (Celsius). (256K equals 4 Fahrenheit.) To put that in perspective, the temperature in deep space (between the stars) is about 3K. Which […]

January 8, 2017 Vic Socotra

Escape from Beirut

Editor’s Note: I did not write this and will not try to take any credit for it. It came in the snail mail as a six-page printed document. As I read it, my eyes widened. I wasn’t quite sure what Ms Miller wanted me to do with the plain unadorned black-and-white pages, so I just […]

Year: 2017