As you know, the rolling hills of Virginia’s green and lovely Piedmont can conceal adventure and mystery. They are not the same as up in the Blue swatch around DC. In fact, they sometimes don’t seem to be in the same space-time continuum. We used to live in Fairfax County, and that school district is now in the mix with Loudoun in teaching the progressive doctrine that America was founded on slavery, and thus must be changed to its roots to accommodate the new truth.
That is a challenge, though since it changes so damn fast. Like yesterday. The level of excitement was palpable. It was a Swim Day, which meant leaving the property. There was a drug order to pick up at the pharmacy concealed in a vast grocery emporium that needed to be accommodated, and a stroll from the Panzer in the lot into the refreshing florescent-lit space filled with articles for purchase. Aside from the comorbid line at the drug center, there was only one of the check-out registers open. I was thankful to have the sturdy cart to lean on behind the well-groomed lady who wished to apply her SNAP card benefits to the chocolate flower arrangement.
It could not be done, and the interchange between the languages shared by the high-school kid on her side of the register and the primary one of the customer lady added to the entertainment. My concern was not about the intrinsic systemic bias against artistically arranged sucrose products, but whether the ice-cream cones in my cart would melt before getting back to the car.
Which is where the next country adventure began. I guess that is part of the unity thing. The spouse of an old shipmate apparently lost control of her Facebook account. Why that would be a target of hackers was a matter of minor interest. What could someone do with an assortment of family pictures and mild, non-partisan ruminations? I had to remember that anything that came from her- apparently authentic, with appropriate photos- was not actually from her but from someone else. Maybe in Crimea. Or Beijing.
But that is just part of life in these United States these days, and it promptly happened to me, too. That had an adventurous aspect but mostly was a pain in the butt. I discovered there was no one to talk to about the theft, or the futile attempt at notification to a contact list I no longer had access to use. It occurred to me that was a perfect set-up to use some Facebook pictures of my lovely cousins or handsome kids to appeal for emergency funding to my bank in the Central African Republic.
I did what I could. Then moved on. As a part of that, the ice cream cones seemed to have survived the duration of the conflict about supplemental nutritional values of artistic display and I eventually found myself back in my Chinese-manufactured power-lift chair, ready to clear the email queue that had accumulated in my time off the property. There was the usual assortment of alarming news and solicitations from people who were in urgent trouble that only a credit card solicitation could solve.
And a note from the WebMistress. That one got my attention. We have been working together for exactly twenty years. That amounts to 7,300 episodes of American life. Of course, the carefully-crafted Daily adventures naturally has been subcontracted to the Writer’s Section of the Production Department, carefully supervised by Legal, Compliance and the HR overseers. But the Mistress manages the web presence, carefully posting daily updates as required, and that special section we call “Winds of Change” that will be the basis to the sequel to “The 70 Days.” That was the book about what we all felt about the election, and which we have vowed not to talk about in a way to upset our rational readers. This note wasn’t about that. It was much more direct.
“Have you been screwing around with the Admin password on the Socotra site?”
I gave it some considered thought, and got out of the chair in the two-step process operating the motor requires. I stepped through the Great Room, advanced across the kitchen area and burst through the back door to where the classic Navy ship’s bell hangs near the graceful steps down to the path to the agricultural area of Refuge Farm. I yanked on the lanyard firmly thirteen times, the prearranged signal to the Interns that they were needed at the Residence immediately. There is a different signal for the Writers, but that is necessary because they hear all sorts of things.
The Interns are much faster, and Stephanie and Josh had them assembled in less than a half hour. I stood in what I thought was a proper pose of authority at the top of the staircase, properly flanked by greenery. I greeted them effusively, and then lowered my hands and clasped them appropriately for delivery of remarks. “Have any of you been messing around with the Site?”
There was enough concern registered on the faces below me to ensure no inadvertent hanky-panky was being conducted aside from the usual mischief. I ordered them ‘dismissed’ with a firm clank of the bell, and retraced my steps to the comfort of the powered chair. I then drafted a formal response to the WebMistress.
“No.”
There was more, of course, but led directly to an IT-based discussion about why someone would be messing around with an old website filled with scintillating commentary on two decades of life since those repugnant terrorists attacked the Twin Towers and my section of the Pentagon twenty years ago. At the time, some of the action items on the daily agenda were more complicated than the ones at the farm. Like, “What is the potential impact of a sub-kiloton device on the National Mall?”
Which would naturally lead to a discussion at the office scuttlebutt about how many sub-kilotons, or maybe just enough to get a suitable aerosol compound dispersed to kill as many people as possible. Those were mornings that contributed to the decision to invest in property far enough from the Mall (and upwind) to permit decent relaxation. In between exchanges, I thought back to why the lovely lady had agreed to maintain the digits half a continent away, to ensure that inadvertent Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) detonation would not wipe all those ruminations clean with the rest of the important historical stuff stacked haphazardly in the garage.
She is not only lovely, but cleaver and creative. We went back and forth on what the threat was, the implications of the attack, and the strategy to defend the enterprise coupled with a plan of attack.
In between, I thought of who in this wide world would give a rat’s patootie about all those digital words. The flat-screen was mumbling something from Washington in the background, and that red-headed Spokes-lady at the White House was talking about the necessity of curtailing something she called “misinformation.”
If you have not been keeping up, those used to be called “lies,” but of course we got used to that so we needed a new term. She introduced the concept that the Government had a proper role in determining what exactly was something we used to call “truth,” and she had worked something out with Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook to ensure we were all on the same sheet of music. Naturally, I was relieved that someone in Washington had it all figured out, but on my lap, the WebMistress informed me she had upgraded the security algorithm on the site. And reminded me to make sure the Writer’s Section stayed sober, or at least on the approved message.
So, if you get a request to be my pal on Facebook, or are alerted by a Daily story that we are in grave peril that can be remedied by provision a single credit card number, expiration date and three-digit security code, you can be confident it is really me asking for it.
For sure. Who said there were no adventures in the country? Heck, we even had to figure out how to make copies of documents the other day. You never can tell what is important to Washington these days without help.
Copyright 2021 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com