As you know, I am blessed to have a circle of pals who possess vivid memories of strange and ancient times and can recreate them with rousing prose. I am also happy to have a resilient Webmistress in the form of the redoubtable Renee, who has been putting up with this drivel for nearly twenty years.

This slow Sunday morning we published a particularly poignant and evocative account of the way the Shellback ceremony worked on his ship- his whole battle group- and just as I had finished transmitting it he wrote to say he had more to the story. That version will appear on the http://www.vicsocotra.com site presently, and my you have my apologies for reverting to the old OPINTEL mode we had to get things out as quickly as the information shows up.

It means the energy is coming back to the sad old body I inhabit, and I suppose that is good. If you pair the remembrance of pain and the antidote of the perfect Old Fashioned cocktail from Coastal Empire’s Marlow, in the spirit of his narrative of this strange plague year, you have the surreal landscape in which we survive.

There were also some thoughts about the issue of what is next for our society, and the more imperative question of what it is that the ruling class wishes us to believe. I am roughing out the Swamp Postcard for the coming week, and noting the sands of the Sahara have leapt into the sky and are now brushing us in the worst intercontinental transmission in a half century. Good for sunsets, and since I don’t remember the last one, apparently the phenomenon is not an imminent threat.

In social and public issues, I have long forgotten my Twitter password, and on a whim signed up for a service called “Parler” which is supposed to be a free speech echo chamber. I saw nothing that isn’t floating around elsewhere and I do not intend to raise my social profile any more than I already have. I will report if there is anything unusual happening there besides the usual wild conspiracy theories that masquerade as reality.

There is a heat wave- apparently a real one- in the arctic.

Then there is the issue of the plague of locusts that we talked about months ago, ravaging Kenya and equatorial Africa had suddenly emerged in Latin America, was threatening Brazil with voracious insects, and appeared to be heading north. That may be something to consider here, though we were on alert for the 17-year cycle of the cicadas right here in our soil. I have not seen one yet, much less the Murder Hornets that were such a news item recently.

Perhaps both pests have heard about the year 2020, and decided to stay in the ground where it is safe.

Another good pal who limits his exposure to the vast global interconnection just completed a three-thousand mile journey across America, and is sharing his thoughts about what he saw to a few pals. I am grateful to be one of them, and his thoughts inform mine, since I have only been off my private property four times since the lockdown began. Suffice it to say, people in the Red States are apparently getting along fine and essentially ignoring the virtue signaling of Blue State people who insist on wearing masks outdoors where there is by all accounts, a negligible threat.

Oh well. The future beckons. I didn’t mention “Public Amusement” in my musings about what changes are being imposed on our old American way of life. The big theme parks have announced they will not be opening in Virginia, and King’s Dominion will be quiet as the cars whizz by on I-95. Based on my Pal’s larger observations, a lot of people are ignoring the whole thing and doing all right. I have altered my world view, and do not consider movie theaters or amusement parks to be activities I will attend with the grandkids. I remember with horror a holiday when we took the kids to Disney World and managed to board two or three rides all day, waiting patiently in close-packed lines. An informed view of eight states suggests the dramatic schism in our society continues apace, and we will just have to see how it goes.

So here goes on a Sunday in a season that seems more like Spring than Summer. I saw a note that the government is taking the idea of unidentified flying objects seriously in this strange year. I am of a mind to suggest that they looked in at our 2020 and decides to keep going. Down here, the sunset should be good, and that is worth looking forward to.

Meanwhile, I will wonder about the wisdom of the cicadas.

Copyright 2020 Vic Socotra
http://www.vicsocotra.com