Tough one this morning. News of departures from this world lent a shadow as pervasive as the gray clouds that obscured the Aurora of the big solar storm. Let’s gt the ceremonial and honorific part done first. It is Mother’s Day. We interred the one with whom we were privileged to participate tangentially in the great Miracle of birth. And life. Ignore the callow young man on the right and concentrate on the raucous laughter radiated by the new Mother on the left who brought such love to so many.

That brought us through the cascade of the rest of the pile of action items. There was the matter of the mail-in ballot we don’t recall requesting. It arrived to participate in the election here in Virginia next month. It is a primary, and a somewhat unusual one in that it is a “joint” exercise with both parties. The incumbent Senator was the only one we had planned on voting against, but since we will have the chance to do that again in November, we were uncertain about participating.

We could drone on about that exercise in a new form of voting since it is intended to give us confidence in the security of the process. In the years we have been participating in General Elections (since 1972) we showed up at the polls and showed a picture ID to vote. That changed with the Navy days, and use of mail-in ballots from ships in Japan or garrisons in Korea.

Here in Virginia there was an accommodation to folks with competing requirements or disabilities. We were permitted to stop by the Registrar’s office, get in a short line, produce a photo ID and mark a piece of paper before feeding it into an electronic scanning machine. We were fairly confident in the security of that system, or at least we were until the revelations about the machines having some back-door algorithms that permit folks outside the government to observe vote totals as they occur. Or need to be corrected.

I guess we will see about that this time. Considering what is at stake, it is worth watching. We filled out our mail in packages, the ballot, two envelopes with bar-codes displayed visibly, and handed it off to the maintenance staff to trundle down to the lobby for placement in the Big Pink communal mailbox.

The literature that accompanied the ballot package assured us we could track the status of our submission. We will do so. They will be able to tell us if they received the ballot, marked our submission and could proudly wear the lapel sticker “I voted!” They just won’t be able to tell us if who we voted for actually got counted that way.

So, there is that uncertainty that accompanies everything else. We mentioned the memorable memorial ceremony for the woman with whom we raised some great kids. Shortly after the conclusion of that service, word popped out of the ether that the Reaper had been active elsewhere. There was a cascade of news about his latest swath through the circle of friends and family.

This one was of a former senior in the Naval Intelligence Community, a wonderful and dynamic man named Larry Wright. He had a personal impact on many of us, and the Salts were active in talking about him. His biography was impressive to read, although limited mostly to his considerable accomplishments in uniform, and the shared recollections of his time with shipmates who served under him. You can see from his picture the sort of impression he made when it was taken. Rest in Peace, Larry. The passing of a generation- when it is the one you share- is a bit startling.

So there was that and then the other news. The new book is lurching toward publication, and the marketing folks jostled the line of interns dispatched from the Legal Section to provide oversight were edged aside. The marketing folks are excited, since their last effort for “Voyage from to the CROSSROADS” exceeded expectations in completing the Literary Trifecta of work about our 93-year-old drinking buddy, Admiral “Mac” Showers, our last Cold War Cruise and the momentous consequences of the atomic blasts down at Bikini Atoll.

Marketing guys are slick, and always worth a drink at lunch for levity. They are pushing the Writer’s Section to finish the next book, the one about this strange year and history of weird things that have not happened yet. Or the proposed second edition of “Stones of the District,” an account of visiting all 40 of the monuments (or sites) that comprise the boundaries of the District of Columbia. The new edition is justified on the grounds that attempting the same sort of tour these days would result in being car-jacked or killed.

Anyway, they started their pitch to the group with a single slide before lurching into the rest of the literary litany of the back-list of Socotra House publications, most available on Amazon or Barns & Nobel. You will see all of them, but here is the first:

We are afraid there is more to come on that front, but we hope the next holiday requiring action is not impending until the Big Pink Pool opens!

Copyright 2024 Vic Socotra
www.vcsocotra.com