These days, we just start with guidance from the Legal Intern, since Creative Section Leader DeMille is frankly fed up with starting the meeting and assigning some tag lines for the groggy individuals at The Picnic Table only to have legal say there is potential liability in pursuing any of them through a lovely clear October Saturday.

We have learned to get a quick reading on what might be of interest to those really concerned about the election and any commentary, ironic or wry, that could be construed as an attack on the democracy currently under assault.

We had the usual spectrum set up in case someone with an axe to grind made up their mind about what to do overnight. Nothing on the Big Surprise question, anyway. We have a rotating evening watch bill for one of the Salts to set his phone to “loud” on notifications for dawn in Gaza. The last thing we saw last night was a somewhat blurry video of two fine chairs in a ruined room and something-waving with one hand and a dark stick-like thing flopping across the plaster chunks on what had been a fine recliner.

It turned out it was the last moments of that Gazan guy Sinwar’s life captured by an Israeli drone. We are not sure exactly what it means yet. The image above is the one Splash took of the brilliant but now waning Harvest Moon over The Patio. The Moon is at it’s closest proximity to earth on this pass, so we understand that is just another factor in why we are not sleeping through the night.

Splash re-set the election clock before posting a “No BS” note on his tablet, the two letters signifying “Big Surprise.”

By the time of the rest of the circle started to fill in the seats for a relaxed Saturday morning we started with NSTR- “Nothing Significant to Report” on what is going to happen in Tehran. It will, but that is in the nature of the surprise that will be coming in the next week or so.

The is a bunch of stuff in Ukraine, but that too is uncertain. The Zelenskyy Victory Plan apparently includes a request for NATO to go to war with Russia to ensure he stays in office, and there may be some issues with that. The newest wrinkle about North Korea providing combat solders to aid the Russians was joined by reports that Seoul is happy to step up and provide tech support for more rockets to fire at other Koreans advancing toward the Dnepr River.

For those of us who spent time at US Forces Korea and in the conflict in Croatia, you can appreciate how disorienting some of the motion of these moving pieces can be.

Some appear to be Legal things with the whiff of impropriety about them common these days. Here in town, DC Judge Tanya Chutkan released a redacted version of special counsel Jack Smith’s immunity motion yesterday. Jack’s appointment had been ruled inappropriate, so it never went to trial and the good salacious stuff was not eligible for use in the campaign. Judge Chutkan’s ruling gets it all out there with time to be part of the surprise package that is neither new nor surprising.

DeMille told us to just stand by. There is plenty of time for the Surprise Package to mature a little bit, and we don’t know how many news cycles are considered necessary to deliver the most influential message to damage anyone in the way of victory.

That leaves us with filling the time until we know what specifically to panic about. Splash did a quick search on Arlington Now local site to see if there were any local issue to provide some context and actual interest. There was one that was entirely appropriate and not directly related to any electoral contest and legal said we could mention it.

He was waving it around when the rest of us were still attempting to get mugs and the basket of bagels generally centered in the middle of the white picnic table. He waved his tablet screen festooned with glowing letters to highlight the story he had found.

“You guys remember that house explosion last Christmas?”

There was some general nodding about the dull boom that caused some minor controversy. It came from over on North Burlington street where a four-hour standoff changed the tone of the neighborhood. The details were colorful and ended up in last year’s holiday surprise. We don’t know specifically why Mr. Yoo felt a need to begin firing a flare pistol from his house.

That activity could be viewed as a sort of “call for help,” and the Arlington Police responded. Barricading himself inside, Yoo then fired flares at the officers. After hours of standoff, leaking natural gas and more flares led to a huge explosion which destroyed the place and killed him. Firefighters battled the resulting blaze for hours and the sirens provided the soundtrack for our evening no-so Happy Hour.

So that was the old news that popped up this week as new news. Mr. Yoo’s house was not a single family residence like the little bungalows in much of North Arlington. It was a duplex. His neighbors were fortunate to have departed their side of the house before the drama got intense with the light of flares and gunshots finishing in the natural gas explosion that leveled the property.

They were in temporary housing obviously but determined to rebuild their lives. They asked the County with a proposal to construct a single-family detached house there. It is not in compliance with current zoning, being smaller than the destroyed two-family structure, but their statement was compelling.

“Living next to James Yoo introduced a great deal of trauma into our family’s lives, which we deal with everyday.”

The Board pursed their lips and took the matter under advisement. The other housing issue is the Missing Middle initiative in which the County wants more multi-family homes to house the people who work but can’t afford to live here. The un-named man making the application said “We do not wish to build a duplex, for what I hope are obvious reasons.”

We’ll see what the Board says. We hope they have some compassion, but understand if they consider there are higher social goals that must be achieved and have offered a compromise measure banning unregistered flare pistols inside the County line which currently have no registration requirements.

That will provide the measured response for which we are famous, you know?

Copyright 2024 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com