(The Socotras, circa 1959, foreground Vic, Annook and Spike. Raven in his Navy flight jacket behind. I have never seen this image before. Photo Socotra)

There were several things to deal with this morning and it is already out of control and not even morning any more. It is a Kodachrome kind of day out there- the skies are tall, the wind not so biting, and the sun promises to stay out another minute or so on the march to Spring.

First, it is not ENS Socotra any more- it is LTJG Socotra. The pinning of his new rank was conducted by the CO of the Nimitz OPINTEL Center, and I was not there but he did permit me to purchase him dinner.

We hooked up after work and had a great time at Willow with the usual cast of characters, Old Jim, Jon-no-H, the Lovely Bea and Sabrina behind the bar. There was an obnoxious drunk named Kevin who personified the worst of Washington- self important, intrusive and brazen in his belief that what interested him must be of interest to us. Old Jim finally told him to go fuck himself, reaching toward the inside of his jacket as though he were about to exercise his second amendment rights.

Kevin went away, presumably to comply with Jim’s request

Anyway, not too many beers but just right and I drove the telephone Lieutenant home in a bright mood. There was nothing at the conciege desk when I strolled through, marveliing that I could actually stroll, and when I got upstairs I saw that Rhonda the Day Lady had stacked three boxes outside the door.

The first I opened was from out West, and was a godsend: three bags of Russian-roast Dazbog coffee. I was about to have to go through a couple weeks without the feisty start to the day, and withdrawal would have been severe. I once was lost, but now I am saved.

(Saturday night in Kodachrome at the Enterprise Bar in Rico, CO. Photo b4uqzme).

The other two were mundane and curious, respectively. One contained a t-shirt from from the Enterprise Bar in Rico, CO, provided by the Dive Bar T-Shirt Club I joined, and the other was a curious package from my sister Annook of the North.

We have not been talking since the Big Melt Down, so I was a little apprehensive about opening it- letter bomb, perhaps? Anyway, the box contained an update on her memorial project for the folks- a bench with plaque for the Petoskey Historical Society, and a cute stocking-style ornament filled with mini-tobasco sauce bottles like Dad liked to pour over everthing everything, and a pair of mitttens. The stocking was crafted out of Raven’s ties, and the mittens from Mom’s old Christmas sweaters. Then, there was Ann’s riff on Big Mama’s annual Christmas letter, capturing  the format and manner of the way she used to write, sometimes in verse and sometimes not. It was eerily right on cadance:

She is a talented woman, my sister is. This must have been part of her mourning process, and the year is now past.

A lot to process this morning. The BBC announced the UK Met Office was scaling down their estimates for global warming by about 20%- the cracks in that narrative are becoming too obvious to ignore- they even acknowledged there has been no measurable warming in nearly twenty years, despite the blather you hear on the media.In fact, there was a feature story on NPR about how we need a carbon tax that will fix the economy and the deficit. It is so preposterous that I almost broke the clock radio turning it off.

Then, I got an email notification that the 1,013 Kodachrome slides that were discovered in the basement of Raven and Big Mama’s house had been scanned. I got lost looking at them in proof format. It is incredible.

Here is Mom, circa 1968:

I had not seen any of these before, and the captured the period from the late 1950s to around 1970. Weird. Like visiting ghosts.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com