Author: Vic Socotra

Medical Adventures, Continued

This chapter is over. The image above is from the 8th Floor of the Virginia Hospital Center, looking east toward the Potomac. The silver building at the upper right is another part of the medical complex where the prelude occurred. This one is from almost Reston. We knew what this one was going to be […]

Inflammation and Indictments

The entire northeastern coast of our continent continues to battle smoke plumes moving south from more than 400 fires burning nup in the hills and woods we used to ski in lovely Quebec Province. The Commenting Class claims there are more than four hundred fires raging, and the reaction across the continent has been severe. […]

Weather Report: Spring Offensive Begins

Ah, blessed confusion this morning! We harvest this week a multitude of “news” that we have ceased to follow as “breaking items.” Like you, we have been awaiting the start of the spring offensive in the eastern provinces of what used to be eastern Ukraine. Someone decided to blow the dam on the big river […]

Goons

This little tale is several yesterday’s ago, when I still traveled in the rivulets of turmoil created by the Agencies at Langley and the Pentagon. As opposed to yesterday, this seems like a day the goons are winning, sad after a day that started with such promise. I had a marvelous time at work, or […]

Alcatraz in the Rockies

We got the news yesterday with the old picture of Robert Hansen, Special Agent, Federal Bureau of Investigation. He had been sentenced to Life in Prison some twenty-two years ago for deliberate espionage against this nation. Some of the materials he compromised were the basic data we used at the Fleet Ocean Surveillance Center Pacific […]

Arrias and His Muse: Radial Song

Author’s Note: My Muse was impressed… Radial Song An engine quickly comes to life, A lovely rumble, grumble, grumble, A puff of smoke, another bang, Grumble, Grumble, Grumble! This is followed by a cough Followed by another, and a third, Three radial engines, a loud, deep purr, Delightful noises from a big silver bird. She […]

Arrias: Ted Williams, Liam Neeson, and Vlad Putin

In 1988 McGeorge Bundy, President Kennedy’s National Security Advisor, commented there was just a 1-in-100 chance the Cuban Missile Crisis would have escalated to a nuclear war. But, probabilities and odds and chance are interesting things. Most people use the terms without thinking about what they are really saying. Consider: what’s the probability Ted Williams […]

News for a Monday

A 2005 Cessna Citation Bravo business jet. Susan Montoya Bryan/Associated Press. NPR’s Joe Hernandez and Russell Lewis contributed to this report. Which we lifted in whole since we cut the “news feed” a couple weeks ago. There was a consensus that the “news” was getting out of control and getting us down. There was other […]

Cocktails and Midway

It is the Anniversary this morning and the memories flood back. They were new for us then, a shared recollection of a Naval battle that stands with Trafalgar and a few others in the history of of wars fought on the waters. It started when my disparaging remarks about General Douglas Macarthur came to the […]

Selling Refuge

(Our Realtor Maggie used this shot taken by drone to demonstrate the sweep of the little Horse Property. We spent the lock-down days of the pandemic quietly, but we discovered where our original plan had some deficiencies. The “Aging Thing” had not been fully explored, and the actual experience made us realize the acreage was […]