Author: Vic Socotra

Sea Stories

(Clockwise are the recent New Works from Socotra House. “Cocktails With the Admiral” is a compilation of the collected thoughts of RADM Mac Showers from his arrival at Pearl in February of 1942 with the big ships still on the bottom. That collection of sea stories was followed in short order by “Voyage to the […]

Life & Island Times: Roads and Their Riders

Four Corners Meditation Editor’s Note: This is a missive from the American Road as it was in a day of remarkable freedom. We just completed publication of “Marlow’s Detour 1.0,”an account of a pair of riders hurtling across the vast panorama of the American Road. What follows is an evocation of the time when all […]

The Lab Thing

(Our digital immersion is a revolution in human affairs!) We have agreed to refrain from posing on the partisan parapet and retired without rancor from the fray. There is plenty of emotion going round as people yack about the various crisis situations in progress. The information streams being waved over the public and private places […]

Full Crow

The name “Worm Moon” is thought to relate to the emergence of earthworms from the thawing soils. That is a distillation of the conversation that had gone through full mugs of coffee. The change in soil composition, for example. The little worms start to turn. Ground is softer, with consideration for how armored vehicles might […]

Stage Three and Two Meetings

Fox 5 Announces Stage Three of Cherry Blossom Deployment. There are six, but as of yesterday the ‘florets have extended. Halfway to Stage Six and full blossom!). Thursdays are filled with normal excitement but there is more today. The Cherry Blossoms hit Third Degree yesterday in defiance of the cool Canadian breeze over the city. […]

Arrias and His Muse: Time for Bakhmut to Burn

Author’s Note: I was looking at pictures of shattered buildings in Bakhmut, then I ran out to get groceries and this just popped into my head… Arrias ******* Time for Bakhmut to Burn For days, for weeks, for months, The siege guns have pounded away, A city shattered, houses now but rubble, The guns fire […]

A Malthusian Ride

(Rev. Thomas Robert Malthus, RFC. 1798. Image wiki). It was a chaotic staff meeting on Tuesday. Monday had been marred by placement of the Chairman’s detritus works of arts on walls not designed to accommodate them. So, discussion was wide-ranging on the information streams and the various interests behind them. Quite a ride. The Atlanta […]

Life & Island Times: Alternate Detour Opening

Author’s Note: Ten years ago, I briefly considered resurrecting my 12-year-old, scrapbooked, Detour Version 1.0 journal notes in a series of email postings. I dashed the attached off the narrative below and then let it sit unshared until my recent 2001 scrapbook’s unearthing in Jan/Feb 2023. I then started recasting it as a possible opening […]

Arrias: No Sense of Urgency

“Zero Dark Thirty” or “The Pentagon Wars”? Movies about the US military generally fall into just two categories: one is loaded with superheroes and amazing technology, the other packed with corrupt generals, politicians and defense contractors. Unfortunately, both have elements of truth in them. How is it that the same national security community that produces […]

Moving Status

Thankfully, both Arrias and Marlow contributed pieces that included actual thought this bright Monday morning. We are still amazed at transformation, from Big Pink’s plush Second Deck down to the more formal First, with external departues over The Patio. The dawn comes on clear days around nine-thirty, as you can see from the bright line […]