Author: Vic Socotra

Weather Report: Thanksgiving Day

Happy Thanksgiving! Some of us around the Fire Ring are from Great Lakes upbringing, so the recent snow up in Buffalo didn’t evoke much surprise. There were a couple grins that they are not having to deal with it this time. Some places got five and six feet of Lake’s Effect snow. Sometimes at this […]

The Turkey Episode

There is a new trend in the morning updates. This holiday week has concentrated on the sad news of murder. The ones in Idaho started things off, and had sensational aspects that follow the hunt for the still-unlocated perpetrator. This morning it was about the murders at the Walmart. That line evolved a little as […]

Modern Reformation

(Accidental motif captured as boxes emptied themselves with energy. Seeing blank wall reformation into ‘home’ is welcome for the onset of the Holidays!) The morning has already had some moments. You know that moving is a disorienting thing with that dichotomy of excitement and loss. It happened here a couple days ago with some progress. […]

Arrias and His Muse: Spice Souq

Author’s Note: My Muse was active… A dream I did not want to wake up from… someplace hot on a cold winter morning… -Arrias Spice Souq I was buying shelled pistachios, Some cloves from Zanzibar, And a pound of dried pear, A jar of Tumeric, Nutmeg from Pemang, When I saw her standing there. A […]

Rex & His Long Shadow

(Author’s Note: We could recount some of the horrific news this morning. There is the case of the murders in Idaho, three young women and a boyfriend stabbed to death with perpetrator unknown. Or about reports of what it is like to live in a 21st-floor condo in Kiev, Ukraine. A unit without energy due […]

A Group of Three

As usual, something, or some things, happened a while ago. They popped up again in the recent tumult of transport from Piedmont to population center. The Writer’s Section has embarked on a fairly major project to follow “The Last (Cold War) Cruise.” That account went to press last week. Dealing with the events of the […]

Life & Island Times: On losing youth

Cobble stoned River Streetat sunset in Savannah Georgia Author’s Note: Dear Readers, We’re not on some wilding bunch road trip. We are mostly unchanging folk in an ever faster changing land — a bit out of step, place and sooner rather than later out of time as our sundown approaches. Suddenly, our days will be […]

Streaming in NoVA

We have a piece we are gnawing at. It is not ready for publication, and yet here is publication time. That means we have to generate something else. Splash likes it up here in Arlington. Loma concurs, since there are public taprooms within walking distance and not a four-mile drive to town. That first part […]

Arrias and His Muse: Winter Day

Author’s Note: My Muse showed up again this morning… chilly for mid November… The puppies had me up and out early, but “too cold” to hear any of the birds as my field guide so informed me… – Arrias A thick hoar frost, A cold, hard ground, A thin, bright crescent moon, Frozen grass crunches […]

Tales From Big Pink

Ruth-Ann was at her usual place at Big Pink. I thought I should take her a copy of a book we penned some years ago about a magical decade that followed “Y2K,” a three-character term that referred to the passing of the 20th Century and the arrival of another one. There was supposed to be […]