Author: Vic Socotra

Silver Spoons on Fire & Making Love Again

We speak a little Spanglish here at the building in an attempt to be courteous to the workers on the maintenance crew who have labored here for the last few decades. Pocito, you might say. In our limited understanding, “Que Mala!” en Espanol, means “How Bad!” Then, there was an attempt to emulate the MAGA […]

Arlington’s Days of (Felonious) Labor

Today is Labor Day, traditionally marking the end of summer vacation. Last day in the pool, supervised by our Czech Life Guard, and the shuttering of one of Arlington’s little gems of active leisure. So, that is personal level activity. In the Endless Campaign, the first mail-in ballots are supposed to be hitting the mail-boxes […]

The Slide Into Fall

What a heck of a morning! Two days left in the pool season, the weather ambiguous about how to treat the swimmers who will have to transition to inside aquatics with more chemicals and strange dedicated citizens in more crowded circumstance. It is a mild metaphor to the events on this day in 1939, the […]

Un-Laboring Daze International, National and Local

All that stuff? We may as well just call these mornings exactly that, but generally sorted into what stack they are dumped. The tumult overseas is still mostly in two piles, the Gaza one still in the news as the Israelis have reduced most of the Hamas fighters. In Ukraine, President Zelenskyy fired his Air […]

The 27 Club

We are trying to figure out the messaging swirling around us. Some of it is up there above. Those are just some of the strands this morning. They are obviously deliberately intended to mold opinion, not convey truth. But we all know that is as old as human communication, and an intrinsic part of our […]

Bidens at the Beach

This is just about the de facto end of a wonderful summer. There was a marvelous swim yesterday in the lingering bright light of the pool complex at the west end of the building- the West Wing, some call it, and it was hard to accept that the lifeguards from the Czech Republic are off […]

Motor Voters

The Production Meeting started with more than the usual half-somnolent uproar. It is Wednesday, the day we are supposed to start pulling together the weekly Weather Report. The coffee hadn’t kicked in yet, and as a group, we relied on our pre-existing biases to stay oriented. Where some of us lived, for a while, in […]

In the Middle of the Mayhem

Good heavens, there is a lot to talk about! Some of us are just back from an amazing road trip under cloudless clear Carolina blue sky. Friendly people. It looked like the America we knew- people freindly, lawns well kept in front of neat little homes and fine dining. Not like the pile of stuff […]

Special Afternoon Edition of The Daily Socotra

We wish we could attribute the delay in publication to something constructive, like out-of-control day drinking or multiple balloting in elections with which we were not previously familiar. But there was travel involved, down to the charming state of North Carolina, and a moving interaction with beloved but distant family and friends under delightful weather […]

In Memory of  Harold James Greenlee

February 18,1951-August 10, 2024 Harold James Greenlee left this world for another on August 10th of this historic year. He left at peace, surrounded by those who loved him. The family joined yesterday under the rich blue North Carolina skies to lay him to eternal rest, surrounded by those who knew and loved him in […]