Morning, Gang! The Piedmont this morning is a little dryer than it has been. Up north at the junction of Legislation and Lunacy, they got four inches of rain. Ours down in the Piedmont was gentle but steady, cool from the northern climes, and maybe the last pleasant stretch for the weeks of High Summer to come.

It is Sunday, a spiritual morning for some of us. There are traditions in several directions. Some enjoy peaceful non-denominational meditation on this rich growing morning. Others have gathered down by the bridge that crosses Refuge Farm’s two modest streams, and sing what is traditional in this place: “Shall We Gather At the River.”
We have an occasional Zoroastrian here who worships when called. We naturally honor Islam’s second significant religious festival, Eid al-Adha, that began yesterday. This one marks the completion of Hajj, the sacred pilgrimage to the Kaaba, the “House of God,” in the sacred city of Mecca. Every Believer is expected to complete the journey at least once in a lifetime. Known as the “Festival of Sacrifice,” Eid al-Adha commemorates the prophet Ibrahim’s readiness to sacrifice his son in order to demonstrate his dedication to God.
We are free here to worship (or not) as we choose. That is just one of the things we value here. We are also working on the next book- the one about the end of an old conflict in which the Chairman found himself on an improbable journey in the ancient Holy Land. Moments “Out of Bounds” on the West Bank of the Jordan River as a Wall in Europe fell.

We will hold that tale for eventual recounting, since research was necessary to frame other parts of a tale shared by many. The three books pictured at the top of this issue of The Daily are ones under scrutiny now. They provide context for the three volumes about life in the American Century. We all here have shared in the benefits of this wondrous period of peace and prosperity. Now that some of the old certainties seem to be passing, it is worth casting an eye back on how it worked, and why we served.

The books are listed in the order in which they joined the digital copies on our tablets. James Hornfischer was one of the better narrators of our personal history in the Naval Service. It is his last book, one in which he struggled to account for the remarkable events that shaped the commencement of The Cold War, the great and mostly peaceful struggle between two diametrically opposed systems of government. It may have been mostly peaceful, but the long shadows of menace were ones we all shared.

“Civil Defense,” “Duck and Cover” and “Mushroom Clouds” were all regular features of our Boomer childhoods. Our shipmate JoeMaz brought it to our attention, and it is a riveting account of a Service that provided peace across the World Ocean that we steamed. This is amid the bitter struggle over the unification of the Departments of War and the Navy in the wake of a conflict that ended the Age of Empire.
Before that level of long-forgotten bureaucratic battle was a glance at more context that fits the biography of our pal Mac Showers, who was called from Naval Service to that of Director of Central Intelligence Helms.

Mac was Helm’s go-to guy for implementing the reforms resulting from scandal, but fifty years later, there are still questions.

The last Beach Book in the current reading list was the one that described the pivot point of the end of the American Century. Peter Zeihan’s “The End of the World…” is a marvelous attempt to capture why the things we know and consider ordinary are no such thing. America changed the way things work on a mostly peaceful ocean with largely safe lines of communication and transit. His interpretation is that as our interest in being the World’s Cop declines, things are about to change in ways we are only now coming to appreciate.

Please note, we understand that everything today is partisan. Truth has been stomped within a breath of demise. The crusading journalism of times past is long gone. And interpretations of history are revised in each generation. The Writer’s Section does not vouch for truth in any of these three tomes. We do appreciate the perspective on how we came to be where we are after a pretty good darned run. These are interesting paths to approach it.

And in the meantime? We hear raspy but joyful voices calling from down by the River, and what the hell. We are going to go down and sing.

Copyright 2022 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com