(Winky’s plush Philippine rattan cruisebox quarters have not survived the years since 1980, his last embarked and underway period on the Best Damn Carrier in the Fleet. For now, Ship’s Company personnel have reserved a special berthing arrangement in the legendary Ship’s Library in order for Winky to be rapidly accessible to answer emerging questions […]

USS Midway (CV-41) is prepared to accept the return of LTJG Winky, USN-Ret., after forty years on The Beach. He felt the need to serve again. He will arrive on the bet damn carrier in the Navy tomorrow! Copyright 2021 Vic Socotra photos Pat Alderman www.vicsocotra.com

As you may have heard, I am attempting to leave my happy home up in Arlington. The Condo went on the market a couple weeks ago, and one of the Dirty Dozen denizens wrote to tell me what is happening in our happy neighborhood. These photos are from one of her walks in the neighborhood. […]

(The view from my place at Big Pink. She Who Prefers Anonymity is still there, in her unit, but the Dirty Dozen is in the process of timed withdrawal from a changing place). I was talking to an old pal from Big Pink, a happy residence for nearly twenty years on the edge of the […]

The Sunday editorial meeting has certain characteristics common to each week: some excesses of exuberance that follow the conclusion of a full week of laying about the fire ring, thinking creative thoughts. The accumulated wreckage of shipping containers, coffee grounds, assorted cans, trash and soggy papers went to the Dumpster, which was thankfully done smoldering […]

The morning meeting had all the usual issues of the editorial process colliding with the dull sensibilities of a Saturday morning. Loma was blurry, for predictable reasons after starting his weekend at Belmont Farms Happy-Hour to Hip-Flask celebration. Rocket was anything but explosive in his limp approach to the matter since he rode along to […]

“Truth,” or what passes for it these days, descended on the Writer’s Section shortly after the morning editorial meeting, and thus got mixed up with everything else. DeMille was concerned, while Rocket, Loma pursed their lips against a plaintive cry from Splash, lost down in the underbrush beyond the lower lunging ring at The Farm. […]

(LTJG Winky, lower right, reviews historical records and imagery from his time in a leadership position onboard CVA-41. He will be returning to a permanent station as a special “stuffed docent” at the Museum on 23 September 2021). A pal instrumental to the management of California’s popular USS Midway Museum wrote Socotra House to inquire […]

Welcome to another mid-week accounting of the Swamp shenanigans! Congress returned to session. According to some some modest deliberations before Labor Day, the House and Senate are providing their recommendations on the budget to the respective Ways and Means committees to be deliberated between the two chambers and enacted in some manner. The price tag […]

General Sun Tzu, from 6th Century China Congress is back in town as of yesterday afternoon, though there was some confusion about that in Secretary of State Blinken’s testimony to the House via Zoom call. The Secretary participated from his office, three miles away from Capitol Hill, since he thought the House was still on […]