It is funny- The Creative Section at Socotra House got our start without any intention of so doing. We were on Midway in the IO when the embassy got taken in Tehran. We were afloat in the North Arabian Sea, out of sight of land for more than three months. Similar to what they are […]

You might recall the title of the book as something different. Modestly different. The original was borrowed from the surreal old comedy troupe “The Firesign Theater” in their signature album. That was (33RPM “Long Play”) Nick Danger from the late 1960s. The book we are talking about wasn’t about the Firesign version, or not exactly, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]