Editor’s Note: For those who follow the antics on Capitol Hill, this is a dizzying morning. We think, after all the travail and rhetoric, that nothing except a “Continuing Resolution” made it across the Magic Minute when the old year died and the new one leapt into our collective consciousness. We are in “Fiscal 2022” […]

Editor’s Note: Marlow reports from his Coastal Empire this morning on one of the several Crises in progress in this historic week. There may actually be some progress on minor issues like the Fall of the West on The Hill tomorrow. In the meantime, the COVID scare continues… – Vic Empire Plague Update The above […]

Editor’s Note: Marlow takes on the challenges of generational change in our new and strange world. There questions flying about how to respond to public health emergencies, changing norms in social behavior and even the nature of how our Constitutional Republic functions in these times when “crisis management” supersedes the old regular order. In older […]

Editor’s Note: Marlow remembers. -Vic I was on the southernmost coral speck house hunting with the ex. We had returned to our inn’s courtyard bedroom with croissants and locally roasted coffees. The first tower had just been hit and was live center-stage on the Today Show. Suddenly the second tower was hit. I turned to […]

Editor’s Note: A very good pal with four or five decades of memorable association passed away recently. Information came across the ether yesterday about how long it would take for his time to share the honorable services of the 3rd Infantry Division’s “Old Guard” at Arlington National Cemetery. It is a long time- possibly a […]

Editor’s Note: It is a morning filled with portents. All of them contain an element of unfamiliar uncertainty. With the 9/11 Anniversary coming this Saturday, we appear to have permitted the installation of a government that was partly responsible for a savage act that marked a generation. Marlow comments on that this morning with his […]

Editor’s Note: Unfortunately, we will soon see the real. Not later. Marlow’s thoughts on that matter have a dramatic echo from other times. It is a reverberation of words and events that we may see again soon. Not later. – Vic #### We start life alone as wee, wet, wrinkly strangers and end as stooped, […]

When an American soldier dies in distant scrap heaps we are trying to turn into leafy town squares with suburbs and malls via combat, the space he or she occupied is immediately filled with dozens of people. And these people — relatives, friends, neighbors, reporters from both TV and print — create a lot of […]

Editor’s Note: Here is a note from the Coastal Empire that commemorates something real and personal, and has nothing to do with the various crises we are supposed to stay alarmed about. This is about love. It seems like a good day for it. – Vic Angel Baby 6-month-old Angel in 2010 Author’s Note: Our […]

Editor’s Note: Marlow is in this morning with some thoughts about the nature of identity, and the use of it in past and current times. The Writer’s Section at Socotra House murmured about it at the editorial meeting this morning, some from behind masks of dubious health use but solid social value. Consider Marlow’s views […]