New week, ya’ll! Local news: We have had some of the urban anger down here on what once were the front lines between Lee’s Army and Grant’s Army. A pair of brothers who had land they did not want to work decided to donate the parcel to the County as a park. It would eventually feature a trail and a ballfields and to commemorate the significant history of the County, two flags on proud polls were erected. One honored America and the indivisibly Union, and the other the battle flag of the rebels, to honor a soldier who they say was killed there.

The rebel flag is ripped down pretty regularly since the troubles began, and last Friday night it came down again, this time with the proud white pole included in the deal of destruction.

To illustrate the deep divisions in the country right now, it appears that a new pole and flag were flying again at the spot within a day.

So, there was a moment to consider things as they are, and move on with all the other strange manifestations of the plague year.

One of the first things to impact me was a great cartoon forwarded by a pal. It looked New Yorker, old New Yorker. There was a proper Karen figure, well dressed, at the wine shop asking the proprietor for a vintage that “goes well with too much TV and the end of democracy.”

I laughed, then sighed. Too true.

I rose late this Monday, or late as things go these days. I checked for riot updates- none reported on Fox- and in the morning email found a story that grabbed me unexpectedly. It was an AP release of a couple paragraphs describing the murder of women in Turkey. It was described as “conservative” violence, but it was hard to miss what it really was. Many of these murders appear to be cases of “honor killing,” a tradition in which females who do not strictly observe household customs can legitimately be killed for their way of living.

It brought back the litany of Turkish events over the last year of our domestic confusion. It brought back more. A few years ago, back in the roaring decade, I had a lady pal who was a Turkish journalist, taking a break in the West for a number of reasons. I remember gazing into her kohl-trimmed deep colored eyes, talking about what might be the best bulwark against the fanatical madness spreading west. As an occasional supporter of various policy issues, I knew only the secular Turkey with the heritage of Attaturk, and felt positively about its role in what seemed to be an evolving strain of expansionist Islam.

She knew more, of course, and was concerned about what she saw as a returning caliphate. As her tourist visa time diminished, I offered a practical political option to solve some of her problems. It was casual at that moment, but one of those huge alterations in life. I offered marriage in case she needed new citizenship. It would have been without traditional romance, given the circumstances. But my bachelor status was something I had of value to give in those times of limited resources, particularly if what she suspected was going to happen back home.

Of course, those also were the days at the fabulous Willow restaurant, a place where solving global issues kept pace with the glasses of excellent Happy Hour white that came across the bar. In the end, she went back, committed fiercely to her home country. I have thought about the consequences of things that didn’t happen more than once in the times since and experienced the consequences of both sides of large decisions inadvertently made.

After her abrupt departure from DC, I heard from her with lessening frequency as the months passed. Finally, infrequent contact became nothing. Despite that, I still think of her with each new outrage in her homeland, and it was particularly vivid when the Hagia Sophia ceased to be an international monument and was clamped down again as a captured Christian memorial- greatest of its time- and defiled.

I wonder if she has been arrested for reporting on Mr. Erdogan’s interesting excesses across the region and in the home. She is (or was) a lady of courage who reported what she saw. Truth was a certainty in her life. She certainly could have been killed. She must have been in violation of some emerging social norm, right?

I will send an innocuous note today nothing of interest to the authorities, and see if she is connected and alive. I hope so.

Copyright 2020 Vic Socotra
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