(I am not sure, but since I have been gone, Jim may have entered the witness protection program. All photos Socotra.)

Ah, the longest day of the year!

Wait, before Old Jim beats me up for a deplorable for lack of precision, it is actually the day with the most sunlight of the year. The Summer Solstice!

It sucked at Stonehenge, the Mother of All Solstices. There were thousands of latter-day Druids and drug-crazed ravers at the ancient site yesterday, as the rain poured down. No one saw the sun framed by the massive gray stones, but they did not appear to mind. Reports were that some were pressing their heads against the stone in silent meditation, and others were shouting out pop tunes and swilling liquor in plastic containers.

One would not wish to despoil a world heritage monument with broken glass, after all.

All across Europe the festivities went on as dusk approached. In the high latitudes there would be no real dark at all, only twilight, with the reports coming in to Big Pink as I made preparations for my own Solstice celebration.

Across the North Sea, the once-hardy Danes lit bonfires, Norwegians did the usual Norse thing seasoned with Aquavit, Germans ran around in the woods and Swedes and Finns spent time brooding in secluded lakeside cottages with large amounts of alcohol. The Solstice there resulted in merriment, related drownings, auto wrecks and the odd bit of domestic violence.

I was having none of that, but Mac had a package for me to pick up at The Madison, and we were having a bit of trouble with mobility between us.

The Admiral had put his heart into the trip to Hawaii, and is slowly recovering from the rigors of the flight a third of the way around the world. I have only this week discovered that I am free of the wheelchair, but not agile enough to navigate the crutches any significant distance.

My Guardian Ensign volunteered to swing by Mac’s place and pick up the package, and I volunteered to hobble down to the Bluesmobile and meet him at Willow or the first non-medical or funeral related outing since the surgery.

“He was sitting downstairs in a blue Aloha shirt,” he said when we had taken up spaces at the Amen Corner. “You should feel his handshake. Powerful.”

I nodded. “You better believe it. He is probably more alive than I am these days,” I said, looking around the dark bar. The air was sultry from the waves of heat in the late sun. “Man, is it great to be out again.”

Tracey O’Grady stopped by to give us a quick update on what has transpired since my enforced absence from the Corner. Apparently the new Sommelier who was hired to replace Kevin has a ruptured disc and never did come on board, and between lovely Deborah and herself, they are being run ragged trying to keep up standards. She bustled away to complete preparations for the dinner rush, and the bar filled up with an older crowd of Yuppies.

I bought the ENS a Two Heart lager in honor of Hemingway’s river Up North and a plate of the newly-reconfigured Fish and Chips. The old tempura fantasy has gone the way of the buffalo, and the current model (after that astonishing Lenten Fish Fry meal Tracey serves during April) is very pub-traditional.

We did that and one of Kate Jansen’s half-Alpine flat breads with the spicy calamari.

Old Jim, Jon-without, and the lovely Liz-S all appeared, and it was delightful to see them again, my Bizzarro World Family.

“So, did you get a reading on Operation Twist?” I asked Jim. “I have been listening all day to hear and all I get is news about the Solstice.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” he growled. “Good to have you back. I have not had impenetrable commentary in weeks.”

“Shucks,” I said, raising a glass of a marvelous new version of the happy Hour White that Jasper slid in front of me on the dark wood of the bar. Doc Adkins showed up in the same ballcap he wore on the Flagship when we were underway together, and it seemed to me that Jon-without might have had a new bow tie. It certainly was brighter than anything I had seen in weeks.

I was eager to get some analysis of Operation Twist, since like everyone else, I have no better idea of what the Fed is doing than it does, and the quarterly meeting of the Board of Governors had gone down that morning. The Sphinx was supposed to make an announcement, and he did, though I did not understand it. I said so, eyeing the last square bit of the Alpine flatbread.

“I could not find any reasonable commentary on Twist this afternoon before I came over. I don’t even know what the hell it means. Who comes up with these names?”

The Doc narrowed his rows under the bill of his ballcap. “It is simple. Here is what it means.”

“Pray go on,” growled Jim.

“The Fed lowered its future Gross Domestic Production estimate, and raised the assessment of the future unemployment rate.”

“What, so that is different than the Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers?”

He nodded. “Oh, yeah, big time. The Fed doesn’t directly report to the Executive Branch. See, the Wall Street weenies hoped Mr. Bernanke would announce a new fiscal stimulus program.”

“You mean another round of Quantitative Easing? Wouldn’t this be the third one?”

He smiled. “You aren’t as dim as you look, Vic. They wanted the Fed to print money constantly and feed it into the financial sector like a drip feed in a hospital.”

“And they still won’t lend it. I hate those fucks that are too big to fail.”

“Yeah, those guys like Jamie Diman are still rocks stars in Washington. In his heart of hearts, though, he hoped wanted Bernanke would get in his helicopter and toss bags of money down on Wall Street.  But no QE3.  No helicopter.”

“So what is this Twist thing?”

“A small potatoes, net-neutral selling of short maturity bonds and buying of long maturity bonds.  He did say that he was “prepared” to intervene in the economy if it becomes necessary.  Prepared.”

“Wait a minute. Are you telling me Chairman Bernanke just voted early in the presidential election?  QE3 would have amounted to a life preserver thrown to the Obama campaign.”

“But doing nothing would have been a vote to get rid of the Administration and he didn’t do it.”

The Doc smiled. “It is a little early to be talking about football, but the Fed just punted on the Administration.”

“Fine,” growled Jim over a long-heck Bud. “No guts, no glory.”

“But I still don’t get what you are saying it means,” asked Jon-without. “What are the implications for us working stiffs?”

“Some people on the big ocean liner are starting to look at where the lines for the lifeboats start.”

“Crap,” I said in wonder. “I am glad I am getting out again. This is intoxicating stuff.”

Liz-S smiled. “Glad you are back, Vic. We missed you. Then she folded over her crossword puzzle in preparation for moving on. She is getting to be quite the government worker already, I thought.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com