Happy New Year!

It is New Year’s Eve here in Baghdad-on-the-Potomac, and I am gearing up, as I am sure you are at your place. The champagne is chilled. The Happy Hour White is selected and on ice. Let the games begin!

The government fiscal year ends tonight at Midnight, and we great FY-2012 the second after the clock strikes. That is not as big a deal as it used to be; there was a time when we actually had budgets and didn’t make things up on the fly, but this is the post-season for democracy in the Republic.

I am pleased with the news this morning that we greased that asshole Anwar al Alawki. That is a major event, since the dickhead was a US citizen, born to Yemeni parents in New Mexico. That was first on the morning menu, and a note from a former close associate who recalled the development of the Predator UAV, and the happy marriage of a surveillance platform that eventually was equipped with Hellfire missiles, completing the perfect self-licking ice-cream cone of sensor and operational weapon.

Those were the days, I thought.

Then I got a note from the Socotra House Legal Department in the morning inter-office mail. Someone had been up in the middle of the night, monitoring the Beeb for morning discussion. There is a significant component of the electorate who have become unhinged.

Or maybe I should put it in a more linear manner: we all appear unhinged.

Whether it is me and LBJ, or the Birthers with the President’s interesting nativity, or those who somehow believe that the Bush Administration orchestrated the 9/11 attacks in order to seize the country and overturn the Constitution.

I was astonished at the source of the latest furor over 9/11: the speech by Iran’s whacky President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the UN. The note urged me to look it up, and the supporting commentary by activist and loon Franklin Lamb.

It is a sad commentary on contemporary discourse that I discovered myself in compete agreement with al-Qaida’s propaganda magazine “Inspired” on the matter. The magazine calls the Iranian President’s remarks “ridiculous,”

In sum, the pesky Iranian leader said he believed the World Trade Center towers could not have been brought down by aircraft, and that “as an engineer,” he was convinced that explosive charges were planted before the airplanes hit the towers. “Airspace was cleared,” he declared, as Mossad ushered co-religionists out of the Towers.

The al-Qaida article said such a belief “stands in the face of all logic and evidence,” and I have to agree. The article went on to state that “Iran uses the theory “as a rallying call for the millions of Muslims around the world who despise America.” The note from the legal department notes that Ahmadinejad also dissed the Holocaust in his remarks, among other impossibilities.

Dwight Eisenhower wanted the atrocities well-documented for exactly that reason, yet the lies continue.

Iran “is a collaborator with the US when it suits it,” according to al Qaida, but of course this actually reflects the Shia-Sunni theological divide. They hate one another, though they both hate us as well.

Cookie Pushers from more than 30 countries walked out on the speech by the deranged and discredited Iranian leader. If Franklin Lamb wants to promote the bogus idea that this was a co-conspiracy between an multiple incompetent bureaucracies (US) in partnership with a maniacal and suicidal (Saudi) assault team, so be it.

According to the recorded testimony of hijacked passengers, the assholes actually did precisely what happened.

I have to shrug and not waste any more time with this. It isn’t healthy.

The whole notion starts with a belief system that demonizes the Bushies and postulates crimes against humanity- with premeditation- you have to accept that they are worse than the Nazis.

I have worked for and with them in wartime, under stress an in long hours. You may not like them, but that does not make them war criminals, and the conspiracy theories in this case are simply and finally not how things work.

Only the seriously disturbed- like Ahmadinejad- could believe it.

I don’t know about you, but I think in honor of the New Year, I might try the Willow Pommes Frites this evening.

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.comRenee Lasche Colorado springs

Rosie Roads

(The former Naval Station at Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico. Eco Touring on the peninsula to the upper left. Photo Wikipedia.)

Wah-hoo! Talk about your interconnected world- he Bundestag- the German Parliament- approved the expansion of the bailout fund for the PIIGs- Portugal, Italy, Greece and sometimes Ireland. This is supposed to be the most important step in a “tortuous process that has rattled markets and raised long-term doubts about the ability of governments to react to the expanding debt crisis.”

So, the hell with it. Europe is going to be fine, right? It is the post season, and I will pay attention when it is time, just like I did in 2008.

It was more exciting to watch the exceptional lightning show, and contemplating Tracy O’Grady’s Portobello mushroom frites which have made their debut on the Bistro menu at Willow. The light flickered over the balcony, the strikes so distant that it was impossible to calibrate the miles by the time of arrival of the thunder.

There was a dramatic resolution to the baseball mystery. As a result of the night’s events, the Yankees will host the Detroit Tigers and Tampa Bay will travel to Texas to play the Rangers in the A.L. division series on Friday. The Red Sox reportedly cleared out their lockers at Fenway and are already in Aruba.

I suppose there is something happening in the Senior Circuit, too, with the Braves completing one of the most historic September collapses in baseball. I will worry about that after the divisional series are over.

I was sitting at the computer contemplating the results of a side-show I have been trying to manage in my spare time, around huge contracts and ailing parents. An entrepreneur out West had a great scheme, and approached me to talk to an official in the Base Reallocation and Closure Office down in Charleston.

I enjoy making cold calls on people I don’t know, which is useful in this economy, and called up the BRAC SE office in Charleston to see what was up with the redevelopment of the old Navy base at Roosevelt Roads.

The last time I was there we had the Forrestal Battle Group working up for deployment to the Med, in a totally different world, and the O Club was roaring. The locals didn’t seem to appreciate us, but that is par for the course in the work-up cycle.

Here is the deal: the entrepreneur wanted to turn a buck on using the old dry-dock at the naval base to dismantle the ancient chips laid up in the mothball fleet on the James River. The scheme would be to tow the ships down there, cut them up, and use the steel for the manufacture of reinforcement bars for construction.

The business case was that the government essentially had provided the facility, and would provide the raw materials, and the enterprise would generate jobs and profits out of a modest investment.

It sounded reasonable enough that I agreed to make some calls, and now it was time to pay the piper and type up the results as the light flickered and the Bosox boarded the plane for the island.

I sighed, starting off the report:

“I have to say I am not optimistic about the chances of getting a significant industrial operation set up in the vicinity of the dry dock at Rosie Roads.

The Commonwealth has locked up one side of the facility for a resort, as you noted, and to the north, the Army National Guard is just settling into its new digs in the adjacent new facility.

In my experience- which includes controversies over three former Navy target complexes- this is going to be a difficult sell without having a Puerto Rican advocate to convince the Commonwealth (and the Army National Guard) that you can pull off integrating an industrial process into the multi-use plan promulgated by the Roosevelt Roads Legal Reuse Authority.

Lennar Mare Island LLC managed to do it with the Sausalito-based SWA Group doing the planning, but an industrial function was always envisioned as part of the plan. In the case of Rosie Roads, I  can’t see the industrial component in the master plan- and definitely not in the two parcels that will be for sale later this month.

I know you have been working this for a couple years, so permit me to re-state the obvious, since I am just learning this issue.
SWA’s plan for Mare Island divided the old Navy property into thirteen specific zones, which included zones earmarked for higher education, historical, residential and industrial uses, with the vast majority set aside for wildlife habitat and wetlands.

The plan was to have 1,400 homes and condos, plus seven million square feet of commercial, retail, entertainment, and industrial space. In 2008, (as I am sure you know) California Dry Dock Solutions (CDDS) went to the Vallejo City Council with their plan to use the dry docks on Mare Island to break up the Suisun Bay mothball fleet, just as you would like to recycle the James River Fleet on the East Coast.

The CDDS estimated that with two dry docks in operation, they would generate between 60-120 jobs.  That has not changed. When Allied Defense Recycling opened for business last year to break up SS Solon Turman they started with 60.

That contrasts with the hundreds of service jobs that would go along with the resort, which would be in direct proximity to the dry dock at Rosie Roads.

I was originally inclined toward optimism- after all, jobs, jobs, jobs is the mantra today, and your business case for breaking ships there and providing re-bar makes eminent economic sense.

The single largest impediment to that paradigm is nationalism, something which does not pertain to the operation at Mare Island, which is unsentimental and mostly about jobs.

I knew three navy facilities that were flashpoints for protest, and the struggle between local activists and the Service took on lives of their own. Economics had nothing to do with them.

The first of them was the Red Horse Creek target range in the Republic of the Philippines, on the island of Luzon. Use of the range was complicated by the fact that scavengers for the dud bombs (and live ones, on occasion) would foul the range.

Injuries fueled the long-running controversy over repatriation of Clark AFB and the Subic Bay Naval Complex. There were bitter and emotional protests, which ultimately led to the return of the sovereign bases after the Mt. Pinatubo eruption. (The RP may well like to have us back, now that China has claimed the entire South China Sea, but that is another matter entirely.)

The second case was at THIRD Fleet in the mid-1980s. The Staff confronted an unending series of protests against live-fire training at the Navy target island of Kahoʻolawe, the smallest of the Hawaiian islands.

The ‘Protect Kaho’olawe Ohana’ protest (PKO) included intrusions onto the island and accidents in coming and going which claimed two civilian lives. In the end, the nascent Hawaiian nationalist movement, supported by activist and later Congressman Neil Abercrombie and Senators Matsunaga and Akaka in 1990, and the island was transferred to the State of Hawaii in 1994.

It was interesting- when I was serving the 104th Congress in 1995-96, I discovered Mr. Abercrombie had suddenly become an enthusiastic support of Navy nuclear submarines- so long as they were based in Pearl Harbor!

There are several valid comparisons between O’ahu and Puerto Rico, less the two senators and a congressman. Going over to the CommSta on the base, the bus has to take a sharp turn near the fence, and that is where Puerto Rican separatists spewed bullets into one carrying sailors to shift change to monitor the Cubans.

Two sailors died, and ten were injured. There are a lot of emotions down there, just as there were when Puerto Rican gunmen shot up the House of Representatives.

I personally had a chance to bomb the island of Vieques with our S-3 Viking squadron, and it was grand fun. The target range on the island became the most emotional issue of them all. As you know, the S-3 was an Anti-submarine Warfare aircraft, and had no automated bombing system. I was surprised to see the pilot take a grease pencil and make cross-hairs on the inside of the windscreen as his aim-point.

Damned if Bill didn’t get a Mark-76 near one of the derelict tanks, too.

As I mentioned, we were training then for a deployment that included the Fall of the Berlin Wall, and with the end of the Cold War, the need for training there was perceived to be redundant.

Particularly redundant after a Navy civilian employee was killed  during a training strike on the island. The Atlantic Fleet Weapons Training Facility became the target of fairly widespread civil disobedience, taken from the playbook of the PKO.

Local protesters were joined by fellow travelers including Ruben Berrios, the younger RFK, Al Sharpton, dozens of the usual suspects, a rap group and Commonwealth Assembly. It was an exercise in playing to the legitimate national aspirations of the island.

The Navy Department could not stand up to them, and caved to the protests. The island property was transferred to the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Without a live training facility, the Rosie Roads complex was essentially useless and was BRACed.

This was similar to the situation in Hawaii. In addition to the always-prickly relationship between the Feds and the Commonwealth, the tourism aspect is hugely symbolic. The industry provides 7% of the island’s GDP, so whether it is realistic or not, there is an inclination to go with locally owned tourist destinations over the prospect of 60-120 industrial jobs.

I asked the anonymous government official candidly what his thoughts were about being able to utilize the dry dock, contained in Zone 3 (“Eco Tourism,” in the Commonwealth Master Plan) there in a manner similar to what Allied Defense Recycling did at Mare Island.

He said there would be three powerful opponents: the Commonwealth, the Guard, and the Tourism industry. He didn’t have a dog in the fight except to dispose of the property.

“Whether it is going to be a local government screw up or not,” he opined, “that is what is going to go down, and if you do not have an organization that looks Puerto Rican, your pals are shit out of luck.””

So, there it is, I wrote. The dining room flickered from the distant lightning. It is the conclusion of a part of the Spanish-American War. Tourism is what will happen on the former Naval Reservation, not ship-breaking, whether anyone is going to go eco-touring or not. Funny how long these things take to get wrapped up.

I made a note, though. There might be some applications for Guantanamo or the savvy investor, besides using that part of Cuba as a prison.

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Post Seasons

We are between fronts here in Washington. The rain came down in sheets this morning, complete with thunder and lightning in the growing light.

I take note because I am on foot this morning, due to an embarrassment of autos, which may be a sign of the times. The Bluesmobile is back in the fold for the winter, and my son is driving a late-model SUV with a proud Spartan “S” on the back window.

The minor details for me include the fact that in order to snag the SUV back from detailing at the Dealer in Springfield, my son picked me up at the office. So the fine German machine is there, and the Bluesmobile is resting outside Big Pink.

I don’t mind walking to work- it makes me feel virtuous through lowering my carbon footprint and gets some of the exercise requirement out of the way- but would prefer not to get soaked on the way.

With the season changing, it is time to put the Hubrismobile down for the winter and get the big husky Ford ready for seasonal action. The folks on the Hill are patting themselves on the back for coming to grips with the latest budget crisis, which now appears to be institutional.

I read in the Times this morning that the committees are so bogged down with temporary stop-gap measures that the distinguished Members don’t have time to think about the larger strategy. Majority Leader Reid does not want to bring the President’s Jobs Bill to the floor, as his co-equal Executive desires in order to avoid a messy fight with some of his fractious followers who want nothing to do with a big tax increase as they go toward Big Casino at the polls in 2012.

So, I suppose we will have to put up with this irritating chicken game for the next year until we get one of those purported choices, one from column “A” or one from column “B.”

From what the polls suggest, we are all fed up with it, left, right and center. There are huge decisions to be made about what is to be done, and we have a President who makes a great speech but does not appear to now how to govern confronting a vocal House that won’t go along with where he wants to go.

Oh well. They say the kids in Europe and the Middle East have about given up on voting, so perhaps we are entering a new post-Democracy season. North Carolina Governor Bev Purdue is being assailed for her comment at a local Rotary Club in which she suggested that Congressional elections should be suspended for a couple years until we get everything sorted out.

It has a certain attraction, you know? Declare a state of emergency and rule by decree. That would get things done. Could we seriously be so far down the road that the Governor of one of the first states to join the Union is talking about suspending the Constitution as a matter of convenience?

It is enough to give you the willies. I am going to not think about the loons who are running this circus for the rest of the day. I am going to concentrate on the Post Season for Major League Baseball, which runs on fairly regular rules with fairly regular and enforceable rhythms.

Jim Leland’s Tigers are playing their last game of the regular season today, and beat the hapless Indians last night, 9-6.

The Tigers are 29-9 since Aug. 19th, literally on fire. They will send Rick Porcello (14-9) to the mound against the Indian’s newbie Zach McAllister (0-1).

If they win, they may get home field advantage against the hated Yankees in the play-offs. My pal Muhammad calls it this way, with the change in the weather:

“Detroit’s Fister threw 8 shut out innings last time he was on the mound…I see that Tampa could take the Wild Card spot away from the sagging BoSox…Here is my call for the American League Divisional Series: If our first series goes 5: Verlander,  Fister,  rain,  Verlander, Fister,  rain  Verlander… I hope the Red Sox and Tampa tie, forcing the playoff tomorrow in Tampa…Anything to help the Tigers…I guess we can still finish ahead of Texas, but it is a long shot.

Schwerzer looking to be ready to be the #3 starter in round #1… Detroit has 51 saves this season, tying a franchise record set by the 1984 team that won the World Series.”

I rubbed my hands with glee as I looked at the screen. I will have to do some homework and figure out who all these players are. It is the Post Season, after all. I wonder if they will still have the ALDS under martial law? I mean, some things are sacred, right?

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

The Gore Effect

Thank God people are acting like grownups this morning. After dipping their toes in catastrophe in Europe, Angela Merkle had a smile-ex with the euro-region leaders, who have agreed to “erect a firewall around Greece” to avert a cascade of market attacks on other European states.

The Senate here reached an agreement to forestall a government shut down, and I am delighted that I do not have to contemplate the collapse of the markets and the currency this morning, and have a chance to think about what happened while I was traveling. The climate up in Michigan was doing its thing: changing. The colors were coming out on the trees in the traditional yellows and oranges and scarlets. Just starting, but you can tell the effect of the Fall.

It was enough to make me think of The Gore Effect. The former almost-President and Nobel Laureate has become identified with a phenomenon similar to that linked with movie star Kevin Bacon and his degrees of separation from everything.

Truth in advertising, I have experienced the “Gore Effect” phenomenon personally. After the conclusion of DESERT STORM, the then-Junior Senator from Tennessee set me up in official testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. After he drew me aside (he arrived late) to whisper a private question, he rhetorically shot me in the face from his chair on the podium. Then he abruptly left the chamber, leaving the grown-ups on the Committee to sort out what he had alleged about me, my testimony and my Agency.

Anyway, that inclines me to accept that the Gore Effect does in fact lead to unseasonably cold temperatures, driving rain, hail, or snow whenever Mr. Gore visits an area to discuss global climate change.

Widely known examples of the Effect include:

New York, March 2004: “Gore chose January 15, 2004, one of the coldest days in New York City’s history, to rail against the Bush administration and global warming skeptics… Global warming, Gore told a startled audience, is causing record cold temperatures.” (NY Environment News)
November 2006: Al Gore is visiting Australia two weeks before summer begins. “Ski resort operators gazed at the snow in amazement. Parents took children out of school and headed for the mountains. Cricketers scurried amid bullets of hail as Melbournians traded lunchtime tales of the incredible cold.” (The Age)
Washington, March, 2007, a Capitol Hill media briefing on the Senate’s new climate bill is cancelled due to a heavy snowstorm.
October 2007, Mr. Gore’s global warming speech at Harvard University coincided with near 125-year record-breaking low temperatures. (Harvard Crimson)
October 2007, the British House of Commons held a marathon debate on global warming during London’s first October snowfall since 1922. (The Telegraph). There is no evidence that Mr. Gore was actually present, though the MP’s did talk about him.
December 2009: World leaders flying into Copenhagen today to discuss a solution to global warming will first face freezing weather as a blizzard dumped four inches of snow on the Danish capital overnight.
Here is a working definition of Climate Change that incorporates the Gore Effect’s inherent contradiction in what is going on:

Climate Change: a term used instead of “global Warming” because the full impact of human caused CO2 emissions isn’t known to scientists. Many experts are predicting that worldwide heating of the atmosphere may cause changes in ocean currents, and therefore, in some cases, cooling of some areas like the Eastern seaboard of North America.

The key fact here is that the existence of climate change is virtually undisputed by all the worlds leading scientists. The science is settled. The only people who mock it are fools who have been duped by the junk science crowd, who are manipulated by Big Oil and the Auto magnates, and who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.

If you aren’t sure whose motives are suspect, think of the old Roman proverb “look to see who benefits.” Environmentalists don’t have some secret hidden agenda, they sincerely just want to live on a habitable planet. They don’t make money from saving forests. Who makes money, the corporations, or the environmentalists?

Think about it, as a person who probably acts in their own rational self-interest, who is more likely to lie and cheat, the party who stands to make or lose money? Or the poor buffoon who just wants to save some owls, and maybe breathe clean air?

The consequences are clear. Hurricane Katrina (fill in hurricane, earthquake, as necessary) was an event that was made more intense by the effects of climate change. The people who say it is not are the same ones who told you cigarettes were OK.

I was not aware that Phillip-Morris was in the oil and gas business, but you can see this is a self-contained belief system, and more of a policy discussion than anything about peer-reviewed science.

If you want to “follow the money,” Mr. Gore himself is heavily invested in Green technologies, and thus has a real stake in government schemes to promote them. It might be useful to sum up the general state of play on what is largely a policy discussion, not a peer-reviewed scientific issue.

Not being a technocrat, I have to rely on those who study these matters as a profession. I should hasten to add, this is relatively new development, largely funded by government grants to public institutions.

Here is a measured approach that I find plausible, since the one thing the climate does not do is not change. I am inclined to believe that the climate is changing, since it is. What that means, precisely, I am not sure about. We are 12,000 years out from an Ice Age, and had a smaller version a few hundred years ago from which we may be climbing out. Or it could be something else.

I found a survey by Dr. Robert Balling, Director of the Office of Climatology at Arizona State University and published under the aegis of the George Marshall Policy Institute think. I will get to that in a minute, but will provide a disclaimer up front:

He is also the author of The Heated Debate: Greenhouse Predictions versus Climate Reality and The Satanic Gases. In fairness to the sprit of the debate, he has reportedly accepted funding from the petroleum industry- just as the proponents of the settled science have made a significant industry out of self-sustaining clarions of alarm. The sources of funding appear to be the better basis of bitter attacks than the actual science these days.

Dr. Balling suggests the history of the earth is marked by regular and significant fluctuations in global temperatures that have nothing to do with people.

The countervailing view- the mainstream view, at least as of 2009- might best be presented by Professor Katharine Richardson, Professor in Biological Oceanography and Vice Dean for Public Outreach for the University of Copenhagen. Her pronouncement at the Conference in 2009 was that “it now almost impossible for the world to achieve the UN target of preventing global temperature rise exceeding 2C.”

She predicted a rise closer to 6 degrees (Centigrade) in this century.

The public policy debate about Anthropomorphic Global Warming (AWG) is a fascinating one. The logical consequence- proposed at the blizzard-marred conference- was clear. A global grand agreement to follow the Kyoto Protocols needed to be struck to redistribute the resources of the First World in order to permit the Developing World to (eventually) adopt the stringent CO2 emission requirements to save the planet.

It actually wound up being a continuation of the old anti-Colonial reparation claims for the Third World.

That put everyone a little off, and in the three years since, the dire predictions have not manifested themselves. Not that three years makes a climate; that is just weather. Things do continue to change, just as the discipline has.

The modern science of climatology was initially concerned about global cooling (1970s) and then global warming (since the late 1980s).

Dr. Balling considers that more accurate temperature records and a greater understanding of the causal mechanisms of variation in climate will clarify what this all means, and what effects human activity have on a very large and very complex system of systems.

At this moment in time, Doctor Balling is prepared to say this:

• Global surface temperatures have risen in recent decades.
• Mid-tropospheric temperatures have not warmed much over the same period.
• The disparity is not consistent with predictions from numerical climate models.

I do not know what Professor Richardson says about that- the latest controversy is about where the missing heat from the mid-troposphere has gone. Some academics suggest it is hiding in the deep ocean, and maybe it is. No one has gone to actually look; it is just what the models say, since they cannot account for anything else.

Never-the-less, taken with the disastrous economic news, the urge to directly couple CO2 levels with warming- or change- is deflating. In alarm, Mr. Gore held a 24-hour teach-a-thon on his internet to re-energize the discussion about CO2 control. He claimed millions surfed the site during the event, although the numbers are a matter of some dispute.

The Gore Effect struck again: his campaign coincided with the Administration realization that the imposition of the new limits by the EPA was going to finish off the economy and put the new restrictions on indefinite hold- or at least until after the 2012 election.

This is a matter of faith, now, and I can certainly understand why there is an imperative to action, if this is happening. But when you do things swiftly, you get the inherent and unintended consequences of speed. Dramatic change is accompanied by endless opportunities for those who have the ability to construct and then manipulate the intricate scheme of cap-and-trade.

With so much cash in play, the incentive for active mendacity by those who stand to benefit most from the state-directed allocation of resources grew large.

Like our pals at bankrupt Solyndra, the solar panel manufacturer who donated lavishly to the last winning Presidential campaign, and who pocketed the half-billion in government loans before padlocking the building and throwing a thousand workers out of their subsidized green jobs.

One thing about horsing around the largest economy in the world is that you can do amazing things in terms of scale.

Beware those who tell you there is no time to think.

That naturally includes me, of course.

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Abingdon, Popov and Eternity

I don’t know how many more precision drives I have got in my system. Glad to be back, of course, but the Sunday passed in a sort of daze. My joints ached from being seated at the wheel for the better part of Saturday, and the repeats of all the shows on NPR that I had already listened to on the satellite radio gave me severe déjà vu.

If this is Car Talk, this must be Youngstown, Ohio, right?

Then there was the news- apparently there is another budget crisis, different from the one boiling in Europe, and involving some slight of hand on disaster funds, which someone wants to fund out of electric car development incentives from the last stimulus, or something. I tuned out- been through this, and I hope those idiots up there on the Hill do something to not shut down the government on Friday.

Or let them do it and get it over with. This is so beyond irresponsible- and I count the conduct of both flanks of the lunacy up there as being at fault- that it fills me with contempt. I drank strong Russian coffee and took an extremely hot shower in an attempt to wash off the malaise of the road and then surveyed the wreckage in the unit.

The crap from the trip was strewn around the apartment, on top of the usual tumult of the maid brigade who had swept through the place in my absence.

I did manage to wake up sufficiently to realize that a critical component of the trip had yet to be accomplished. The fancy Caddie SRX was still resting out front, and the Bluesmobile was still sleeping at the garage under the office. The trip would not be over until the Hertz people had their car back, and the outlet was at Reagan National. I put $60 bucks worth of low-test in the tank at the Quarters K Navy Exchange, and read the sign over the pump that explained that the NEX gas-station-cum-liquor-store would be closing on 30 October so the Secretary of the Navy can transfer title of the property to the Secretary of the Army in order for him to expand the footprint of Arlington National Cemetery.

I stand firmly on both sides of the argument.

As a retired officer, I am entitled to a burial with full military honors. That is the sort of entitlement program I support- but of course there is a problem. Arlington is filling up fast. There are more than 200,000 vets and their family members already in the ground there, and with a thousand WW II vets dying every year, something needs to be done or I will have to find another place to spend eternity.

But in the meantime, I am going to lose a convenient, Navy-subsidized liquor store. As I filled the tank, I wondered if I could write a letter to that Congressional buffoon who purports to represent Arlington County and suggest that they hold off on the expansion until I need it.

I suppose that is unrealistic, though. Quarters K was the place we used to watch the reconstruction of the Pentagon, after the attack.  Arlington House is just up the hill- between the Pentagon Military Reservation, the cemetery and Fort Myer, that is about what the Arlington Plantation covered.

It was originally planned as a living memorial to George Washington by his adopted grandson, George Washington Parke Custis, and Arlington was passed down to his daughter, Mary Anna Randolph Custis, who married Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. It was confiscated in 1864 by the federal government when she failed to pay property taxes levied against the Arlington estate in person- as if she could- and General Montgomery Meigs (the Army’s greatest builder) started putting Union dead in the vegetable garden so that Bobby Lee could never come home.

I did not buy any liquor at Quarters K on this trip, though, since I was going to be on foot once I got the car back to Hertz, and did not want to take the Metro burdened down with a couple 1.75ML bottles of top-quality Popov Brand discount vodka. I motored from Quarters K over to the airport and got the car back to the Hertz people and began the trudge from the rental garage back toward the main terminal and the Metro stop.

There is a curious thing in the middle of the garage complex: the ruins of a Colonial-era plantation house and some outbuildings. There is a sign pointing to the site of what had been Abingdon House from the walkway, and having no place to be and plenty of time to do it, I decided to go take a look.

The place is an island of tranquility in the midst of the TSA Gulag of Reagan National Airport. It is unsecured, for one thing, and I was the only person apparently not in a hurry. I snapped some pictures with my iPad, and wandered past the interpretive plaques and markers.

Abingdon’s land once swept down the hill to the Potomac, and comprise the whole parcel now occupied by the airport. The house burned in the 1930s after surviving the war- funny thing about historically relevant and inconvenient things around Northern Virginia- and the Airport Authority really wanted to bulldoze the site for more parking.

It took the State Assembly to get involved, and they managed to save what was left, and it is a respectful and solemn place now.

The pictures of all the interpretive plaques and foundations are on my Facebook page, if you care, and actually, they will be there even if you don’t.

The thing I take away from the visit is how small the houses were. George’s big house at Mount Vernon leaves you the idea that the plantation life was vast. It wasn’t. Life in colonial Virginia was hard and brutal. The slave cabins would be located under Garage Complex B, or something.
Here is the short version:

“Abingdon was the epicenter of society and the plantation families of Virginia and Maryland. Eleanor Calvert, wife of Martha Washington’s son and the owner of Abingdon after his death, was a daughter of Benedict Swingate Calvert, “natural son” of the 5th Lord Baltimore, proprietor of Maryland, a descendant of Charles II of England, distant cousin and close friend to Prince Frederick (son of George I and father of George III).

Benedict’s mother is not recognized, but has been speculated to be Petronilla Melusine von der Schulenburg, 1st Countess of Walsingham, the illegitimate daughter of George I of England, so half sister to Prince Frederick. Benedict was packed off to Annapolis, MD when he was about 13 (he must have been just a bit inconvenient to have around the palace). So Eleanor’s grandparents and extended family included the Lords Baltimore and the very king her father in law (George Washington) was fighting for independence. Eleanor’s family, at Mt. Airy in MD, not far from Abingdon, remained Royalist throughout the Revolutionary War, even while maintaining good relations with her and the Washingtons (Washington caused a lot of controversy by staying with Eleanor’s Royalist parents at Mt. Airy after resigning his commission in Annapolis). It’s ironic that while they were at Abingdon, Eleanor Calvert and John Parke Custis provided George and Martha Washington with their (her) only direct descendants who were also related to King George III (at least through Charles II and possibly also through his own great grandfather, George I).”

That is not all that is at the airport. There is an Indian burial mound on the Abindgdon property, too, in the middle of the Delta Airlines employee parking lot. They brought in the bulldozers on that one, too, but when bones an artifacts started to turn up, they did the right thing and work was quickly and respectfully halted.

The mound is in a restricted area, so it is even more inaccessible than Abingdon. But if you are passing through the Airport, and are not in a hurry, it is pretty cool to see.

But figure the odds of not being busy here? Still, I think it is interesting that the Airport and the cemetery and my liquor store are so intimately connected. And who knows, I might get buried between the old fuel tanks and the Vodka aisle of the Quick Mart.

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Personal Best

It was an awesome drive, and I managed a personal best for elapsed time over the route from The Little Village By the Bay to Arlington.

The Caddy  covered the 776 miles in 12:03:34. Legal speed limit estimates on the GPS indicated a baseline of 13 hours, 13 minutes, without allowance for Brief Stops for Fuel (BSF). My rough calculations suggested slightly better than a mile-a-minute (776 miles in 773 minutes), but that will be subject to official notification from that irritating traffic camera in Rockville.

The previous personal record for the transit was under gray skies and dry pavement under winter air mass conditions, and totaled 12:37:23 hours in the now-discontinued classic GM Panther body-on-frame V-8 powered P-71 Police Interceptor-equipped Bluesmobile.

The rental Caddy knocked the stuffing out of that. They used to say that the best off-road car was a rental car, but this vehicle was one of the better choices I have made in personal travel. The peppy new 3.6L V-6 – the luxury market segment’s most powerful standard engine – headlined the package, which I was still figuring out on the fly. There were features I did not understand, and some that I only figured out after I was back.

I defeated the Ogemaw County Traffic Revenue Enhancement program by slowing down to something near the posted limit, and left it on cruise control until I was clear of the jurisdiction before ramping back up to 80 mph.

The car combined performance, technology and refinement. I could not tell it was only a V-6: the new 3.6 liter “LFX” engine provides a power boost of 16 percent-plus (308 horsepower / 230 kW) over the previous engine and the caddy comes off the line nicely, delivering higher torque at low rpms to help blow away the competition.

I am happy to report that responsiveness of the vehicle is dramatically improved in all operating conditions. Off the line, overtaking, passing, banana lane shifting, and idiot passing in full-throttle acceleration were all superb.

I can’t say enough about the ten-speaker Bose sound system, hooked to Sirius satellite radio. But aside from the amusement value, I am a purest.

I was on a full-out car Jones, having been combing through Raven’s automotive history down in the office, I was immersed in his drafting tools from his days as a stylist, and the concept designs of really cool cars he worked on as a young man starting out in Detroit.

Getting ready to launch yesterday morning, I stood and looked at the Caddy’s bold chiseled lines. It is more than a bold pretty face, though, and one thing I have to assert: the powertrain is what made me a believer.

The LFX engine is harnessed to the Hydra-Matic 6T70 six-speed automatic transmission, a joint development with Ford, which features a driver-selectable Eco feature. You can  amend the shift points and throttle progression to optimize fuel economy. There is a gauge to help you out on that, but I only found out about that by inadvertently shifting to sport mode coming off the line at theUS-131-US-31 intersection at the south end of town.

I had time to think on the drive. I had managed to get some stuff done this trip, mostly at the end of the visit. It was frustrating, maddening, sad and rewarding all at the same time.

There was not enough daylight this close to the autumnal equinox to make the whole distance in daylight, and I can’t see crap at night anymore, and the highest danger is approaching the Capital and its maniacal drivers in darkness.

As the light came up, I buttoned up the house, hoping I had not missed any doors or windows, and drove out in light rain.

It was Lake-Effect moisture, thank God, and by Grayling I passed into sunshine for the diagonal length of Michigan. I let the tank draw down to nearly empty, stopping outside of Flint for gas and six White Castle sliders procured from the last outpost of the fabled franchise adjacent to the interstate before passing through the ruins of the Motor City.

Next stop was for a vente Starbucks somewhere east of Sandusky, OH. Otherwise, a straight shot, quickest route, pedal to the metal.

After the Big Left Turn out of Michigan, the flat farmland of Ohio whizzed under the wheels of the SRX, Cleveland passing abeam, the Lordstown Assembly Plant, and finally Youngstown, last exit in Ohio.

I assaulted the hills and construction zones leading up to the Pennsylvania plateau, Pittsburgh passing to the south. I thought for about the hundredth time of stopping at Shanksville to visit the crash site of United Flight 93, but did the calculations with the onboard processing in the Caddy, and saw that if I did not stop to pee, I could make the Beltway just as the sun went down.

I pressed the accelerator and flew down the big hill at Breezewood, PA, the Village of Motels. Then Hagarstown and Frederick and Rockville.

Approaching latter, after Father Hurley Boulevard and the beginning of the express lanes on I-270, brake lights winked on across the broad swath of concrete.

Damn! The record attempt was going to be shot if I had to creep into the city, and it would be pitch black when I arrived. Double Damn!

It had been a pretty good day up to then, and I groaned, thinking that it would be an hour or more in some idiotic DC traffic jam. We crept along for a couple minutes, and I saw a Maryland Trooper coming up on the shoulder in the rear-view of the SRX.

I was pondering on the appropriate protocol was to get out of his way when my attention was drawn to a man standing in the middle of the Interstate, attempting to gather what looked like the contents of several suitcases in his arms. Bright fabric colors were strewn all around him, mangled by the wheels of hurtling autos and his face was screwed up with anxiety and fear as traffic veered and crawled around him.

He was not having a personal best sort of day. Traffic picked up, and the merge onto the Beltway went smoothly, and the Legion Bridge into the Olde Dominion was where the light finally faded, and I was flying blind.

I hit I-66 and flew into the city. I pulled into the garage at the office to transfer materiel from Caddy to the cavernous trunk of the Bluesmobile by 1930 in the evening. Then I walked over to Willow to let the adrenaline evaporate out of my jeans and shirt.

It is a different crowd on Saturdays, mostly the date-night dinner trade. I was happy to see Old Jim, our buddy Holly and Liz-with-an-S holding down the bar, and it was a thoroughly good end to a long day with several thousand minor tactical decisions conducted to a background of Sirius Satellite Radio channeled through the ten Bose speakers.

I don’t know how many of these I have left in me, but one key contributing factor in the speed of the trip was a requirement for only 1 1/2 fuel stops- the Caddy is amazing.

If we win the big contract re-compete, I will buy one. If we don’t, I will have to start looking for likely highway overpasses to live under, and just watch the Caddies go by from there.

I thought, sipping a Happy Hour White next to Jim, that if I had some bad days in the last week with Raven and Big Mama, none of them featured me  standing facing traffic, trying to get my shit together in the through  lanes of the busiest freeway in America.

Poor bastard. I wonder how he made out?

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Departures

I have to give this trip mixed reviews. It was overdue, and this situation clearly needs more attention. I don’t know how to do that. As usual, as the moment of departure nears, I am torn. I am happy to be going, eager to be home, and yet….

And yet.

There are several loose ends that will undoubtedly take a month or more to sort out. I don’t know if I solved the mystery of the Vegetarian Menu or not, but I elevated it to Jackie in the front office, and she claims to have fixed the matter.

I would be appalled, if I was Big Mama, but she did not mention how bad it was. She peers around the Challenged Dining Room and imagines the relationships between the people. She has created quite a society there.

I sing “Goodnight Irene” to the old lady at the next table, since that is her name, and she seems to like it. That table still interacts with one another, a couple and two ladies to make a foursome. Raven and Big Mama sit alone.

Karla, the Dean of the wait staff, has been intervening to get her real entrees, but when she is not on duty, three courses of vegetables are the order of the day. It happened, possibly for the last time, at Lunch on Thursday. She fairly well, but picks at the food. When it is nothing but veggies she doesn’t eat. I don’t blame her a bit.

Wasn’t it President Bush the First, who said: “I say it’s broccoli, and I say the Hell with it?”

The Last Official Act with the elderly was to get Raven a shave and a hair cut, so he won’t be too outré in appearance. He was getting along to Howard Hughes territory, with huge sideburns and white wispy hair down over his ears and down his neck. Sherri is very nice in the beauty salon.

Having declared my absence to Big Mama, I actually got some work done at the house. I cleaned out the new reefer, which had a bunch of stuff that had been in the old icebox and was a year beyond expiration date.

Made some real progress on Raven’s office, a bizarre and sad experience from which I had to take frequent emotional breaks. There were perhaps fifty plastic storage boxes all stacked up in a weird sort of chronological order. Some of them were simple milky-clear Tupperware containers, and others complex portable filing schemes, two of them soft-fabric tactical systems for the busy executive who needs their information neatly filed while parachuting into intense negotiations.

Or something. The contents were all the same. Newspaper clippings, hundreds of dead batteries, dozens of empty notebooks and battalions of pens, paperclips and pencils. There is some correspondence and files on the Fleetwings Seabird airplane that Uncle Jim designed in the 1930s and other family stuff. I did not touch any of that and concentrated on thinning out the plastic farm and the endless unopened containers of office supplies.

There were some interesting technological objects as well. Did you know that Sony tried to launch a whole standard of data discs that failed? The format sank like a stone. I had never seen one before, and it was a bit like finding a library of BetaMax tapes. He has three of the players, naturally.

The clippings in the boxes gave a clue as to what he was seeking: prostate natural cures, senior health issues, and memory.

I realized how it happened to him, the transformation into Raven, He knew it was happening, creeping up behind him. He started dozens of lists of things to do, and then lost the pad. He did try to do something about it, and though he lost, he certainly did make an effort. As he slipped away the plastic boxes filled with hope and air piled up.

I managed to fill up the side of the garage that I had cleaned out last time, but the mass is generally sorted by empty plastic containers, gadgets from Radio Shack, and unused office supplies.

If anyone ever has time, there might be a yard sale in the Spring, opening up the contents of the Big Top garage, or just look at it, tag items for interest, and send the unused stuff to Good Will and the rest to the dump. I would like to get to the point where we can assault the paper records that make sense in a holistic manner, though that will take more time than any of us have at the moment.

The Green Car turned over and I ran it long enough to fill the house with fumes, but I did not have time to get a trickle-charger to keep the battery topped off. I have one in DC, and will try to remember to bring it up here. The little reefer downstairs is unplugged and defrosted and the new microwave is hooked up and works.

Washer and dryer work, as does the dishwasher. All clean on departure. Big Top thermometer and top and bottom floors of the main house are set to 62 degrees.

As usual, there was far more to do than I got done, but as a status check for the real deal, Mom is living in a fusion of Turner Classic Movies, the Hemingway festival next year. The Fox News phase of their lives seems to have passed. Raven is resting.

Leaving shortly for the 15 hour drive home.

The Caddy is beckoning, and the road is open. There is a White Castle I know of, just off I-75 a couple hundred miles from here. It is the last outpost of the franchise on the way east, and it is looking a lot like lunch.

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Faster Than Light

“It was Albert Einstein, no less, who proposed more than 100 years ago that nothing could travel faster than the speed of light. But science world was left in shock when workers at the world’s largest physics lab announced they had recorded subatomic particles traveling faster than the speed of light. If the findings are proven to be accurate, they would overturn one of the pillars of the Standard Model of physics, which explains the way the universe and everything within it works….”

– Science Note from the Telegraph of London, UK

Funny- I had just heard a story within the last couple weeks that it was confirmed that nothing could move faster than 186K Miles per Second (MPS). Now this news from the latest experiment conducted at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN). The Large Hadron Collider apparently clocked neutrinos whizzed by faster than light.

Beam me up, Scotty! The universe could be open to us after all, and not by pointless sub-light speed (endless) journeys to arid Mars. I wish it was possible to harness the neutrinos to the rental Caddie and hurtle me back to DC faster-than-light.

Things continue apace in the Little Village By the Bay. The process is not faster than light, but it is moving swiftly.

In addition to entertaining the folks, I vowed to work on Dad’s office, which is the last unconsolidated area in the main house. I was going through the wreckage. Piles of disassociated paper are strewn about with no particular rhyme or reason in the heaps plastic storage boxes.

There are stacks of e-mail that Mom printed for Dad to read- as he transitioned into Raven. His once considerable set of skills peeled off him, and the office piles are evidence of the progressive decay. Email on line was an early casualty. Many of my stories were printed, which made me blush at the realization of how much he loved his kids, and the others are a dozens of notes that constitute a roll-call of dead friends.

My sister Annook did a great job on cleaning up the library upstairs, but we are down to books, gee-jaws, and Big Mama’s records and files. I need to see if the local Historical Society needs them. There is enough stuff to do here, even though things are much better that I could spend a month or two getting it sorted out.

Then, I hit the mealtimes over at the Village. I may have to arrange for Raven to travel by wheelchair soon- he is frail and I hold his hand on the trip from the apartment down to the Dining Room for the Challenged. He falls, periodically.

Meanwhile, Big Mama is progressively losing her grip on the present and is off on several imaginary, or part-imaginary lands.

They are curiously linked to things she used to know, and which she is determined to get back, though the efforts to research them do not get far. She wanted me to check at the Bellaire, OH, high school library for information on Ernie Hemingway (“Next time I am there,” I responded brightly, “for sure.”)

She seemed to be very pleased about some coup d’etat I had apparently organized to control the International Hemingway Convention scheduled to come to the Little Village in June of 2012. She thinks it is a huge secret, for some reason, and then she was immensely pleased to confirm that I had been born here in the village (which of course I was not).

Strange, but not bad strange. Just strange. Almost fun in a sad sort of way. I have much more discretionary time here now that my appearances at Potemkin Village are now individual events, unconnected to any coherent plan.

Dad’s office is filled with plastic storage boxes, all with identical contents: dozens- if not hundreds -of note pads, most with writing only on the first page, pens, and unopened packets of file tabs and office organizing materials. I am sorting into three piles: photos and things with writing on them, empty plastic bins and office materials. Once the latter two have been consolidated and donated I can go back and look at pile number one.

I need to get back to DC over the weekend, but will be back up for Thanksgiving. I hope my brother makes in up in October and Annook has sworn to do Christmas.

I think I will head out of here after I get Dad’s wild wispy hair hacked off this afternoon, the first appointment I could get. He looks much better shaved and with a haircut.

I need to move some piles out from downstairs, and it is going much slower than the speed of light.

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Rain and Memory

It is rainy and gray again today. The Bay looks strange- there is a white highlight to the north shore at Harbor Springs that is so silver it could be ice. I got lost in Dad’s office last night. I went down to take the new microwave out of the packing and check how the defrosting was going in the little fridge- I doubt it had been done in years. Then got sucked into story of my father’s life. Ugh.

The thing that struck me was the sheer number of different means of keeping track of what he had to do- the Pocket Day Timers, notebooks, “To Do” binders is huge. I was making three piles outside- empty plastic containers, generic office supplies, and things that he actually touched or wrote.

It got to be too much. What struck me was the number of organizational binders, all of them blank. Maybe that is when he knew that something was going wrong.

I will devote time today to getting them to lunch, and maybe out to the mall. But I think we have got to another tipping point: Dad may be too frail to go out, I don’t really want him peeing in the Caddy, and though I have a couple bath towels for him to sit on, the whole thing fills me with dread.

Big Mama has ventured into entirely new territory. I had the iPad with me, and it was useful to keep her engaged. She wanted to talk about the four Hemingway wives; we got through two of them, Hadley Richardson and Pauline Pfeiffer at lunch. She wanted to know what my relationship was to them, and when I showed her pictures on the iPad, she said she could clearly see the likeness in our looks.

Big Mama was once the foremost expert in town on the years that Ernie spent at Walloon Lake just down the road, and his summer of love here in the little Village By the Bay as he recuperated from his war wounds and began to invent himself.

Big Mama is lost in that story now, and is inserting me into it. The memories are all jumbled up, no longer connected to a central narrative. She wanders among them, still curious, but the dots are not connecting. She wondered if my new relationship to Ernie would change anything here. I assured her it would not.

Then there was the big controversy over the fact that someone has decided she is a vegetarian, and is filling out her menu forms with all the steamed broccoli and cauliflower they cook, and deleting the entrée.

Big Mama hates vegetables. It is very strange.

We will see what happens- it may be that things have got to the point where being with them for meals is enough. I just got sidetracked again with crap in the wonderful library.

Ugh. I want to go home- and yet I also feel that I am home…weird…all those memories, and the rain coming in across the bay.

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Cross Over

If you are going to drive yourself crazy, I strongly recommend the new Cadillac SRX performance cross-over. It handles like a dream. The Sirius satellite radio offers a couple hundred discrete channels. The engine is powerful and it tracks with precision.

I love the Humbrismobile, but the German machine demands your attention at all times. The Caddy is forgiving, but powerfully so.

Hell, if we win the contract re-compete, I may buy one. The downside, of course, is if we lose I may wind up selling everything and living here over the garage. It could be a time to cross over.

But the reason for the car rental was simple. I did not know when I could get out of town, and buying air tickets was impossible to plan since I didn’t know when. It takes almost as long to get Up North flying as it does driving, whether it is to Detroit and drive, Traverse City and drive, or Pellston and cab it into town.

I hate the Pennsylvania turnpike, but the Caddy made it almost OK, like traveling in a nice comfy sofa.

I pulled into the compound just after lunchtime yesterday, and began the cross-over
into madness- or dementia, as the case may be- rapidly. I picked up at the house where Annook left off, and I have to say that the house looks great. More on that in a moment.

The well-being of the folks is a concern. Raven remains frail and Big Mama seems to have only a sporadic interest in things. Her Hemingway fascination appears to be in full blossom. She was the local authority on the Nobel Laureate’s time here in the Village, right after his return from the Great War, and his infatuation with a local High School girl, and his stool at the Park Grill bar.

Across the dinner table she went on and on about the four marriages, and how she was trying to figure out whether I looked like Ernie, and who his brother was. Somehow she is now convinced that there is something that connects us, like the three owners of Potemkin Village who are seated at a table in the Dining Room for the Challenged.

It is very strange.

She is still pissed about her car, and I got an earful about it as I sorted the mail she no longer opens. I made a note to do that this trip. can I am going to steal her license. I reminded her driving is a privilege, not a right. Mom did not eat much, but she doesn’t seem to have lost much weight.

Physically, they seem to be doing all right. I asked to have a service added to their care menu, and now the Village People are intrusively reminding them about meal times. Raven seems to have rallied a bit, and actually commented on his peanut-butter pie for dessert last night. Then he escaped the table and headed for the normal people’s dining room. He actually made it a few steps in before I corralled him. So, his doing better physically actually is a net negative, if he goes back to his disruptive roaming.

Then, there is the work at the house. Garages, attached and otherwise, and the office downstairs still need work and I will get on it this trip and the next.

I got a new spread, pillowcases and such for the master bedroom in an attempt to banish some ghosts.

I need to tackle Raven’s office downstairs- it is a disaster, and looked like he just left in a hurry. I want to fit out a little kitchenette down there- then, once that is clean and the bookcases are mostly emptied, we should be ready to show the place for sale or rent. A new microwave will help- I will get one this trip. With the exception of the office, the downstairs looks great. I defrosted the little reefer, which might be getting to its last legs.

The major event will be the clearing of the cars and the garage. Otherwise, it is a wonderful house and we are nearing the point where we can cross over from the disaster area to something else.

It is a wonderful house.  I just wish someone could use it.

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com