on a last day



no broken arrow, no
broken fears. no broken
sorrow. no broken years.
each all gone at full
strength. as the studied
length of the day became
its own measure of
campaigning what was offered
and gained, probing and
writing history at every
last step of the way,
morning and night every
day, laughing at himself
as each volume finished
found its way to the
history shelf. sometime
later to be read, writ
without a broken arrow
as life has been nothing
more than the battle
between the eagle and
the mighty sparrow. after
all, all is to laugh my
friend- writers we are,
men with no beginning
sometimes foolishly hoping
for an end, on a last
day

-old jim

6/28/13

Copyright 2013 Jim Champagne
www.vicsocotra.com

The War on the Generals

(General James Mattis, a tough Marine dismissed from his CENTCOM Command for his views on Iran. Photo AFP).

“From his first months in office, President Obama secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities, significantly expanding America’s first sustained use of cyberweapons, according to participants in the program. Mr. Obama decided to accelerate the attacks — begun in the Bush administration and code-named Olympic Games — even after an element of the program accidentally became public in the summer of 2010 because of a programming error that allowed it to escape Iran’s Natanz plant and sent it around the world on the Internet. Computer security experts who began studying the worm, which had been developed by the United States and Israel gave it a name: Stuxnet.”
– David Sanger, writing in the New York Times, June 2012

It is a curious thing, this leaking thing. I have avoided talking about the lamented and misguided Mr. Snowden, though I did vent a bit about young PFC Bradley Manning when he made his breathtaking disclosure of a half a million classified cables from the State Department and other Government agencies. I mean, I get the whole leaker-as-hero thing, but this little cretin had signed on oath to protect the material to which he had access.

Snowden is something else altogether. Latest reports from the rock-star espionage practicioner is that he took the job at Booz-Allen-Hamilton specifically to scoop up particularly juicey items about a program which had been vetted, briefed to Congress, and approved by a Federal Judge. In other words, he blew the whistle on a legal program.
But no matter. I am pleased not to be living in a transit lounge in an airport I don’t particularly like.

But there is another leaking case going on, and this one is really surprising. The investigation is targeted on the former number two officer on The Joint Staff, General “Hoss” Cartwright.

(General James “Hoss” Carwright. Official DoD photo).

Cartwright, who served as the Vice Chairman between 2007-2011, was reportedly the savant who championed the Stuxnet attack on the Iranian nuclear enrichment centrifuges.

It was way cool. I remember when the existence of the bug was first disclosed by independent security experts when it escaped into the wild. It was exotic. It was targeted against Seimens electronic equipment. Outside the real target, the bug was benign. Inside, it did all sort of really neat tricks, and mutated to change its signature.

At the time, I had a suspicion- a hope, better said- that we were taking action against the development of the Shia Bomb. And then the big leak came with the Sanger article. It depicted a heroic Administration on the cutting edge of cyber-warfare, proactively protecting America under the firm but measured guidance of the President.

(National Security Advisor Tom Donilon. Photo White House).

I smelled Tom Donilon all over it. You know Tom, I hope. He is a former Public Affairs Offier who stumbled into being the National Security Advisor to Mr. Obama. His credentials for the post are better suited to being a press secretary- he is much more in the mold of Baghdad Bob Jay Carney than a Zbigneew Brzezinski or a Brent Scowcroft. He is more of a showman, though he had the confidence of Valerie Jarrett and the President. Those are two things that are very important in the Obama White House, and several military officers, of whom Hoss is the only the latest, to come to unpleasant situations with it.

In fact, you could actually call it something of a war against the Generals. In my experience, I have never seen so many GO-FOs (general and flag officers) “lose the confidence” of their civilian masters. Jimmy Carter at least understood them, having been a naval officer himself. President Reagan certainly did as he re-built the DoD after Mr. Carter’s semi-benign neglect. Mr. Bush was appreciative of their service, and respected their judgment. Mr. Clinton realized that their anger was toxic, and after an early defeat on the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell compromise, essentially left the Pentagon alone. The second Mr. Bush may have used them too willingly, but at least the generals knew where they stood with him.
Mr. Obama is a different sort of customer. It is pretty interesting. Of course he never served, but he did preside over two wars, and along the way launched more espionage investigations than all the other Presidents put together. The number of them is extraordinary, surpassed only by the somewhat surprising aspect that the only leaks pursued seemed to be ones that did not depict the Administration in a positive light.

Poor Hoss is the latest on that score. I will have to let this one play out to see what is what, but my sense of this is that if Hoss talked, it was because he was told to do so- either by the President, or more likely by that former PR flack Tom Donilon. You are going to have to go a long way to prove to me that General Cartwright is not being thrown under the bus to protect the National Security Advisor, and ultimately the Oval Office.

Of course there has been General Officeer misconduct. It is just sort of surprising how much durty laundry- or at least alleged dirty laundry has come out. Why do I say that? Let’s see:
Maj. Gen. Ralph Baker, commander of the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa, Gen. Carter Ham, commanding general of all U.S. military operations across Africa, Gen. William “Kip” Ward, the first four-star general to command U.S. military operations in Africa, Rear Admiral Charles Gaouette. All were involved in the Benghazi humiliation.

The last four U.S. generals to run the Afghan war: Gen. David McKiernan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, General John Allen. Gen. David Petraeus managed to survive his combat command and retire, but was forced to resign after the FBI started to rummage around in his personal emails and an intimate relationship with his biographer came to light.

I don’t know if Gen. Joseph Dunford feels the hairs going up on the back of his neck or not. He is the 15th ISAF commander since 2002, a veritable revolving door of generals.

President Barack Obama also fired General James Mattis, the head of Central Command, without even calling the general to let him know he was being replaced. National Security Advisor Tom Donilon was unhappy with the crusty Marine’s insistence on being heard about the mischief that Iran was exporting to places like Syria. I know that Ms. Jarrett takes a particular interest in things Iranian, along with Mr. Donilon.

I am not accusing anyone of anything in particular- though I would gently note that it seems like a really bad career move to oppose anyone close to the Oval Office. They play with their elbows up in there, which is something that the generals don’t seem to understand very well. It is funny, really, this role reversal of bloodthirsty politicians going after the big bad warriors.

It brings to mind one of General Mattis’ best quotes. “I come in peace. I didn’t bring artillery. But I’m pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you fuck with me, I’ll kill you all.”

I believe the General, and agree with him. He just didn’t understand who he was up against. Culturally, he never had a chance. He is just not from Chicago.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Corn Dogs and the Court

I heard my pal Joanie on the radio this morning, talking about the big Supreme Court decisions yesterday. She has been a point person for same-sex couples since she got out of the Navy, and I am happy for her and her partner.

I was in the Panzer when I heard the recap of the decisions that will conclude this Supreme Court Session, and let everyone get ready to go to the State Fair. I was, as usual, snagged in traffic in that awful stretch of I-66 outside the Beltway.

The decisions are completely in line with my views, which is to say that the Feds have no business picking winners and losers in the marital world, and if a couple decides to entangle themselves in the institution of marriage, there ought to be equal protection under the Constitution.

Period.

I was more concerned with the decisions that did not get the full attention of National Public Radio, which was the ruling that suggests local governments may have to compensate landowners who are denied permits to develop their land. There are an ominous number of real estate parcels for sale near Refuge Farm, and this could mean more strip malls in the green rolling hills.

What with the GDP being adjusted down again, maybe I can wait that one out. There are other things going on that got my attention in arcing between being a city mouse and a country mouse.

It is peaceful in the country, a little humid, but that keeps the fire danger down and I am thankful for that after what I saw in Colorado last week, with the flames licking everything with their ravenous tongues. There are some things for which to be thankful.

So, back in town for some critical meetings, I was happy that the rains were holding off and thought I might walk over to Willow for a change.

There I saw something I never thought I would see, and I am not sure what our pal Mac would have thought. Maybe commented on the Iowa State Fair and when they started deep-frying everything under the sun.

Old Jim and Jon-without-an-H were in their usual places at the Amen Corner, and the Lovely Bea and placid lovely Jamie drifted in as the shadows lengthened. Jamie was in a particularly upbeat mood, since she had flown back from her consulting gig up North in order to take a mandatory company training course on Business Development.

You know, that is the sort of crap the companies inflict on hapless employees to focus them on opportunities to shape the customer’s perceptions and Grow the Business. It is complex, and includes crucial items like how to sit at the conference table to the best advantage.

I was deeply sympathetic- I had just taken the mandatory course on ethics in a lull between conference calls. My approach is to dis-enable the video and sound and take the course for speed. I got a 92%, which covers all my ethics for the year.

As it turned out, Jamie had successfully completed the workshop on the last go-around and she got four hours of her life back. We all celebrated, and as Jim was ordering his usual Tuna Slider, no tartar sauce just the red hot sauce and a spoon and don’t forget the grilled tomato, noticed there was something new on the menu.

Corn Dogs.

“What on earth?” asked Jon-without. “Is this a trip to the State Fair?”

Owner and executive chef Tracy O’Grady came out from the kitchen to explain. The designer griller who did the patio event last Friday had left-over vegan hot dogs, and Tracy decided to get with the summer spirit.

Corn-dogs: rich, and deeply golden.

Damn. I want to go to the State Fair.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

The President’s Plan

It is out, as of 0600 this morning, and the topics to be covered in the Big Climate Speech are no longer embargoed for distribution. This is good, since I have to be elsewhere due to The Big Meeting that will inform us of The Big Changes at the company, held conveniently in distant Chantilly, VA.

We are very excited about this. Just after lunch, while I will be watching PowerPoint slides about my future, the President will travel by motorcade of a dozen limousines to Georgetown University where he will tell us how to save energy.

This is apparently one of the signature initiatives of his second term. You can read it for yourself and see what you think. There are some things that are good, and there are some things that are just nuts.

Take E85 biofuel, which will destroy the engine on your car, for example, or regulating coal-fired generating plants out of existence without replacement.

The President is going to pour more public money on things that don’t work, apply new standards for appliances that won’t work, and demand impossible miles-per-gallon standards for big trucks that can’t work.

Plus a lot more money for scientists to continue to churn out alarmist nonsense, just the unholy partnership that Ike Eisenhower warned us about a long time ago.

Other than that, good plan.

I am kidding, of course. The best one can say about this compilation of common sense and idiocy is that it could be worse and it could be slightly more wrong-headed. I am not sure how, though.

None of it relies on Congress, since the President intends to use the Executive Branch powers of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy to advance the agenda by regulation. We turned the corner on “sinister” with the Executive Branch a long time ago, but this raises the bar for a Government that works only for itself.

When the best that comes out of Washington is something that doesn’t make you cringe as bad as you could, that is a sad state.

After the speech, the President will head back to the White House to pack for his $100 million trip to Africa.

This is indeed a trip to Wonderland. I am pleased to be with you, along for the ride.

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/presidents-climate-action-plan.pdf

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Back to the Front

(Somewhere in a foreign field with the troops of 1914-18).

I don’t know if you’ve looked at what is happening in the Asian markets this morning. I have tried to stay away from looking at the balance in the 401K, which is headed south at an alarming rate. Apparently Wall Street began to panic after Mr. Bernanke’s declaration last week that the Fed would be weaning us off the printing press later this year.

This morning the news is not constrained to accessing my account information to get the bad news. The bearish Zero Hedge site and left-of-center CNBC are in agreement and telling us that global economic house of cards is shivering again. This time the ill wind is from China. There is reportedly a liquidity crunch and big stock market losses- as much as 5% over the course of a day or two. According to other sources I could not avoid, the Japanese Nikkei is leveraged to 300% of value.

I don’t understand any of this crap, but maybe it is the beginning of the Zombie Apolcolypse or something. I will be watching with interest to see how the Dow responds today.

Maybe the end is near? God, I think I should make a cardboard sign to take to the office this morning.

Funny, these things sneak up on you. The conditions are all in place, there are no surprises except for the timing of it all.

Like the First War. It seems inevitable now, but they did not know that in July of 1914, that the world was ending. I have been thinking about the Fall of the West on and off for some time. Some of the junk I moved in the garage down at the farm included a steel coal-scuttle helmet from the First War, and some other bits of militaria I have owned since I was a kid.

The centennial of the event for which they were produced is right around my Dad’s birthday in August of 2014. I have been thinking of how to commemorate the occasion. Maybe a trip to the one-time trenches of France?

It is timely enough. Amid the other wreckage of moving, Barbara Tuchman’s fine chronicle “The Guns of August” surfaced. It is a horrifying and banal account of how the military planners and incompetent politicians set in motion a chain of events that began the end of a world.

It is worth a re-read in the ramp-up to the anniversary next year, I think. Solzhenitsyn’s imposing “August 1914” door-stop book also appeared in the debris, and his contention that the defeat of the Czar’s troops by the Prussian- sorry, German Army at Tannenberg brought about the events of 1917…well. How our world was made, indeed.

And the collapse of the empires, the rise of the USSR and the other Fascists…and the defeat of the whole lot let the Islamo-genie out of the bottle. I don’t feel like thinking about that this season since I spent my professional life worrying about those idiots. I would rather go back and contemplate how it all began, and what those legions of young men did a century ago.

(The Zone Rouge was essentially a no-man’s land for decades after the trenches- many of them as detailed as this- snaked 450 miles from the Channel to the Swiss border.)

Part of the wreckage cleared out of the office on Saturday was a stack of manila folders containing photocopies of the old Michelin Touring Guides from the 1920s describing how to tour to the Zone Rouge, the swath of France in which the West Front was contested. I requested them from a variety of Federal Repository Libraries while I was at the Industrial College, thinking that I might go someday and see what had changed between then and now.

Then, the carnage was still evident and palpable. Now it is almost all gone, built over and developed, though the fields that remain still produce a harvest of UXBs and heavy ordnance with each Spring’s plowing.

I was inspired at the time by a snotty-toned book called “Back to the Front,” by a Paris-based American journalist named Stephen O’Shea. He walked much of the 450 miles of the Zone Rouge from the Channel to the Swiss border, examining what remained from the Great Conflict.

Along the way, he discovered the profundity that war is bad, which is the downside of the book. His self-satisfied pacifism jarred with me then, since it was such a superficial appreciation of the horror that marked the beginning of the Decline and Fall of the West that I felt only contempt for his naivety.

I mean, after all, the loss of that First War generation ensured the end of the Raj, the rise of the Bolshies, and the subsequent failure of vigor that sealed the fate of the greatest empire since Rome, and of it’s rivals. As I mentioned, it also unleashed the militant Islam that plagues us now, and may, in the way of demographics, complete a victory for the True Faith denied before the gates of Vienna in 1529.

Or not. But anyway, it was a fun book, if you ignored the general snarkiness, and concentrated on the description of the works left behind by the poor human sheep and their imperious and misguided commanders.

There is, of course, a personal interest in all this. The Americans played a small but crucial role in the fighting on the Western Front. My Grandfather Michael Socotra was there with the American Expeditionary Force, or the AEF.

He volunteered out of a safe railroad job in Ohio, and his skills were such that he served on a train ferrying Yanks to the Front. I don’t know if he ever saw Smedley Butler at the in-processing camp at Brest- Camp Pontanezen- which was pretty rough: all mud and unsanitary conditions. In October 1918, Marine Colonel Smedley Butler was promoted to Brigadier, and he tackled the problems with alacrity. He diverted duckboards intended for the front to literally pave the camp with wood.

AEF Commander Pershing authorized a special patch for troops serving under Butler:

(An original patch of the Duckboard Regiment authorized by General of the Army Black Jack Pershing.)

Two-time Medal of Honor winner Butler was thereafter known as “Old Duckboard.” I would expect any tour of the American part of the war should thus start at Brest. Perhaps the best approach is to fly to Heathrow and take the ferry to the continent?

It would be appropriate to start in England, where you cannot look at the list of names posted in all the little villages and blanche at the impact of so many young men killed or maimed in such small places. But that snarky O’Shea does have a point: the Yanks had demonstrated that mass infantry encounters were demonstrated to be the height of stupidity as early as Antietam. And the nice fellows at Krupp had another fifty years to tweak the technology of mass killing.

Remember the Zouaves of 1914 in their bright red pantaloons charging the machine guns?

“L’audace, L’audace, toujours L’audace!”

The generals and their tactics, n’est pas?

I am going to start planning for the tour, unless of course, the West does complete its fall later today. If so, I will adjust my plans.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

For the Children

(Legendary Child Star Jackie Coogan, eking out a living in his last great role as creepie Uncle Fester in The Addams Family.)

I have been up at Refuge Farm this morning since way early. I discovered it is raining, to my vast surprise, since I had heard the weekend was going to be nice. Accordingly, the cushions were left out on both the front and back porches. Crap.

I had intended to move a bunch of stuff between house and garage to thin out the confusion of the Great Room and make some room for the guests who are going to lily-pad their way through Culpeper on their way north from Florida to points north. I will shortly not have the availability in the Capital to host anyone- oh well, it is part of the disorganized process yesterday’s disjointed story attempted to depict.

The first thing I saw in the email queue this morning was a note from a pal far away who who lost a spouse of several decades a few months ago. My pal veers through the process of loss in the human way: from fortitude to dismay and pained bewilderment. I wrote back immediately, trying to stay engaged and supportive, but that started the too-early morning with thoughts on the nature of self, and fate, and the penetrating pain of loneliness.

Those are topics well suited to the pre-dawn.

Plowing through the rest of the messages brought politics to the fore, as it always does, balancing the claptrap agitprop of the New York Times with some of the conservative coalition rants. And there was a link to the promo teaser of what the President is going to announce in the brief time he is in Washington between Official Visits to Europe and Africa to Further the Interests of the United States in his 14 limos and fleet of military aviation assets.

The First Family is going along again, too, apparently to get ready for an extended stay on Martha’s Vineyard when they get back. I like the fact that the President takes the family along. I wish I had been able to do that on official travel.

Still, every time I hear the ubiquitous phrase “for the children,” I check my wallet. Apparently we are going to save them again, come this Tuesday.

The President is going to make a major address on Climate Change at Georgetown, and announce a raft of new executive orders to be carried out by the thrifty ideologues at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy, eliminating the need for the involvement of those knot heads in Congress.

I get a little foggy on my “how a bill becomes law” thing- civics was a long time ago- but I get the nagging feeling that this is not how things are supposed to work in a Constitutional Republic.

Plus, it is pretty evident to even the most casual observer that the alarmist computer models have gravely overstated the likelihood that the temperature is racing out of control. In fact, the global temperature has now stalled for between fourteen and twenty-three years, depending on which observed measurement database you prefer.

The alarmists prefer the models, since they are not dependent on anything except the assumptions you load on the front end. Garbage in, garbage out. There is something really wrong with the whole belief system.

Much as people wish to make events like tropical storm Sandy and the cyclones of Spring some sort of evidence that the climate is out of control- there are actually fewer hurricanes and this is a quiet year for tornados. Don’t believe me- read the report penned by Sebastian Lüning and Fritz Vahrenholt describe recent tornado activity as being in “great doldrums.” Helps to read German, but not necessary.

Here is the money chart and a link to the report:

 

 

 

It is pretty exciting. The Washington Post reported with a straight face this morning that new “rules likely will drive up the cost of electricity.”

I always thought the progressives were in favor of affordable energy for the working stiff- since it makes life better here. But we are as well off as any humans in the history of homo sapiens. It is much more important to the developing world, since without it they won’t.

But I guess that message got lost in the new State Religion of doing things for generations yet unborn- like running up their credit cards.

It reminds me a little of the old story about child actor Jackie Coogan. If he is remembered these days, it is for his last big gig as Uncle Fester in the TV show “The Addams Family.” He was big in the early days of the film medium, though.

Jackie charmed audiences in Charlie Chaplin’s 1921 classic “The Kid.” Age and entropy will out, though, and by the mid-1930s his career had slowed considerably. As a legal adult in 1938 he attempted to win back his $4 million of his childhood earnings from his mother and stepfather, who had been living the high life at his expense.

We get inured to number like that in these decadent times, but figuring constant dollars from 1935 on, that $4 million represents the equivalent of a tad over $68 million today.

You can imagine he was a little upset when he realized what Mom and Pop had been up to.

By the time the case was settled the amount had dropped down to approximately $250,000, of which Coogan received only a portion. There was such a scandal that Congress actually did something about it, passing the “The Coogan Act, or, the Child Actors Bill,” which put the earnings of child actors into escrow funds.

As with anything in Washington, though, there were plenty of loopholes. The legislation only covers actors working in California and, in reality, applies to income only from TV series and motion pictures and not TV commercials. Then, just as now, the Congress could not legislate on things they could not imagine and did not yet exist.

Which actually is about what the children who serve as props to all these nonsensical things will find out when we get there, or at least they do. Hopefully we will be gone and they won’t be able to get at us when they find out what we have done to them.

Of course, it will still rain, and there will be storms, just as there always have been. The difference between then and now is that Jackie Coogan actually did get something in the end. His share of the measly $250,000 is worth- surprise! Would be worth more than a cool million in today’s dollars.

By way of contrast, our kids- actually, our grandkids- are going to get stuck with a whopper of a tab in their constant dollars, some broken wind-mills and the legacy of a theory that does not work in the real world.

And their lights may not work. Care to ask them now how they like the dark?

Perhaps we could have Uncle Fester ask them. That would quiet them down for sure.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

You Can’t Always Get (What You Want)

 

(District Boundary Stone NE7, near the site of the disastrous Battle of Bladensburg, which set the stage for the burning of Washington by the British in 1814).

It is funny how things come around. I feel several circles closing this morning. One has a certain claustrophobic aspect, and another a historical one. Both hark back a dozen years, ones that encompass some dizzying personal highs and lows.

My pal the Argonaut is going to help to close one of the latter, and the former…well, that is back too.

The situation is not nearly as grave as some bad days in the Nation’s Capital. Put aside the political shenanigans, if you can, for just a moment.

The two events I am thinking of both have a martial flavor, since the consequences of military action can be brutal and final in the extreme.

In July of 1864, two forces were racing with urgency toward the capital. The Washington Monument was stalled at half-height; the Capitol Dome was undone. Jubal Early, one of Lee’s last great Lieutenants, was pressing down on the empty forts ringing Washington from the North.

It was a bold move: “Unconditional Surrender” Grant had stripped the city of troops to make a decisive move against Petersburg and Richmond, and only by the skin of his teeth did intelligence tell him he was at real risk of losing the District- and the President- to the bold Confederate move.

(Fort Stevens, fully manned. The fields behind the ramparts are now the remnants of Walter Reed Army Medical Center.)

It was whisker-close, but Grant got his reinforcements to the ramparts at Fort Stevens on a day or so before Early’s Rebels began the assault, and the city was saved.

It did not work out that way the other time the city was threatened by an armed force.

That is one of the other circles that is closing this summer. It takes me back to one of my first quests as a resident of the Old Time District of Columbia, which had been bounded by the Boundary Stones that then included what is now Virginia’s Arlington County. I needed a project to get my mind off the War on Terror, and the parallel war with the Ex.

It was a pretty cool project, or at least much cooler than the one I had to deal with on a personal level. The stones were patient. Their emplacement was a project authorized by Congress under President George Washington, and completed over the course of the sweltering summers and dank winters of 1791-92. Their placement was arguably the first public work of the new Republic. In my journey around the Disctrict to see all the stones- there are 36 of 40 originals still in the ground)-I found myself one sunny morning near stone NE 7. That one is located on the grounds of the Fort Lincoln Cemetery in Ward 5.

The low earthworks of a Civil War redoubt remain near the great flagstaff that waves the National Ensign.

Along the fence in Block 18, 75 feet southwest of Garden Mausoleum near Garden of the Crucifixion, lies SE7, a once-massive chunk of sandstone with the word “Maryland” on the side of the square facing the Free State. The interior side once would have read “Jurisdiction of the United States.”

NE 7 had been in place since 1792, or just about the same time the cornerstone of what we know as the White House was laid with great ceremony. They called it something else then, the President’s Palace or the President’s Mansion, because the original color was that which dominated the new capital.

Which is to say a dark reddish-brown. The color of mud.

It was a morning of revelation at Fort Lincoln. We do not think much of the great invasion of 1812, or the abject humiliation of the young Republic by the haughty and professional marines and sailors or the Royal Navy.

If Grant’s troops saved the capital in the Civil War, President Madison’s did not in the war a half century before. The Royal Navy expeditionary forces advanced from the invasion fleet in the Chesapeake Bay, swatting aside the militia hastily assembled to impede them. Only the Marines and Sailors of Commodore under Commodore Barney emerged from the Battle of Bladensburg with their reputations intact. They also took the highest casualties on the US side – Barney took a musket ball in the thigh and was captured.

The Brits then spent a leisurely day or two burning everything of consequence in the new capital.

There are references to the flight of President Madison from the Presidential Palace in the capital today, mostly focusing on the conduct of the indomitable First lady, Dolly. But for the rest of it? The rout of the militia hastily assembled? Not so much.

The 500 United States Marines on the high ground at the Bladensburg Road, near the NE 7 Boundary Stone of the District have their monument, though, and they are remembered at least in this small place. The Marines were outnumbered. Intelligence was bad. Their Commodore was captured, and the victorious Brits swept past the Boundary Stone with nothing to oppose their sack of the New Rome.

President Madison fled the Capitol and his new house, still unfinished, was put to the torched as the victors drank ale at Mrs. Suter’s new boarding house on Pennsylvania Ave and 15th Street and toasted the flames.

The British left town in good order before the startled Americans could respond. Things proceeded at a more leisurely pace in those days.

I am withdrawing from the city at an even more stately pace. Don’t take this as whining, please. It is not that- it is a leap I am taking that makes complete sense, the conclusion having been arrived at in sober and deliberate manner.

The trade I have plied this last decade in Washington has brought me around full circle. Broke, desperate and freshly out of uniform, I had my challenges, but the war in Afghanistan was new, and looked successful. Iraq was only a gleam in the eyes of the NeoCons, and who could have guessed the wild ride of the coming decade?

As the Iraq war began to die down, I could see what was coming for the industry that had grown up to support the era of conflict. They say that an able seaman looks to the wind, and trims the sails accordingly. If what I saw coming, came, the only thing I could think of was to downsize and prepare to live on much more modest means, trading time for cash.

The plan, as I conceived it last year, was something like this:

The little unit I reconstructed was coming on the market. It has a patio on the first floor, an expansive public space that multiplies the sometimes oppressive amount of square feet, is adjacent to the abodes of my pals in the Ornamental Concrete International Union, and is just feet from the entrance to the pool.

It is re-done to my exacting specifications. The kitchen walls were blown out, granite countertops installed, and the famous Murphy bed could be folded up into a sliding bookcase that was a wonder when I completed the installation, making the bedroom disappear into the wall. The rest of the physical plant was upgraded from the 1964 baseline horror with which I started.

The convector AC/heating unit was replaced, plantation shutters installed, the bathroom upgraded and closet reworked with cool and intricate cubbies and hanging spaces.

Small, but elegant. It was a great plan. I had a handshake deal with the woman to whom I had sold a few years ago, and then lurched on to refurbish the much larger two-bedroom, two bath unit up on the fourth deck, high above the pool.

It was a great place. Cluttered, perhaps, with the detritus of my life and that of my parents as all their crap devolving a generation in the time-stream. But I shrugged and got on with complying with my young Realtor’s imperious demands, and that of his relentlessly tasteful Staging Lady.

I liked the place once they were done with it. In fact, I liked it better than I had ever liked living in it before. The transformation from my baroque jumble to a less-is-more look reinvigorated my senses, and when the place sold, lickety-split, I was taken aback.

The change in the market had been accompanied by other issues. The woman who was going to sell me back the little gem of a unit got shafted by the bank. Her change in circumstances meant the lenders no longer trusted her to make payments on a retirement place, and she was stuck. No place to go.

I felt sorry for her. That is the way of the financial world these days. I let her out of the hand-shake deal, only to find myself in the same dilemma: where was I to go, once the deal was concluded only weeks hence, and I had to be out of the place I own? It is madness to try to commute from the country- that much I have learned about this town. A lily-pad in town is necessary for sanity.

I did not have the same options that the British had, which was to parade down the Bladensburg Pike, banners waving and re-embark on the invasion fleet. Were that a possibility, damn.

I consulted urgently with Rhonda at the front desk, who knows all things. We ran down the list of available rentals in the building, since I have no stomach to leave all of my ersatz family at Willow and Big Pink just yet. The ones I liked were just off the market. What was left was a couple unadorned efficiencies, identical to the one I rented with such relief a month after 9/11.

Bare bones, no balcony, and painfully small. Just as it was, more than a decade ago. Much has changed, and much is the same. Thank God the farm beckons from bucolic Culpeper.

Oh well. As the President is going to discover with al Qaida and its affiliates, the enemy gets a vote in whether the wars are over, or not. We will see about that. I got a note from the Argonaut, who is interested in finding that last elusive Stone of the District- SE 9, the one on the Potomac riverbank in the shade of the big overpass that requires a team to identify and assault.

We are going to complete that in the next couple weeks, and that circle will be complete.

I guess we will see about the other ones, won’t we?

I am hoping Mick and the Rolling Oldsters are right. Sometimes, you get what you need.

(The United States Capitol in ruins after the British invasion, circa 1814. Image Library of Congress.)

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

The Longest Day

(The great Ice Sheets of the last and unlamented Ice Age, from which we are still emerging. Check it out. Image courtesy of Treehugger.com)

Well, summer arrived early this morning and I am wearing a sweater in normally torrid Arlington. It was a strange and elongated Spring- I hope it does not mean another Ice Age is commencing. They used to talk about that a lot, but I suspect they dropped the concept since the ice would have to actually appear for people to take it seriously.

The whole anthropomorphic climate change thing is much more subtle, since no one cane really tell why temperatures have soared almost a whole degree (Celsius) in more than a hundred years, and while the deadly (hahaha) greenhouse gas continues to increase in concentration, the temperature has stalled for a decade and a half, and people are still getting hysterical about it.

I for one would rather have it a bit warmer than colder, but the planet will do what it will do regardless of what we think.

I saw a graphic about how thick the sheets of ice and snow were in the historical think an ice sheet three times the height of the CN Tower in Toronto would be inconvenient, but the Canadians are innovative people.

I assume the ice would stop at the Border, since the DHS folks are pretty severe about security these days, and alien snow is still…well, alien and undocumented. Chicago and Boston ought to have a plan, though, as I am sure Mayor Bloomberg does.

One theory I heard was that he would permit as many re-fills of 32-oz. soft drinks so long as they were all filled up to the brim with crushed ice. Clever man.

It took a long time for those sheets to build up, so I am not going to worry about changing my winter plans just yet. But I am definitely crossing Montreal off any plans for summer vacations.

The Longest Day normally conjures up images of the invasion of Normandy, or at least it does for those of us of a certain age.

I will never forget the epic film about D-Day of the same name, with an international cast of thousands. Many of the older stars actually had parts in the Greatest Story of the Century, but they are almost all gone now. This is just the longest day of the year, which would cause Old Jim at the Willow Bar to wince and declare that “They are all the same goddamn length, you moron. It is the amount of daylight that changes!”

Jim is a stickler for accuracy, and it is important to remember that. In fact, that was one of the topics under discussion by The Lovely Bea, Placid Lovely Jamie and Jon-without-an-H at the bar last night.

I did not know whether to celebrate the day or not, based on the magnitude of impending change, but decided to stop on the way home anyway. So what if China is about to melt down, Mr. Obama is going to double the taxes on carbon (didn’t he mean carbon dioxide?) and the Stock Market is taking it on the chin to the tune of 500 points of bear trading in just two days.

I spent a good part of the afternoon attempting to not check the balance on the 401K, which I have an uncomfortable feeling is about to take a hit that could amount to a third of the total value. Freaking Bernanke. I bet his 401k is a lot better than ours.

I did have a reason to drink some of the excellent sauvignon blanc that Brett was dispensing as the Happy Hour white.

The good news is that low interest rates, lack of inventory, and anxiety about the future got me the contract on my condo. The bad news is that interest rates are going up, there is a lack of rental inventory, and I have just put myself out of Arlington (and the easy stop at Willow) unless I can figure something out, muy pronto.

The topic was so serious that Jon-without dove direct into a gigantic glass of Bombay Sapphire gin with two olives. The Lovely Bea contemplated what vodka would go well with water and lime, and Brett-the-bartender came up with Chopin, with is either made with potatoes or grain, I forget which, and delivered an astonishing creation to the space on the bar in front of her:

The damned thing looked like a palm tree, best I could determine, but Mayor Bloomberg would have been pleased at the amount of crushed ice.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Ratified

There is so much going on that I can barely whack myself into bewilderment with the National and International Issues at hand. I am tempted to join the Syrian Resistance, though since they are Sunni fanatics that might not work out so well. Considering the Shia alternative it might not be a particularly good career move, now that we know about the games the US Government plays with Big Data.

I mean, which bunch of extremists can you trust?

Case in point: I can’t keep track of the grammatical parsing of what passes for sworn testimony up on the Hill, either. I think we are back to attempting to determine what the meaning of “is,” “is,” with AG Eric Holder, and I think it is about time to audition for a new Top Lawman, even if this one is really good friends with Valerie Jarrett.

I am more concerned with the meteorological effects of the winds and dryness out west, where many were calling the newsrooms and posting on Facebook about the smoke that has blanketed much of Southern Colorado. I think folks are feeling bracketed by the Black Forest Fire north of the Springs and the one burning now in Walsenburg, southwest of Pueblo.

Shoot, I was just in Pueblo the other day, and it was pleasant- but dry.

There is another fire going in Jefferson County, west of Denver, and it just means this is going to be a tense long summer waiting to see if the lightning- or some whacko- sets a fire.

Here is how nuts things are. I rolled back into town yesterday from the farm on a pleasant ride yesterday to find a battery of requests to tour my palatial unit. It was a good day to hole up at the office and get stuff done. At some point in the afternoon, one Agent handed my agent an offer to buy at my asking price.

He stopped by this morning. As of about ten minutes ago, I have a ratified contract. I have no idea where I am going to go, of course, since no plan survives first contact with the enemy. I will have a little more than a month to figure that out, should this all go the way it appears.

I am suspicious, naturally, and a ratified contract is only one step on the way to an executed and final agreement. There is the appraisal and the home inspection to get through, and negotiations will continue, I imagine.

But it could be a lot worse. I could be negotiating with the Taliban, after all. But if we had a ratified contract with them, I am sure we could rely upon it.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Bemused

I am at the farm and bemused. I was going through office stuff before attempting the drive back to the Emerald City. I toggled over to check my private mail as a diversion, and was stopped in my digital tracks.

A pal had sent a picture from long ago and far away and wondered at its provenance. I looked at it silently. The image shows two immensely dignified young men in front of a small frame house in a mountain town. One appears dressed for some sort of court appearance and the other does not.

I am one of them, and I marveled at the years between. Almost 40 of them, which stretched end-to-end is exactly the distance between now and then.

This morning I can be whoever I want to be, within reason, and it is a relief. I saw with surprise that I had a light morning on the schedule and intend to take advantage of it to clear up some backlogged projects and go back up to the lunacy in Oz after the traffic dies down.

The farm is a jumble of disorder, and is emphatically NOT STAGED for sale. Everything, animate or not, has a story if anyone cares to remember.

Not the same back up there in Never-Never Land. Unit 405 is now depersonified, except for the portraits of Sky Girl, who appears to have awakened to the possibility of something wonderful, and the China Girl, who sadly realizes that she is trapped in something that is not.

When I arrived at the farm, I swerved over to check the mail from the driver’s side window of the Panzer.

Something was building a nest and eating the mail when I pulled in to pull out the advertising fliers from the last two weeks. I got out my cane and poked it to ensure that the first thing I felt was not the Clarion-Bugle but the teeth of a voleor chipmunk.

I wheeled into the circular gravel drive and took a quick survey of the property. There was no storm damage that I could ascertain, and opened up the house and set up the computer to get current with the office email.

That was when the picture arrived, and that took me far away. I remember it as though the years had not fled of their own volition.

Scene: an old hard-scrabble mining town in the vastness of the Intermountain West, suddenly overrun by Beach people from California. In the living room of a cheaply-constructed rented condo, a group of young men, some in sweats and some in suits and Stetsons were contemplating dinner. The time is late afternoon and particles of dust dance in the bright thin light:

Muhammed: “Are we down to lard to put on the baked potatoes?”

Bonds: “We are out of potatoes.”

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com