Good times are coming. I read about it this morning. The wonks over at the Bureau of Economic Analysis fixed everything. I will get to that in a minute.

I am packing today, freight elevator reserved for tomorrow. By nightfall on the first I hope to be moved, and the next chapter in this bizarre life can begin to unfold. Me and Private Manning, I guess. He is guilty of just about everything except aiding the enemy, which he did through the release of almost a million classified cables and what not, but the Judge decided he didn’t.

It fits with what we have seen issue forth as justice in these later days of the Republic. If he gets life in the stockade at Leavenworth, I am OK with it.

I hope you are, too. I wonder if they have banned smoking in the prison? It is something to consider these days.

But that is about as much time as I want to give to the PFC who so badly betrayed the trust of the Government. The Government is working hard to betray our trust in it, too. Not that I wasn’t suspicious all along, but if you needed confirmation, it appeared in the pages of the Wall Streeet Journal.

You can call it a right-wing sheet, but at least it is a thoughtful counterpoint to the blather on the rest of what passes for journalism, a sad decline that seems to be along for the ride on the judicial system.

A pal sent me the great news about the economy. Things have been just stumbling along, the slowest recovery since FDR started messing around with the markets. Clearly, something radical needed to be done to go along with the big new “pivot to the economy” that we do when there is something Washington doesn’t want us to think about very hard. The WSJ noted it this way:

“US economic history will be rewritten this week, as the most far-reaching methodological changes in years will add the equivalent of a country the size of Belgium to output in the world’s largest economy. The… change by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, to be announced on Wednesday, will be to start counting spending on research, development and copyrights as investment, and reflect pension deficits for the first time.
Combined they are expected to add 3% to GDP…”

GDP calculations are already distorted by understating inflation. You know that from any trip to the gas station or the supermarket. But apparently that’s not enough. Now Bureau will overstate economic activity. Happy GDP headlines could commence as soon as Friday, ignoring the fact that the books have been freshly cooked, and nothing will really relate to the past the way it did.

I have already accepted that everything that is reported these days is some sort of falsehood or misrepresentation. It makes listening to the news quite entertaining as we try to figure out what exactly is really going on.

I heard Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, who is responsible for the new accounting procedures tell us there was “No evidence of wrongdoing at IRS….”

Press Spokesman Jay Carney: “Benghazi was a long time ago…”

And my favorite is, of course, Attorney General Holder. He has been tasked with investigating Attorney General Holder to see if he did anything wrong, with a report due to himself sometime soon. Care to guess what the results might be?

I am expecting him to conclude that he did nothing wrong in all of that mess with guns, and journalists and wiretaps. Gives one faith in the soundness of our system of justice, you know?

I am way beyond expecting the straight story on anything. But there are some things that make an old budget weenie positively blanche. Anyone with a brain in the business insists on constant-dollars as a measuring stick for how the program performs. In constant dollars, adjusted for inflation, you can compare apples to apples across the years. Without that calculation, all comparisons and metrics are useless.

Yet we are permitting our masters to get away with this crap. They do not even pretend that these are more accurate or more insightful numbers. They even boast that they are “rewriting history” in order to “fix” the present.

Sort of like that idiot Dr. Hansen over NASA tinkering with the Dust Bowl temperatures post facto to influence today’s climate policy decisions by making the hottest decade in American recorded history cooler. From here, of all things.

Christ, what is wrong with us? Do we really have to drive over the cliff and into complete melt-down?

I guess we do. A pal summed it up pretty well, since I was casting about, trying to figure out when it went wrong, when the truth died. I would argue it was some time in the Clinton Administration, and the punctuation point between past and present being the bi-partisan repeal of the Glass-Steagell Act.

You remember that, right? That was the legislation more properly termed The Banking Act of 1933, but really meaning the four provisions of the Act that limited commercial bank securities activities and affiliations between commercial banks and securities firms. That firewall was breached, and the pigs went to the troughs. To my knowledge, no one has paid for the financial crimes that almost melted down the economy.

A pal summed it up this way, and I am inclined to agree with him:

“…this is real “Alice Through the Looking Glass” stuff: the Secretary of Treasury doesn’t even blink about ignoring the law (the debt ceiling), he just informs Congress that he is enacting ‘routine extraordinary measures’ (I feel like I should listen to George Carlin’s skit on language: ‘Jumbo Shrimp’) – and then Congress doesn’t even blink. The Director of National Intelligence sits in front of Congress and lies, and then a day or two later publicly admits he lied, and Congress doesn’t even blink; the President is well on his way to making the entire nation a nation of part-time workers and there is hardly a blip; we have an agency in DHS (TSA) which claims the authority to not only frisk you before you get on an airplane, but also before you get on a train AND asserts the authority to conduct searches on road, as in set up roadblocks and search people and cars – and no one blinks; we (and tens of thousands of our compadres) read (and read and read…) something called Executive Order 12333, seemingly once a week for three decades and now we have the intel community regularly using satellite imagery of the US, collecting virtually everything electronic that they can on US citizens, and even conspiring with the Brits to read content – all without any warrants – and it hardly gets a stir (at least compared to what I suppose we would have thought 15 years ago); the unemployment numbers are clearly falsified, inflation numbers are falsified, GDP numbers are clearly falsified, I have to assume now that virtually everything I hear or read out of Washington isn’t simply wrong, it’s been at a bare minimum gun-decked. And there is simply no sense of outrage. We have a few people in the media and a few folks in the government who have expressed concern. But that’s it. Just the simple fact that someone engaged in a bold-faced lie to Congress (Clapper) or publicly ignored (read ‘broke’) the law and felt no angst about it beyond simply telling Congress that they are using ‘extraordinary procedures’ (change the accounting rules for a few months, who gives a shit?) and Congress didn’t see it as a challenge to their authorities?

There should have been 535 members of Congress demanding Clapper’s head AND an explanation from the White House AND an apology simply because he thumbed their noses. There was nothing. The Ways and Means committee should have shut down the IC until such was forthcoming – nothing. There should have been a similar hue and cry from the press – nothing.

And it isn’t simply that there is so little response, it is that what you do see, in both the executive branch and the legislative (and for that matter the judiciary (hell, throw in the the 4th branch – the fed)) is apathy. People lied? So what, I need more coffee. Someone is changing the numbers? So what?

We care more about the numbers surrounding Armstrong’s blood-doping or A-Rod’s use of steroids and HGH then we do about virtually anything having to do with our economy.”

I shook my head. Something ought to be done, you know? I wonder exactly what. Sorry, I am distracted. I need to get back to packing.

It may very well be near time to get out of town. This stuff could be contagious.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter at: @jayare303

(Dining table, with magazines, airplanes spare books, backpack and a Cartier bag filled with clip-on bow ties. Photo Socotra).

It is beautiful weather, though I am off to a slow start this morning. I was up at two, the list of things that need to be done in the next three or four days- is daunting.

I got depressed when I was padding out to the pool deck to try to continue the swim therapy on the leg and saw the Vietnamese man who is currently in the poolside unit I have rented, pending the sale of Tunnel Eight, horsing a large leather recliner out of the unit.

There appeared to be a significant amount of furniture still in the place, and he stopped in his- soon to be my- doorway, and explained that he had been in an automotive accident that morning, and was slipping behind since he did not have his car. My heart sank.

I was hoping to get a jump on things tomorrow and move some of the fragile crap and books down there before the moving crew arrives to pack me up and slide me down to the first floor.

It looks like another trip to the brink, and maybe beyond. Deep cleansing breaths, I told myself. OOOMMMMMM.

Looking around at the unit, I get more depressed than I do with the visit of Madam Clinton to the Obama White House. Even though things have been thinned out considerably since the decision was made to make the old place ready for sale. There are ominous stacks of books leaking knowledge out onto the floor. Pots and pans lurking in drawers, unseen for years, and piles of magazines and paper notifications of the old life that is slipping away, or better said, cast out over the balcony.

I am stuck at the moment, though I suppose there are things I could be doing in preparation. Which is why I was lying in the bed looking up into the darkness, wide-awake, then drifting off again until past the alarm.

Speaking of alarms, don’t be surprised if I am hauling crap and miss a day or two as we get to the coming weekend. I am fine. Just approaching the eve of the storm. Should be clear sailing on the other side, right?

Get me through the next week, Lord, and I promise I will never attempt to make my life make sense again.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com <http://www.vicsocotra.com>
Twitter: @jayare303

Hell, I don’t know if it is half of us that has to do what I did this morning. If it was, the drive would not have been nearly so smooth. I joined an elite this morning, and feel astonishingly liberated.

Wait, I am (as usual) getting ahead of myself. I had labored mightily down at the farm- well, in a desultory fashion- on a look at the moral values of the Ancients. I thought the topic was fascinating, given the astonishing change in civic morality here in these United States, and the and the collision between the values of what the great ones left, and what the excavators thought about some of the salacious relics.

As I typed in the Great Room of the farm (all things being relative, it is a small room) I recalled walking the streets of Herculaneum in the light rain, realizing that the exposure to the elements was destroying the ruins, and that they had only been pristine for that moment when they were unsealed.

(The modern city of Ercolano towers above the classical ruins of Herculaneum. Nearly three-quarters of the ancient buried city remains sealed in the hardened mud-flow from Vesuvius in 79 AD.)

I looked at the modern city of Ercolano that towers above on the mound of pumice, and how much is still to be discovered; nearly 75% of the ancient city is still entombed.That would be a great follow-on job: erotic art commissioner for the Museo Nazionale.

The Suburban Baths that were uncovered at Pompeii in 1982 featured the graphically naughty illustrations over the containers for clothing in the locker room. It presumably was a co-ed facility, with the contention offered that the sexes bathed at different times rather than together in a common facility.

I don’t know about that. You can make up anything you want about the past, just as we kid ourselves about the future.

It was getting on toward noon, slow for a story morning, and then there was nothing for it but to start the Great Unloading of books. I was out of boxes up in Arlington, so the stacks of assorted volumes were piled throughout the rear three-quarters of the Panzer.

Family binders my Mom created went in the house, as did personal papers I do not (yet) want to give to the mice. Sorting and carrying required some minor furniture movement, and filling up the new fixtures that were moved down a week ago- and the piles to the garage- made me feel suffused with a sense of accomplishment.

It was four in the afternoon and my legs ached with the effort. I thought I could make it back up north before the pool closed, and began to steel myself for the drive in Sunday traffic when I heard thunder to the southwest, and the flash of lighting before the rain came down in sheets.

Screw it, I thought. The only reason to go back was to swim, and if lightning risk closed the pool, the aggravation of the drive would be for naught. I poured a drink and went over to the Russians to shoot the shit when the rain quit, and played with Biscuit the Wonder Spaniel.

Back home, I threw some stuff together for a light Croftburn Farms meal, and was more exhausted than I thought. I was in bed before 2100 attempting to read Secret Sentinel, a purported history of NSA and unconscious shortly thereafter.

And up, predictably early. I made coffee and was sitting down at the computer just after four, thinking about how far away dawn was, and considering what I had to get done back up north. I could wait until after the traffic died down and start out at nine or ten, but that would basically shoot the day.

I poured the coffee in a travel mug, grabbed a flashlight and the empty boxes and bags from the crap I had brought down, buttoned up the place and roared out of the driveway. This would be a new experience- I had not tried the drive at this hour before.

There was no one on the farm lane going out to the Zachery Taylor Highway, no one on Rt 3 on the brief jog to get on Rt 29, but brisk traffic going north. My heart sunk as I sipped the still piping hot coffee, looking out at the limits of my headlights. This was liable to be a mistake, I thought, and the famous Traffic Nightmare at Manassas would leave me a quivering mess by the time I got back to town.

As it turned out, there is an entirely different class of motorists on the roads before five AM. I remember how it was when I lived in Fairfax: to get a decent parking spot at the Pentagon’s North Lot, I had to be out the door at this hour. The people on the road then had the discipline to get up early, be showered and shaved (or made up) and be ready for action.

I won’t go so far as to identify a political orientation to that sort of behavior, but I was flowing north at speed with people who had made a conscious decision to live away from the urban sprawl, and were prepared to make sacrifices for the privilege of doing so.

OK, OK, it is late July, everyone is on vacation, Congress is in recess, but despite a fairly heavy volume of traffic, I was on the brakes only once in in 70-odd miles. I looked at the miles per gallon on the instrument panel- a record-setting 26.1, and I was unpacked and sitting at the other computer before seven.

Damn. This is a whole new way to approach the Farm Experience. If this is how the other half lives, it is not bad. Of course, that works only if Washington would just stay on vacation…

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

(Barrister Jerry anticipates dining on his beef-on-weck as Tex the bartender looks on. The sandwich is served with condiments of Duke’s mayonnaise, sautéed onions, grated horseradish and topped by three deep-fried olives. You can do all sorts of mischief with a deep fryer. Photo Socotra).

The anticipation had been building all week. People were coming to town from all the points of compass: across the street, down the block and Vancouver, British Columbia in the case of Jon-without-an-H.

The occasion was beef-on-weck night at Willow, the last Friday of the month. Last Friday for a lot of things, I thought. The old office is going to shut down, and relocate to the Headquarters up Glebe Road, not that it means much to me personally any more.

In a week, I will be out of Tunnel 8 and into a new unit. There is a lot still to be done, and a lot of crap to be hauled to somewhere else. I am in denial, and I do not mean that river in Egypt. It is all going to happen, ready or not.

I do not feel ready- sort of like the President’s pivot toward the economy this summer. He was in Illinois someplace talking about investing in a bunch of stuff, the way I heard it. No specifics that I was aware of, but I know he is eager to change the tone of the conversation as Fall begins to loom beyond the horizon of summer.

It was a Friday in the flower of Arlington’s high summer, with a break in the humid heat and most folks with any sense are out of town. That is why Tracey O’Grady feels the need to drum up some business, and thus has commissioned the Charbroil Grill to be established on the patio each Friday. Coming in conjunction with the Last Friday, it was a festival of foods at Willow.

The beef on weck- locally raised, hormone-free, humanely slaughtered, slow-cooked steamer round thinly sliced and piled high on one of Kate Jansen’s Kemmelweck rolls topped with sea-salt and fennel- looked unreal. On the patio, the Buffalo, NY, theme continued with Sahlen’s natural casing hot dogs being grilled up at a steep discount.

They have been making those sausages up on the shores of Lake Erie since 1869, and Tracy endorses them as “most authentic.”

So, anticipation mingled with dread was about the way the day was shaping up. The ache from even the low-impact workout in the pool stayed with me as I navigated the Panzer over to Willow.

There is a brief window of street parking remaining. I got one of the metered spots in front of Tex’s black SUV and dropped some of Mom’s magic bag of quarters into the slot.

Then I limped across the street toward Willow. The aches and pains wear off a bit with forward motion, reminding me that me choices come back to haunt us, don’t they? Perhaps those years of contact sports and high-impact distance running were not the smartest ways to pass the time?

Oh well- the aches and pains today were well worth the feeling of being bulletproof then. I think.

I strolled into the bar to see Old Jim at his customary place at the apex of the Amen Corner. Heather one was behind the bar, clad in black, and showing some cleavage. The place was starting to fill up- the owners of Liberty Tavern in Clarendon were down the bar, taking a busman’s holiday for a drink outside the pandemonium of the 20-something crowd that takes over their place on a Friday afternoon.

The regulars filled up the corner- the Lovely Bea was there on the other side of Jim, no placid graceful Jamie, who is off on assignment for the Accounting Firm. Barrister Jerry rolled in, all dark-suited legal efficiency, and the rest of the usual suspects turned out, including a surprise appearance of The Other Russian.

TOR is just back from a trip to the homeland. “He is not there,” he said, in his accented English.

“Who isn’t there? Putin?”

He scowled and then smiled. “No, your Snowden traitor.”

“What do you mean,” I asked. “Everyone says he is in the transit lounge at Sheremetyevo International.”

“Was just there. Is too small for concealment. He is someplace else with a better shower.”

“Well I’ll be damned. News that isn’t true? That is a first.”

TOR shrugged. “Putin doesn’t want him, either, but our Administration does not want him back before the next election.”

“He is a jerk,” I said. “Nobel cause syndrome run amok.”

“Mr. Holder says we will not kill or torture him if he is repatriated.”

“Pity,” I said.

Tracy O’Grady herself came out to chat as the steamer round was resting after an afternoon in the oven. “I just watched Anthony Bourdain,” she said. “I was interested because we are doing the grill on Fridays, and he is doing hot dogs on his Travel Channel Show “Layover.””

“I like him. He is irreverent, and what a gig he has.”

Tracy looked dubious. “the segment I watched was from Crif Dogs on the lower east side in New York. He was describing deep-fried dogs a deep fried dog with a Wd 50 hot dog bun, battered deep fried mayo, tomato molasses, shredded lettuce and dried onions- but in reality it turned out to be kind of bland. Too much bun and lettuce, it looked like.”

“Wait, deep friend mayonnaise? How do you do that?”

Tracy turned professional. “It is that molecular gastronomy thing. I would think you could chill the mayo until it is malleable, coat it in batter and deep-fry it.”

“That sounds appalling,” growled Jim. “No wonder Americans are fat.”

“What would you top it with?” I wondered. “Mayo? Do you make your own mayonnaise here?”

Tracy stayed serious. “For some applications, yes. But for ordinary purposes, we use Duke’s Mayo. It is quite good.”

“Is the beef done resting?” asked Barrister Jerry. “I am ready to be wecked.”

Tracy allowed as how she would check and see if the sandwiches were ready to come out, and disappeared into the back of the house. We talked about British Columbia and were starting to sing along with the sixties music that Tex was pumping out on Pandora.

Thankfully, Jerry’s sandwich came out and decorum was restored as we marveled at what a lawyer can to do red meat.

“Goes with the trade, I think,” I observed to Jim.

“I am going to stick with the halibut slider,” he said, and asked Tex for one of those, hold the mayo, hot sauce on the side, and another Bud.

“You going to get Wecked?” asked Jon-without.

I pondered Jerry demolishing his sandwich, feeling vaguely queasy. “I think I really ought to have the salad,” I said. “But maybe deep-fried mayo on the side.”

If you are that nuts, here is the recipe:

Deep Fried Mayonnaise (Feeds 2).
Batch of 4, 2 each.
· 1/2 qt. Duke’s Mayonnaise
· 2 x Egg-Whites
· 1 x Slice of Sourdough Bread
· 2 tsp. Corn Starch
· 2 tsp. White Unbleached Flour
· 1/2 qt. Canola Oil
Place Mayonnaise in freezer, wait two hours. Start with a glass of Happy Hour White. De-crust bread while you are still competent to operate a sharp knife. Remove crust from dried/toasted slice of sourdough bread. Blend in food processor on HIGH for ten seconds.

Heat Bertolli’s extra virgin olive oil on stove. In small bowl combine egg-whites, flour, corn starch, mix lightly, then fold in breadcrumbs. Remove Duke’s Mayonnaise from freezer. Scoop a sphere of Mayonnaise 1″ in diameter. Roll sphere in batter. Drop sphere in oil. Remove when golden-brown. Repeat. Serve hot with Secret Sauce.
Secret Sauce: I told you. What is better to top fried mayonnaise than….
· 2 tbsp. Mayonnaise
· 2 tsp. ketchup
Mix well, until monochrome, either you or them.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

(Presidential Press Spokesman Jay Carney, who apparently has no problems sleeping. It is part of his six-step program. Photo AP)

Most of my pals have stopped making jokes about the NSA Internet surveillance program, even as Congress got around to narrowly permitting it to continue yesterday. For a while we were including a wave to the analysts at Fort Meade whenever we tweaked the government. Not so much anymore.

A couple minutes after the news came that the Congress would not stop the program- by only 15 votes in the House, the latest story broke that the Feds are not only collecting it all, but demanding passwords, too.

I am torn. I like the fact that the capability to capture just about everything that happens in cyberspace can yield tremendous advantages in nailing bad guys. I am confident that almost everyone in the system is pretty much like the people with whom I served: honorable, scrupulous in application of law and privacy, and circumspect about what they know.

I guess I am saying that you can trust people like me. General Jim Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, was clearly uncomfortable with his testimony to Congress, in which he told- well, what was it he told?

The least untruthful denial about the program he could manage?

That is faint praise. They used to call statements like that lies. But I have to give the General the benefit of the doubt. The program was authorized and approved, and the question was asked in open hearing, not in the secure spaces where actual questions about classified information can asked without security concerns.

I have worked for Jim Clapper and I respect the man enormously. He is just in a bad position, working for the people from Chicago. Which brings me around from the hard line position that Bradley Manning and Ed Snowden are traitors and need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, to the position that the people in charge cannot be trusted to do the right thing.

North of Jim Clapper things are very much Chicago politics: high elbows and corruption and venom against those who cross those in power.

I give you Jay Carney, the prevaricator-in-chief and mouthpiece for the Administration. He has invented a new six-step program for addressing the truth that seems to be pretty effective, at least if you have a press corps that kisses your ass. I have to give him his due- he seems to have sidestepped some damaging information that would have derailed a Republican Administration.

The current line is that the problems the Administration brought into the summer are “phony crises,” cooked up for base political purposes by the evil Tea Party House of Representatives.

Scuze me, Mr. Carney? The murder of a US Ambassador is a phony issue? The issuing of gag orders to the survivors of the terror attack- on the freaking anniversary of 9/11- is not a cover up?

That the Infernal Revenue Service was not actively targeting political groups to suppress their first amendment rights and influence elections? Remember what they did to Tricky Dick Nixon about that? Jeeze Louise.

I forget what the other one was. Was it targeting journalists with criminal prosecution? Tagging the Associated Press for surveillance? The discriminatory policy of the EPA and HHS that permitted free release of information to groups that support the Administration and denying or charging significant sums for public data to those that do not?

Or was it the whole NSA thing we are arguing about now?

I would ask Jay Carney, but he is incapable of telling the truth. It is getting positively tiresome. The first comment in the White House Press Room- like Benghazi or the IRS- is always some wild denial and deflection. You know, it was an anti-Muslim video, not radical Islamists, who did it. Or it was just rogue agents in Cincinnati that got an improper idea and had some unsupervised fun with it.

Then there are six or seven versions and variations on a theme, until we discover that it actually was a well-planned and heavily-armed attack timed for a specific day, done by people allied with the government of Egypt to whom we give billions in aid, and which government was installed with our tacit approval. Or, that the actual decision to use the IRS as an electoral weapon actually sort of wound up in the office of the Chief Counsel in Washington, one of only two political appointees in the entire Service?

When it is finally all out there, dragged out inch by painful inch, we get the ultimate statement from the podium: “That was all a long time ago,” like murder has a statute of limitations measured in news cycles.

Or Hillary wearing those wild glasses, sternly hectoring the Senate with that faux outrage: “What does it matter?”

Anyway, we all get tired of this nonsense and just want people to act like responsible grown ups. Unfortunately, these are the people who are in charge of all that data collected by the NSA and the Postal Service and God knows who else.

They even are going to pull together all the tax AND health records into a really cool new database that will know everything about everybody.

I trust the Spooks- or at least I did. But I certainly do not trust what the United States Government has become. I wonder why CNN doesn’t cover that?

I guess Anthony Wiener is more entertaining, and this is only third second chance he is asking for. I heard about the potential dream ticket for the 2016 election, though. It looks like a sure-fire winner, and there is nothing wrong with it whatsoever.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

(This Thanksgiving’s dinner walking by Natasha’s kitchen window. Photo Natasha).

“I am the first one to admit I am no farmer,” I said, taking a sip of happy Hour White. “I don’t even have a tractor.”

Boats looked pensive. “You have not even defined your requirements,” he said. “Do you really need a tractor? What about a commercial riding mower with non-mowing attachments?”

“That is what Frank the lawn guy uses. I was thinking I needed a front end loader and a scraper to keep the gravel on the driveway and the work area around the barn. The rain we had this spring caused gullies to open up and I have to talk to Don-the-Builder about remediation.”

“Well, your choice of motorized vehicles is a key first item, but you can’t go into it thinking that you buy the equipment first. There are other models you have to consider. You have a small place, right?”

My back stiffened. That question was reasonable enough but you never ask a man how much acreage he has, or how many horses or cattle. “It is a gentleman’s farm,” I said. “But not a hobby. Well, make that it could be more than a hobby. I am not doing that at the moment but I have hope.”

“You talk about the Russians next door. How much land do they have?”

I furrowed my forehead, thinking. “The total property would run over 30 acres. Not that much, but they have plenty of room to spread out. I don’t know what the original total acres were. I think my place was part of that spread when it was a working farm.”

“Well,” he said, firmly. “For more than ten acres a real farm tractor might be the ticket. Less than that, it might be over kill and too big to get you into some spaces. Suppose you decide to plant a small orchard on an acre or two. You’ll need something to mow in and around the orchard. Of course you don’t have to grow grass under the shade of an orchard, it can be a good place for a nursery cash crop of shade-tolerant flowers. Impatiens maybe- they make an excellent houseplant or summer bedding plant.”

“It is also known as “Busy Lizzie, right? I never trusted a plant that was short on patiens or busy. Stuff grows fast enough down there.”

“I am used to the Cajun growing season, but I take your point.”

“I think I will concentrate on the large animal end of things- that is what my property is optimized for. Ponies and equestrian stuff.”

“So I ought to be talking to the Russians?”

“Da,” I said, signaling Tex the Bartender for reinforcements to the tulip glass in front of me.

“Small scale agriculture and decorative plant operations in raised beds and green houses usually generate some mowing chores that don’t lend them selves to full scale farm tractors, but can be handled by riding mowers. Then of course a few sheep would pretty well keep the grass all over the place in check but it would certainly not have the mowed, manicured look of the mechanical mower.”

“that sounds green and sustainable,” I said carefully, “but I don’t want to be considered a sod-buster and have the local ranchers try to run me off the land.”

Boats smiled. “Right on. You might also find the sheep to be more maintenance than the mower. It would be hard to sell the small amount of wool that even thirty acres would support, and the shearing would be a pain in the butt.”

“I saw some of that in Australia, and the round-up and shearing are pretty much beyond me now.”

“I understand, you old fart. But don’t forget about leased turn key agricultural and nursery operations. Everything from catfish farming to orchid raising offers opportunities to people with some acreage to lease out to skilled producers who can use your pond, green house or bed space.”

“Well, we don’t have a pond, though there is a 40-acre parcel up the road that does and it is for sale.”

“Now you are talking. Some of these arrangements are share-cropping arrangements with the land owner and producer sharing the risks of production.”

“From each according to his means and to each according to their needs?”

Boats gave me an enigmatic smile. “It depends on how you approach collectivism. That is what a Co-op does and there are no Commies in the equation. It is about free citizens banding together to share fiscally intensive capital equipment that they individually could not afford.”

(This is the team from the Rustico Restaurant. I saw somethings that would have got my vote immediately. I was in Hoosierland for the BRGR Battle Cook-off in Ballston. Photo Willow.)

It is summertime, and the living is easy. Well, sort of.

I received a pair of troubling notes yesterday. The first was the announcement from my college roommate that his dad, a WWII gunner’s mate in the navy, had passed from this earth at 0530 that morning.

I liked his Dad a lot. He was loyal to his wife, and kids, to Temple University, and to his nation. He voted with his feet to join the Navy and serve on the frosty Murmansk Run, where a plunge in the water was immediate death. He was one of the Good Guys that saved us from Hitler and Tojo, and delivered us into the world that we were able to completely screw up on our own.

Bill passed before the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, and that was the subject of the other troubling note. I sighed, and gave a thought of thanks for a life well-lived, and turned my thoughts to the affairs of the living.

This one was from a pal who follows the health care train-wreck in more detail than I do.

If you are like me, you heard that parts of the massive new law are un-executable, at least in the near term, and that other parts are going to drop on us in October. Like a lot of folks with an inadequate but acceptable insurance, I have not paid a lot of attention to the implementation phase of this, since it didn’t affect me.

My pal begged to differ. He was dismissive of the efforts of the Hollywood celebrities (who would no more have coverage under this thing than travel to Mars) to flack the bill. Obviously, the stars are useful for engaging the healthy young citizens, without whom the old and sick will pay a sky-high premium starting in October.

I was ready to get some popcorn and watch the show when it happens in October, but he pointed out that the real deal was January, when government subsidies start to flow. It is pretty lavish- a family making $88 grand a year will qualify for benefits. My pal’s contention is that none of this showboating at the moment matters. Once people get used to free money, it is going to be impossible to get the genie back in the bottle.

He claims that the passage in 1948 of the National Health Service in the UK did more to finish off the Empire than Hitler. There have been plenty of Conservative governments in the years since the NHS was established, and none of them had to guts- or the popular vote- to try to reign in the health system. It grew, predictably, like Topsy.

Free stuff is popular. But periodically you run out of other people’s money and have to vote yourself some more of it.

Here, my pal thinks that when the Affordable health Care Act proves to be just the opposite of its name, we are going to have to fix it by doubling down on something that simply cannot work, based on demographics. Like Japan, there will be fewer and fewer young people propping up a tyranny of the old. We will have to increase the burden on the young as it grows, swelling inexorably, just like Social Security and Medicare.

They are too popular to kill.

I mean, with those shining examples of government efficiency, why would we expect anything else? I figure I am dead around 2036, based on family genetics, so I guess I might even get to meet one of the Resource Allocation Panels that will deny me care, based on my age.

Just like the National Health Service does today in Great Britain.

Anyway, I strolled into Willow with the determination to get myself out of travel mode and back into the summer spirit. I had missed a lot over the course of the last week. Robert the Sous Chef raises Pit Bulls on the side, magnificent dogs (if not trained to be pycho killers) and can you tell which one is which?

(Jim and Friend, courtesy Robert.)

I have been thinking about getting a dog- Old Jim looked at the one in his arms after his bride Chanteuse Mary announced that she was falling in love. Jim growled “Our current dog will eat him,” to close off that line of inquiry.

I was thoughtful. Maybe a pack of pit bulls on Refuge Farm would be the perfect addition? It would certainly cause other people to think of their medical coverage.

Then, owner and executive chief Tracy O’Grady walked out into the bar area with something that looked like a bowling trophy. It was taller than she was, and the top featured a jaunty little circle with the words: BRGR Battle inscribed within.

“And the winner of the 2013 Ballston BRGR Battle is….Willow Restaurant!!! “ she announced proudly.

“Man, you are on a roll. You just won the Best In Show in the Taste of Arlington restaurant competition. What was this one?”

She smiled. “Four local restaurants and some guys from Georgetown University were invited to a cook off to see who was best. We did slides made of smoked local beef, duck confit butter, smoked cheddar cheese, local heirloom tomatoes, pickled red onions and dijonnaise on one of Kate’s house-made rolls.”

“They looked good,” growled Jim. “It was sort of fun. They had live music and lawn games and Belgian beer. I prefer Budweiser,” he said, taking a long swig while the ferocious puppy dozed in the crook of his left arm.

“Duh. Are they even on the menu?” I asked. “Isn’t the infamous Willow Burger the only thing like that you serve?”

“It is coming to our menu soon,” said Tracy, carefully placing the enormous trophy on the counter behind the bar.

(Team Big Buns)

“I would have thought the guys from Best Buns would have had a lock on things, or the guys from Rustico. How did they pick the winner?”

“Ticket holders got to savor a slider from each burger joint, and we got to sling in there with the best of them. We were voted the best.”

“The popular vote is always right,” I said, taking a long sip of the crisp Happy Hour White. “I mean, what could go wrong with that?”

(Tracy and Trophy)

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

(Noel Coward, urbane composer of the classic “Just One of Those Things.”)

“There are influential people out there who would like you to believe that Detroit’s demise is fundamentally a tale of fiscal irresponsibility and/or greedy public employees. It isn’t. For the most part, it’s just one of those things that happens now and then in an ever-changing economy.”

– Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman, writing of Detroit in the New York Times

I almost burst into song when I read the conclusion to Paul Krugman’s latest column in the New York Times. Well, not so much. It is too personal.

I made it back safely from Indiana yesterday in a drive with only one brief stop for fuel. I can’t write another piece about how awful traffic is around here. It started 68 miles out from the city, still coming down the big hill that marks the beginning of the Pennsylvania highlands.

Or rather, the end of them on this trip. Traffic came to a halt completely miles before the I-270 junction. The sprawl caused by the boom in Big Government here has completely outstripped the infrastructure to support it.

I have seen it North and South (the I-95 corridor), and to the West (I-66). The bulwark of the District, guarded by its moat (the Potomac) makes it impenetrable from there. Local activists stopped the cross-city throughways years ago, and what is left is nightmarish on the exits out to Maryland.

This is insane. I was lucky not to wreck the car- and yet the 500 miles before the last bit were effortless.

America- what a country. I made the mistake of reading the comments to Prof. Krugman’s analysis of the Detroit debacle. There were literally hundreds of them. It stopped me short, though it should not have. I know that Times readers are overwhelmingly Blue, and the lamestream media is an adjunct of the progressive movement.

But as a native-born Detroiter, former resident and frequent visitor in the long decades of its decline from greatness, I read Mr. Krugman’s words with astonishment.

I gaped in astonishment. One of those things? Noel Coward, yes. Economics, no.

You can argue that the demise of Detroit is combination of a whole bunch of things. The failure of the courts to order cross-district bussing in the schools, investing the suburbs in the city. The lack of revenue-sharing between the suburbs and the city. A commuter tax, though that would simply have prolonged and fueled the corruption. But there is a chicken-and-egg thing here, as well.

The last time there was not a Democratic mayor and city council in the Motor City was 1962, when Louis Miriani finished his term in office. Before you accuse me of blaming the Dems exclusively for what happened, I would remind you that Louie was busted for Federal Tax evasion after he was out of the Manoogian Mansion.

He was deposed by the charismatic Democrat Jerry Cavanaugh, supported by a wave of African American voters who were fed up with years of institutional oppression, poor housing and general discriminatory practices. Jerry was ambitious and moved on.

He was followed by Roman Gribbs, a Democrat and the last white mayor of the city, who declined to stand for re-election in 1974.

That set up former Top Cop John Nichols in a race against activist Coleman Young. Nichols was most famous for his STRESS unit, which conducted sting and other operations against a largely black population. “Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets” was the acronym. Brings back a lot of memories, not many of them good.

(Mayor for Life Coleman Young, in 1974).

I left the city not long after Mr. Young’s election, and the next twenty years of the Mayor’s rule marked the decline of the city into a desolate kelptocracy. So I do not agree with Mr. Krugman.

Nelson Mandela, had he been available, might have been able to save the city by uniting its people. Mr .Young was many things, but he was no Mandela. His policies confirmed the belief of half the city that it was insane to stay, and consequently, only those who could not leave remained.

Blame the unions? Nah, that is happening everywhere. Those chickens are coming home to roost in most of the cities of America. Blame the mayor and the council? Sure. They are responsible for the disaster.

But the voters are responsible, too. They voted the crooks in, and kept them there. But should our fellow citizens pay the whole burden for the corruption? Should we who escaped?

I can’t quite bring myself to agree with Mr. Krugman. Detroit is not one of those things.

It is the synthesis of everything.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

(The Side Table at the AMO banquet last night. My Hoosier pals the Fougerousse’s are left, with Mayor Norm and the Harrington’s to his right.)

I woke in Indiana this morning, and there are several hundred miles between me and the Big Pink pool, so perforce, I will be brief before I commence to flogging the Panzer across the concrete-covered dark rich soil of the Hoosier State and Ohio and eventually deal with the mountains of the Keystone State and the long slide down into the capital.

Consequently, I can only note in passing how nice the people of this nation are. The real people. Not the ones on the radio. They believe in things passionately, they have great skills and compassion and a gentle kindness that one does not see in the Nation’s Capital, where True Belief , or feigning the same, is the admission cost to the mechanism of governance.

Not so out here. I was seated at the side table under the big screen next to the Mayor of Auburn, IN.

We shot the shit for quite a while. This was something quite unusual: a politician who is not only likable but you can trust. Mayor Norm Yoder has lived in Auburn most of his life. He graduated from Auburn High School and from Purdue University’s Engineering School with honors. He and his wife Peg have owned and operated several businesses, including Yoder & Yoder concrete and Joshua’s Restaurant over on Grandstaff Drive.
He started out with his brother, pouring slab for houses and worked his way up in scale and complexity, doing site prep all over Indiana, Ohio and Michigan. Realizing that concrete is a young man’s game, he quit that business when he was 50, and concentrated on the City Council, and moved up to run for mayor when it looked like the city needed energy in a chief executive.

I told him how much I enjoyed his town, and he seemed genuinely pleased to hear it. “I will recommend a trip to Auburn to any of my pals who like cars,” I said. “Or nice people and nice little towns.”

Norm actually beamed.

The big ballroom where the AMO- the American Motors Owners- banquet was held was once the showcase of the headquarters of the Cord and Auburn motor-car companies. They sold high-end luxury cars all over the world to the rich and famous. The designs are still fresh and world class, art deco moving on wheels.

When the company went bust after the war, the city could have given up, like other car towns did all over the motor belt of northern Indiana, Ohio and southern Michigan. Norm told me he traveled all over the region with his concrete business, and he could always tell when a town had given up by the way the downtown was treated. Cord shuttered the doors, but the town hitched up its britches and moved on.

I do not have to tell you that the downtown is pristine, and the former Headquarters of the elegant car company has been saved and preserved as a museum and conference center. It is, by the way, magnificent in detail, just like the cars that were built here.

Norm did his presentation and then I did mine, and then the post-banquet activity moved on to the staggering number of categories for awards- there were, after all, nearly three hundred classic cars to be honored. Most of them were after my Dad’s time, but they were built in the heart of the decade when I began to drive, and when the muscle car was king of Detroit- though of course, these classics were built in a little Wisconsin town called Kenosha.

The whole thing was pretty amazing. I wandered through the halls filled with the most elegant autos ever made, and eventually wound up back at the Holiday Inn Express.

I was standing out front when a jet-black ’70 AMX two-seater rumbled up past the entrance: blub blub blub went the 401 engine, throbbing with power. The driver was an old guy- probably my age, I thought, who grew up on high octane. He handled the Hurst shifter with the aplomb of decades of experience. He disappeared into the night.

What a trip. What nice people. Car people.

Which reminds me, I need to get into mine and get on down the road.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com