Into the Clag

“Clag” is what we used to call it in the squadron, and it is waiting for me,” I told Mac. The Admiral had ventured out to Willow in a holiday mood, and he was merry at the prospect of being safe in the local area with his family as Christmas collapsed on us.

“What does that mean?” he asked, taking a sip of Racer-5 lager beer.

“Low puffy clouds, crappy visibility. I don’t know where and how the term jumped over into the aviation world. It began as a descriptive phrase to describe the exhaust of steam locomotives, so if you saw puffy dark clouds hovering low near the ground, dense and dancing, that is jus what is floating out there on the heights of the Pennsylvania Turnpike,” I was having a minor problem in tilting my head back far enough to get a decent gulp of Happy Hour White. I waved at Liz-with-an-S to get a tumbler for the wine that would enable me to pour it down my gullet with more efficiency. “Not to mention the leaden gray skies of the freaking Ohio Turnpike.”

“The clag could render the way ahead a mystery,” said Mac. “How are you going to know what it looks like in the morning? There is some fierce weather out west.”

“The wonders of technology,” I said. The crowd was thin but enthusiastic. My pal Guy was in from the PacNorthwest, John-with and Jon-without were there, and the Director of a Major Suburban Intelligence Agency breezed through to hook up with her husband for a rare intimate night out together.

“Where is your security detail?” I asked. She laughed.

“I don’t need one, Vic,” she said with a smile. “And besides, times are not looking good for some of the nonsense that came along with the War on Terror. Merry Christmas to you all,” she said with a wave, and I walked her back to the dining room.

When I got back, Mac and I split an order of the Pollyface Farms Deviled eggs, I had another tumbler of wine, and we called it a night. He had a bounce in his step, and he looked great. I told Katya and Liz-S and Tinkerbell that I would miss them on the road, and hoped to be back to get properly mood-adjusted with them before the New Year, ins’hallah.

It was not a good night for sleeping. The ache from my neck woke me a couple times, and I wondered for the first time in my life if the drive was going to be too much.

I got levered out of bed with only modest agony and looked at the road ahead.

It is, I noted, not freezing, which is the only good thing about the weather ahead. I checked the traffic camera at Breezewood, the Village of Motels, and the roads appear wet but passible.

As you probably know, there is a monster storm brewing in New Mexico and Colorado, and my challenge is to make the Michigan line and head north before the blowing snow and gale winds and zero visibility clamp things down but good.

The road is no place to spend the holidays.

Trafficland is an invaluable resource for the harried traveler, and you can click into any VDOT camera hitched to the national network. http://trafficland.com/city/PIT/index.html

It is pretty amazing- if you find a camera that updates with decent frequency (Breezewood updates every two seconds) you can actually observe people in transit, assuming you have their GPS coordinates.

I guess that is a cautionary tale, from a privacy perspective, but it appears that particular train has left the station in a cloud of clag. We may as well get used to the fact that Big Brother has been here for a while. The interesting wrinkle is that it is not just Big Government that can follow us around. It is anyone with a little tech savvy.

Of course, I am looking at this from a snow-and-ice perspective, and so long as I can make decent time and the rubber side stays down and the shiny stays up, I will be content to let the constitutional issues play out on their own. I will be looking at the Trapster app on my smart phone to see if that asshole Ogemaw County Mountie is aggressively patrolling mile marker 210 on I-75 when I get close.

Rain in Toledo, too, but please, Jesus, make it just moist and not slippery.

I need to go collect the rental car, and the interesting times will begin. I slept like hell, and my neck is about immobile. That is actually useful, and will keep me looking ahead.

Straight ahead.

There is a lot of other clag to talk about- the impact of the transition in North Korea- could we see re-unification in our lifetimes? Could peace finally break out?

Could the Republicans extort the XL Pipeline out of the Senate in exchange for an extension of the payroll tax? Crap, I don’t care. I want to know if the basement is flooded in the Little Village by the Bay.

So, stuff neck and all, I am off into the clag. More if I get there in one piece.

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra’
www.vicsocotra.com

19 December 2011

The Dear Leader

“It was extraordinary the degree to which everything ultimately revolved around this one man.”  –     TIMOTHY GARTON ASH 

(A description I read this morning, thinking it was about Kim Chong Il, and then realizing it was about Vaclav Havel, the Czech playwright and former President whose eloquent dissections of Communist rule helped destroy it. Works either way.)

Sorry- I am late this morning. I was ransacking the jewelry box to grab my Geat Leader lapel pin. I was unsuccessful, and I am a little pissed off about the chaos back in the master bedroom. I am going to get organized one of these days.

Just not today.

There are all sorts of things I did come up with, but not the circular pin that our North Korean Worker’s Party Minders presented to us at the airport at Pyongyang when we were getting ready to leave after firming up the Agreed Framework that didn’t prevent the North from getting the bomb and really scary rockets.

It was sort of touching. Bill Richardson’s key staffer Calvin and I had asked if we could go to a store and purchase some of the badges as souvenirs. The Koreans seemed quite appalled by the idea, and we realized that they were something special, and the type of badge, image and shape probably conveyed special information on rank and importance.

We were embarrassed at being the usual Ugly Americans, but we bonded well with the staff assigned to make sure we did all the right things and none of the wrong ones. That would be easy enough to do in The Stepford Country- and we visited all the classic places- the Great Leader’s birth home, the Tower of the Chuche Ideal, the Sports Complex and the highly disciplined dancing kids.

They say there was a short-range rocket firing this morning to go along with the newsreader sobbing in the black clothes of mourning. I have come to accept just about anything out of the DPRK. They are amazingly audacious.

I actually regret that we did not get a chance to meet the Dear Leader on that trip.

Now, I will never get the chance. They say he was quite the card, and a riot to party with. Don’t ever believe people who try to paint the leaders of the Hermit Kingdom as not having a lighter side.

Oh well.

I will have to cut this short and not leave you with any particular insights, except that the brutal regime that imposed starvation on its people actually made Pyongyang a party mecca.

Well, if you know the right people, anyway.

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com <http://www.vicsocotra.com>

Past Performance

“Gotta run down to the farm and feed the mail and check the cat…wait…” I looked at the level of white wine in the glass in front of me. “You know what I mean.”

It was Friday and work was long in the wake. We didn’t know if the government was going to shut down or not, and if I sampled the opinion along the bar, I am not sure I could have dredged up much interest one way or the other.

Old Jim scowled and gave the stink-eye to Mimi, an alleged professional oenologist who was camped out on my usual stool at Willow. Her husband was next to her where John-with-an-H normally held court. He had a placid demeanor and seemed long-suffering or just inured to the whole thing. Apparently they sample the local wine scene in order to help formulate Mimi’s desire to run a wine bar in Shirlington one of these months.

“Probably a lot of ferns,” growled Jim. “Disgusting.”

JoeMaz was a surprise appearance at the bar- he had a conference in one of the anonymous Homeland Security offices in the neighborhood, and figured he might find us at the bar. He downed his lager, saying: “Traffic is down, time for me to head for Maryland.”

“Don’t let them hassle you at the border,” I said. He waved as he hit the door and disappeared into the night.

Jim’s bride Mary smiled and took a sip of champagne. “I am going to sleep until 7:30 tomorrow,” she said. “I love weekends.”

And that is exactly what it was- the Friday reward for slogging through a bushel basket of past-performance citations from my contract to support a bid to gain some Air Force work. I was tired, but felt a little warmth in my midsection generated by the cool crisp wine.

That was in contrast to the martini in front of Mimi. That was apparently what got Old Jim talking to Mimi and her husband. She claimed he was a curmudgeon, which he is, of course, but her needling got him to take his game up a notch to the “truculent” setting.

Jon-no-H came in, looking relaxed, and it was the locals versus the traveling side at the Amen Corner.

We got Mimi hooked up with Kevin, the sommelier, who dragged out three bottles of white that were considerably better than the usual $5-a-glass happy hour- Rosenberg Reserve, or something, but at that point I had at least three glasses in front of me, and I was confident that if I was seeing double, there would have been at least four.

“I have to find out what the hell is up with the water in the house,” I said to Jim. “The Roto-Rooter guy said the water meter was still indicating flow, even though all faucets were secured upstairs.”

“This is at the house in Michigan?” he asked.

“Yeah.” I said with a frown. “An un-programmed trip Up North. No time to get airline tickets, so I decided to drive again. Both ways suck, but driving sucks so long.”

“So the running water meter means there is a leak some place?”

“Yep, just with winter coming on full blast.”

“We are driving to An Arbor on Thursday,” said Jim. “Too bad we won’t cross paths. We always go up there to visit Mary’s sister for Christmas.”

“I am going to be Up North by then. You gotta love the Ohio Turnpike and I-75 this time of year,” I said. Jim’s scowl deepened.

“Family,” he said with grave dignity.

“Yeah,” I sighed. “I am not looking forward to it, based on past performance. I have about had it with flogging my cars over the 800-mile one-way trip. I don’t drive the Mercedes convertible in the winter and the P-71 Crown Vic police interceptor had a $340 hiccup last trip, plus an EVP failure- another $800- when I got back, plus the gas, so the hell with it. If I spend the better part of a grand on a rental car, it all works out the same.”

“That is a thought,” said Jim. “Make it someone else’s problem.”

“Precisely,” I said. “I still have a Fleet discount from the company I worked for before this one. So, I called Hertz and looked over what they have available. The nice thing is “unlimited miles” and I take them at their word. I will pick up a Chevy Traverse AWD cross-over on Tuesday morning at Reagan and flog it Up North.”

“Chevy Traverse?” said Jim. “I have no idea what that is.”

“I didn’t either,” I said. “But it is a crossover with all-wheel drive and this trip I might be needing it.

“I will be interested in hearing about how it does for you.”

“The description said it had cup-holders for twelve in the correct configuration.”

“A dozen cups,” Jim marveled. “That might be the apex of the American auto industry.”

“That is exactly what I thought. It would be the perfect happy hour mobile. I will be spending about thirty hours inside of it, so I may try all of them.”

Mimi was loudly praising the Rosenberg Reserve for its fine chocolate notes and mellow oaks. I could not tell which one it was from the glasses in front of me, but they all seemed pleasant enough.

“I assume you will be providing us with an extensive appreciation of the vehicle and its performance.”

“Hell yeah. You can count on it. How often do you get to take a rental Traverse to Traverse City?”

“It is an age of wonders,” said Jim, and waved at Katya for another Budweiser. Mary had another glass of champagne.

“Every Traverse comes with rear air vents so everyone can stay more comfortable, no matter where they’re sitting,” I said. “Generous Motors thought of everything.”

“Yeah,” said Jim. “Everything except making a profit. Those morons.”

I took a sip of something that might have been Reserve, or something else. “Yeah, most of the GM performance is all in the past.”

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

The Roto-Rooter Report

I stumbled into the kitchen to make the coffee. It had been a perilous journey from the safety of the eiderdown. Something was wrong with my neck- the spasms in my back that made my last trip back from Up North such an adventure last month had diminished, but now reappeared higher up, first on the left side and now on the right.

Looking straight ahead was about all I could manage, once upright, and twisting the torso was the least painful means to survey the kitchen counter. The cell phone was blinking the icon that indicated there was a message from nine hours before- never good news.

I pressed the right buttons and listened to the voicemail from Annook. It went something like this: “There is ten inches of standing water in the tub off the master bedroom. Called Roto-Rooter. They said to let it sit overnight and see if it drains and they will plunge the sewer connection tomorrow. Early flight. Left key under mat.” There was a phone number to contact the Rooters, and an abrupt click of finality.

Crap.

I navigated my paper notepad into my available field of vision and jotted down the number. I placed it above the “0930 conference call” and below the “documents to the credit union” and “meet appraiser” at the eleven-thirty position, and well above “Big Pink Holiday Party at 6:30. Each note has a little box to the left to be checked off when complete and give me a false sense of accomplishment.

I pecked at the keyboard for a while until I ran out of what passes for creative time in the Socotra household and dragged my sorry butt to the office, making the conference call seconds before my name was uttered on the roll-call.

Sweet success. When the meeting was done, I scanned personal financial documents into .pdf format on the Ricoh copier in the supply room and sent them off on an unsecure internet connection, wondering if I would regret it.

Then I called the Roto-Rooter firm in the Little Village By the Bay to see what was going on with the foot of water in the tubs, and the cryptic remark about the toilets.

There are two things in a house that I tread gentle on: electricity and water. Both have elemental consequences, and the idea of the basement turning into a hockey rink was about the last thing the Socotras need this festive holiday season.

I worked long-distance with the Rooter guy through the day, changing gears from really hungry business partners, home appraisers, and the credit union. I gobbled ibuprofen to keep the shards of pain shooting up both sides of my neck. Sometime before the end of the business day and before turning the lights out at the office, the Rooter guy called from the house. He informed me that the tubs had drained, but that the carpet was damp outside the master bathroom, and that the water meter in the basement indicated there was water flowing somewhere even with all the faucets turned off.

“Do you know what it is?” I asked.

“Nope. I am a sewer guy, not a plumber. You probably ought to have us plunge the connection every couple years. I don’t think we have been here in a decade.” I nodded and a spear shot up my neck.

“Nothing wrong with sewers,” I said encouragingly. “But you have no idea where the leak is?”

“No clue. You need a plumber.” I thanked him and asked him to drop the key in the mail-slot when he left and realized that I was going to be traveling sooner than I had anticipated.

Double crap.

That meant a quick trip to the farm to collect mail and feed the cat before I blew out of the state. Then I drafted a quick note to my siblings on what had transpired, and made a reservation for a four-wheel drive SUV to go to Michigan. Then I turned off the computer, looked at my watch, and saw I had time for a glass of happy hour white at Willow before the holiday party commenced in the lobby of Big Pink.

The older residents are early-birds, and the shrimp would be long gone if was late.

At Willow, I pulled up a stool next to Old Jim. The place was packed with merrymakers a lot further into the seasonal spirit than I was. Jim was talking to John-with-an-H, who bemoaned the fact that someone’s FOIA request was going to cause him an extra couple days in the office to produce e-mails related to an ongoing investigation.

“Bah, humbug,” he said. “I thought this was going to be the last day in the office this year.”

Jim snorted. And took a long pull on his Bud. He doesn’t have an office.

“Lot of that going around,” I said, and signaled to Elisabeth-With-an-S for a refill and the check. “You look great tonight,” I said. “I have time for one more. Then the holiday party back at the Building.”

“I hate those things,” growled Jim. “Waste of time.”

“it is the only time we see everyone from the building once the pool closes,” I said. “It is always interesting to see who shows up for the free food.”

I flogged the Bluesmobile back across the Arlington blocks and found a place to park in front of the building minutes before the official start to the party. Ancient residents clutched plastic plates awaiting the arrival of the shrimp.

Jiggs and Mila and Charlie were soon there, and 007 and Chris the Concierge, and Leo the Engineer and his daughter and the Porters and the cutest two kids in the building.

There were veggie platters, meatballs and a ham. The shrimp, of course was there briefly, and spinach dip in a pumpernickel round loaf of bread and a large platter of deviled eggs.

A bartender was pouring wine over by the mailboxes. I checked the mail and took the elevator up to the unit to get a very tall vodka and my camera. Heading back down to the lobby, I smiled. The good news was that I did not have to cook dinner.

The bad news, of course, that I would be back in the house in Michigan sooner than I thought. I wondered if I should pack my hockey skates in the trunk when I pulled out of town.

Nice party, by the way. Most people seemed happy and hungry. I got enough pictures to capture the sentiments of the season, and then went back upstairs for more vodka. I shut and locked the door behind me.

“Ho, ho, effing Ho,” I said to the darkness, and turned on the Christmas lights I did not take down last year. It really cheers the place up, you know?

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

The full photo account of the party is available to friends and friends of friends, whoever you are, on my Facebook page.  All rights reserved.

Errata

 

Never let it be said that The Daily allows its mistakes to fester. Oh, heck, scratch that. Of course we do.

Nonetheless, the Staff here at Socotra House Publishing, LLC, took time out from monitoring all aspects of the Continuing Crisis to compile a list of errata from the month that concludes a memorable year in Your Nation’s Capital.

It is three times in this annual cycle that the Federal Government has teetered on the brink of a shut down. Both national parties appear unified in the desire to extend the Payroll Tax Holiday to go along with the other festive manifestations of the season, but are deeply divided on how to do it.

Both sides- there appears to be no representation for most citizens who express contempt for their Congress- say they are determined to avoid a pre-Christmas shutdown, raising the possibility that Congress may just pass a short-term bill to keep the government open and kick the whole payroll tax and spending mess into next year.

There is a seasonal surprise for you! By the time the State of the Union Address rolls around this coming January, it will be a thousand days since the Congress of the United States managed to pass a budget, it’s purported purpose since the founding of the Republic.

It has been a curious year. Accordingly, as the days grow short, it is time to turn to the in-basket and correct those occasional minor errors that creep into any complex enterprise. Mistakes were made, as the saying goes in Washington, with passive voice and deep regret.

In the interest of fairness and accuracy:

President Obama apparently spent the first half of the Army-Navy Game sitting with the Midshipmen. Our Correspondent was suffering from hypoxia in the upper reaches of FedEx Field and did not notice the Jumbotron coverage of his presence, as he did in the second half, when the President joined the Cadets of West Point to watch a gallant but failed effort by the Black Knights to wrest victory from an implacable Navy presence.

The Daily regrets conveying the impression that the Commander in Chief favored the Cadets.

Secondly, Jon-no-H did not celebrate his 50th birthday the other evening at the famous Willow Restaurant. It was his 52nd.

The Daily regrets the error.

Thirdly, In the article “Durban Poison” we reported that Canada had announced it was pulling out of the Kyoto Climate Protocol. The UN provided a subsequent update and said that our sovereign neighbor to the North could not. Apparently the World Government we have heard about has come to pass, or the Climate Treaties are like the Irish Republican Army- :once in, Never Out.”

The Daily regrets the error.

Finally, on this day, marking the departure of the last 40,000 US combat troops from Iraq, we note that apparently there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

The Daily regrets the whole thing.

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Captured

My pal Muhammed has a father who is on the same road as Raven, only not quite so far down it. He called me up as I was peering out the glass windows of my eighth floor office at the sun sinking into the Arlington heights under thin salmon-colored cirrus clouds.

“Yo, Vic,” he said.

“Yo back at you. Wazzup?”

“Got a story for you. My Dad Bill has been falling a lot.”

“Raven just had one, too. Freaked me out when the nursing home called.” I know his Bill pretty well from when we were teens, a couple centuries ago. He was tough as nails, and was a navy gunner on merchant ships that did the Murmansk Run in the Big War, the one that was in waters so cold that death was the only outcome of going in the water.

“I knew that and thought you would be interested. So here is the deal here. His Doctor placed him in a Physical Rehab facility in Southfield.  He is in a single room with TV and a bed, kind of like a Hospital room.”

“You just described Raven’s roost at the Bluffs.”

“Well, Bill got placed there Friday, when they moved him from Beaumont Hospital. I went to visit him earlier today on my way to work.   He and I discussed the Temple win over Villanova in basketball and he asked if the community college where I teach  was near this facility, and whether I had to work today.”

“Sounds like he is still with it,” I said. “Doesn’t he have Parkinson’s or something?”

“Yeah, but here is what is interesting. He began to tell me that he has been in this facility and has not been able to escape yet.”

“Funny, that was Raven’s last sentence to me when we put him in the home. “I gotta get out of here,” he said.

“My Dad told me there is a plot afoot and he is trying to figure it out.  But, he told me that spies are everywhere and they are assembling files and dossiers.  He then said that Bonnie, the Head Nurse, is a leader in the conspiracy.  He is worried that they eventually will get information out of him.  So he told me that he is clamming up and will not talk to these people who could be spies.  He is refusing to “talk.”

“Sounds like he remembers the Code of Conduct pretty well.”

“Yeah, in the middle of this, Bonnie walked in. My Dad and I stopped talking.  Bonnie talked to me about his physical condition and when he will be released.  Then Bonnie says to me that Bill is confused and mentally cannot follow what is happening.”

“That is not what was going on, was it? He was trying to not tip the Nazis off that he knew what they were up to.”

“Yeah. So, Bonnie tries to prove to me that he is out of it. She asks Bill who I am  My Dad ignored her.  She repeated the question.  He looks at her and mumbles:  “Evelyn Mae Muhammed, my Mom’s full name.  Bonnie, thinks Bill said “Brian.” So Bonnie looks at me and says.  “Well, is your name Brian?” So she says, “See, he is confused and does not know who you are.”

“Yeah but you knew he did.”

“Yep. She sat there, as if she had proved her point.  I said nothing. I knew that Dad had not said Brian.  To me, it was like he was stonewalling her and giving his Serial Number but was not gonna tell this potential spy my real name.   He didn’t want them knowing who I was, since I could help him solve the case and help him escape.”

“I am glad that Raven doesn’t have any confederates to break him out of the home.”

“Well, my Dad may have one. So then, Big Nurse says  to him:  “Bill, he looks just like you, he has the same shaped head as you”  She seems to be prompting him to make the connection on who I am.”

“But he is not going to give it up, is he?”

“Yeah, he just looks at her and says:   “That is not my problem, that is his problem.”

“That is a hoot.”

“Yeah, so when Big Nurse leaves.  He starts discussing the plot again, how Bonnie is a ringleader and how he wont give her any information. Then he asks me if my brother can visit today because he needs to know about this and may know what to do.”

“Isn’t he still living in California?”

“Yeah. I tell Dad that I will call him and let him know the details and report back to Bill tomorrow. Then he says to me: “The food here is lousy, can your wife cook me some food and bring it tomorrow?”

“So he knew who your wife was and that she is a great cook?”

“Hell yeah. He not only knows my name, knows who I am, he knows what my brother’s name is and who my wife is. Then he asks me some for some details about the Lions win over Minnesota.”

“Amazing. Maybe he thinks you are with the Red Cross.”

“Could be. I dunno how long this goes on.”

“He has more in common with Big Mama than Raven. Raven is just out of it. She is mixing up the movies on TV with reality.”

“Yeah, it is pretty amusing how these things work.   I guess this is why we may not actually need LSD as we age.”

“Good luck with this. There is no instruction manual with this.”

“Take care, Vic. I will keep you posted,” he said and clicked off. I shuffled some papers on the desk and watched the last light of the day reflected in the clouds. Then I turned off the computer, slung my briefcase over my shoulder and went down to the street.

I don’t know if it is better to be held by the Nazis or just be out of it. Honest to God.

I walked up the block and crossed the street and walked into Willow. The Lovely Bea was planning a surprise birthday for Jon-with-no-H and all the usual suspects were there. Jon-without is turning 50, I thought, and that means there is around thirty to go until the Nazis capture us all.

In the meantime, I suppose we may as well drink up.

 

Copyright Muhammed and Vic 2011
www.vicsocotra.com

Going Postal

I have been meaning to talk to you about this for a while, but in the great scheme of things it didn’t rise to the collapse of the Euro, or the world overheating, Canada pulling out of the Kyoto Treaty, the greedy fat cats who broke the world, or those Occupy folks who seem to think that everything ought to be free and who, in order to help the working stiff, are trying to shut down the shipping ports on the West Coast in order to…

Oh, hell, I don’t know how that helps anyone on the eve of the big shopping season.

Or the Iranians and the Chinese, though I think we ought to say thanks to our friends in the Middle Kingdom and India who told the self-important unaccountable UN bureaucrats in Durban that maybe they would get around to signing on to a new Kyoto Protocol in a few years, even if Canada won’t.

I think that is rich, really. The European Union seems determined to commit suicide, something they seem to try in new ways every fifty years or so.

They might be saved by South Asia this time. Or not.

Anyway, alongside the other pressing matters to freak out about, there is the matter of our own Postal Service self-destructing. It has happened with such glacial slowness that I didn’t really notice.

The nice Letter Carrier comes to Big Pink six days a week and fills up my little box mostly with things I don’t want, didn’t ask for, and won’t look at.

We now have a privatized Government Agency that has changed is mission from meeting its appointed rounds in sleet and snow to giving me brightly colored advertising, solicitations for money and political materials for people I would not cross the street to throw up on.

You know the latest- the threat to not to deliver things we don’t want on Saturdays, which actually seems sort of fair.

I do recall the instant that the Postal Service became an irritant. All that stupid material was piling up in the mailbox, spilling out onto the county road, announcing that I was not home and essentially saying: “ya’ll come on in” to any of the gap-toothed folks driving back to their meth labs in the woods.

Anyway, we are having a crisis about management ineptitude, the unions, the burden of the pensions for the letter carriers, and the stupid Congress who won’t shutter a single local Postmaster.

It is sad. I used to say things like “the government is supposed to take care of the national defense and deliver the mail. Everything after that is negotiable.”

Now I don’t say that. But, there is so little that matters to me in the daily delivery that it managed never to become an issue, but rather a mild irritant.

I mean, when you actually have to go to the post office, what is going on?

In my neighborhood, the former Buckingham Theater that serves as the local point of presence is doing all kinds of stuff that seems a little out of the core business area: money orders, remittance paperwork, strange bundles destinated for overseas. It is more than a little like visiting the DMV, or the United Nations Security Council.

The Post Office is still relevant for these few weeks before the festival of giving things to each other. In my case, just sort of. I am done trying to prove that I am a thoughtful SOB. Not enough energy and not enough spirit. I am not doing cards this year, and not really sending anyone gifts beyond the immediate circle of the kids and some selected family.

You probably have a clue why. I just can’t get in the mood of the season and want this whole sad end of life’s parade to go by with as much dignity as we can muster. I got Raven his usual metal airplane model, and it was delivered by FedEx a month or more ago.

It is kind of fun to watch him try to open the packaging, seeing the synapses firing, but I don’t think he is going to be able to do that this year. I will go over and help him, if I can see a break in the weather and get up there to ensure that he gets one gift at least, and sit with Big Mama and hallucinate over some old movies.

This, I am betting, is going to be his last year. I could be wrong, but I don’t think so.

Not so for Big Mama, but we will work that out as we go along. She can watch movies just about anywhere, after all, and once Raven’s part of this is resolved, maybe we can move on.

Anyway, I was taking care of one last bit of holiday business with the nice folks at Pond Hill Farms. Their stuff is great- I love the Ball Jars of corn relish, and hot garlic jelly and there is nothing better than brats smothered in their secret recipe sauerkraut-and-sweet pickle mix from the Ball jar. But the raw honey from Michigan clover and Michigan bees is to die for.

If there is anything better in a rich mug of Dazbog coffee in the morning I don’t know what it is. So, I was getting a case of it delivered to a pal out west, and I asked if I could have them use FedEx. That seemed to nonplus the nice lady on the phone, and she had to check and see if they could do that.

As it turned out, they could, but Pauline asked me why I wanted them.

“The letter carrier on that route is a jerk, and he would try to jam the glass jars into the mailbox and smash them. FedEx goes right up to the house, and I have confidence that the honey will make it intact.”

I could almost see her nodding on the other end of the line.

I have to be out in Fairfax early this morning to attend some critical all-day training, so I will just leave it at that. I am sure there is a better way to deliver the mail than what we have, now that all the bills are paid online and all that comes is Government-subsidized advertising. This is not what Ben Franklin had in mind.

If Ben came back, I am pretty sure he would be working for Big Brown, or DDL or somebody. They get things done quickly, and not one of them has delivered an advertising flyer yet.

The comparison is enough to make you want to go….well, you know.

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Durban Poison

“The only real solution to climate change is to leave the oil in the soil, coal in the hole and tar sands in the land.“

– Ivonne Yanez, Acción Ecologica, Ecuador

I had that dream again last night, or at least a familiar variant of it. It was not the running dream, but close enough. “Fight or Flight” reaction switched on in my brain chemistry. We were on active duty, in an office complex near the sea.

Some sort of surveillance mission was in progress. I was setting up a high-resolution camera on a tripod when I saw the outlines- three of them- of great gray ships. They were coming our way with due deliberation, growing in size as the minutes ticked by.

There were about fifteen minutes left before the alarm was going to sound- I knew that somehow in the dream but the belief system remained consistent.

The ships were not on the ocean, and not of it. They floated with grim majesty toward the complex where we stood, peering out the window. I guess there was some running after we realized they were coming for us. I tried to find an interior wall, as though the ships were some force of nature like a hurricane.

Looking up at a louvered glass window, I saw a vast moving shadow that blotted the light.

What the beings piloting the ships wanted would probably get clearer soon. They had arrived.

I can’t tell you what happened next, since a nice piece by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, his Capriccio Espagnol, Opus 34, came on the radio. It is an orchestral work based on Spanish folk melodies written when the global temperature was about a degree cooler in centigrade than it is today. It is not his most famous work, but there is a quality to his symphonies that is quite evocative; old and new things mixed in a fiery cocktail of sound.

I felt the two worlds slowly begin to integrate in the darkness. I preferred to stay under the eiderdown, but the adrenaline from the dream was still sparking along my nerve ends.

“Screw it,” I thought. “It is Monday and there is no getting away from it.” I padded off to the kitchen and started the coffee and booted the computer. I streamed the Colorado station that carries the BBC in the middle of their night, and listened to what is important to Bush House in London.

The rich aroma of the Dazbog coffee filled the unit. I get a couple bags in the mail each month, but I imagine that is irresponsible. I will have to start looking for coffee grown and roasted locally, I imagine, once everything starts to change.

The COP-17 Climate Summit at Durban was very much on the mind of one BBC commentator, though it seemed to fall somewhere behind the news about UK’s position on the Eurozone consolidation and the demonstrations against Mr. Putin in Russia.

I frowned. I certainly understand Britain’s discomfiture on the whole European thing. It might tear apart the coalition government of Mr. Cameron. But that is not my problem this morning. I was intensely curious about what had happened in Durban at the COP-17 Indaba.

It used to be the most famous export from Durban was a particularly potent strain of marijuana. No more.

The Durban negotiations lasted an extra day and night past the official close on Friday. Apparently governments from 194 countries have agreed to extend the Kyoto Protocol to reduce carbon emissions. They also established a more ambitious global framework for reducing emissions, and opened the Green Climate Fund to give cash to someone in the UN who promises to assist developing countries’ efforts to address climate change.

That much was clear from the Beeb, but I wanted more.

I looked in the New York Times e-edition to get the latest. It was very curious. There was nothing there. “Maybe it didn’t make the abridged version,” I thought, and Googled all articles in the paper for the last thirty days. The last story of any length was dated before the Conference started.

No help. The questions before the conference had little to do with the science. Instead, it was mostly about The Process, and the distribution of reparations from the First World to the Third.

It was better put by a querulous comment on one of the news articles on the Indaba: “The UN plan will shift wealth from the first world’s poor to the third world’s rich without making any difference in climate.”

Well, that is one way to look at it, I suppose, since the smart guys in the First World will ensure that the poorest actually cough up the money, and the sharks in the Third World will appropriate it all in bribes and kick-backs.

That seems kind of stupid. The Conferees had been concerned with some previously unknown consequences of climate change. There was a prominent paper that linked the First World to a sort of Climatic Apartheid. There was another that pointed out that women were likely to be impacted by climate change more than men. I scratched my head on that one. There was all sorts of extraordinary stuff.

The real answer, of course, revolved around money, and the process by which it will be provided to the developing world.

I found something from Kumi Naidoo, Greenpeace International’s Executive Director, who gave a bleak assessment of what emerged at the end of the conference before he climbed on a jet for another continent. Mr. Maidoo is a long-term anti-apartheid activist and Rhodes Scholar. His degree is in Political Psychology, which natural provides him special insight into The Process, if not the science.

His post said:  “…our Governments this past two weeks listened to the carbon-intensive polluting corporations instead of listening to the people who want an end to our dependence on fossil fuels and real and immediate action on climate change.”

“The grim news is that the blockers led by the US have succeeded in inserting a vital get-out clause that could easily prevent the next big climate deal being legally binding. If that loophole is exploited it could be a disaster….leaving almost no room for increasing the depth of carbon cuts in this decade when scientists say we need emissions to peak.”

An organization called “Climate Justice Now!” was more direct in their assessment, accusing the First World (where they live) of crimes against humanity. “Delaying real action until 2020 is a crime of global proportions,” says their website.

One of their heavy-lifters is a woman named Janet Redman. She is Co-director of the Sustainable Energy & Economy Network at the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive think tank.

She said in her blog that “Industrialized northern countries are morally and legally obligated to repay their climate debt.”

I checked out her credentials. She is an expert, holding a Masters degree in international development from quirky Clark University in Worcester, MA. She has a bachelor’s degree, too.

She says “Developed countries grew rich at the expense of the planet and the future all people by exploiting cheap coal and oil. They must pay for the resulting loss and damages, dramatically reduce emissions now, and financially support developing countries to shift to clean energy pathways.”

I tried to find out what she thought about things this morning, now that Durban is done, and whether she agreed with Greenpeace. There was nothing posted since last Friday.

Apparently the thousands of delegates are all hurtling at Flight Level 36 spewing carbon dioxide on their way home to get ready to go to the big conference in Qatar next year.

I wish them all the best. I mean, with the big crisis that is just around the corner, we need to have social justice, gender equality, eliminate patent and intellectual property rights and end the World Bank’s domination of the climate to make things better.

Oh, and all that money. Quickly.

I can’t wait to see what comes next. Maybe the Times will get around to covering the whole thing this week. I wonder what really happened.

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra .com

The One Percent

I went to The Game yesterday. You know, the Army-Navy game kicked ass yesterday. Cold, cold, cold, but kick-ass.

The storied rivalry is usually played in the City of Brotherly Love, that being a major venue about half-way between West Point and Annapolis. That makes it a little out of the way to go, being on the dreaded I-95 corridor from the District.

The train is how some people do it, or by charter bus, but that is a little more time than I am willing to invest, since I have a pretty strong loyalty to my Service, but considerably less so to that of the Academy that has traditionally formed the backbone of its officer corps.

My habit has been to go over to the Army-Navy Country Club and watch it on the big screen in the member’s grill. They put out a free buffet at half time, and it is fun to see the alumni of the two schools go crazy.

The West Point crowd has actually been going crazy for the last nine years, since the Midshipmen have beaten them each and every one of those years. I know what that is like. Losing to Ohio State for six years seemed like an eternity.

This year, though, it looked like the Mids were faltering, and were coming in with their first losing regular season record since 2002, and it might be the best chance in a decade for the Black Knights of the Hudson to gain bragging rights.

Never mind the Air Force. They can have the Commander-in-Chief’s trophy. This is the game that counts.

Jiggs was responsible for this one. Jiggs was class of ’68, and one of the officers who went off to minesweepers off the coast of South Vietnam when there was such a thing. I went to college, you know, rather than Trade School, which accounts for a general ambivalence. “Canoe U,” was one of the nick-names Annapolis had, and there are plenty more. There was always a little twinge of resentment for how the Academy guys got ahead, but like everything else in this world, that has diminished over time.

Plus, my Dad Raven was Navy, and I was, and my son is, so what the hell. Jiggs had some nose-bleed tickets in the upper reaches of FedEx Field out in Laurel, Maryland, and bus tickets, and passes for the tailgate tent, and he got better seats down on the lower level.

He called me up to see if I would be interested in attending.

“Hell, yeah,” I said. “I have never been to one, and it has always been on the Bucket List.”

“I have not been to one since 1968, and I swore I would never go back. But having the game here in DC is too good to pass up.”

So, that is how we found ourselves out in front of the Crystal City Sports Pub, waiting on the two shiny buses from the Reston that would take us across the District and to the tailgate tent in the sprawling parking lots that surround FedEx Field.

We saw some unusual sites along the way- the driver knew a way to snake around the husk of old RFK Stadium, looking forlorn with the logo of DC United, the soccer franchise that is trying to make it in a country that mostly could care less. I made a note to go back along the route we followed- it looked like some of the Civil War forts are still in tangled trees that have grown up on the old earthworks.

Fort Chaplin was intriguing- and I had passed this way only once before, looking at the Boundary Stones of the northeast quadrant of the District diamond.

The buses deposited us about a half -mile from the white tent where the tailgate was going on. We about froze our butts off on that part of the hike. The tall ramparts of the Stadium were another mile away, almost, and the tailgate tent had a vague resemblance to the roofline of Denver International Airport and seemed to be just as distant.

Did I mention it was cold? The breeze seemed to cut through my old heavy-weight Nomex flight jacket with the stupid squadron and air wing patches on it. Chill or not, it was a good decision to wear, since I had already met several shipmates, who came up to comment on units that no longer exist, and ships that no longer float.

Jiggs had us covered, and a remarkably pert volunteer from the Academy Alumni Association checked us off and handed us colorful wrist-bands to signify that we were paid, and the drinks and the food- all you could down of both- were complementary.

I decided I liked the bloody marys, after about four of them, and started to get jazzed, whether or not I actually attended the Academy. Curiously, there were dozens of West Pointers and active duty Army in the tent, a display of joint service affinity that I think years ago would have been unthinkable.

It is not exactly that there is an outpouring of affection between us- and I found myself thinking “us” in a personal way- but that we have so much more in common than we have with the vast majority of our fellow citizens.

“When do they march on?” I asked. I have no feel for the nuance.

“Already there,” said Jiggs. “but I hear the President is going to be there, so we may as well go and get in line for the enhanced security screen.” I nodded, and downed the last of my drink, and off we trooped.

I knew this was going to be a challenge as the wind knifed through me. I hoped the bulkhead of the upper reaches of the stadium would cut the breeze. Otherwise, I was going to be a chilly puppy.

The crowd was great, and the stadium, freezing or not, was packed. Almost everyone was wearing the colors of one of the teams, and old and young, it was very much a family affair.

Peering down at the field far below, I realized that I had a better idea what was going on from the Jumbotron in the end zone than actually looking at the field.

The President’s motorcade passed us, lights flashing, as we waited the pat-down to get into the stadium. Jiggs headed for his better seats, and once through the irritating security (all the crap in my pockets piled into my Guantanamo Bay ballcap with the scrambled eggs on the visor) I rode the endless escalators up to the heavens.

The clarity that went along with the arctic air mass made the panorama of the capital an impressive thing.

I was amazed at how much higher the seats were from the entrance ramps. The good news was that when the four FA-18 Super Hornets roared across the stadium I thought I could reach out and touch them, and was pleased that the Army came up with four Apache attack helicopters to make another aerial statement.

It was just like a flyover. Only slower.

The President did a nice job with the coin-toss, interestingly (or not) performed with a coin engraved with the likeness of President Reagan in honor of his hundredth birthday.

I won’t bore you with the details of the game. These are no longer exemplars of the best college football teams in the land as they once were. They are very talented, in their way, but hardly powerhouses and more akin to Division II teams than the Penn States of the world.

Of course, it is inconceivable that anything like what happened in Happy Valley could happen at West Point or Annapolis. As I shivered high in the Upper Level seats, it occurred to me that this stadium contained a whole different sort of America. Poli-racial, determined, increasingly bi-gender in composition, self-reliant and loyal.

Anyway, it was a decent game, played close, and the Black Knights were in it right up to the end. The President seemed to sense that, and came down from the luxury box to sit with the Cadets in the student section of the end zone seats.
I didn’t mind.

Navy managed to do the right thing, and it is pretty impressive to have beaten your biggest rival in the world ten straight years.

Walking away, I passed a couple Cadets in their long gray coats with gray shawls across their shoulders. I thanked them for their service as I passed.

Then it occurred to me. The numbers. This stadium on this day was the real one percent. Less than that, really, like the millionaires and billionaires the Occupy Wall Street yammers about all the time.

It is no wonder I couldn’t work up any animosity to the Cadets- crap, the services (along with our Zoomie and Coastie brethren) are the only ones with any skin in the game. And back-off, Gyrines, there were plenty of you there in the crowd with the Department of the Navy, even if it is irritating.

This one percent of the population is not clipping stock coupons or not sitting on their fat asses occupying things and demanding more free stuff. It is a little disconcerting, you know? I decided to shout it out as I headed toward the parking lot.

“We ARE the one percent!” I yelled. “The ones who went!” No one looked back with any curiosity at all. They already knew.

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Deep Cleansing Breath

This may be the most exciting time to be an alarmist in recent human history.

You have to qualify that statement a bit, and I defer to my pal Mac on that. By that I mean that Raven and Big Mama can no longer talk about what it was like to be young and living lives with the backdrop of Second World War in the background, and the certain knowledge that there were a bunch of clever people actually out to kill them.

Mac remembers that on a personal level, and a time when the whole vast enterprise was very much in doubt.

As of this morning, it appears that it is finally over. Most of the sovereign nations of the European Union have surrendered to Germany.

Yesterday, that astonishing event only made the top five things I was worried about, and if I had slowed down long enough to do a David Letterman Top Ten list, it would have been easy.

10. Jon-no-H Corzine, former governor of New Jersey, and Chair of Goldman Sachs.

9. The COP-17 Indaba Climate Conference in Durban.

8. Exploding Chevy Volts.

7. Unification of Europe on German terms.

6. The illegal transfer of weapons by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to the Mexican Drug Cartels

5. The Drug Enforcement Administration’s laundering of the Cartel profits over a quarter century.

4. What the President meant by making that stirring speech in Osawatomie, that oddly-named town in Kansas.

3. Iran. But that needs another top ten list of its own.

2. The Economy and the risk of another collapse.

And in first place (snare drum!):

1. The cat.

You can see why I had to take a break. I was hyperventilating, typing frantically with key points about everything.

Corzine made $400 million in personal profit when Goldman Sachs went public! I was sweating profusely at that point and needed Spanish-style punctuation to insert at the beginning of each sentence- upside down exclamation and question marks!!!

Hola! The President went to Osawatomie partly because Teddy Roosevelt spoke there! But TR only went because that is where Abolitionist John Brown fought two battles in Bleeding Kansas!

Carumba!  have you seen what is on the table in Durban? Global government!!!

I felt more than a little like Jack Kerouac, amphetamine-amped and typing the manuscript for “On the Road” on a single roll of paper, fed through his Underwood typewriter. He produced the continuous scroll by taping pages of semi-translucent paper together to feed the typewriter and write without interruption. I ran out of interruptions after only about six pages and I had a soggy mass of a tale, by turns alarmist, depressed, astonished and appalled.

I needed an intervention. I called a pal, who told me to hit “save,” take a deep cleansing breath, and go on about the day. “Take a look at it tomorrow,” she said. “Things always look better in the morning.”

Good counsel. I went to the office and let Friday roll over me. I had a few glasses of wine with Old Jim at The Front Page at happy hour. Willow was closed for a private party, and that was enough of a dislocation to the space-time continuum to put me out early.

When I rose, I found I could breathe normally. The matter of the cat was resolved, though it came with an abrupt and significant chill across the miles. Damn.

Then, I picked up my morning mail and saw that Germany had won without firing a shot.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has argued that the solution to the euro crisis is not a series of short-term bailouts but a long-term overhaul of the rules that govern European integration.

She used the market turmoil as a blunt instrument to force the free-spending southern tier of Europe to adjust to their new impecuniosity by surrendering the authority of their central banks to the de facto master of Europe:  The Deutsche Bundesbank.

Due to its strength and size, the Bundesbank- or “Buba” is the big brother to the European Central Bank, conveniently located in Frankfurt am Main.

That is a legacy of the Cold War, of course, when Frankfurt was in the American Zone of Occupation and later the FDR. But Buba answers to the Ministry of Finance is in Berlin, who in turn reports to the Chancellor, who is determined to reduce spending and commence a firm regimen of austerity.

You have to know how desperate the times must be for the proud nation-sates to surrender their budget authority to the Germans, who as they used to say, are either at your feet or at your throat.

I have only been to Berlin once, but I highly recommend it. I was visiting an associate, and during a blitz-schnell tour of the city, I requested a drive-by of the Finance Ministry.

It is a curious place for the leadership of the new European Order. Designed by Ernst Sagebiel, the monolithic building was erected during Hitler’s zenith, 1935-36. Most of the capital was rubble by the time the Allied Air Forces and the Red Army were done with it. The Goddess of Battle saw fit to leave Hermann Goering’s Air Ministry building almost completely intact.

Like the Dai Ichi Insurance Company in Tokyo, its survival made it a natural for the follow-on government of that zone of occupation. In 1945 it was in the Soviet Zone, and was quickly repaired. Only the Ehrensaal (Hall of Honor) was subject to alteration, transformed into the Stalinist neo-classicist Festsaal (Festival Hall), and the enormous Eagle and Swastika that dominated its end wall was removed and trashed.

Once the work was complete, the building was used by the Soviet military administration until 1948, and from 1947-49 by the German Economic Commission.

In 1950-52 an extraordinary 16-yard-long long mural was created at the north end of the building along Leipziger Straße. Created by the German painter and commercial artist Max Lingner, it depicts the Socialist ideal of contented East Germans facing a bright future as one big happy family.

Max had to revise the design five times along the way to a proper Socialist-realist design, and by the time it was done, he hated it.

Shortly thereafter, in 1953, it was the scene of an attempted revolt against the new puppet East German government. That didn’t work out so well, as you can see that in the form of the former STASI HQ not far away.

After re-unification, and the return of the central German government from Bonn to Berlin, the building became home for the Ministry of Finance.

So here we are this morning. Europe is unified in a way that we could not have imagined in 1992 when the Treaty of Maastricht was signed. The Continent reports to the Air Ministry.

Take a deep cleansing breath. Germany won.

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com