Bowling Alone

I don’t know if I could pull off a story thismorning, what with Wikipedia going dark, and the ominous black mask over theGoogle logo on the mighty search engine.

Check it out:

(Masked Google Logo echoes corporate protest to corporate aggression. Photo belongs to them, please don’t hurt me.)

This is what greets the world this morning when youtry a search for anything. I assume the black mask is to remind us of what thepowerful interests are trying to do to us in Congress.

It would be sort of neat if we could try arepresentative government in America, one that is not beholden to the deeppocket crowd. The matter at hand is the anti-piracy legislation pending in theHouse and Senate. Wikipedia, Moveon.org, user-submitted news site Reddit, blogBoing Boing and the Cheezburger network of comedy are participating in a blackoutto protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) billsthat will effectively censor the web for the first time.

I understand all the commotion about criminalactivities by shadowy and criminal offshore interests that steal, copy anddisseminate other people’s intellectual property. But the practical effect isto hand the bureaucrats the power to shut down any site (including mine) ifsomeone alleges that a picture (or perhaps a thought?) belongs to someone else.

Sorry, it is an outrage. This has got to bestopped, and I hope you will drop a line to your elected representatives, ifyou know who they are. Hang on. I am going to do that now. (tap, tap).

Ah, much better, and it only took a minute once Ifound out who is masquerading as our elected representatives.  You can Google it, if you need to. Here iswhat I wrote, and if you are feeling feisty this morning, you can borrow thesewords to send to your own alleged representatives:

Senator/Representative XXXX,   I didn’t know if I could pulloff a decent letter to you this morning, Sir, what with Wikipedia going dark,and the ominous black mask over the Google logo atop the mighty search engine.     That is what greets the worldthis morning when you try a search for anything. I assume the black mask is toremind us of what the powerful interests are trying to do to us in Congress-both in the Senate and the House.

It would be sort of neat ifwe could try a representative government in America, one that is not beholdento the deep pocket crowd. The matter at hand is the anti-piracy legislationpending in the House and Senate. The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and ProtectIP Act (PIPA) bills will effectively censor the web for the first time.   I understand all thecommotion about criminal activities by offshore interests that steal, copy anddisseminate other people’s intellectual property. But the practical effect isto hand the bureaucrats the power to shut down any site (including mine) ifsomeone alleges that a picture (or perhaps a thought?) belongs to someone else.

Sorry, it is an outrage. Thislegislation has got to be stopped, and I hope you will do what you can toprotect our basic net freedoms. Law always lags technology- but PIPA and SOPAare not the way to go.

I hope you will oppose this latest lunacy.

My thanks for your attentionin this vital matter of freedom.   CAPT Victor Socotra, USN-Ret. Arlington

(Mr. Bowling Don Carter in his salad days. Photobelongs to someone else, please don’t take down my site.)

Now, where was I? Oh, yeah, the greatest bowler onGuam. As you probably know, Don Carter, the master bowler of the 1950s and 60s,left us this week, just a few years younger than my Dad when he passed. He did his star turns on black-and-white television in myyouth. Trim in a natty bowling shirt, he appeared each week on “Make thatSpare,” a vehicle that hyped the Professional Bowling Association, or PBA,which is easy to confuse with other real sports.

Don was the first professional bowler to reach asix-figure annual income, the first to run six strikes on the jackpottelevision show, and the very first to convert the cash sweepstakes shot on TV.He was awesome.

The whole notion of bowling has moved from commonactivity to sociological metaphor. When we were kids, Dad would take us up toThunderbird Lanes on the weekends for a treat. I don’t know where he bowledduring the week- he of course was a member of a league at American Motors. Wetook a lot of joy in occasionally knocking down a pin or two.

I would tell you more about Don Carter’s amazingcareer stats, but of course Wikipedia is blocked today and I can’t. The pointis that we all used to bowl, and we all used to be in leagues, a gregariousactivity that has slowly disappeared. That is the metaphor part: sociologistRobert D. Putnam wrote a fascinating book published at the change of themillennium called “Bowling Alone,” which claimed that even though more peopleare bowling these days, we are not bowling in leagues. Putnam alleges thatchanges in work, family structure, age, suburban life, television, computers,women’s roles and other factors have contributed to a dramatic decline in groupsocial activities.

(Cover of Bowling Alone. I am using this under fair-use, and I could prove it in court, even if you take down my site.)

He further extrapolates the phenomenon of the bowlingalley to show that we sign fewer petitions, belong to fewer organizations thatmeet, know our neighbors less, meet with friends less frequently, and evensocialize with our families less often.   I don’t bowl, and I could not tell you the lasttime I slipped on a pair of those crazy parti-colored rental shoes to hoist aborrowed ball and sling it down the gleaming hardwood toward the adamant white-and-red-stripedpins.

We were talking about Don Carter and bowling ingeneral with Mac and Jasper at Willow last night.  The whole matter came up as Jasper askedLiz-with-an-S if she minded if he stowed his bowling bag in the cooler behindthe bar at the Amen Corner.  Jasper wason the civilian side of the bar, just hanging out with the regulars. The LovelyBea was there, and Jamie and Short Hair Mike, and John-with an-H and Jonwithout.

(The Amen Corner boys and girls. Photo Socotra, no fair-use required.)

Liz-S is The Man behind the bar these days,assisted ably by Tinkerbelle and Jasper, when he gets the hours, and she saidshe did not mind in the slightest. Old Jim asked to see his ball. Jasperobliged, and displayed with pride a custom sixteen-pound beauty, the heaviestallowed in regulation play.

“Only two sports you can hustle,” he said with asmile. “Pool and bowling. My Dad taught me that on the island. He wanted me tobe the best bowler on Guam.”

(Willow’s two Guamanians: Jasper (left) and Mac(right).  All rights reserved and if yousteal it I will have the government shut down your website. Sorry, justkidding. Not.)

I think I mentioned that Jasper is from the islandwhere America’s Day Begins, and has forged a bond with Mac, who spent eightmonths on Nimitz Hill on the island. They are the only two Guamanians of myacquaintance, albeit Mac was only a temporary resident.

That is where things got a little complicated. Iwas interested in continuing the story of The Luckiest Man in China, WendyFurnas, and the details of his repatriation from the brutal hands of theJapanese Kempeitei at Bridge House Prison in Shanghai. We got as far as thefact that the MV Gripsholm was on her first Red Crosscruise to bring him back (along with US Ambassador to Japan Joseph Grew, but Ican’t find more about that since Wikipedia is down), and whether Wendy hadapproached the Navy, or vice versa, when he got on American soil again.

“Why didn’t he join the Army?” I asked. Macshrugged. He was looking good this evening, nice suit, soft collared shirt anda dazzling patterned tie. He is a regular Babe magnet when he wants to be.

(The Lovely Bea with Babe Magnet Mac. Life is good when you own the rights to pictures like this. )

“I don’t know. Maybe he didn’t want to spend therest of the war in the jungle. Wendy was in JICPOA on O’ahu through the rest ofthe war,” said Mac. “When we got back from Guam on the flight throughKwajalein, I went over to the JIC and Wendy was the last one there. Hisinstructions were to get rid of everything, even if he had to throw it all inthe dumpster. He had a room full of guns, swords and binoculars. All of itgreat war trophies. Then he was supposed to lock up and report to CINCPACFLTwhere I was.”

“That is amazing,” I said.

“What, the sixteen pound ball?” asked Old Jim. Hehad been talking to Short Hair Mike about how to separate pigeons from theircash. “It seems a little heavy for Jasper, but he is a wiry guy.”

Jasper flexed for us. He is working on full sleevetattoos on both arms, not colored in yet, but clear in blue outlines againsthis warm brown skin.

“Do you bowl here?” I asked. “And where?”

“There are Bowl America lanes in Falls Church,Fairfax and Chantilly,” he said. “I belong to a couple leagues. I got to keepmy skills up.”

“Do you still hustle?” I asked. “And doesn’t thatmean that we are still bowling in leagues?”

“Sure,” he said. “I don’t know what that guy Putnamwas talking about. It is more fun when you compete with a bunch of otherpeople.”

“Well, I guess the country isn’t falling apartafter all,” I said.

Old Jim growled. “You would be wrong, Vic. It isgoing to hell in a hand-basket.”

“Or a bowling bag,” said Mac, polishing off a glassof red. “That is my limit for tonight.” I looked at the dregs of Happy HourWhite in my glass and waved at Tinkerbelle for the check. “This one is on me,”I said grandly as she handed me the black leatherette folder.

(Tinkerbelle with the check. It is my damn picture. Back off.)

Liz-S said proudly: “You know the Admiral drinksfor free here,” and I nodded.   “That makes it a lot easier to be generous.”

I was going to tell you about some other stuff, butthat can wait until tomorrow. In the meantime, didn’t you have to drop a noteto your bonehead Congressperson? SOPA and PIPA are wrong.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Bad Decisions

 

I was up early enough to write something profound this morning. I thought about what precisely that might the dwarves in South Carolina are up to, or when a recess appointment is constitutional when technically the Senate isn’t in recess. I just couldn’t dredge up the interest.

Instead, I looked for restaurants in little Ohio River valley towns where the glass plants have shut down and the railroad does not run any more.

There is  lot of ancillary stuff that needs to be done. Finding stone-cutters, for example, and finding whoever it is that is responsible for the aggregation of green plots of earth high on the bluff above the brown river that were all sold long ago.

There is a lot of paperwork involved in closing things out, and resolutions to “really get my shit together” and get things organized so that those pesky kids don’t get stuck with it.

No urgency. Maybe that and the softly falling winter rain has something to do with the lassitude.

What was it they say? Don’t go gently into that good night?

Hell, it ought to be “Come to the last big curve in a high wide exciting slide, drink sloshing and tires smoking.”  The other thing that gives me a certain amount of heart is that nothing in this ife is wasted if you keep your eyes open. Like they say, bad decisions make good stories and nothing is really wasted.

Maybe I will even be able to come up with one tomorrow.I need to make some decisions.

Copyright 2012  Vic Socotra

www.vicsocotra.com

Luckiest Man in China, Part 2

Restaurant Week at Willow was in full swing. Mac and I sat way down the bar from Old Jim and his bride Mary, and a bunch of civilians- including an irritating party from DARPA who talked too much—were clogging the aisles.

The point to Restaurant Week is to offer great deals on a fixed price menu to try to expose the food tourists to the excellence of Tracy O’Grady’s cuisine. Mac had ordered some of the Greyure Cheese Puffs to complement his Racer 5 Indian Pale Ale.

He clearly relished the change in his medication that made he able to enjoy a beer now and again. “Speaking of food,” he said, “Wendy Furnas was able to dine out on his experiences in Shanghai the rest of his career. He was asked to speak many times on his escape and subsequent imprisonment.

It was pretty amazing, and not unlike many experiences of those who were subject to Japanese care.
“I just read the account of Louis Zamperini’s odyssey in Japanese POW camps in Laura Hillenbrand’s best-seller “Unbroken.”

“That was true for a lot of folks. Wendy had his experience in the Bridge House Prison in Shanghai. Pretty grim. Wendy described some of the torture sessions that went on there, and not all of the survivors had Louie Zamperini’s ability to transcend the experience.”

“I haven’t heard of Bridge House before,” I said. “I wish I had known. I was in Shanghai with a delegation that wanted to talk to people who didn’t want me around, so they cut us loose for the day. My pal Val and I got to just cruise around on the subway and look at stuff in town. Wish I had known.”

“It wasn’t like the Hanoi Hilton,” said Mac pensively. “Wendy said it was just one of several camps the Kampeitei set up. Bridge House was an Art Deco European-style apartment building near Sichuan Beilu. There were 15 cells in the prison, most of them reconstructed to have cell doors that could be opened from only one side. He said they were like cages built with half-foot wooden planks set a couple inches apart.”

“Ugh,” I said. “I can’t begin to imagine. I was fascinated to see the old buildings in Shanghai. We were walking through the French concession and I realized the buildings were exactly the same as old Hanoi. I had to hit myself. It wasn’t Chinese or Vietnamese architecture. It was a European idea. Wild.”

“Yes. Exactly,” said Mac. “Wendy wound up at Bridge House Prison because of his association with the two newspapers he worked for after the American School shut down.”

“Was he tortured?”

“The Kampeitei were known to use all sorts of methods to get confessions, which is how Wendy came to be sentenced to death. His fellow inmates were guys like the head of Dodge China and the head of the Shanghai Stock exchange. The Japanese thought they jeopardized the security of Japanese rule in Shanghai.”

“I imagine so. Actually, they probably were. Wendy was lucky to get exchanged.”

“No kidding,” said Mac, taking a sip of beer. “Wendy claimed it was the first-ever prisoner exchange between the Japs and the Americans. He came home on the Swedish ship MS Gripsholm. That is why he always said he was the luckiest guy in China.”

“Wasn’t Gripsholm the boat that brought back the Naval Attaches from Tokyo?”

Mac nodded. “More than that. They kept a neutral Swedish Captain and crew and sailed under the Red Cross flag like a hospital ship. Between ‘42 and the end of the war, she carried Japanese and German nationals back home, and at exchange points picked up Americans and Canadians- and Brits married to them to bring back here.” He contemplated a cheese puff. “I cant eat all these,” he said.

“That must have been weird,” I said. “I will have one, but carbs are my enemy these days.”

“I imagine it is these days, but we had more serious enemies then. Everyone on the ship was hoping the submarines of both sides would recognize her and not put torpedoes into the hull. All told she made a dozen round trips in the middle of the shooting war and carried almost 30,000 passengers. In the Pacific, Wendy came back via the neutral ports; at Lourenco Marques or Goa.”
“What a story,” I said, downing my glass of wine.

“That isn’t all of it. The State Department kept the lease on Gripsholm through 1946. She was the ship that repatriated Italian deportees from America back to Naples after the war.” He smiled, and I had to laugh.
“You mean like naval Intelligence’s favorite mobster Lucky Luciano?” I smiled. “That interlude still touches a nerve some places.”

Mac smiled enigmatically and took a sip of beer. “Wendy suck around on active duty like I did, and had more than thirty years of service before he was done. He did the usual stuff at the Pentagon and relieved me in Hawaii and at CINCNELM in London.”

“He had a great career,” I said. “I wish I could have talked to him about the War. It is amazing what we are losing.”

“Well, you haven’t lost me yet,” he said, and Tinkerbelle came buy and asked us if we wanted another round.
I think we did.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

The Luckiest Man in China

“So, who is it that is killing the scientists of Iran?” I asked Mac. We were seated way down the bar from the Amen Corner, and it felt unusual. Unbalanced. John-with-and-H was seated next to us. Apparently he is keeping his distance from Old Jim, who was occupying his usual seat, but entertaining some civilian guests.

“I don’t know,” he said. I assume it is Mossad, since they have clearly been let off the leash by Benjy Netanyahu,” he said, looking happily at his glass of Racer 5 Pale Ale.

“I am hearing that the MEK is involved, too, in a sort of unholy alliance between the Israelis and the counter-revolutionary Iranians.”

“I remember MEK,” I said. “They were anti-Shah Marxists back in the day. They have changed a lot over the years. Saddam used them as a lap-dog during his war with the Mercedes Mullahs.”

“They could be a front, sure,” said Mac thoughtfully. “I have heard Mossad has been masquerading as the CIA, running all sorts of false flag operations.”

“Well,” I said. “It is not like they are not the first target of a Shia Bomb. I certainly understand where they are coming from, but it seems like they ought to be nicer about their only real ally in the world. Even crumbling Superpowers have feelings.”

“Feelings, schmeelings,” he responded firmly. “It is war, and if people don’t recognize that it is already underway, too bad. This has the potential to jump over into something hot, and suddenly, too.”

“I feel like I have been running into Iran every time I turn a corner since 1979.” I said, watching Tinkerbelle fill up my glass with happy hour white. She gave a decent pour, since she was running around manically with Katya and Jasper since the bar and dining room where filled with foodie tourists due to the extended Restaurant Week promotion. She was wearing her Eurotrash glasses, which if anything enhanced her look of sweet vulnerability.

Mac turned over a piece of paper that was face down next to his glass of beer.

“Wendy Furnas died,” he said, turning over the page to show me.

“Lot of that going around,” I said.

Mac nodded. “He relieved me three times- At CINCPACFLT, at the Office of Naval Intelligene and in London. We were friends since the end of The War.” For Mac, of course, there is only one “The War,” though in my life there are now so many that it is hard to keep track.

“Wendy was in the college class of 1934,” said Mac. “He came to the Navy in a curious way.”

“I remember, him,” I said. “didn’t you tell me he was in charge of shutting down the Combat Intelligence Center in 1945?”

“Yep. The CIC was down to just him. He was told to get rid of the trinkets and souvenirs and padlock the place and walk away.”

“Wow,” I said. “I can only imagine the value of that stuff now. Then, I imagine it was just stuff to be disposed of.” I thought about the stacks of things in Bill and Betty’s house in The Little Village By the Bay, and the garage full of junk. I had been wading through estate paperwork all afternoon, and did not want to think about it.

“Wendy had quite a life,” said Mac. “He was a little older than me, I guess 94 when he passed. He had an exciting start to his war.”

“How so?” I asked, taking a sip of wine.

“Well, he often said he was the luckiest man in China, for one thing. He accepted a teaching position at the Shanghai American School after he graduated from college. In the spring of ‘40, Americans were advised to leave Shanghai because of deteriorating relations with Japan. They closed the Shanghai School, so Wendell transferred to St. John’s University as an English professor. Simultaneously he worked as an editor for two Chinese/American language newspapers.”

“So he ignored the advice to get out?”

Mac nodded. “By this time Shanghai was shelled, a British gunboat was sunk, and the city was taken over by the Japanese. Wendy attempted to leave the country and traveled under cover of night with a band of escaped Marines and others led by KMT guerrillas.”

“Man, that is unreal,” I said, trying to imagine being on the lamb in occupied China.

“After four days of travel they were captured by the Japanese Army. They were sent to the Bridge House Prison in Shanghai, where they were interrogated and tortured and some were put to death. While he was there, the crew of a Doolittle Raiders bomber was incarcerated and before the war ended, two were executed and two died of malnutrition.”

“How did he get out?” I asked looking for Tink to give me more wine.

“He was actually sentenced to death by the Japanese, but was exchanged for a high-value Japanese prisoner Tokyo wanted back. That is why he called himself the Luckiest man in China.”

“That is a fascinating story,” I said. “We are losing some Great Americans these days.”

“Don’t kid yourself,” said Mac with a smile. “You are creating some new Great Americans right now. But I will tell you more about Wendy tomorrow when I dig out my old notebooks.”

“I am looking forward to it, Admiral,” I said, happy to be back in a world that I actually had a fighting chance at understanding.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

The Last Picture Show

It is Friday the 13th. I don’t know if you put much stock in the old tale of woe that comes on this combination of days: there are three of them coming at us in 2012, and this is the first.

There is some squirrely stuff going on, now that I have a chance to look at the wider world again. The pesky Iranians and the covert war and bellicose saber-rattling are a little unsettling, as is the viral video of the Marines doing whatever it was they did in Helmand Province in Afghanistan last year.

There are other things to worry about. This is the sixth day of the week and the 13th of the month. The confluence of both has ominous reputations that date back to Roman times, or beyond. The day is said to portend more misfortune than some credulous minds can bear. Certainly mine.

I prefer to think that the modern association of Friday the Thirteenth as a day of bad luck dates most immediately to Friday, October 13, 1307, when the vile and rapacious King Phillipe IV of France decapitated the leadership and rank and file of the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon. We know them now by the shorter and more accommodating name of the Knights Templar.

At the time, the Templars were immensely wealthy and powerful, with both military and financial arms. They were known as “the bankers of Europe” because they controlled so much of its wealth, and operated with the charter of the Holy Father in Rome.

It took a perfect storm to bring them down. There was a weak Pope at the time, of French extraction, who was under house-arrest in Avignon, a war King who was broke and deeply in hock to the Templars, and an intricate plot to lure the Grand Master of the Templar Order to a place where he could be forcibly detained.

The scheme used the funeral of Phillippe’s sister-in-law Catherine of Courtenay as the cheese in the trap. Grand Master Jacques de Molay was invited to be a pallbearer. The funeral was in Paris, on the 12th of October.

The King had de Molay arrested the following day, along with virtually the entire leadership of the Templars, who were tortured into confessing to heresy and witchcraft. There ensued seven years of imprisonment, in which de Molay protested his innocence, but in the end, Phillipe had him burned at the stake on the island 18 March 1314.

That is a Monday, by the way, and the day that I associate with a mild headache and reluctance to get out of bed.

None-the-less, it is the Friday coincidence that will have people avoiding things today, but I won’t be one of them. I am going to treat this as an ordinary business day, and very glad to be back at it. Sleep is good. I had some intense dreams that featured rail travel in Australia. I have no idea what they meant. Portents of a journey, perhaps?

I take that under advisement, since the immediate crisis has passed, and now there is a mountain of paperwork to be done.

The show moves on with the living, and I don’t need to tell you how precious the Thanksgiving and Christmas trips up to Michigan were. All the kids got there, and if we did not know we were saying goodbye to Mom and Dad, they both knew that we were there and that we loved them.

If I had not gone for Thanksgiving and Christmas I would have kicked myself for a long time.

As part of the stack of things to be done, I looked at the last pictures I have of Bill and Betty, now freed of their roles in the long decline, and free to be themselves once more.

I now look at these pictures I took- the last ones- of Mom and Dad from the 28th of December 2011 as part of the miracle.

Betty Foley Reddig, 15 June 1924- 03 January 2012

W.E. Reddig, 08 August 1923- 03 January 2012

Amazing. The whole thing is freaking amazing.

Life is precious. We should live it.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra

Decisions

(Spike and Vic at the breakfast table in the Little Village by the Bay last week.)

I liked that Mercedes GLK350 well enough that I actually looked for one in the Certified Pre-owned section of the local dealer- the one I walk by when I hoof it to the office.

I was lucky- there is only one on the lot, and it is a weird sort of magenta, which saved me from another impulse purchase. Still, I liked pretending to be whomever it was that was doing all that stuff up in Michigan with the three-pointed star right in the middle of the grill.

I was reminded of the Caddie SRX that I drove Up North what seems like a century ago. I forgot to rate that one along with the Dodge and the Merc and the Jeep. If a Cadillac dealer was on the way to work, I probably would have considered that as well.

Much more fun thinking about new cars than about the things we have been forced to think about lately. One important and valuable tip I got was to not do anything rash, predicated on the rush of events. Take a deep breath. Relax.

The crisis is over.

Having had to make a bunch of decisions on the fly was exhausting. What happens with the earthly remains? What is left at the nursing home and Potemkin Village? What goes to consignment? What to the dump? What to Goodwill? Snap judgment is no good.

Of course, the long process of choosing a candidate is destroying all of the Republicans, so there is something to be said for a little less deliberation.
1. Selective Search for Evidence: Gathering facts that support pre-determined conclusions, but disregard other facts that support different conclusions. We are all guilty of that.

2. Premature Termination of Search for Evidence: Accepting the first alternative that looks like it might work. Finding a course of action you like and ignoring the branches and sequels.
3. Inertia: Being unwilling to change old thought patterns. Like assuming things will work out the way they always have. Sometimes they just end.
4. Selective Perception: Prematurely screening out information not assumed to be useful.
5. Wishful Thinking: Wanting to see things in a positive light, even when you know it cannot possibly turn out well.
6. Recency Effect: Putting undue attention on recent information and experience while minimizing the value of information collected in the past. Whatever is on top must be the most important, right?
7. Repetition Bias: Believing what’s been stated the most often and the loudest must be true, just based on the decibel level.
8. Anchoring and Adjustment: Being unduly influenced by initial information that shapes your view of subsequent information.
9. Group Think: Conforming to peer pressure or the opinions of the majority. I remember thinking that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.

10. Source Credibility: Rejecting input from sources prematurely judged to not be credible (or not “cool” or “in sync with the way you do business.”) Do not forward that email, just because it is too good to be true.

11. Attribution Asymmetry: Attributing success to your abilities and talents, but attributing failures to bad luck and external factors. Look in the mirror.
12. Role Fulfillment: Conforming to the decisionmaking expectations others have of someone in your position, which I have been informed on occasion is with my head up my butt.

So, deep cleansing breaths. There is nothing to be done in regard to wrapping up the estate, not until I have the certificates from the Medical Examiner in hand. I will make a list of institutions to contact, but nothing needs to be done immediately, and probably no decisions are good ones until the rawness of the grief wears off a bit.

For the first time in years, literally, I am not flinching at the sound of the telephone going off.

I cleared a shelf in the library for the square boxes from Michigan, and there is peace at last.

For now, no decisions are the best ones. Of course, they say that about Congress, too.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra

Sunset

(The plates went into the Bay right here, off the breakwater. Photo Socotra)

I am dazed. The clock radio was playing classical music, as it normally does with the alarm, and I was inhaling the first Dazbog-brand coffee of the morning before I actually looked at the clock and discovered it was a little after two AM.

Crap. Two hours early for the wake-up, and the residual of the 5-Hour energy drink must still have had my system  I have not had much of a chance to think about things, or better said, have been thinking about all the things all the time and not processing it very well.

This was a week of miracles. Whether it is a secular or Holy miracle I don’t claim to know, but I will tell you that there are the wings of angels in some things, and this week passed with a smoothness that suggests to me that we were borne along on someone else’s wings.

We got a lot done: the details with the funeral home, cleaning out the Bluffs, cleaning out the densely-packed apartment, arranging the memorial service, placing the obit, clearing space back at the house for Betty’s books and photos, and taking the rest of the new stuff without family association to the Goodwill.

The next step will be paperwork, of course, but we have decided when to have the funerals, and there is plenty of time to figure that out now that we have got the dates straight for people to travel.

The last night we were there in The Little Village By the Bay, Mike and I went down to the breakwater in the Harbor with two dinner plates from Potemkin Village the night before a very early departure to enable him to make a flight out of Detroit.

It was a dreamlike transit out of the darkness of the north, hurtling in the Mercedes rental that I will shortly have to return to the nice people at Hertz, once I unload the stuff out of it. I could not make more than a token effort when I pulled into the lot at Big Pink.

I realized it was only 0900 on a marvelous sunny January Day, and, if I played my cards right, I could be at Willow for happy hour.

I was. Best time ever, clocking in the 800 miles in 11:45:01 elapsed, which translates, with two fuel stops, to an average speed of advance of 68.04 mph.

The light was golden under deep blue skies. I had the window down a lot as the miles slid by. I thought and then stopped, letting the road feel flow up through the leather-wrapped wheel, listening to a variety of excellent channels on the SiriusXM radio in the dash. Spike and I listened to CNN and sports analysis of the New Hampshire primary, and the dissection of the alleged BCS championship game, and once I was alone in he car, and able to have the window down and the radio up full blast, I settled on The Loft for alt rock, and wound up listening to international radio later on.

I thought about Spike on the breakwater, and of us hurling the plates like inverted frisbees out into the unsettled waters of the bay to take the Greek rite, and say a goodbye in the last light high light of early January.

Making the Big Left Turn out of Michigan to cross Ohio, I noted the time on the clock on the illuminated display as I updated the nav plot. A week ago to the minute, I thought, leaving Toledo in the rear view, I called the Doc’s Nurse to see what was up with Dad.

Near Elyria was when the Doc himself called me back and told me Dad was shutting down and would not last long enough for me to get there. Approaching Cleveland was when the nursing home called to notify me he was gone.

Cruising across the central highlands of Pennsylvania and Bedford was the minute that Jackie called me say that Mom had gone, too.

I still can’t quite get my mental arms around that one, and the very strangest thing happened at the Memorial service at Potemkin Village. Mom’s friend Lee pointed out a man in a yellow fuzzy jacket.

(Ernie Mainland, owner of Windemere Cottage at Walloon.)

“That is Ernest Hemingway’s nephew,” she said. “He is the son of “Sunny” Mainland who was Ernie’s favorite sister. He owns the Windemere Cottage where the Hemingways summered at Walloon Lake.”

“Holy Cow,” I said, watching my language. “Mom was looking for him for the last two years. That was part of the whole narrative she had, of us helping to organize the the big Hemingway festival here in town this coming summer. I explained to her that it was planned for her birthday, and she was happy with that. She liked the plan. Now, that is the weekend we will have the funerals.”

“You ought to meet him,” said Lee, and I marched over and gave him my card. I explained the whole thing, and he said he was planning on being out of town when the literary celebrants came to town. Apparently being a tourist attraction can pale after several decades, but Mom and her encyclopedic knowledge of all things Hemingway in town had endeared her to him, and she did with everything she did.

A day or two later and down the road, I felt myself unstuck in time. The events swirled- the places all jumbled up. There was the apartment , the dump, the recycling center, the Goodwill, the consignment place. The car floated with minimal interference along the concrete with the cruise control on, traffic light, the miles melting away. Bedford, Somerset, Breezewood, Hagerstown, Frederick, Rockville and suddenly I was flying over the American Legion Bridge and into Virginia again.

It was still daylight when I walked into Willow and sat down on the stool next to John-with-an-H. Old Jim scowled in welcome.

I felt a little strange, I assumed from the coffee I had been drinking all day and the energy drink I consumed passing north of Pittsburgh, having a remarkable feeling of lightness, one with the ethereal skies.

No more Pennsylvania Turnpike for a while. There is nothing in the North that will summon me with the urgent command to hurtle north. All the paperwork can be done by remote control from here in Arlington. It was a magical drive, though. Pavement clean and dry, skies sunny, temperature brisk and not unpleasant with the window down in my red parka.

I managed to get the Mercedes back to Big Pink and got the high-value crap and the perishable groceries up to the unit. I assume everything else is still down there. I will have to go and check shortly, if I am to get the car back before the one-week anniversary of the minute I passed out of the garage at Reagan National Airport and into the strangest week of my life.

(Trusty Mercedes GLK-350 in the last light of the last sunset in our time in the Little Village By the Bay.)

I had an armful of mail and my computer bag and Chris the concierge said I had two boxes, too. They were square, and heavy for their modest size. They had my unit number written on the side and an official looking USPS address form on the top. I sighed, It was magical, the whole thing. The proximity of their passing, the miles under our wheels, the accommodating weather, the kindness of the people, the brilliance of the sunset.

The boxes contained the ashes of my folks.

No surprise. Bill and Betty had beat me home.

It was a week of miracles indeed.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vocsocotra.com

Comparison Drive

I am a car guy, a hazard of growing up in the Detroit of a certain age, and naturally have welcomed the opportunity to experience a variety of top-sellers in the marketplace recently.

An alert reader sent a query this morning about my rating of the Jeep Grand Cherokee, and it is a welcome change to get back to something I vaguely understand, as opposed to Life, Death, Love and The Law.

I am blessed that I do not have to have a commercial license to operate the motor vehicles. If I had one, I would be directly impacted by the Department of Transportation’s new and frighteningly stringent Hours of Service rules for professional drivers, implemented on January 1, 2012. There is a triple whammy of things affecting the industry, whether you are driving for a transport company or jobbing it out as an small business owner-operator.

The DOT is forcing shortly stints at the wheel and more mandatory rest periods. This is going to play holy hell with the way the companies have to schedule loads, and the new tough fuel regulations being imposed on the truck manufacturers are going to force lighter loads, lighter trucks and more of them to carry the same freight.

Of course, due to NAFTA, the Mexican truckers won’t have to comply, which means, I think, that we are pretty soon going to be seeing a lot more of them on the roads. I am not sure I am in favor of that, any more than I think the EPA should be declaring farm dust as a pollutant. There are unintended consequences to any central planning scheme, but you would have to ask one of the Politboro guys about that if you can find one.

Oh, wait. I guess it has been just long enough that everyone who remembers why regulating human nature doesn’t work is living at Potemkin Village. I suppose we will have to learn the same tired lessons again. In the meantime, I am waiting for those boneheads to try to apply those wonderful rules (for our own good) to personal driving.

So, with the possibility that we might be at the end of the Golden Age of American long-distance driving, I offer a little comparison driving for your consideration. As you know, I have just completed (or will soon complete, ins’hallah) extended stints in four vehicles: a Grand Cherokee, a Ford P-71 Police Cruiser, a Dodge Discovery AWD and most recently a Mercedes GLC-350. I provide the following brief auto reports and ratings for your consideration:

Mercedes GLC-350: (850 miles, so far) Awesome. A little small and could use a bigger gas tank, but great tunes, precision handling, nice cargo bay with the rear seats down useful for clearing estates. Handling requires your full attention, since apparently the Germans think you should. Bossy Teutonic fuel warning alert. Two cup holders.

Jeep Grand Cherokee: (300 miles) AWD, confidence in snow (though there was none during rental), American amenities, excellent cargo load. Several cup holders- unknown number as I was unable to sit in all seats during rental. Important plus: the Grand Cherokee comes with an intrinsic off-road capability, though of course all rental cars do.

Dodge Discovery: (2,000 miles) AWD Huge cross over-style vehicle that verged on the mini-van, bane of my married years. Handles OK. Semi-confident in adverse weather. Huge cargo load. Useful for shuttling between residence, assisted living and nursing homes. Huge fuel tank- I blinked at the cost to fill the 20-gallon tank, but you only have to do that in Cleveland. Up to 12 cupholders, depending on configuration.

Ford Crown Vic Police Interceptor (P-71): (34,000 miles). The vehicle for intimidation on the road. Professional courtesy from Law Enforcement personnel. Akin to traveling on your living room couch at extremely high speeds. Runs on fish-oil if necessary. Rear wheel drive, but combat-tested and best of the old breed. Two cup-holders.

While expensive, the three rentals and the double-blind baseline personally-owned Ford provide interesting contrasts. I would not buy the Dodge. I will never again buy a Ford with the Panther frame-on body, since sadly, they are no longer manufactured. I am told that with the existing fleet in service, parts will be available through the 2113 model year.

I would certainly consider the Jeep Grand Cherokee, as a follow on to the Crown Vic, but there is a feeling of quiet superiority in the Mercedes that makes me look eastward for Lebensraum.

I hope this is helpful in planning your long-haul future.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Taking Leave

Gentle Readers, family and friends,

There are two ways to do this, and being me, of course I am not going to chose. I’ll give you both.

I will start with the mystical version, then provide the more staid official one that may, with some modification, make the papers. Let me be clear and make no mistake: there are miracles in this world, small and large, and we just observed one yesterday.

Raven left this world just after noon yesterday. It was not unexpected, but I had just seen him and kissed his forehead last week. I was surprised by the speed of his departure, once he made his mind up to do it, and was managing the notifications and travel arrangements through the afternoon, more stunned than saddened, since you know that when you are in the process it seems quite endless.

Then another phone call came, this one from the nice lady at Potemkin Village. Jackie announced that she had bad news.

Not quite irritated, but a little querulous, I said: “I know, Dad died at noon.”

She stopped, a little perplexed. “That is not it.”

“Oh, crap.”

“Yes, I am sorry. Your Mom is dead.”

I assume Dad- no longer a Raven confined in the failing bonds of flesh- came and got her. He made pretty good time, since it is nine miles over to the Bluffs in Harbor Springs. I do not claim to know how these things work, but Mom joined him sometime after Staff looked in on her at 2:30.

She was OK, and apparently was changing clothes or packing prior to her departure. There was no reported pain or discomfort for either one.

They were together 63 years and a month until Dad was ejected from Potemkin Village due to his wanderings, since Mom could no longer keep tabs on him. He was looking for something, and yesterday, he found it.

They loved each other very much, and they left yesterday on their terms.

I am leaving Arlington in a rental Mercedes- what the hell- for Michigan this morning to pick up my brother at Detroit Metro Airport late in the afternoon for points north. I will bring my folks back here with me with the luggage once we get some stuff cleaned up in The Little Village By the Bay,

This is a world of miracles, ones beyond our ken.

I doubt if the newspaper will publish an obit that reads: “Local Couple Escapes Custody, Spends Eternity Together In Bliss,” so we have to have a version that is a little more conventional. Here it is, though of course it is not anything like the real deal, which leaves me stunned at the power of the human spirit, able to transcend space and time and death itself.

So here you go:

“It is with great sadness that I write to inform you that William Edwin and Betty Foley Reddig passed peacefully from this world in the afternoon of 03 January 2012, not far from their retirement home in Petoskey, MI.

Born August 8, 1923 to James Burr and Rhoda Fischer Reddig, Bill was the youngest of four children, while Betty, born June 15th of 1925, was the oldest of her family, the pride of Hazel and Mike Foley of Bellaire, Ohio.

The Reddigs, originally a merchant family of Shippensburg, PA, had migrated to East Orange, NJ, and eventually to the grand family home at 98 Sagimore Drive in Maplewood, where J.B. Reddig worked for Western Electric as an telephone engineer. “J.B” was recognized as a Telephone Pioneer of America for his pioneering service in the emerging technology, installing the first central phone service in Panama City, Bermuda and Rio de Janero.

Bill’s family was always oriented toward the high technologies of the day. His older brother, James C. Reddig, was an innovative aeronautical engineer (MIT ’27) who later developed sophisticated space-borne camera systems for the Kodak Corporatation. His sister Rhoda was a nurse and the founding Dean of the Univerity of Michigan Nursing School. His sister Barabara married the dynamic Air Corps veteran and engineer Richard Gile.

Betty’s Dad Mike was a star football player on a state championship team, a World War I (and Bonus Army) veteran and career railroad man. Hazel was a great beauty, and a woman of determined and loving disposition.

Betty excelled at everything she did in her long life. Friends commented that she was either the President or Secretary of every organization she joined, which included the League of Women Voters, The Petoskey Historical Society, the Garden Club and many more. She was the first of her family to attend college and completed her baccalaureate degree in three years, a common practice for men in the war years, but highly unusual for women.

Bill and Betty were the last survivors of their generation on both sides of the family.

Bill was commissioned as a Navy Pilot through the V5 Program shortly after the conclusion of World War II, He returned to New Jersey and completed a course in Industrial Design at the Pratt Institute. He was introduced to a vivacious young girl from Ohio through a blind date arranged by his childhood friend Ray Rappaport in 1947. He and Betty were married in 1948 at the Church of the Transfiguration (the Little Church Around the Corner) in Manhattan.

They renewed their vows at the same church in 2008 on the occasion of their 60th anniversary, a gala occasion that will be remembered by the numerous extended family who attended.

Bill and Betty were advised by Bill’s friend Bob Veryzer that there were burgeoning opportunities in the post-war auto industry in Detroit, and they decamped from Manhattan when Bill secured a position as a junior sylist at the Ford Motor Company. He was recruited in the early 1950s to join George Romney’s management team at the upstart American Motors Corporation, where he seved as assistant head of design to the legendary Ed Anderson and later to Dick Teague. Before departing industry to be elected as Michigan’s Governor, Romney and his people shook the foundations of the industry by producing low-cost and fuel-efficient vehicles to compete with the “gas guzzling dinosaurs” of the Big Three car companies.

Betty was no shrinking violet. She devoted primary attention to the development of their three children, common for the times, but as soon as she felt they were old enough, she returned to school to gain her teacher’s certification, and later had a full career as a high school educator at Kenowa Hills High School near Grand Rapids.

Bill flew AD-4J Skyraider attack aircraft for the Navy Reserve at NAS Grosse Isle, resigning his commission in 1956 after the birth of his third child, his daughter Ann. Both he and Betty were active in social affairs, Bill in Toastmasters and Betty in the League of Women Voters and the Michigan Constitution Convention (“Con-Con”) which revised the state’s charter document for the first time in a hundred years.

Bill’s considerable talents were recognized at AMC, and he accepted a promotion to be Head of Design at the appliance subsidiary Kelvinator. His signature accomplishment there was to apply the style of the auto side of the business to what were then plain white appliances. His concept show “The Kelvinator Originals” featured refrigerators styled as fashion statements, integrating an elegant designer touch to custom kitchens. After divestiture of the appliance company, he rose through the management ranks to become Chief Executive Officer of White Consolidated Industries of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Bill and Betty were enthusiastic visitors to Northern Michigan, and they delighted in their vacation retreat at Martin Lake, developed as the first condominium in the state of Michigan. He was an enthusiastic sportsman in summer and winter. He was elected a National Ski Patroller from the Otsego Ski Club in Gaylord, and ambassador emeritus for the Otsego Patrol for the remainder of his life.

He eventually purchased Curtis Wire and relocated to Petoskey, where he was active in his passions for sailing, skiing and golf. He also served his adopted community as a City Councilman, serving the city as Mayor Pro Tem. Active in retirement, Bill was a member of the “70+” ski club at Nubs Nob. Bill and Betty were widely admired for their kindness and courteous manners, and will be much missed by their family and many friends. Bill and Betty are survived by three children, CAPT J.R. Reddig, USN-Ret., of Arlington, VA, attorney Michael S. Reddig of Flagstaff, AZ, arts director Ann C. Reddig of Anchorage AK, and seven grandchildren.

Funeral arrangements are incomplete as of this writing, but the family anticipates service at the Reddig family cemetery in Shippensburg, PA, and the Foley plot in Bellaire, OH. They request donations in lieu of flowers be made in Betty and Bill’s name to the Alzheimer’s Association National Office 225 N. Michigan Ave., Fl. 17, Chicago, IL 60601″

No copyright. Miracles are free.
www.vicsocotra.com

Pay No Attention

“Pay no attention to the little man behind the curtain,” goes the line from everyone’ s favorite half black-and-white and half Technicolor movie. But on this day, the first working one of the New Year, after the very first School Night whose strictures I happily ignored, I am having a hard time hitting my rhythm.

The President is back from Honolulu (was it a coincidence that a Prairie Home Companion was live at the Neil Blaisdell Arena there last Saturday? I think you know the answer to that!) and the Iowa Republican Caucus circus is going to happen, whether we like it or not, and the whole shambling beast of Western Civilization will continue its apparently inexorable waltz to the abyss.

With the great issues confronting us, I am going to punt this morning. I came to that conclusion as I got the first bracing mug of Dazbog-brand Russian Roast Organic Timor Astabe free-range coffee of the morning, sweetened with a generous dollop of Pond Hill Farm raw Michigan honey and went to the mail bag.

What I am avoiding, of course, is the matter of Raven, which I am going to ignore until I can contact his attending physician later this morning from the office and attempt to find out why he has taken to his bed, and is not eating and needs oxygen. That is first and foremost, since it will determine if I have to walk down to the Bluesmobile and go back to the Little Village By the Bay.

No one is awake up there yet, so I will defer that, and any opinion about how Mitt and Newt and the other five dwarves are going to do in Iowa. I reached into the leather mail sack and pulled out a note from a pal in Alaska who pays intermittent attention to The Daily. Yesterday’s column was square in her sights. She nailed me with this:

“And raisin toast? Plus hot sauce on the omelet I hope- but no pork products?  Were you really in Culpepper?
Happy New Year, Vic.”

That stung, I was in a hurry yesterday, as you probably could tell, so I sighed and decided to invite you all “behind the scenes” at the back lot of Socotra House productions, with all the warts and no makeup whatsoever.

So come on back and don’t bump your head. The liability insurance is something that the back office people are always bitching about.

My pal’s concern about the pics not quite matching the words- the lyrics and music slightly out of synch- were properly noted. So let’s walk through the production set and try to explain the incompatibility, like Errol Flynn wearing a wristwatch in Robin Hood. At Socotra House LLC, the staff fancies The Daily as a photo-journalism enterprise, a sort of poor person’s Life eMagazine, not some stupid blog.

We were hampered by a mild hangover impacting the perils of the country tri-fecta of satellite broad-band, being Down on The Farm, and a craving for a Big Southern Breakfast.

Here is the sad truth: the pics that accompanied the story were of an imagined breakfast at a known and quite real place. Actually, they were placeholders for some found art I had not found yet. It was dark, and I needed to grind out the product and get on with the business of the real day, not the imaginary one.

I was looking from the laptop at the dining table over at the queer Japanese banner that I picked up in downtown Tokyo the same year I met the husband of my alert reader. I have no idea what it means, though probably could find out, if I had the time. I was pecking at the story, thinking about eggs and took a picture on my iPad camera, imported it, and cropped it. I will get to that some other time, probably when I am hungry for fish, soy sauce and wasabi.

By the miracle of iPhoto, I intended to crop out the logo and the headline, but I did not have time.

It is not that I wanted sushi for breakfast, though I was hungry enough to have a Japanese breakfast if there was a bustling Asian restaurant with a chef who yelled at you when you came through the half-curtain on the door, and whose knives flashed in the dawn’s early light.

Instead, I looked on the web, found a couple “representative” pictures of the restaurant where I intended to dine, and a plate of eggs, which actually had been eaten some months before in Texas.

I had thought of ordering hash-browns, since Frost does them really well, but I saw the Texas version of the grits and they looked good. I had become enamored of the ground corn with fresh creamery butter  through the Third Fleet Flag mess in Pearl Harbor, and my mind wandered through the mid-Pacific via the Ford Island Ferry. Plus, grits were truly southern, and Culpeper and the Frost Diner are nothing if not Southern.

So, I “borrowed” the image, citing an imaginary “fair use,” and making a note to change the order I had not made yet at the Frost Diner to match the words to the story I had not completed about a breakfast I had not had yet, but was making my mouth water.

I looked at the Gnome by the door as I gathered my crap together as the light came up. The dwarf (no Republican, he) had joined my Grandmother’s home retinue at 98 Sagamore Road in Maplewood, New Jersey, about a century ago. His wiring had gone bad, and when that home was broken up years ago upon her death, the creature had taken up a place in the crawlspace in Petoskey before migrating to Culpeper in the trunk of the Police Car, back when I felt guilty about taking things out of Raven and Big Mama’s house, rather than just trying to get rid of all the crap there.

I snapped a shot of the Gnome to remind myself to get fine grit sandpaper, black enamel paint, a small paintbrush, and figure out how to manufacture a sturdy base to affix to his delicate iron boots.

And a pennant to place in the hole in his empty iron left hand. Of course, that is going to mean a trip to the Lowe’s home improvement center in the Big Box end of town, so the picture would help with the shopping list, which I always remember only when I arrive at the farm and am getting unpacked and don’t want to go out again.

Over the course of the last two years, I have commissioned the cutting of new glass panes to replace the lost originals in the lamp. Now I only need to figure out how to attach the original light fixture back into the lamp after re-wiring it. Work in progress, I thought, as I filled up the trunk of the Police Interceptor with the trash (no waste pick up out here, you have to pack it out) and put out some cat food for my absent Heckle, just in case she showed up.

In general order, I needed to get the sun up, the police car into downtown Culpeper, get a shot of the marquee of the Frost Diner to which I actually owned the copyright, then order three eggs and grits from big Stephanie, a country girl of broad sweet freckled complexion and some two hundred odd-pounds, who probably will consider getting her figure back once her daughter is just a little older.

First, I had to stop and marvel at the massive edifice that has been thrown up just down the road from the little vest-pocket farm I own. The light is enhanced, but real enough. It will balance the abandoned share-cropper shack immediately across the property, which is visible now that winter has beaten down the foliage, but will disappear again soon enough.

I thought about going back to get some shots of the ramshackle structure with the No Trespass sign at the end of the dirt lane, but settled on this picture, since I was hungry and the day was calling me. This is important, and could impact my assessment and appraisal value of my property.

I have Raven’s disabled parking pass in the Cruiser, which I only use when I need it, and parked the Bluesmobile in a challenged spot on Main Street, no kidding, that is what they call it, near the diner. I considered that moral impact of the fact that I might be inconveniencing someone more challenged than myself. Screw it, I thought, the pass expires in 2014. I will work out the moral ambiguity then.

Across the street from the diner is the boyhood home of Confederate General A.P. Hill, one of Lee’s more able Lieutenants, and which, in the General’s active (and absent) years, had been home to a ground-floor tobacconist whose most illustrious client had been Ulysses Simpson Grant, who would stop, by himself, alone, to purchase the daily handful of cigars that would eventually kill him when his staff and army of 100,000 men occupied the town in the winter of 1863-64, before the Overland Campaign that at considerable cost, took Richmond. I liked the light on the building, which survived the recent earthquake in fine shape.

Then, having liked the upward looking shot of the Frost marquee that I “borrowed” I looked up, and thought I might be able to do it one better:

The neon sign was still on, and the light of the day was brand spanking new. I liked it.

There were plenty of empty stools in the diner when I went in- push on the left side of the double glass door. it was early, after all, even if the story was already on the street and available to readers in Sweden and the UK in time for their late lunch.

These are the actual eggs, grits, Heinz-57-brand catsup and Pete’s hot sauce (vinegar and pepper-based, not that really hot stuff from J.C. McIlhenny Tabasco sauce, which is way high on the Scoval scale of hotness, and which, for over 140 years, has stood as the ultimate test of gastronomic courage. That was quite beyond me, and wanted no challenge, just some eggs and grits and an English muffin. All I wanted was to jazz up the eggs a little.

No courage required- the sweetness of the Heinz was to balance the jazz. Stephanie delivered the plate to me with cheerful abandon, bantering with the regulars, and refreshed the mug with some steaming hot java. I read a surreal novel called Good Omens as I sat there in front of the juke box, and checked the New York Times on the iPad along with the copy of the story from the inbox on my email as I sat there, happy as a pig in- well, whatever.

There were no overt pork products involved in the creation of the three egg omelet. I have to watch that, since I have alert readers who have been critical of the imaginary diet I have, mostly based on the quite authentic pictures of the Willow Restaurant’s haut cuisine. Meat is bad, for all the reasons you are well aware of, though ovo-lactate is OK, as I understand the rules, which means the eggs and the cheese and the veggies are OK, but real southern sausage is off the menu for cruelty reasons.

They say the hen contributes to a Southern breakfast, but the pig is really committed to it.

It was a great breakfast, and Stephanie gave me a Styrofoam go-cup to keep me company for the rest of the 68 miles to Arlington, where I hooked the iPad to laptop, downloaded and edited the pics, sent them to the production staff in Fountain, Colorado, to make the official record copy on the web site and with some resignation, confronted the new year.

Thanks for letting me explain. In my experience, integrity is everything in this business, and once you can fake that, you have it made.

Plus, if they pass that new Internet Piracy legislation, I might not get the chance,

Now, off to the freaking office. It is the first work day of the year, and I will have to figure out something for the story this morning.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com