Clash of the Titans
(Justin Verlander on the mound. Photo NBC.)
I am groggy and it is the Fall Fund Raiser on National Public Media, which is enough to make me irritated all by itself. It is my fault, the buck stops here and all that. I accept full responsibility in passive voice. Mistakes were made.
I stayed up to watch the Tigers last night and wound up flashing over to the unhappy collision of the alleged Titans at Hofstra.
Mitt got double-teamed and still kept his composure. It was painful to watch Candy Crowley try to steer things to Mr. Obama, and to a degree she succeeded, even if it made her twist like a pretzel.
(CNN Senior Political Correspondent Candy Crowely. Photo CNN.)
Her insertion of extraneous and incorrect clarification into Mitt’s attack on the President’s record on the Benghazi assassination was either transparently partisan or an indication that she has significant short-term memory problems that could require professional help.
But oh well- what did I expect? The media has been carrying the President for years now, and it is foolish to expect the wonks to change now.
The President may get a bump out of this- he certainly showed some vinegar that was completely absent in his first performance, but it is pretty easy to improve on an abysmal showing. I am listening to the talking heads pump up his performance this morning.
If Mr. Romney is elected, how much more will we have to contribute to NPR to keep All Things Considered and Big Bird afloat? That is a pocketbook issue.
The issues I did not hear about included Climate Change or Sequestration. The former is a touchy subject, since the big warming trend seems to have stopped sixteen years ago. Sequestration, on the other hand, is real and looming and it scares the crap out of me because it will knock the bottom out of my line of business. Not a word about that, and it is bigger even than Big Bird for most of the people I know.
I went back to the game that may matter less but is much more satisfying. Justin Verlander got to the ninth inning before he got the hook. He pitched a great game, though the Yankees were game and stayed with him right to the end.
It is too soon to count out those pin-striped New Yorkers- C. C. Sabathia is on the mound for the Yanks, and he has had full rest and could drag this to game five. The Yankees have not been swept in a series since 1980.
The Tigers won Game Three but it would be nuts to count out the Yankees yet.
That is a sort of universal feeling this morning. But the litany of little set-pieces speeches made some things crystal clear.
I will not vote for George Bush this time. I have decided that the only candidate who actually did what he said he was going to do was Justin Verlander.
I will be watching tonight. It could be titanic.
(Max Scherzer will take on C.C. Sabathia in Game 4 of the ALCS. Image courtesy US Presswire)
Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Holed Up in Virginia
(No debate about it, Justin Verlander is prepared to stare down his rivals and come out aggressive against the hated Yankees. Photo AP).
The second debate is tonight. The President has been holed up in Virginia prepping for the encounter with the former Governor.
That is precisely what I am thinking about doing- holing up in the country and not coming out until I know exactly what we are going to be dealing with after November 6th. I am not going to start hyperventilating this early this morning- I got off in that direction yesterday and had the solid beginnings of at least three rants before I took a deep breath and let it filter out slowly.
Ooooooom.
I read the last of the Joe Picket novels last night, at least the last one I had not read, having missed it on the cascade through the ten or eleven books. This one featured a shoot-out with some survivalists from the Upper Pennisula (“da Yoop”) of Michigan shooting it out with our trusty game warden and his Special Ops pal Nate, who is decidedly ambivalent about enforcing the mandate of Washington against a couple citizens who just wanted to be left alone.
For a travelogue mystery set in the great West, this one was pretty apocalyptic- “No Where to Run” is the title of the C.J. Box page turner.
I am not as apocalyptic this morning. I am thinking about adding a Little House to the property down south and establishing my own compound against the coming storm.
You know the whole concept about that: people can live in remarkably small spaces, if necessary, and in some modicum of comfort. Here is one of the designs I saw for a hot-tub house or a writing or painting studio:
(A small house. I have a hot electric connection that runs out to the edge of the woods that could power it.)
Inflation should have been one of the issues in the campaign, but I doubt if it will come up. It seems to me the price of gas and food should be enough to convince anyone that there is an issue that Mr. Bernanke is not addressing, and as one of the Boomers on the verge of entering a fixed income, that scares the crap out of me.
They don’t count those categories because they are too “volatile.”
Duh. They are volatile as my mood this morning. The American League series has moved to Motown, and the Tigers have two wins under their belts and the pitching rotation looks awesome.
Three weeks to go to and the result of the World Series- and some other things- will be clear and hopefully we can all move on and do something constructive with our time.
The main question tonight confronting the nation is whether or not Justin Verlander is going to bring his A-game to confront the slumping, injury-riddled Yankees at Commercia Park in my beloved, bedraggled Detroit.
It is best-of-seven to win the American League. Justin Verlander is at the height of his powers and on the mound tonight. Derek Jeter, Captain of the Yankees is sidelined. A win tonight and the Tiggers could finish this off at home tomorrow.
The Yanks best years are behind them, and maybe I will have something to cheer tonight. The Tigers are not the only ones who could benefit from having a good night.
Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Turning of the Season
(Deck before. Work in progress. All photos Socotra.)
I am down on the farm and the light is just coming up. The first truck and horse trailer did not rumble down the lane-and-a-half blacktop until nearly seven, dawn still minutes away. I contrast that to the morning in Arlington, and the difference is stark. Here on the farm is the sound of the train at the grade crossings on Rt 522, peaceful, breeching the soft night sounds with the remembrance of other deep nights in the country.
Arlington’s mornings arrive stark and all-business. The roar of bureaucrats and lobbyists hurtling into the Federal City is palpable through the open door to the balcony. Their aggressive headlights pierce the soft light as they roar toward their cubicles.
Here in Culpeper there is little ambient light save my own eerie cold blue-tinged mercury vapor of the security light on the pole over looking the Garden of Whatever and the birdbath.
Don-the-Builder’s crew was here and sealed the deck since I was on the property a week ago. The wood looks good and ready for another season challenging the gales of winter. I listened for the whine of The Russian chainsaw in the pastures adjoining mine, but things were silent and broken only by the distant rattle of gunfire from the range at the hunting camp at Happy Acres near the state forest. Life is pretty damn good here.
(Deck sealed and ready for winter. I think I got the stain color about right. Now, if I can get the pavers in the ground I will be able to walk without getting Virginia’s red mud on my boots, all the way to the Garden of Whatever from the stairs).
I succeeded in failing to bring the correct drill bits to repair that pesky fence board that was crushed under the weight of the pine that came down in the upper pasture two years ago. Screws, not nails, is my motto, but one would have to actually act on it.
The small things- priming the little gas engine on the blower to clean out the garage of a year’s worth of detritus- and prepare for the workbench and small tools I need to get organized. Chores are good, and justify a most excellent happy hour on the deck with the Russians when the light began to lower, and the colors under the pale blue skies began lengthen and darken with purple hues of evening.
I was sitting on the refurbished deck drinking with the Russians, trying to wrap my brain around the concept that this is likely to be home, the place I am going to live one of these days.
(The dying flowers of fall just over the deck. won’t be long now).
The change is marked. Leaving Fairfax County the Obama-Kaine-Moran lawn signs abruptly change to Romney-Allen-Cantor. That is just about the place where the State has placed the ‘Welcome to Virginia” center. It is clear that Richmond views the northern tier of the richest counties as not exactly being of the state, since they face Washington, not the state capital.
Same deal headed south on the nightmare of I-95: the welcome center is at Fredericksburg, an hour’s drive (if you are lucky) south of Arlington.
(The view from the kitchen window. I do not mind doing the dishes here. Ah, Fall!)
So at the farm there is a certainty about many things: the changing of the seasons, being one. Another the necessity of caring for the land and the structures placed upon it. The satisfaction of doing simple chores and laying in supplies for the coming winter.
None of these things happen back in Blue Arlington. We are busy, busy up there, and I forget just why.
Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
With a Whimper
(Defending World Champ Cardinals celebrate the end of the Nationals pennant drive. AP Photo Nick Wass.)
“The question of how baseball could be so cruel to this city may be answered some day. It existed in horrible form in the nation’s capital for decades, and then it vanished for 33 years. It came back gnarled and wretched for seven more seasons, only to yield to this blissful summer, to the moment Friday past midnight when Drew Storen stood on the mound at chilled Nationals Park and, with two outs in the ninth inning, threw 13 pitches that could have moved the Washington Nationals four wins from the World Series.”
– Adam Kilgore, reporting in the Washington Post this morning.
I already burned up the keyboard this morning doing an analysis on what might have happened if all that stimulus cash thrown at green technology had been directed elsewhere. Like us.
As Smokin’ Joe Biden pointed out pithily the other evening, even Paul Ryan asked for some stimulus on behalf of his constituents, like that wasn’t his job. Joe was awesome, in the same way a drunk ex-brother-in-law might be, before one of those uncomfortable Thanksgiving dinners.
The mantra of the campaign, as we stumble toward The Day, is “the lies.” I can’t sort it out- there are so many of them, and the word itself, uttered at increasing decibels and accompanied by rolling eyes and maniacal laughter, seems to substitute for rational discourse. So, I am going to put that aside.
I don’t use the Washington Post for much these days- I dropped my hard-copy subscription years ago when the cheerleading seemed to jump over the OpEd line and get entrenched in what had been the hard-news side of the press room.
Not that it ever was, really. Politics is a tough business with a lot of high-elbows and cheap shots, and has been since the beginning. Harry Truman observed famously that “if you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen.”
Actually, he had been saying that long before he became President. When he was in charge of the War Contracts Investigating Committee in the Senate, looking at war profiteering issues, he used the phrase. When he became Chief Executive he updated it to refer to the grilling of his appointees by rambunctious Senate Republicans. In 1949, he said: “I’ll stand by [you] but if you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen.”
I like cooking, and I can deal with the heat in there, even if the hurly-burly of modern politics in the wired age doesn’t appeal to me much. As an aside to the Truman reference, the period has a grip on me at the moment.
I am taking a break from blood-soaked modern Western mysteries and am reading the fascinating story of the Eisenhower administration’s development over the ‘boring” eight years of the 1950s. The title of “Ike’s Bluff,” by Evan Thomas refers to the way Mr. Eisenhower handled the genie-in-the-bottle of his day: atomic weapons.
Though the story comes across as a sort of Restoration Comedy of manners compared with modern politics, it features some amazing moments. Some of them include National Security Council meetings where serious discussion of nuking the Red Chinese came up more than once.
The times may have been antique, but the issues were real. Ike turns out, in this depiction, anyway, to have been a pacifist. Maybe only someone who has been responsible for the prosecution of an enterprise that was truly horrible can judge the consequences of pursuing a course of action that could result in something even worse.
Thomas claims that Ike’s refusal to take the nuclear option off the table made it credible, though he never would have exercised the option. Its very existence was deterrent enough, so he never disclosed if he was really willing to use The Bomb.
I don’t know about that. I do know this: it is going to be a sunny day, with temperatures in the upper sixties. The forecast for tomorrow has changed, for the better. Time to head for the farm. There are more things to consider than the change of the season, and the season of the witch that we are living together.
The Nats lost, darn them. They were so freaking close. They had the best record in Baseball, and they won the National League East.
Adam Kilgore wrote about it in the Post this morning, since the game did not end until I had been asleep for hours. Adam is a veteran reporter now, and his words this morning are lyrical.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nationals/nationals-lose-9-7-cardinals-advance-to-nlcs/2012/10/13/d1aabce2-14d7-11e2-ba83-a7a396e6b2a7_story.html
The only political implication in Adam’s piece is that we will have way too much time to listen to the nonsense. There are 24 days to go until we get to take the ribbon off the box that contains the answer to the riddle of our collective future.
The Nats don’t have one, at least until the start of Spring Training next year.
Hope springs eternal, naturally, but I think this afternoon I am just going to look at the colors of the trees on the back pastures at Refuge Farm and just not worry about it.
Go Tigers.
Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Home Run
(Jayson Werth slams it out of National’s Park. Photo AP).
Can’t do it this morning. Well, maybe I can, but there is so much I have to ignore that it makes me a little disoriented. Bear with me- I am sure you are inundated as well.
I drove my younger boy and a buddy out to Dulles, late in the afternoon. Going out was not that bad, but coming back toward the capital the surge of traffic toward Nationals Park and Game Four, and maybe the desperate finale for a Washington baseball team’s first appearance in the post season since 1933.
The town is a little giddy about having something other than the endless spewing of half-truths and misconceptions that goes along with the endless campaign, and with first pitch at four in the afternoon, the usual patterns of the commute were all screwed up. By the time I got a drink and was comfortable enough to rail at Major League Baseball for blacking out local television coverage in preference to their own premium cable baseball channel, I gave up and just listened on the radio.
Listening- the theater of the mind is what they call it on NPR- took me back to the days I listened to the legendary Ernie Harwell, play-by-play announcer for the Detroit Tigers in the sepia-toned radio days of my youth.
The Tiggers themselves were up against it against the surprising Oakland A’s, so there was plenty of competition for my attention, and the Nats put on a nail-biter right to the bottom of the 9th inning. Then, to my astonishment, Jayson Werth strode up to the plate, played some cat and mouse with reliever Lance Lynn for twelve pitches before parking the lucky thirteenth and winning the game.
Hysteria ensued, and it was refreshingly not about a gaffe or some other act of public stupidity. Later, the Tiggers stumbled, 4-3, and will go to a fifth game to settle the matter with phenom Justin Verlander on the mound.
(Oakland keeps it alive against Detroit. Photo AP).
I was pretty agitated from the drive and the games. I am not sure I can go back to commuting in this crazy town, and wound up going down fairly early with the iPad slumped on the covers next to me.
I woke up to the sound of the radio- I assumed it was 0445, and time to get rolling and accordingly rolled upright. Then I realized it was just the radio left “on,” and it was two. I hit the head and was awake.
Crap. I tossed for a while and gave up and fished around for the iPad and went back to the blood-soaked mystery that had put me down for the count.
I was so happy about the games. Anything to keep our attention off the antics of the politicians. I finished the mystery in the small hours of the deep night, which included a body count of at least a dozen, and then started an account of the Eisenhower Presidency called “Ike’s Bluff,” which purports to explain the whole boring 1950s thing as being the General’s secret battle to save the world.
It is so quaint that it made me quite homesick for another era.
I finally drifted off again in time to be gently roused by the sound of classical music. I like waking to music, even if it is occasionally disorienting. I remember the “buzz” function of the alarm used to provoke a Pavlovian response from me, which meant slamming a palm down on the top of the clock, necessitating periodic replacement of the device.
I have adjusted to not panicking at the first blast of consciousness. Life is good. I understand there was a debate or something on last night, too. Apparently no one hit a home run, though both sides are claiming decisive victory.
Four weeks to go- to the World Series, anyway.
Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
The Mad Duck
I suppose it is the passing of the icons in a life that marks the path we all travel, eventually. I have difficulty in thinking that the blazing blue eyes of Paul Newman grew rheumy, and are stilled by the ravages of lung cancer.
He will be forever young in my mind, though I know he is not. Have you seen the face of Robert Redford these days?
The list of those cultural icons who defined the lives of the Boomers is legion, and many have gone just this year.
The one that sent chills through me was the departure of one of the great ones yesterday, My Favorite Lion, the guy George Plimpton termed “The Mad Duck,” Mr. Alex Karras. Plimpton saw the flailing arms and churning legs, and that is the image that occurred to him. It stuck.
Funny it happened now. This is a magical sort of moment in the rhythms of the season. Major League Baseball is entering the exciting post-season and the run to the World Series. The stupid Nationals bobbled the first home post-season game yesterday afternoon since 1933, and somewhere, the ghosts of all those awful Washington Senators teams or yore are shaking their heads.
The National Football League is headed for Week Six. The colleges are shooting it out as they get to League play. I could happily pull the rock vodka dispenser into the living room and camp there, images flickering on the Big Screen, 24 x 7.
With Alex Karras gone, though, the golden light of years past is dimmer. Al Kaline, the Hall-of-Fame right fielder who played 22 years for the Detroit Tigers is still alive at 77, the same as Alex. Baseballs players do not take the same sort of punishment that interior linemen do, and I hope for many further returns for Al.
We had some giants in the Motor City, back in the day. Mr. Hockey, Gordie Howe, is still with us at 84. His endurance will never be equaled on the ice, all apologies to Mr. Gretsky notwithstanding.
But Alex represented something special to those of us who played the interior line, lighter than the guy across from you, and the manifestation that at the highest level of play, it was intensity and intelligence that mattered, not bulk.
The Mad Duck is famous because of literary dilettante George Plimpton, who went on to his reward shortly after a Paper Lion Reunion in 2003.
Plimpton brought their world alive in his book about the experience of an patrician amateur attempting to play a sport populated by blue-collar guys. Don’t remind me that The Mad Duck was the son of a physician. To us he could have been a guy from the UAW local down the street. He was us, a rebel.
He was unrepentant about gambling on the game along with Golden Boy Paul Hornung. Even the suspension for the 1964 season was just part of his persona.
Hornung kissed the ring of league Commissioner Pete Rozelle. He is in the Hall of Fame. Alex continued to hang our at the Lindell A.C., the legendary sports watering hole that closed in 2002. I still recall the “mortgage burning” party there, and some of the same undesirables of Detroit life were still around and highly visible.
The Lindell A.C. closed in 2002. Plimpton last saw The Mad Duck the next year and then he was gone. Joe is the last of the three alive- he is 80.
That the three of them were on the same field once was a poignant reunion. The Mad Duck, for a variety of perfectly good reasons, had been estranged from the Lion’s organization. Reportedly, he was energized by the recognition of the cultural DNA of the old NFL that Plimpton wrote about.
Oh, they were bad boys. My pal Bonds lived down the street from Joe Schmidt and once saw Dick “Night Train” Lane’s chanteuse spouse Dinah Washington waiting in a big car outside for him. The names flood back: rogue QB Bobby Layne, Doak Walker, Tobin Rote and Leon Hart. They were our heroes, and the fact that we went to school with the Rote girls and played against Leon’s son made their shadows long and personal.
Alex stayed a bad boy, but he had a subtle wit that belied his violent trade. Punching out that horse as the character “Mongo” in blazing saddles. Appearing in bed with Robert Preston in the gender comedy “Victor/Victoria.” Whatever that sitcom was- “Webster?” He never ceased to surprise, and until the dementia induced by way too many blows to the head stole his reality.
He was part of the suit against the NFL about the effects of repeated concussion when he died. When he was playing, Bobby Layne was the last QB not to wear a facemask.
For all the undersized but highly motivated interior linemen of the world, I salute the passing of The Mad Duck.
My world is a little smaller this morning, but it was made larger for all these years by his presence. Thanks, Alex.
(Alex and George at the Silverdome, 2003. Photo Detroit Free Press.)
Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Frozen in Amber
I was over at Mac’s place yesterday to have a chat and catch up for the week.
After I signed in at the front desk, Paris the attractive young woman at the desk permitted me access to the elevator and the ride up to the fifteenth floor. Mac had the door propped open to his unit, though I knocked on the frame to announce my presence.
“Come in, come in!” he shouted. I strode into his main room and fished my notebook out of my backpack and sat on the couch next to him, wincing as my left leg twitched and lower back flashed with pain. By comparison, Mac was in good shape. He had his oxygen tube strong under his nose, but a sharp sport jacket.
“Were you out today?” I asked. “You look great.”
“Yep. I was at the hospital to see my oncologist for a follow up on the radiation treatments. I got a clean bill of health, since it worked. The pain is gone.”
“That is fabulous news, Admiral,” I said. “I think that calls for a glass o wine, if you have some.” As it turns out, there was a charming bottle of ’06 Chardonnay on the counter with the appropriate tools out to open it. Mac used his walker to accompany me to the kitchen, the hose to his oxygen snaking ominously close to his feet as he traveled.
“Well, it is sort of a clean bill of health,” he said. “The Doc said I was essentially on hospice care.”
“That is absurd,” I said. “You have more energy than I have seen in weeks.”
“Depends on which Doc. I have an oncologist, a pulmonary physician and cardiologist.”
“Wow,” I said. “I had a drive by with orthopedics this year, but you have the Royal Flush.”
Mac gave a merry laugh, and it is good to see his eyes sparkling in amusement. He kicked the jam from beneath the front door to allow it to swing closed as we returned to the living room.
We eventually wound up seated again on the couch, and we talked about drugs, the history of the Naval Intelligence Designator, and the role of Fleet Admiral Nimitz had in institutionalizing a career path for the intelligence folks who made him a believer in the value of OPINTEL
I marveled at the direct impact of Admiral Nimitz in what became my life’s work- and of course, Mac, who was the 21st of the New Class of intelligence officers selected in the very first Board to be held after the conclusion of World War Two.
I am not going to burden you with it. The details are of interest to a fairly narrow bunch of people, and many of the more interesting ones are long gone. I have my notes, and they will go in the book when I get around to it. Mac was sitting alert and listening for Doug-the-Building-Manager to appear.
“I need to collect my wine glasses, since I am entertaining more these days at home. They are across the hall, and Doug said he would get me in to look for them.”
“Is the owner away?” I asked.
“Well, yes, you could say so. She died.”
“Oh,” I said. We had been talking about Wyman Packard, a departed colleague, who erroneously claimed to have been the first Naval Intelligence Officer selected, when Mac could prove he had made his designator transfer the year before he did. I was writing when an assertive knock hit the door.
“Must be Doug,” said Mac, and shouted for whoever it was to come in.
I put down my notebook and took a sip of Chardonnay. A very tall man with a shaved head and a broad grin entered the apartment and hook hands all around. “This is Doug, the Mayor of the Madison,” said Mac. “The Grand Poobah.”
I told him I was pleased to meet him, and he in turn told Mac he was ready to go across the hall if that was convenient. Mac said it was, and almost bounded out of the room, if that is something you can do with a walker. “You can come, if you want,” he said, and I followed dutifully out into the hall.
The unit just kitty-corner from Mac’s was the same anonymous beige in color, and Doug opened it up. There were no lights on. An envelope was on the floor. The last Steig Larsen murder mystery was on the counter. Pictures of a couple grand-daughters were on a nice oriental cabinet by the wall. The light was dim, the blinds drawn.
Doug and Mac went into the kitchen and began opening cabinets. I watched in interest, since they looked exactly like Big Mama’s did at Potemkin Village when my brother and I arrived to clean them out. The difference was that there were no wedding rings on the bureau near where she had collapsed, the EMT tech thoughtfully removing them from her lifeless finger when they took her away. His disposable gloves were in the trash.
I resisted the temptation to look in the wastebasket here.
The apartment was as if frozen in amber, the last moment a still life life.
Rooting around, Doug found approximately twenty-five coffee cups from the dining room in the cupboard above the sink, and a dozen or two of the industrial grade stemmed glasses for wine or water. He said he would collect them later, and I saw one mug that had actually belonged to the previous owner. It was emblazoned with the words “Sexy Senior Citizen.”
Eventually, the real wine glasses with the elegant stems were found in precisely the last place they looked. There were four. I took three carefully, and we left the strange time capsule across the hall from Mac’s place. I put them next to the sink to be washed by hand, a quality that Mac values since they do not fit in his little dishwasher.
“When did she die?” I asked. “This week?”
“No,” said Doug, preparing to go get a cart to collect the Madison’s assorted crockery. “She has been gone about a year. There is a son someplace, but he has never even come to look at the place. I need to go down to the courthouse to file some papers and get rid of it all if he doesn’t do something pretty soon.”
Frozen in amber, I thought. Very strange.
I finished up my glass of wine as we talked about the coming sale at the PX and the various aspects of crock-pot cooking. Mac had become quite the chef when his wife Billie was ill, and he intended to keep his hand in now that the chill winds of Fall have arrived.
“I will see you next week, “ I said, collecting notebook and pen and throwing them into the backpack. “Be safe in the meantime, and if you need anything, just call.”
Mac looked for the remote to go back to election coverage, and I got up to shake his hand before I got any of that campaign nonsense lodged in my ears.
The elevator was slow in coming, and when the doors slid open, there were six elderly women with a variety of canes, walkers and support devices heading down from above to the dining room. Their men are apparently all gone, but they seemed to be persevering pretty well.
This life thing I definitely not for sissies. When I was back on the street, I pondered if I should go home and cook something sensible for dinner, or walk across Fairfax Drive to Willow for another glass of wine.
I think you know what I did. Did I mention that Old Jim has got another haircut? He is looking like a retired Marine Gunnery Sergeant these days.
Life is good, I thought, considering the alternative.
Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Phishing Expedition
I not longer claim to understand the technology that is humming around me, any more than I comprehend the apparently baseless depravity of the political process. As you know through weary repetition, I am trying my best to avoid the steady barrage of ads on television and commercial radio.
I am sticking with alt-rock on the satellite radio in the Panzer when I drive, but it is harder to get around on the flat-screen. Over the weekend, it appeared that there was nothing but the campaign, periodically interrupted by moments of football.
It is beyond irritating. I have become Pavlovian in my ability to hit the “mute” button on the remote, but the effort requires concentration and once, deep into the second NFL contest of the Sunday, it caused me to spill my drink.
That is unacceptable, and I have cast about for ways to avoid those sorts of household catastrophes. Here is something I have found handy: the new-and-bigger Panasonic flat screen TV I got to replace a dumb-and-smaller one is now aware, and possibly more so than I am.
Here is the thing that amazed this old codger: the television works off the wifi connection in the unit, and connects me directly with Amazon, which is happy to stream television shows of my choosing direct from my video library to the screen without the requirement of being attached to the bastards at Comcast cable.
Well, Comcast still provides the point-of-presence for the cable, but this is close enough to freedom for government work.
Voila! Freed from advertising, and these days that is a powerfully good thing for mental hygiene.
I am not perfect, of course, far from it. I have the same fever everyone does in this town, and I tuned into commercial television briefly to watch the historic second post season appearance by a Washington DC baseball team since 1933. The Cards shellacked the Nats after dropping the opener of the series.
It is a diversion, but it came at the cost of seeing some of the political ads.
Ick. I felt unclean. When the Nats were put down, 12-4, I decided to do the same thing to myself. It was too early, and the predictable happened.
My eyes popped open at 0200. I could not get back to sleep. It was the rattle of cold rain on the window that did it, I think, and the chill wind that passed through the slightly-open window. I tried to get back down, but couldn’t. I felt around on the other side of the bed, not looking for anyone in particular but for the iPad.
I fumbled for my glasses but discovered that the Kindle App and even the mystery novel that opened with a triple-murder in Saddlestring, WY, could not sooth me back to dreamland.
I snuggled deep under the eiderdown and the quilt atop it as I idly flicked the pages across the screen. It must be the moisture in the air mass that brings the chill home to the bones. The damaged leg feels it most, and I dread the coming of winter, which may be penetrating in a way I won’t like. The predicted minimum was supposed to be in the low-50s, but according to the iPad, the thermometer is hovering down around 48.
The breeze through the window sent a chill radiating through the unit- a dank one. Leo-the-Engineer will not turn on the heat at Big Pink until next week, which of course will not coincide with the passing of the cold front across us, bound in from the west. The great midsection of the country is shivering ahead of schedule, and I think it is going to be a hard winter.
Between the average effort of living and listening to the surreal political show, I am a little nuts. Last week it was the news that Bank of America got hit by a massive denial-of-service attack that was supposed to cover wire transfers from depositor accounts. Attribution is always tough on these things, but rumors put the source in Tehran, which is going nuts itself over the impact of the sanctions and the cyber-war against their nuclear program.
Perhaps you have become inured to the constant stream of attack. I look at email even from trusted pals with a jaundiced eye. If there is an ambiguous or missing title and a simple link in the body of the message it means the link is bad, bad, bad. Worse even than those “Dear Beloved in Christ” solicitations from Nigeria.
I was accordingly suspicious when I got a call from the nice folks from American Express yesterday morning indicating that my account information had been compromised. There were a couple charges I did not recognize, but refused to give any personal information to the anonymous caller. Instead, I backed off the call, suspicious that it was a Phishing social-network attack.
You know about those, I assume. It is ridiculously easy to penetrate computer networks, if you know the social engineering game. A few phone calls after basic research about a company can reveal chains of command, and spoofing the email address of a superior including an attachment with an executable file…well, you know how that goes. It just requires a little homework. Open the attachment and an executable file runs and hi-jacks the machine, installing back doors for the malevolent into the “secure” server without anyone being the wiser.
So, to ensure that the nice lady on the phone was who she said she was, I demurred on confirming my address or the card number and said “good bye,” and hung up.
I found my wallet and dragged out the Amex card, which I do not use for anything except a few recurring accounts. I contacted the phone number on the back of the card. They confirmed the mystery charges and invalidated the old card number and cancelled the charges.
I asked them if it was Amex whose database had been compromised, or Netflix or Verizon or the Virginia EZPass transponder people who are the only ones who have the card information on file. The lady on the phone was coy. Any of these entities could have been hacked and the list of card numbers and CVV information compromised.
In my experience, when they call you, they already know what the problem is but will not acknowledge it to avoid liability.
Heck, all this was being done over communications that may contain components obtained from the nice folks at PRC-owned Huawei Communications. And you know about that.
I think it is going to be a long day. I will try to stay dry and warm- two things that despite the drought and Climate Change, seem to be pretty nice things to be.
Four weeks until we know against what to batten the hatches against- storms real or political, or more likely both. I cannot think of an alternative to follow, or an outcome that does not fill me with a touch of dread suspiciously like the chill wind of early winter through the window.
Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Vodka on the Rocks
(Jeff Henderson’s Funky Rock Beverage Dispenser. Photo Socotra.)
Sorry- I am disoriented by a lot of the circus that masquerades as our democratic process, and Columbus Day isn’t helping me out. Maybe you are too, unless you are retired and every day is Saturday. I am not, at least not until we do the Thelma-and-Louise drive off the cliff in January when the Sequestration thing kicks in and my industry gets killed.
The suspense is killing me. It is enough to drive a poor contractor to drink.
The radio is telling me that traffic is light but still confused, since the reversible lanes are not reversed, parking regulations are not being enforced, and all the trains are not running.
That has the unintended consequence of driving more people into their cars to get where they are going. Apparently it is a national holiday of some sort, though to be fair, that aspect of the legal holiday has been under acute revision by the weight of collective mass guilt we are supposed to be feeling about other transients who moved into the Americas from less inviting climes.
I am ambivalent. The company does not honor the holiday, but stays above controversy. The HR people utilize a convenient mechanism to avoid the matter altogether: they grant us two “floating” holidays that “can be used to honor days of special personal significance.”
So, should I choose to celebrate my Italian- or Portuguese- heritage, I am perfectly free to do so. It is sort of like Veteran’s Day, I think, which is a holiday for Government civilians and a working day for Veterans in the private sector.
Likewise the festival of St. Patrick, should I be inclined to head down to the pub and start celebrating, early and in earnest.
That could be an option this morning, since I am eager to try out some vodka on the rocks. Real rocks.
You may not be able to get water from a stone, but there are alternatives. I discovered an intriguing and sustainable delivery system for my favorite adult beverage. You can get them through a remarkable gallery Up North- the Painted Bird, of Suttons Bay, west of Traverse City and on the way only to the Indian casino and the lighthouse at Northport.
The Bird is open every day of the year except Christmas:
It is run by a friend who I have known since before the Cuban Missile Crisis, and stocks an astonishing amount of beautiful things made by hundreds of artists and craftsmen. They tend to be local folks, which makes it part of the sustainable movement I believe in, but of course interesting pieces can come from anywhere.
This particular one hails from artist Jeff Henderson, of Dover, New Hampshire. Handmade from natural stones found along the coast of New England and fixed with a stainless steel spigot with a stone lever, Jeff’s sturdy and sophisticated drink dispenser “adds instant pizazz to any event,” which by my lights applies to Columbus Day morning and a crisp bloody mary, crafted with Clamato juice, two shots of Popov Vodka, a strip of dill pickle and a celery stalk, some coarse black pepper, a little sea salt and a splash of lime and Frank’s Louisiana Hot Sauce.
You can see a YouTube demonstration, featuring Jeff himself in all his artisan’s glory. He has eschewed pretense and demonstrates his product dressed exactly as he is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHPQ50x8WjQ
Jeff is now the small-business engine known as Funky Rock Designs, of Dover, New Hampshire. His studio is in one of the Washington Street Mills that harnessed the power of the Cocheco River to make textiles. From the mighty mill machinery flowed a river of cloth that was sold around the world. The relentless cycle of competition and capitalism killed the mills, though.
Cheaper product from southern cotton mills, a couple bad fires, and finally the Great Depression all contributed to their demise, and by the time Jeff was first hauling lobster pots out of the Atlantic, the big brick structures were falling into ruin.
Thing turned around in the Reagan Administration. Developers purchased the ramshackle mills and began to restore them. Today, Dover’s old manufacturing district is alive with creativity.
(Jeff’s original rock lamps. Not lava, just stone. Photo Jeff Henderson).
Jeff and I have a bit in common- an “industrial” accident made us both re-think what we do to pass the working hours. Jeff used to make his living in a traditional manner, for someone who lives near the shore in rock-ribbed New Hampshire. He was a lobster man, and there are plenty of ways to get yourself killed doing that.
Jeff told an interviewer that he liked working inshore waters, and the way the bottom has fallen out of the lobster market, it probably was a great decision. Today, he searches the shores of the Atlantic “looking for beautiful and functional rocks that whisper beauty.”
They more than whisper to me, since I nearly dropped the bolder on my foot when I was taking it out of the box. This is serious art- heavy. I guess he started with other decorative things like lamps. People seemed to like them- a particular favorite of mine was a key holder made out of a real rock, rather than the fake plastic ones. Is that elegant, or what?
But I fell in love with the booze dispenser.
Right now mine is sitting down at the farm. Since this is a quasi-holiday, I could drive back down there and get some actual work done. But once on the farm, and at peace in the country, I have to say that every day seems like Columbus Day.
Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Autumn Projects
(The garage waits. There are several projects lurking there, and the photo albums of a family now on both sides of the Great Divide. Yeah, I know. Those gutters are growing little pine trees. Photo Socotra.)
Strangest year of my life, I thought, sitting out on I-66 with a variety of fellow citizens, including one in a bright red SUV who seemed to be determined to run up the twin exhausts of the Iridium Silver Panzer.
I was headed for the Farm and projects that should not be deferred beyond the falling of the leaves and the coming of the snow. Hard winter, say the oaks, dropping a bumper crop of acorns, and oddly plump squirrels with plenty of fur.
Don-the-Builder was coming by to give me an estimate on some incidental work I have been meaning to get to, and this is the time.
Time, I thought, watching the brake lights ahead by the West Falls Church Metro station.
The traffic wasn’t going anywhere soon, and the bright skies of Arlington were transformed into lead in Fairfax County. I pulled off my Ray Bans and tucked them back in their tan leather holster. Back to the indoor glasses, and the leaves blowing across the creeping cars came into sharp focus.
Strangest year. Start off with the departure of the folks, and suddenly the parental umbilical, the cord that leads back beyond my first thoughts are abruptly sundered. I felt untethered at the time, and attacked the problems of the estate to distract me from the unsettling close approach of the void, the emptiness of the end.
Real estate transactions, sibling strife, miles and miles of highway. The accident that left me a gimp. The operation to correct it. Weeks and weeks in bed or a rolling chair. Too much time to think, looking up. That earthquake, epicenter in Mineral just up the road from the farm, and the crazy wind event that smacked the Capital and knocked the power out for six days.
Things started to move a little better after I inched past the Route 50 exit, and eventually I found the car rolling of its own accord toward the mountains, and to the real Virginia.
Too much thought, too many mysteries and fevered political tracts in the darkness. The growing feeling that something was really, really wrong, and there was not a goddamned thing I could do about it.
The would be the kind of really wrong that I used to feel about the ethereal evil beauty of the Weapons the Marines protected down in the magazines down below on the gray ships.
(Don’s guys have been busy. They replaced the rails that waved at the sky, and the one I burned with the grill. Photo Socotra).
I had been at the farm, trying to horse some estate debris out of a rented Infinity to pile up in the back room. Car emptied, I poured a glass of wine and strode out onto the back deck to discover that one of the railings had decided to reach toward the sky, warping dramatically, curling like an index finger, as if to beseech the clouds for more moisture to help free it from the structure of the deck altogether.
That had been hidden behind the cheap-ass grill I bought new, the one that had been crushed by that pine tree that came down in the Big Snow two years ago. I was moving the bowed frame onto a brick to make up for the missing wheel that had popped off the axel from the weight of the wood. In dragging the thing around, I found the impudent railing and its astonishing gesture for freedom.
And the fact that another section of railing had charred dramatically from the back of the red-hot grill. Interesting, I thought, that it had not just ignited and burned me to a crisp.
Better to be lucky than smart, and being neither naturally, I smiled at the idea of being alive.
Each light on Route 29 southbound drops off traffic. Past the Route 17 detachment, I always feel I am in the real Virginia, where Clark Brothers gun store and range rattle with semi-automatic weapons fire, seven days a week. People seem anxious for some reason.
South, past the pit of Big Country BBQ, Opal, VA’s contribution to the vinegar-based culinary legacy long-haul trucker lore. Then, past the Spite House on Fleetwood Hill at Brandy Station, erected by a Romney Republican (I could see the signs) on the site of J.E.B. Stuart’s headquarters at the biggest cavalry battle of the biggest war fought- yet- in this hemisphere.
Don-the-Builder was to meet me at three, and I arrived with plenty of time to spare. The clouds drifted toward Washington, which embraces that sort of meteorological phenomenon as a kindred spirit to the opacity of its process. He told me on the phone that his guys had power-washed the front and back decks, and replaced the gesturing top rails.
He was waiting for everything to dry out before applying a thick coat of the colored sealant I had selected. I was interested in a quote on pavers to replace the log roundels that had marked the path from the back gate to original owner’s Garden of Solitude or Reflection or whatever she called it.
(The original owner’s Garden of Whatever. Panzer peeks out of camouflage in the rear).
Right on time, I heard the crunching of gravel and Don’s gray SUV pulled up.
We made the usual greetings and walked the house. I explained requirements and ideas: pavers, weathered door louvers, a flagpole, perhaps? We talked about what was under the vinyl siding and where things might be mounted. Along the way, we showed each other scars from the operations we had that summer. His were of a personal nature, and performed with minimum invasive techniques at U-VA hospital just down the road in Charlottesville. Mine were invasive, and done by the Army.
We agreed on a plan to complete the work underway, and look to his Cabinets lady to see if we could move the kitchen around, reconfiguring it so it would actually have some counter space. Once we covered the list, I offered to drive him over to meet the Russians.
“They love their land, and they are going great guns on clearing the old fields They may need some help with the house, though. 1910 was the year the main place went up.”
“I like that mirror,” said Don pointing at the big silver circle mounted to the mailbox. His voice contained a drawl softened by the distance from the Federal City. “It is going to save someone’s life some day.”
“If it is mine, that is good enough,” I said.
He appeared to like Matt and Tatiana, and I told them, by way of introduction, that Don had built my house and added the garage door openers and cool storm doors with the screens that roll right up when you raise the glass panel.
Don asked Matt how he liked it in Culpeper. Matt told him he loved it.
I told him I loved it. Don replied that we were all refugees here. “I came down in 1972,” he said in his gentle voice.
“We will all be down here, sooner or later,” I said. “If we can make it.”
I waved and left him with the Russian delegation, with the invitation to drink some wine later. Which is exactly what happened when Don was gone, and that alarming biker-guy in the drive turned out to be a respectful young man accompanied by his Biker Lady and two toddlers who was a whiz at trimming maples that might be ready to crush your house.
But that project was going to last into Sunday, with the roar of chainsaws, and I do not know if anyone will fall from the tree.
Yet.
Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com