Get With the Program

Get with the program, folks. Here we go.

Sorry…all that storm- clock change-and election nonsense quite distracted me, and I freely acknowledge I am a bit peevish. I got out the flag to take down to the farm for the maiden flag-raising ceremony this weekend. It is a trophy flag, a 5×8 American national flag that I got at the Hillary Clinton fire-sale at her Presidential Campaign HQ next to my office back in 2007.

I am going to fly it with pride, and maybe smoke that nice cigar the Republican Operative gave me on Tuesday, thinking his side was going to win.

Thankfully the weather was not so bad here last night. I left work at four to get ahead of whatever was coming on the .7 miles commute via back streets between the office and Big Pink, poured a drink, and did email for another couple hours until my co-workers finally got someplace out of Blackberry range.

Eight inches of snow up in Long Island made me shiver but all we got was cold wet rain. I still have learned my lesson about Washington and The Weather. “If it’s snowin’, I ain’t goin’.”

On the morning after the morning after, I am hearing about the crap that might have been a campaign issue. I completely agree with the nice people on the radio that we are looking at fiscal disaster. As I thought during the big fight on health care in 2008, what are we doing?

I can’t believe what some people are saying, which is that this sequestration thing might be what the President’s people wanted all along. Which is to say, a dramatic restructuring of the budget priorities away from defense and into social programs. I guess that is what we voted for, right?

I am interested in learning more about how the “smart money” is surviving in the disintegrating Euro Zone. The markets around the world reflected that this morning, tumbling down two or three percent, and with rumors that stress was penetrating even the vaunted German economy.

I certainly hope to NOT find out that the only tactic available to the Europeans is to offshore their assets in USD accounts. Jeeze, If that is the case were are well and truly hosed.

I cannot even consider the Renminbi as an alternative reserve currency. A man has his pride, right? Or does that goeth before the fall?

I forget.

I do understand the criticality of social issues to both sides of this thorny (and possibly insoluble) divide. I understand why young single women felt sort of warm about that “Julia” version of the future, with the helpful Federal Big Sister there to help out at the tough times in life. If I were female, the number one threat to my life would be those idiots who want to play politics with my body, not that both sides were not.

This winning coalition is still razor thin and quite fragile. The Progressive coalition has elements that are naturally conservative, and in the case of Hispanic Americans, largely Catholic. Another approach by the Stupid Party might have worked to blunt the cynical tactics of the Corrupt Party, but Mitt was too nice to try it and phrases like “self deportation” were like self inflicted wounds. So, now here we are, freed from the shackles of the Patriarchy, but broke and out of ideas.

The exploitation of secondary social issues in the campaign may have resulted in a narrow triumph for the President, but it has changed nothing about the calculus of power here between the house on Pennsylvania and the one on the Hill with Harry Freaking Reid still in control of the Senate.

No mandate for anyone, but at least there is going to be lega pot in Colorado and Washington State. I have been thinking that I just ought to get with the program. The fiscal cliff that looms in exactly 58 days will impact everyone that does business with DoD. We will see how that goes, but I think the recession is about to arrive in Arlington.

Maybe it should have been here all along. But like I said, I just have not got with the new agenda. I should just cut to Winston Smith’s final vision in 1984 and get on with it. Apres nous, le deluge, right?

Maybe I should start dating guys and get married in Maryland and then move out West to start smoking weed. That is how absurd this all is: with the biggest economic catastrophe in a century staring us in the face, that is the sort of crap we expended our collective energy on.

The Republicans are toast, in my mind. I will continue to caucus at election time with those morons, but they demonstrated that an effective Ground Game is something that eludes them. They should go back and read Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals.” Blaming a corrupt-but-effective Chicago-style political process doesn’t make stupid look much smarter.

Maybe you feel the same way. I am on Bullshit Overload. After completing the office mail, I fell asleep yesterday evening in my brown chair while watching “Elementary,” a new Sherlock Holmes interpretation with Lucy Liu as Dr. Watson. It was good, commercial free, and had no crowing Mainstream Media in the background.

That is one of the things that I couldn’t handle anymore, and is worth further discussion. The New Media is killing the old. Everyone knows that. The interesting angle to that is the fact that polarization is enhanced with the ability of the electorate to get their facts from The Daily Koz or Caller, and both are so intrinsically biased that we may never actually be on the same sheet of national music.

E pluribus unam? Ash heap of history, gang.

Oh well, life goes on, I think, and maybe with the time change and the election behind us I can start sleeping regularly again.

But I am old now, and maybe I have passed a tipping point on that, too.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

It’s Over

(The mystery of the hanging chads from 2000. Photo AP).

Michelle is not peering at me from the banner to the right of my email screen. It is over.

I had hoped it would go like this, either way: a clear, clean kill.

Well, it was neither, in the practical application of democracy, but it was a kill. We have chosen, in most of the battleground states to go “forward,” wherever that might be. I am still a little foggy on that, but happy we are not going to do “hanging chads” for the next several weeks. The campaign is over, thank God, though we appear to have chosen a course that means that everything will stay the same: same idiots in control of the House and the Senate and of course the big white home on Pennsylvania Avenue.

I think it is time for a new party.

I was thinking about that last night at Willow. They were advertising a special election burger, Blue Cheese and Red Catsup on two paddies of local beef. I did not have one- I wasn’t hungry- though I was thirsty enough. ENS Socotra stopped by, and sat next to Old Jim who is an unreconstructed Democrat, Old School, and the Johns- with and without ‘h’ were fully accounted for.

John-with was seated next to a real political operative in town from Florida. John-with is a political type, red, though burrowed into the civil service, and his friend from down south was an actual party operative. The conversation was animated. I told Jim that Nate Silver of the NY Times was calling it an 83% chance for re-election, while others were saying it might be a Romney night, the popular vote split right down the middle.

I didn’t know, but just hoped it would be over. Tracey O’Grady had relented on her usual ban on the televisions over the bar, and Big Chris had opened up the cabinet doors to allow the patrons to see the blue-glow of the old-school televisions. News Channel 8 was playing with no sound at the Amen Corner of the bar, and Fox was on the other down by the service door to the kitchen.

The Ensign had mussels and lobster ravioli, and I had another glass of wine.

“They say there was the usual hi-jinx at the polls,” I said. “the Ground Game is in full force.” The Republican at John-with’s side said he wasn’t surprised.

“Down in Dade County I was involved in the hanging chad thing.”

“God,” I said. “That was awful.”

“You have no idea. You wanna know how you get a ‘pregnant chad’ or a hanging one?”

I said that I didn’t. “I do remember that strange man with the glasses peering at the little squares to divine the intent of the voter.”

“Yeah, that is exactly the guy we caught on video tape stuffing a ballot box. That is why Dade County dropped out of the re-count.”

“It is all fuzzy at this distance,” I said. “But it was appalling, the whole thing.”

“Let me tell you,” said the Operative. “The only way you get a hanging or pregnant chad is if you try to vote multiple ballots at the same time. The stylus doesn’t go all the way through if you have three or four of them stacked up. That is how it happens.”

“Really?” I said. “That is pretty blatant.” The Republican nodded emphatically, and then diagrammed how the punch-card system worked on a bar napkin, just the way I used to jot down Mac’s recollections at the same seat.

Old Jim took a deep sip of Budweiser and waved at Liz-with-an-S for reinforcements. “That is not the way it really works, based on my three campaigns,” he said. “The key is what you have people doing on the ground. You need a big apparatus and it has a lot of moving parts.”

The Republican nodded again. “You want to know why Florida didn’t go for Gore in 2000?”

“I’m game. Widespread voter fraud?” I asked tentatively.

“Nope. There was a woman named Brown who was running for Congress. She had thousands of voter information cards printed up, and blanketed the all the polling stations in Dade County.”

“That is the ground game,” said Jim. “That is where you get the votes out.”

“Well, it didn’t work that time. The voter card was deliberately very simple. It had directions to vote for Gore and Brown.”

“So?” I said, sipping the woody-tinged Chardonnay. “What happened?”

“18,000 citizens voted for Gore, and then voted for Harry Browne.”

“What’s your point?” I said.

“Harry Browne was the Libertarian Candidate for President. The voter card didn’t say ‘vote for Brown for Congress.’ All those people voted twice for president, and all their ballots were spoiled.”

“That would have won Florida for Gore,” I said.

“And Florida would have given him the Electoral College and the White House,” said the Operative.

“Damn,” I said, trying to think how this revelation would have played out over the last sorry decade.

“No shit,” said Jim, and slammed his fresh Bud on the bar. “That is the way things work.”

John-with and the Republican Operative announced they were going to watch the first returns come in at Senior Executive Jeff’s place up the block. The Republican handed out cigars as he left, which in the context of the rest of the night, was about the last thing that party is going to be able to give me.

This morning, it is over. But I thought at the time I might have a whiskey for the ditch.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Into the Soup

(Julia Childs would approve, as would Anthony Bourdain would approve. It ain’t rocket science, just like the election).

Cold was the night. First decent cold of the year, the first sneer of the winter wind that cuts deep.

There is going to be a lot of crap going down today all across America. I am so glad that I voted already. I should go over to the polling station in the basement of Culpeper Gardens Assisted Living and do an informal poll of how many neighborhood people are out there doing their civic duty. Or, I could slice up that bag of Vidalia onions.

Civic duty or hot bubbly soup? Your call. I am just so happy that the advertising is going to stop, and the unit will be filled with the smell of sautéed Georgia goodness.

It was cold at bedtime. The local news told me that the freeze was on for everywhere that counts in the northern part of the state. Another nor’easter is bearing down, probably missing us, but the local models are not in accordance with the national model, so we could get smacked with a brush of Old Man Winter’s sleeve. It is not supposed to interfere with voting, but who knows. The fun-and-games with missing polling stations and early voting is already in the bag.

I am resolved to only vote once today, and just see how it goes.

There is so much swirling around. I don’t understand the polls, so I just hope the eligible people go and do their thing and let us know at the end of the day what they did.

With some degree of certainty. That local curmudgeon Mark Plotkin made a prognostication on the flat-screen before I gave up on trying to stay awake for Monday Night Football. He said that the “provisional ballots” in Ohio are going to delay the results of the Ohio voting for as much as ten days, so it seems wise to make plenty of soup.

I love French Onion soup and rarely have it, since the extended prep time makes it an activity to do with the television murmuring in the background.

It is not rocket science.

The Cloak and Dagger Cookbook has been on hiatus since before the accident this Spring, and I am only now getting back into fun in the kitchen. The Russians inspired me with that fabulous lasagna down at the farm last weekend, and inspired me. There is nothing like bubbling, melted cheese on top of piping hot onion soup.

I have done it before, flying blind, and got things mostly right- I mean, how far wrong can you go with a bunch of sautéed onions, vegetable or some sort of broth and melted cheese? I have some Swiss Raclette from the artisans in Up North Michigan with which I have been wanting to experiment, and the cold snap and the emotion surrounding the election suggest to me the time has come.

I did my homework. The legendary chefs all have some sort of signature twist to a very simple recipe. I cobbled together this recipe from the Julia Child and Anthony Bourdain and it seems pretty good. One issue is with Julia’s flower- it can make what I think should be a liquid into something much more substantial. I will leave it up to you.

It might be a little more time consuming than you anticipate, but unless you were attempt to vote in several precincts, there should be plenty of space minutes waiting for the fate of the West to be decided.

STEP 1:
8 nice Vidalia onions, sliced
6 oz fresh creamery butter, salted or unsalted, your call.
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

I used the little Cuisinart to make fast work of those onions, but hacking them up with a sharp blade is also good therapy for an election day.  Weep early, right? Get it out of the way.

I like my big Lodge cast-iron fry pan with the glass cover. Throw the onions in the oil and melted butter and sauté gently for about a quarter hour, or until things are nice and caramelized rich brown.

(Onions before and after 45 minutes of caramelization)

STEP 2
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp sugar
Add the salt and sugar and complete the browning process, which could take another half hour of pacing back and forth from the kitchen to check the exit polls in Iowa. Or is it Ohio? I forget.

STEP 3
3 tbsp flour
Add and cook for another 3 minutes, which is one of those things that need to be watched, depending on how many glasses of wine you have had. The flower was in the Julia Child recipe, which makes a sort of roué that is perfectly understandable in her French tradition, but it is going to make the broth thicker than some might like.

STEP 4
3 oz port/brandy/red wine. Your choice, like the election, but I find taking some internally is good, too, and aids in precision.
2 oz balsamic vinegar.
Add and deglaze the pan. Scrape up those cool brown bits. The beauty of cast iron is that you can apply real steel to scrape the surface, unlike those non-stick pieces of junk. That’s where the goodness resides!

STEP 5
2 litres stock, boiled separately. Bourdain says chicken stock. Child says beef. My vegetarian friends prefer veggie broth. Just have two liters of it.
3 slices bacon, cubed. (purely optional, and I mention it only because Anthony and Julia said to. We don’t have to do everything we are told, as I expect to see in the course of the election).
1 Bouquet garni (fresh thyme, flat leaf parsley, and a bay leaf in cheesecloth). This is the fancy-pants part, but it is useful to keep stems out of your teeth later and it always makes me feel like I am taking things to the next level, like the President in the second debate.

Take the Lodge 14” skillet with the caramelized onions off the heat, then add these last three ingredients and simmer for 30-45 more minutes skimming the top if necessary.

STEP 6
While the soup is simmering, shred the cheese (use the Cuisinart if it is still out!) and slice up the baguette from Croftburn Farms into rounds.
3 cups Swiss Raclett cheese, shredded.
Bake the bread rounds into croutons in the oven at 325 for half an hour. Half way through, baste them with olive oil, and flip them to get the other side nice and toasty.

STEP 7
Now the dramatic conclusion. Put on a movie or something non-partisan, trust me, the talking heads will have something all new to say by the time it is over. Light some candles, assuming you have power to start with. Spoon the soup into oven-safe bowls, position the bread rounds like aircraft carriers on the rich brown liquid. If you are a sissy, go ahead and break up the croutons for ease of spooning later, but I like the fight. Top with heaps of the grated Racelette and broil on high high high, watching carefully to ensure you do not set fire to the kitchen. Pay attention and do not get distracted by some fatuous rhetoric from the Lamestream Media or the Fox alternative.

For added danger, at least if you are a handy-person, you can try one of my favorite kitchen-aids to do the browning: a blowtorch. This approach offers all sorts of opportunities for additional fun. Whooosh!

When it is rich brown but not black, pull the bowls out of the oven, or put down the blowtorch and enjoy.

Just like Election Day.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Almost Home

It is Monday and I feel like I am almost home, don’t you? It has been a very long bus ride with people who really need a shower. What a long, strange trip this has been to arrive right back in the middle of the road, the signposts ahead pointing boldly to the Right and to the Left.

The polls are calling everything a dead heat, tied 49-49 percent.

I puzzled about that particular news this morning. Do you think it will be like that when the ballots are counted? I don’t know. I just hope that whatever happens is a clean kill for the victor- a measurable majority of both the popular vote and the Electoral College.

I do know that the legal teams are already filing briefs to carry the fight beyond Election Day, so I have a certain gloomy expectation that it won’t be over tomorrow, and it will be a reprise of that awful Gore-Bush thing down in Miami and the media circus about hanging chads.

Seems sort of quaint these days.

I would feel better if someone had opened up a lead, but at this point I don’t really care. We have got a lot of stuff that needs to happen by January- Sequestration, Tax hikes, all that stuff. We require a functioning government or we are going to have even more trouble.

I hope we know what we have to deal with when tomorrow is over. With luck, we will be able to fix some problems and move on. Or at least know that this mess will continue, badly divided.

Only tomorrow will tell. So, in the words of  American Hero Todd Beamer, “You guys ready? Let’s roll.”

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Projects

(It was picture perfect at Refuge Farm on an early November day. The sky was North Carolina Blue, if I may be permitted the geographic anomaly. Photo Socotra).

I think we should just let the clocks alone. I have been up since “0300” and this is an affront to nature.

it was lasagna with the Russians last night here at the farm. Matt put it together as he struggled with practicing the Oral component of a large proposal. The backdrop of uncertainty about literally everything has all of us a little nervous, but this will all be over soon.

Please.

Anyway, assembling the lasagna helped keep his mind off all that, and eating certainly kept my attention later. The table was nicely filled. Since I was not responsible for the main course, I provided a garden fresh salad and hot corn bread, all of it at least claiming to be local.

The food was great, and rather than barreling straight down, I took the time to stop at a farmer’s market south of Haymarket. The place is Buckland Farms, a neat little operation that specializes in local food. The selection is magnificent, the vegetables and eggs fresh and from right around here.

The market is on the site of the famed Buckland Races, the battle in which J.E.B. Stuart routed the Yanks for the last time, chasing the Blue Coats all the way from Warrenton to Haymarket in a pell-mell rebel-yelling riot.

The salad fixings and cornbread accompanied the lasagna nicely. Matt and Tatiana came by to pop the foil-covered pasta at three, and with the time change coming up I could not figure out if it would be longer or shorter to happy hour, and decided to split the difference. The wine from the Old House vintner was fantastic.

With the entrée in the oven, it was time to walk the grounds and check out the efforts of the Works Private Administration over the course of the week and survey for storm damage from Super Whatever It Was Sandy.

Aside from the nervous laughter about what was going to happen to the Defense Budget regardless of who wins, there was scarcely a hint of politics in the crisp air.

First project was the pavers. The Original Janet who commissioned this odd little place had used circles of sawn lumber to mark a path through the Garden of Whatever She Was Thinking, and over the years the wood had swollen and disintegrated into mulch. Hence, the pavers. The color is a little raw, but should weather nicely. I liked what Don’s crew had done:

(This is the view walking back past the antenna field which monitors the Geostationary Satellite that provides television, radio and agonizingly slow internet communications to the HQ. Photo Socotra.)

(The new look to the approach to the Garden of Whatever. Photo Socotra.)

The power-washed and re-sealed deck looked great. I walked the pavers around back and went down to the pastures to see what had crashed into the fences in the torrent.

(The view from the starboard pasture looking back up to the run-in for the invisible ponies. That is another project, maybe for when I am on the property full time.)

Astonishingly, nothing was out of place. All was right with the property, and in the course of the inspection I spooked something big down by the stream at the back property line. Something that might have been a whitetail, but it was moving fast.

Walking back up the gentle hill, I checked the weather-vane. Somehow I need to get the big copper pony back up on top of the barn, and I am not sure I want to engage a crane to do it.

It is a long way up there on very thin roofing, and the copper pony that used to sit atop the N-E-W-S letters blew off two years ago. Need to figure that out at some point.

I asked Don’s guys to remove the young trees that had taken seed in the gutters. An excellent fall project, and they complied, gratis. They are good workers and I like the relationship.

(Clean gutters is an act of Godliness.)

 

Here is the new flagpole. It will be installed on the pad dug next to the Big Ass Rock in the driveway. It is 20ft LOA, with 18ft above ground. It is a sturdy fixture, rated to 140kts. I will continue to fly the national flag, as befits a veteran-owned mortgage, but wanted to have a means to demonstrate which allegiance I am celebrating on any particular day.

You have to have something on which to run up the Jolly Roger, just in case, right?

Anyway, it was a good day to be deep in the Virginia country, and have the crisp breeze blow out the Beltway fog of what is next. Who cares? The Earth lasts. Shoot, it positively abides, it does. I am taking a leaf out of that hymnal on this Sunday. The clock may lie to us like the politicians, but the land does not.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Reading the Cards

(Happy Hour White, a peach martini and candlelight at the Willow Halloween party. Photo Socotra.)

Now that time is getting short. There is not much television time left before this electoral circus is in the lap of the Gods, I am not buying any advertising, and will let this thing play out on its own. I took a certain interest in the political ads that blanketed the big screen when I got home from Willow last night.

I simply do not know what to think. The polls are ambiguous, and if either of the egotists who think they can run this fractious nation actually are presented with the challenge of governing, well, more power to them.

As for me, I felt blue. Naturally I am apprehensive about the election. I should have more confidence in this great nation, but I am rattled and freely admit it.

It was a hell of a week set against the final fury of the seemingly endless campaign. On the personal front, I got through Mac’s memorial ceremony, and the hurricane, and the power outage and notification that the government is going to actually act on the big new contract vehicle I am supposed to be managing. Maybe the blue mood came from the realization that something is really going to happen to cause the great gears to begin to turn.

The Halloween Party had been scheduled for the real night, but the loss of power and minor voyage damage to Washington from Hurricane Sandy dictated delay. I walked over after to the restaurant after work to check the costumes, though I was not fully in the mood. I was not going to wear one.

Distracted by other things, I suppose. Brushes with the Alpha and Omega of life do that too me, I guess.

I hoped that is all it was.

(Sabrina and Tinkerbelle, the Willow’s house sooth-sayers. Photo Socotra.)

I had my fortune told while I was still at the Willow bar. I walked over after work, which included too much stuff left over from the wreckage of the storm earlier in the week. The Halloween Party itself had been deferred from Wednesday to Friday, the entry portal to the weekend.

Sabrina and Tinkerbelle both have mystical sides, and owner Tracey O’Grady set them up in the little private dining area up front. I am neither a believer nor an apostate on the matter. The proliferation of odd things I have observed of late suggest that there are manifestations of the human mind that we do not comprehend and certainly cannot control.

A friend of mine has had good luck in channeling truth from the cards, and I think there is something to a mechanism that frees the mind to contemplate the unknown..

Sabrina is named for the teenaged witch in the old television show, and that tells you something about where her parents were coming from. She has embraced her avocation while continuing to hold a day job, as many of us do. She was working the Tarot cards, and Tink was reading palms. I threw a twenty in the middle of the table and invited the ladies to work their predictive magic.

I thought nothing would come of the experience except some fun, but I was curious, wanted to help the girls make a little extra money, and seemed like a diversion that could help raise my mood.

I understand enough of the psychology of human interaction to know that a good reader will play off things the subject will freely admit, and the truths that can be revealed are often not from the deck of cards or the lines of the palm, but from the articulation of things already well known but not said.

Sabrina has a bosom that is quite remarkable, and was fully on display in some sort of cantilevered undergarment, the better to distract the subject, I imagine. It certainly worked.

She had me cut the cards as I attempted to avoid gazing at her secondary sexual characteristics. She dealt three: the eight of coins flanked the four of swords to the left and the ten of coins was placed to the right.

She had the patter down well. The four swords met on the card, the tips of the epees meeting exactly. “The Four of Swords shows a period of rest and recovery after a time of challenge, since the ability of the tips of the blades to stay precisely aligned is finite. Once recovered, you can and will return to the challenge. In the meantime, the cards show a new challenge, which is to stay silent and inactive. This is the time build up your mental strength. Meditate and spend time in a calm atmosphere. You need to replenish your strength and spend time in spiritual thinking.”

“You need to rest and relax,” she said calmly. .

I nodded, my attention still distracted by the magnificent and unassailable majesty of her breasts. “The coins mean something else. This card can mean work, employment, commission, craftsmanship, skill in craft and business, perhaps in the preparatory stage. Steady patience with achievement kept in mind.”

“Seems reasonable,” I said.

She pursed her full lips. “Of course,” she continued, “reversed they can mean voided ambition, vanity, cupidity, exaction, usury. It can also signify the possession of skill, in the sense of the ingenious mind turned to cunning and intrigue. That it is to the left of the four swords means you have practiced and honed your craft in the past.”

“True enough,” I said. “It has been an interesting decade since I went ashore from the Navy. It has had everything: action, danger and romance. Not that it worked out the way I thought it would.”

Then Sabrina turned to the last card- the one that refers to the promise of the future. “The Ten of Coins is a sign that despite challenges and setbacks along the way, you will finally reach a point of completion and accomplishment in your journey. This sense of accomplishment is likely to be as a result of an improved career path, more solid financial reserves, a stable home environment and a possible committed and long-term relationship.”

“Yike,” I said. “I don’t see any of that on the horizon.”

“Trust the cards,” she said, and captured me in her dark eyes. “This is one of those cards that shows that everything will eventually come together in a wonderful way and you will feel highly successful and proud of everything you have achieved at the end of your journey.”

“OK”, I said. “Does it say anything about next week?” Sabrina gave me a Mona Lisa smile. “This is not the internet,” she said. “The cards say what they say.”

“Unless they are reversed, right?”

Her bosom heaved in ambiguity. “I don’t think that is what the cards say. Constant stress and tension will break even the hardest and most resilient of people, but if you rest as the Four Swords say you should, this brief period will enable you to refresh your energy, concentration and focus and be ready for the next challenge. The cards with the coins demonstrate that you have built your craft in the past, and will continue a journey of accomplishment, healed in body and mind.”

She smiled that unreadable smile, and I thanked her. The reading done, she scooped up the cards and returned them to the thick deck. I turned to Tinkerbelle, who was going to do my palm.

I think the world of Tink. She wore her dread lock wig over heavy makeup on eyes and cheeks. She looked positively otherworldly. Normally she is cute as a button, but tonight her evident fertility and exotic garb accented something much more primal.

She is carrying her first child. She has named the infant within her “Nola,” for New Orleans, Louisiana, her place of origin. It is a mystical battered and resilient place. “I fond out the baby is seven pounds already, she said with a little shiver. There is a long time to go, and I have no idea how big she will be at birth.”

“Our first was late, and over ten pounds,” I said. “A big baby should be a healthy one,” I said.

“I certainly hope so,” she said, acknowledging a bit of apprehension about the miracle that she will perform in her time. Tink had her cheat sheet concealed in a iron-bound box with the lid propped up to conceal it from my view.

She traced the lines on my upturned had, furtively stealing a look at whatever was inside the intricately designed casket to her right.

She marveled at the length of my lifeline, as did I. I do not anticipate an extended stay in this world, certainly not like Mac’s long and good life. She furrowed her brow as she traced a line across the middle of my and. “Stubborn, aren’t you?” she asked.

I nodded in affirmation. “Old and stubborn, yes. No question.”

“Not so old as your life-line suggests you will be,” she said. Then she traced a parallel line to one that predicts my remaining time on the planet. “This one is your creative streak. It is deep and profound. It means whatever you do, you will do well at.”

“Does it mean business?” I asked. “I don’t care that much about it.”

“No,” she said. “It is about what you do. They are not the same thing. There will be satisfaction there in a job well done.”

I did not want my hand back, since her touch was gentle and inviting, but she gave it to me anyway.

There were other Rubes waiting outside the curtain, and I thanked the ladies for their time and attention. They did a nice job. Now that I have the rest of my life mapped out, it seems like time to get on with the period of reflection and get on with it. I bade a bon nuit to the usual suspects at the bar, and those behind it: both Johns, with and without, the Lovely Bea, Old Jim and Mary, Chris-as-Tex and gypsy-clad Liz-with-an-S. She had done something mysterious to her normally doe-like hazel eyes.

Quite mystical, the whole thing. I left the bar more than a bit pensive, but avoided being run-down in the cross-walk on Fairfax Drive as I limped back to the garage to find the Panzer to take me back to Big Pink.

When I got home I listened to the political ads that poured from the big screen, allowing myself to watch, rather than flinch in avoidance.

This last four years has been a period of uncertainty. It has not been without its moments, but I think it is time to move on and get back to work, or whatever it is that will take us to our inevitable home.

So that is my contribution to the polling information for the last weekend of the campaign and the election next Tuesday. No question about it: my call is for the Ten of Coins, all the way.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Moving On

(The Socotras flank Mac earlier this month. Photo ONI.)

Mike had the little brass box that contained his Dad’s earthly remains.

Mac was in place on a low table in front of the Sanctuary at the Lutheran Church up Rt 50. He was punctual, and the Color Guard from the Office of Naval Intelligence was doing a run-through before the mourners arrived.

I remember having Raven and Big Mama’s ashes around the place for a couple months before we could get it together to arrange the stones and the ceremony and the lunch. There is a commonality to all this, combined with a rawness that would be unendurable were it not for the mundane tasks that make up life.

It is all good, and necessary, and completely appropriate.

Anything involving Arlington Cemetery includes the bureaucracy of the United States Army. That means death has to be deconstructed into two parts: the first to acknowledge the immediacy of death, and the second to perform the ceremonial ritual of interment.

The first part was pretty good. The chapel was full of mourners. The Color Guard was crisp and professional. The three hymns- Amazing Grace, Eternal Father and the recessional Holy Holy Holy marked the mood, and I bellowed as loudly as I could.

The reception was great. The Wake, held at Mac’s old home where Dave’s family now lives, was thoughtful and elegant.

Then it was time to move on.

Some pictures of Mac’s last official act, his visit to ONI for Nimitz Day on the 4th of this month appeared.

That is the way I choose to remember him. What a guy.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Note: yesterday’s lead photo caption credited Dave Showers. Mike pointed out that it was his.

MAC

(RADM Donald “Mac” Showers at Pearl Harbor last June. Photo Dave Showers).

It was Halloween yesterday and All Souls Day today. It is an appropriate one for Mac’s memorial ceremony at the Faith Lutheran Church down Route 50.

I am really disoriented- Admiral Paul stopped by Willow yesterday afternoon at cocktail hour and Old Jim called me on the cell to summon me from my desk at the office to chat at The Amen Corner.

The Macaroon Lady flew in from California to attend the service, and the regulars entertained her. Then Mac’s whole clan arrived, some in costume for the occasion, and we had plenty of wine and a fine meal in the dining room to commemorate the occasion. I clomped home later than usual and grateful to have power and now the internet.

So, the storm is in the wake. On to the next thing, which is to find the bits of cloth and metal that will complete a Service Dress Blue uniform.

I jotted down some words for the ceremony. Here they are. It is not enough and it is not particularly eloquent. But it is certainly how we all feel:

“It is a signal honor to be asked to talk a bit about the military career of our pal Mac. I still cannot quite believe that he is gone. When you knew the Admiral, in time you just came to assume that he was eternal.

It was important for Mac to help people understand things. He certainly helped me.

We starting talking several years ago. I enjoyed his company, and he enjoyed the beer, back when he could still get his doctor to agree to let him drink one or two, and we spent hours and hours talking about his life and times.

As you might imagine, he had his stories down pretty well after seven decades, and I enjoyed mixing things up. Sometimes we would start on one thing and wind up somewhere else- like life in Depression-era Iowa, with the banks closed and only a barter economy enabling people to get by.

That he had to bring his recruiting officer to meet his mother Hedwig in order to get her permission for him to enlist.

I think you know the amazing events in which he played a part. The three that everyone knows are the first even fight in the Pacific at the Battle of the Coral Sea. Then the triumph of the code-breaker’s art in the epic Battle off Midway Atoll. Before that encounter, the Americans never won a battle against the Imperial Japanese, and after it, they never lost one.

You all have heard the story about how Station HYPO identified Admiral Yamamoto’s flight itinerary and enabled Air Corps P-38s to intercept and shoot him down in the Solomons in April of 1943. It is still controversial, though it was not to Admiral Nimitz at the time. “Kill the S.O.B.,” he said.

On the way through these famous tales, I found some things that just plain amazed me.

Mac was a Deck Officer- what we would know now as a Surface Warfare officer- though he never served on a ship. Big Navy had no idea what Station HYPO was up to, and periodically they would ask Mac to go to sea. As part of that, legendary submarine skipper “Mush” Morton asked him to go on a war cruise on USS Wahoo as a sort of orientation to the art of submarine warfare.

Mac mentioned that to me one evening as I was settling up my tab at Willow, and I casually asked him what happened.

“Jasper Holmes would not let me go. The guy I was supposed to relieve got off the sub, and they had to go one officer short in the wardroom. Good thing. They never came back.”

Which brings me around to the notion of fate. We agreed that much of his legendary career- at least at the beginning- was dumb luck. Half his class at Investigation School- the top of the alphabet- was ordered to Corregidor. In other words, from graduation to prisoners of war, just like that. Mac went to Pearl, just eight weeks after the attack, and the great ships still sunk in the mud of the harbor.

Dumb luck that the Officer in Charge of the Counter-intelligence office in Honolulu was unimpressed with Mac’s experience, and sent him off to that obscure billet working for Joe Rochefort.

By 1945 he was with Fleet Admiral Nimitz, closing the ring on the Empire of Japan in Operation Starvation, slipping target nominations on the sly to General Curtis “Iron Pants” LeMay.

Walking around Yokosuka, Japan, five days after the surrender on a “courier” mission that his boss Eddie Layton arranged so he could see it. That is where that giant Japanese flag that is out at ONI came from, traded for a bottle of Three Feathers Whiskey to a young Marine guarding the last floating Japanese Battleship, IJN Nagato.

Amazing at every turn. After the war, bumping by chance into Admiral Forrest Sherman in the halls of Main Navy the very week of the transfer board that would establish the new structure of Naval Intelligence, and becoming an intelligence officer.

Convincing  Marshall Tito’s people that he should have lunch with the Yugoslav leader in The White Palace.

Turning a so-so assignment at the Intelligence School at Anacostia into the first OPINTEL course.

Suggesting his colleague Rufus Taylor to transfer to intelligence at Arlington Hall Station. Ruf became the first intelligence professional to become the DNI.

At First Fleet, deciding to provide target materials to Navy pilots assigned to carry atomic weapons to the Soviet Union.

Returning to Pacific Fleet Headquarters as the Fleet Intelligence Officer- the same job in which Eddie Layton served in World War 2- to confront the conflict in SE Asia. Then Washington again, and Purple Dragon and the Pueblo Damage Assessment, and that big deal we are still not supposed to talk about.

And that is where we wander into things he preferred not to speak about on the record, but for which he was recruited to CIA by the legendary Bronson Tweedy, turning in his letter to retire on December 31, 1971.

I have paper napkins and notebooks with all of it, and since Mac reviewed them all, I feel that the unofficial and un-foot noted story will be true and accurate.

When he was done with government service in 1983, he started a third career. His experience with the cruelest disease- Alzheimer’s- helped me through the decline and loss of my Dad.

I am going to miss him a lot. When I was typing this, I had the weirdest sense that I needed to call him up and ask him a question.

At the end of the day, what Mac Showers did was make a career out of helping people to understand things. What a man he was, and what a legacy. We were all honored to have shared the planet with him, and I am absolutely confident that I will see him again for liberty on the other shore.

So long, Shipmate.”

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com