Things have been very strange this holiday season. I was getting gas over at the base yesterday- the filler cap for the Panzer is, as is Mercedes style, on the right rear flank of the vehicle. Most American cars have them on the left.
There were vehicles in modest lines to accommodate the Lefties, and a moderate wait. I didn’t want to waste my time- I am a thorough-going Washingtonian, after all, and mentally thanked the engineers in Stuttgart for giving me an opportunity to save a few minutes in a busy day.

I was wondering why engineers world-wide did not place the gas tank in the middle of the vehicles somehow so you could fill from either side? Didn’t the gas cap used to be on a hinge under the license plate?

Did someone decide that was a safety hazard? Some anonymous official at the NTSB maybe?
This being a military gas station, the lanes are clearly marked as one way. I was pulling in to the left side of a row of pumps when I looked up and saw a young couple in one of those souped-up little Japanese cars (Fast and Furious style) headed in, straight for my grill, going the wrong way.

I grimaced. The way ahead was blocked by the Honda, and after I filled the tank I would have to back up, or be trapped until the driver got his gasoline and backed up himself.

I gestured at him, pointing ahead, and said “One Way!” I did not add “Dumb ass,” a shred of civility to which I am trying desperately trying to cling. Honestly.

I did not roll down the window and scream at him, nor did I use any of my digits to add emphasis and signify my displeasure.
To my mild surprise, the young man backed up and actually went around to get in line on the proper side of the pump. I wondered if I would find the Panzer with a long key slash down the side while I was in the Class Six store getting more vodka, lime and tonic.
Driving away, I wondered at why my irritation was so profound. This was just a kid without knowledge of proper procedure, and who, with a little guidance, did the right thing. Why am I feeling that bubbling edge of dissatisfaction so often these days on the eve of the Season of Joy?

The traffic thing is always bad here. I actually flinch on the drive down to the farm when I see cars with Maryland or District plates, since I can be reasonably sure that something unexpected is going to happen. It could be a simple matter of being glued in the passing lane with passing anyone, or performing unexpected and un-signaled lane-changes. Dangerous. Heightened vigilance required.

There is a lot of that going around.

I have always viewed drivers from those jurisdictions with suspicion- sort of like seeing a car with Diplomatic plates and knowing with a fair amount of specificity that the driver neither knows the rules of the road nor has any inclination to follow them even if they did.

Anyway, on the trip back to the office I wondered why I was reacting the way I did. Is it election hang over? All that divisive bile spewed over the last year was corrosive, and it has not stopped yet though the campaign is long gone. Honesty was one of the first casualties, and I am afraid that is long gone, too. I can’t think of anyone on either side, with the possible exception of that Ron Paul loon, who was being straight with us.

Was it the fall-out of the shooting in Sandy Hook? I can’t get past the fact that an irresponsible and sick young man had so scarred the lives of innocent kids, their families, and the appointment of Smokin’ Joe Biden appointed to figure out a way to make us all safe with a host of new far-ranging initiatives.

There are two things we could do right away. Ban extended magazines is one, and the other is to address the way mental illness is treated in this nation. Oh, maybe a third. Putting a big sign up that says you are a “gun free zone” might not be working out quite the way we thought.  Somebody properly vetted and trained on the property to respond to the mass murderer might have been a good thing. Honestly, think it through. Why do the killers go to places that they know there can be no resistance?
But the mental health thing is so painful.

There was a note in the electronic mail from my pal Joe about the stress and financial burden of raising a child with profound autism. It is a burden that never ends. I remember when his son was born, and the revelation of his illness. Now he is 24, a strapping young man who will never get better.

They are saying this morning that the Shooter’s mother, the first to die, was about at the end of her rope in trying to single-parent a very sick child, and was on the verge of sending him away.
I count my blessings that my own sons have grown up tall and strong, and I feel guilty about my good fortune. There is so much that is so wrong that it is almost unbearable.

I need to get over it and get with the spirit of the season. I think I remember what it is. I will give it a try.
Honestly.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

(Sandy Hook Principal Dawn Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung, left, and School Psychologist Mary Sherlach. American Heroes.)

The horror at Sandy Hook- those innocent kids gunned down, the heroic ladies who ran toward certain death to protect them- is not going to go away. The other outrages of public gun violence seemed to fade with the passage of days.

The perpetrators of those serial outrages against humanity all melt into one another, from that asshole Charles Whitman on his Texas tower to the deranged young man with the orange hair in the theatre in Aurora, Colorado.

This sick little shit is something different. I am not going to use his name. His eyes are really disturbing in the surviving images: focused beyond us from some hell in which he resided. What does he say to us from the beyond the veil of death? Whatever it is, I do not want to hear it.

I was going to write something about the reason for the Second Amendment this morning, and had a long thoughtful commentary from my pal Boats about the way things work with an armed citizenry down in his neck of the woods. But you know what?

I can’t do it.

This is a society that is out of control. The reason that all those three hundred million guns are out there is that everyone is scared. Scared of something. We have been bludgeoned with the specter of so many disasters that it has become a reflex action. Fear. Flight or fight is the human reaction to fear, and there is no place to run.

Though I am looking.  Accordingly, I am going to take a deep cleansing breath and do something different.

There is nothing that anyone can say that will prevent something fundamental changing in the way that Americans view their long relationship with the gun. It has been one of the fundamental foundations of the Republic.

Principal Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung ought to be commended in the same way that military folks are awarded the Congressional Medal for heroism in the face of certain death. I don’t know what the civilian equivalent might be- the Presidential Medal of Freedom? Whatever it is, she should be enshrined along with Mary Sherlach, the school psychologist, who was right there with Dawn, charging the gunman.

The human spirit is a remarkable thing. There is nothing that can be said that will either assuage the pain of this crime, nor to mitigate the loss.

The “why” of this monstrous crime is only tangential to the history of this Republic. The actions of a seriously disturbed and very young man were already crimes from the moment he rose that Friday and shot his mother to death in her bed.

The big debate that is starting is going to be about giving up freedoms that are dangerous. People are scared and they want to protect themselves. Then there are more guns. It is as logical as it is incredible in a civilized society.

From what I hear this morning, I think we are going to do something this time. I don’t know what it is, but here we go.

In the meantime, I will attempt to remember those sweet young faces, and the courage of the women who died trying to save them.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

(Accessories available for the Bushmaster AR-15 similar to the one carried by the shooter in the Sandy Hook shootings. Barrels under 15” require approval by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and are not legal in all states. Photo Bushmaster.com)

I wonder what is going to happen in the wake of the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut.

I mean, this is beyond horror. I served the Nation nearly thirty years with the intent of protecting the helpless from the depredations of those who would do us harm, and now there is one of us, a sick sick young man whose own death is of little consequence, had he just had the simple courtesy to keep his pain to himself.

So, as I watched the President last night I tried to think through what will happen when he applies all the powers of his office to the solution.

I am in favor of the mentally ill being prohibited fro the ownership of guns. Aren’t you? Isn’t any empathetic citizen going to agree? Airen’t they already?

I was listening to Meg Griffin, the afternoon jock on Sirius satellite radio, and possibly a distant relative through my Irish side. I was coming back up from the farm yesterday afternoon. It was gray and spritzing rain and chill when I had the window down. The heated seats in the Panzer are a treat- if Mercedes had built such conveniences into the real panzerkampfwagens, I am reasonably confident the Germans could have taken Moscow with comfort to spare.

But I digress.

Anyway, Megless (her on-air nickname) spins a mean platter and her eclectic selection spans most of the pop genres and gets me rolling. She is in the Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame for her tuneful selections. Yesterday though, she linked the songs with rants about guns. She is a Mom, I think, since Tom Petty once stopped an on-air interview to gawk at her radiant and fulsome pregnancy.

I think I understand the visceral nature of her revulsion with the crime that took those innocent little kids. I can’t even begin to imagine the other side of the fierce parental instinct to protect your child. Can’t.

Megless was right there. “Guns are too easy to get at the shopping mall,” she declared with her voice dripping in contempt. “This is madness,” she said in another bridge between segments of roots music.

I can’t say that I disagree in principle. We appear to be in the midst of a collective arms race. A woman I know who lives out in the Mild West, Mormon-country, wrote me eloquently about the role of guns in her life.

She grew up in Denver, Colorado, a charter member of the original baby-boom cohort born in the wake of the second installment of the Great War. She remembers that a natural part of every year’s rhythm were the annual hunts for pheasant and elk, in which her father and every man she knew, participated.

Every year, she recalled, these men would take out their rifles, ammunition, tent, sleeping bag, Coleman lanterns, cook-stove and ice chest, load up the station wagons and head for the mountains.
They would stay out there a week or more, camping at night and hunting during the day. The elk they brought down were hauled on their backs up and down the mountains of the Front Range, dressed out at the campsite and then hung up to age when they returned home. The packaged meat provided food through the Colorado winter for the families.

I recall being Up North as a kid, and seeing the deer lashed to the fenders of the cars, headed back down below during the season. Those animals were the first experience with the real death I saw, rolling by the windows of the family station wagon.

In my friend’s experience, the possession of guns was “a natural part of life, not a religion.  People didn’t worship the gun.” Her father had only two long guns that were kept locked away, out of sight.  “No way did my brother or I have access to them, or to ammunition. The guns were merely a means to providing food for the table.”

She views what had happened over the last couple decades as a sort of civilian arms race. She says: “No man I ever knew continually upgraded their hunting rifle.  There were no repeating guns then.  There were no assault weapons.  While there were pistols, no man in my extended family or among my friends owned a pistol.  The guns they owned were to hunt large game for food.  Not for sport.  Not for a hobby. Not for carrying as a concealed weapon.  Not for sporting around on the back of a pick-up truck’s window…Guns were just a part of life that came into play only during hunting season, when people hunted the hard, old fashioned way, for their game.”
Like her, I am sad beyond words at what has become of our society today.  She believes that gun laws must be changed. The President believes that, too. Enough is enough!”

So there is one call. I got another one from a pal who is a mother in Alaska. No concealed carry permit is needed in that state. The Constitution itself, and its Second Amendment is deemed sufficient authority for citizens to go about armed. Quite the contrary to my somewhat sardonic quip that “an armed society is a polite society,” she observes that people just settle their differences on a higher velocity level out on the trail, or in the few urban enclaves. “Not that polite,” she says.

So, the spectrum of opinion in the wake of the tragedy ranges from an outright ban on guns, favored by Megless, to respect for hunting tradition from another, though with significant modification, to the observation that guns don’t make people more polite, just more deadly.

My pal in Utah thinks that the right to own high-capacity automatic weapons should be restricted. “There can only be one purpose for the guns with magazines that allow 100 bullets to be fired without reloading…. And I don’t think that purpose has anything to do with the Framer’s intent when they wrote the Second Amendment.”

I respect that view completely. I also think the sensationalism about the hundred-round magazine is a media hype. They tend to jam, just as the one that psychopath in Aurora tried to use did, enabling Law Enforcement to take him down.

The Second Amendment is not about hunting. That would have gone without comment back then- not even a topic of discussion. The issue was about King George.

We will have to explore that tomorrow, and the whole “well-regulated militia” part of that awkward parsed phrase. The Constitution and its amendments pre-dates the establishment of the United States Army, after all.

Maybe it is time to talk about what it means, and whether the People can be trusted. Obviously, not all of them can.

So what do we do?

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

(Here is the seasonal display on the front door to Refuge Farm. Photo Socotra.)

I am down at the Farm, and slept well in the new bed, thank-you very kindly. I should have dreamed, and I did not, thank God.

I had arrived in full darkness, not surprising for this time of the year I guess, but by the time I got moved in and mounted the wreath on the door, I was late for the Russians. I mixed a traveler and drove the Panzer slowly down the front fence line to their lane.

It was so dark in their door-yard I wondered if I would fall getting to the back door. Half-way from the Panzer the security lights came on- they were not hanging in the kitchen- I guess that is a pretty unwelcoming space, until they get around to fixing it up.

Natasha came to the kitchen door and waved me in, and we walked into the old dining room. The parlor was behind, dark and chill, but the cast-iron stove was glowing with warmth and good cheer.

We caught up. I won’t lie to you: the coverage of the school shooting was literally more than I could bear. As a father, the idea that this could happen to your child made me weepie all day, and the smallest thing would set me off.

Natasha had a different take on matters. I don’t know if it is the dark reality of the old world of the USSR in which she was raised to womanhood, and the clutches of an authoritarian State that controlled everything in the interest of creating the new human: the New Soviet Citizen.

The world suddenly opened up as the system collapsed, and she was able to escape.

“Between the shooting and the budget cliff and the season, I was ambivalent about putting up the wreath,” I said, taking a sip from my drink. “Three years ago I took everything down the minute I got back from the funeral of Bill’s daughters. They died in a one-car accident in the middle of the holidays- beautiful girls, and in Catholic tradition, laid out in their caskets with the lids open.” I shook my head, remembering. “I was devastated for days,” I finished, unwilling to go further and have my eyes get moist again.

Natasha nodded, her dark enigmatic eyes deep in thought. “I joined NRA today,” she said.

I blinked. “You did what?” I asked.

“Da, she said gravely. “We are going to apply for concealed carry permits once we complete the safety course.” Natasha had been in the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow, and was the only rocket scientist I know, a fact of which she reminds me periodically.  Matt continued his last chore of the day, screwing hold-backs for the drapes into place on either side of the big window that radiated the chill from the silent pasture beyond. “I grew up in Soviet Union. I know where this is going. I did not come to live in America to see it go the way of Russia. Freedom is nothing to take lightly.”

“Freedom is hard,” said Matt, putting down the cordless drill. “People forget that.”

I wondered about the violence of the computer games our young men play, and then the starkness of the differences in how people look at really important stuff. Then we talked about other things, and when I finished my drink, made my apologies and got back to the car. I could hear a freight train approach the grade crossing in the distance on the tracks of the Orange & Alexandria Railroad.

Geese began to honk as I crunched into the circular drive. When I opened the door I heard what must be dozens of them. Living in the city as I do most of the time, this many bellowing birds was unusual. Geese can be fierce protectors of their turf and I wondered if I might be attacked by angry birds.

No geese appeared, though the hubbub continued along the fence-line to the west, slowly diminishing as the sounds continued down the west pasture, no birds appearing. Predator? I wondered. Maybe a fox getting too close to the nesting place?

I don’t know. I had another drink in the warm great room. I looked at the wreath and I looked at the cold-iron fireplace. I thought about lighting a fire, but then decided to do the right thing, wait until the chimney guy comes and looks at it and certifies it ready to go.

I sighed. There is something primal about the fire, something that calls out of the ancient mammal in us down there in the core of our brains. Chirp.

A couple chores loom. Literally. That damn smoke detector on the cathedral ceiling has always been a problem, hopelessly out of reach. No ladder, of course, another item for the Big Box home center. Janet-the-Original-Owner had smoke detectors in every room, and all the batteries expired at just the same time, beeping things happening everywhere, all with the same irritating chirp.

Chirp, chirp freaking chirp. The sound of angry birds all over the house.

I dismantled all of them except the one way up there. Chirp. That is one of the things I gotta accomplish. This one only requires the will to do it. That is so unlike the rest of the list back in the World where I live most of the time.

Chirp.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

(Video capture of the response to the shootings at Newtown. Image courtesy of Fox17.)

We were sitting at the Amen Corner at Willow. It was a Friday that had not gone that well. The Budget Cliff had everyone a little jumpy, and the awful news was the only thing that could push that into the background.

“It happened again,” said the Attorney. “I hope the fucking Supreme Court sleeps well tonight. Second Amendment my ass.”

“Don’t start,” I said. “The decision about gun ownership in the District had nothing to do with the horror in Connecticut.”

“There are too many goddamn guns,” said Old Jim. “That is the problem.”

“That is just one of the problems,” I said. “Mostly it is a young male problem. First I heard about the massacre this morning was an email from a college professor buddy. He wanted to get the name of an NRA trainer who could certify him for a concealed carry permit. He is scared to death one of his young male students will do something like it in his class. He wants to be able to defend himself.”

“Twenty kids. Can you imagine it? I can’t. This is the worst thing- the most horrific thing- I have ever heard of,” said Jerry, who was taking a break from rehearsals for the Holiday Chorus shows at the Kennedy Center.

“The lovely Bea and I are going shooting this Sunday,” said Jon-without-H matter of factly. He had a carefully knotted holiday bow tie and was drinking a porter, to keep things mixed up. “We did our NRA classroom course last Monday night.”

Liz-with-an-S popped down to our end of the bar and joined the conversation without missing a beat, updating the count of the murdered, and gliding through the conversation with effortless elegance completely out of context with the appalling subject.

“You know the only answer to this is to just take all the guns out of circulation, right?”

I shook my head. “Yeah, of course. The government should take all the guns. What are you, nuts?”

“No, I am serious. It is a public health freaking emergency. Guns are a menace to an orderly society.”

“Suppose I agree with you,” I said, taking a sip of the chardonnay, “And I do, in a logical construct. I think if we were designing a society today we probably not permit the civilians to be armed to the teeth.”

John-with grimaced. He is in the business of controlling weapons of mass destruction at the State Department, and knows a little about the difficulty involved in disarming the world. “Watch what comes out of the latest ‘National Discussion.’” He said, swirling the Happy Hour Red in his tulip glass. “Bans on guns that look like military weapons. Longer waiting periods to purchase them. Banning high capacity magazines. Cracking down on ammunition purchases. The Second Amendment says you can have guns but it does not mention ammunition.”

“Exactly which of those would have affected this brutal act of mass murder?” I asked. “Apparently the guns that were used were purchased legally by a sane adult female. This nut-job would never have popped up on the radar screen. He stole the guns after killing his Mom, for Chrissake.”

“Banning the extended magazines for the semi-automatic weapons might have.”

“I will take your point on that, but we don’t know what was used yet. And would people just learn the difference betwee

I am not going to do it to you this morning. I am not going to talk about Detroit going bust, or the wild closing of the legislative session in Lansing, or anything like that. We have got enough trouble right here in River City, and I don’t even want to do that.

You can’t get away from it. We are trying to get ready for the season of Joy, and the cyclic rhythm of the human response to the growing of the dark and chillness of the Winter. I was charging the battery in my camera to cover the holiday party that evening when I got a note from a pal in the budget business in the middle afternoon that summed up exactly what I am thinking this morning as we sweep majestically into the holidays.

It is a little surreal, sort of like those whitewater raft trips out West- a regal tranquility abruptly transitioning to foaming white. I looked it up, just to see how this might work. Based on the International Scale of River Difficulty), there are six types of rapids, classified according to navigational difficulty:

Class I – Easy. Small waves in fast moving water. Few obstacles.
Class II – Novice. Wide channels and rapids that are easy to navigate, without many turns or obstacles. Small waves less than two feet high.
Class III – Intermediate. Strong currents require training and ability to maneuver quickly and effectively. From this class on, rafters require a guide. Not suitable for young children.
Class IV – Advanced. Powerful rapids for strong paddlers that can handle fierce turns and spins. Drops and waves are common.
Class V – Expert. Violent, dangerous rapids, usually through obstructed channels, tight turns, and soaring falls. Requires professional equipment.
Class VI – Un-runnable. Likelihood of death in attempting class 6 runs.

I trust my pal Jerry. He is in the business of navigating the budget rapids, and he said this yesterday, as the sun was breaking out through the clouds high above North Glebe Road:

“Just remember (because no one seems to at this point) once the President and the Speaker make whatever it is they are going to make (sausage seems to be a pretty apt metaphor although I really doubt that any of us will like the taste of it), BOTH the House and the Senate must pass bills AND if either does any tinkering there will be a conference requiring an additional vote by each body.  If we are REAL lucky, Congress works three days a week (Tuesday-Thursday, so they can spend time in their districts) – that means there are SIX legislative days (if you include Christmas) to make and enact this deal and preclude sequestration.

Figure the odds!”

So, here we go, I thought, calculating the odds as precisely slim and none.

I would have got a little pensive, but then my cell phone went off and Old Jim growled that he was at Willow and what about a holiday drink. I shrugged, looking at the papers piled up by the computer. The Holiday Party back at the building beckoned, but it probably was OK to have a little head of steam on a purely a priori basis.

I walked over to the bar and had a couple glasses of happy hour white, and we talked about the type of rapids ahead at the Amen Corner. I told him I was looking at property in Colorado for a variety of perfectly good reasons. Not for an immediate crisis, mind you, but maybe a place to go where there was no swiftly moving water.

Jon-no-H was there, waiting for the Lovely Bea, and big Chris-the-Marine, Sabrina and Jasper were holding down the business end of the bar. Sabrina had some brilliant crimson feathers woven into her hair and was at her exotic lovely best. Happy, too. She had just acquired two kittens, and the world was good. Tracey O’Grady, the executive chef and owner, came out to press the flesh, and I realized how much this aggregation of workers and bar-flies mean to me.

Old Jim had missed lunch and ordered up a couple salmon sliders, no tartar, just Frank’s Red Hot Sauce drizzled over appetizing lumps of fish. I waved away the menu. “There will be plenty of food back at Big Pink,” I said, finishing my last glass of wine. I slipped a twenty and a couple singles into the black folder with the check. “See you tomorrow.”

Which is how I found myself in Holiday Land in the lobby, the darkness full and the chill air outside held at bay. It was good. There will be a bonus story this morning about exactly that.

In the meantime, check your life vest. I can’t say if the New Year is going to feature a “Class I” or a “Class 6” set of rapids. Keynes would argue for the latter, at least in the longer term, but of course, I am no Keynsian.

I think if you find yourself deep in the hole, you ought to just stop digging, you know?

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

(President Warren G. Harding. A conservative politician from Ohio, Harding had few enemies because he rarely took a firm enough stand on an issue to make any.)

“There isn’t anything the matter with world civilization, except that humanity is viewing it through a vision impaired in a cataclysmal war. Poise has been disturbed, and nerves have been racked, and fever has rendered men irrational; sometimes there have been draughts upon the dangerous cup of barbarity, and men have wandered far from safe paths, but the human procession still marches in the right direction.”

– Candidate Warren Gamaliel Harding, 1920.

As we lurch toward the Holidays here in DC, the pressure is on to make everyone play “Let’s Make a Deal.” The House has been told to expect to come back to the District the week after Christmas for more negotiations. I may have to indulge in a few dangerous cups of barbarity to get through it. I am confident I can wander back to the safe path, if I don’t fall down the brick steps of the Willow Restaurant.

It will be a pain to have the Honorable Members and their swarming staffs back. The traffic is bad enough when the Hill is in recess. When they are in session, forget about it. I am going to stay out of the city, if I can, since I am getting a better understanding of the problem with the budget cliff or the collective suicide pact into which we seem to have entered.

But here is the problem: we don’t think there is a real problem, just a theoretical one. You know, a policy issue rather than something real. The numbers that account for who we are, or at least what we make, tend to bear that out.

Sorry if you don’t live here. You might want to drop a line to your re-districted Congressperson and point that out. Here it is in a nutshell: this is a list of the richest counties in the United States. By extrapolation, this represents the wealthiest concentration of non-state-level jurisdictions in the history of this tired old world.

I feel good about it, and a little sorry for the Counties that are further away from the Washington Monument and don’t get to play.

You will note in the list of top ten median-income counties in the US, NoVa comes in at exactly half the top six. Three Maryland in-close counties round the list out. So, six of the top ten counties in the land are right here, encircling the Capital.

Nothing says it better. We are your problem. We are the ones slurping at the public trough, with all that Federal money sloshing around. But it is still surreal. The top earning County- once-rural Loudoun- has a median income of a little under $120K a year- or, to put it in perspective, the equivalent of a couple of public school teachers living together in hetero/same-sex/pals-with-benefits arrangements.

At the moment, I am comfortably north of the median all by myself, though I have to view that as a purely temporary phenomenon. It is a little embarrassing, when they start throwing around the not-paying-our-fair share thing, but I am hardly anything special around here- two bedroom apartment living for me. That makes me wonder at the real disparity in income that is represented by the numbers.

There are some people around here that are channeling some serious money away from you and into their pockets.

Looking at the Geography is useful. Blue Arlington is the little odd-shaped lump with a right angle boundary that completes the original diamond of the District of Columbia is the closest in, naturally, since it actually used to be part of DC. Fat Fairfax was the first to benefit from the flight of the white population from the District after the Riots, and the African-American middle class followed in short order to PG County.

Culpeper County, of the real other Minutemen fame, would never make the list. Fauquier County, just to the south of Prince William, may make it some day, if the sprawl continues to spread with the desire of ordinary people to have a decent quality of life. If you consider the four hours a day you have to spend to get to the land of Oz further north to be of any quality at all.

Culpeper, of course, is nestled on the south side of the Rappahannock River, as several Federal Generals discovered in their increasing fury to drive to Richmond.

Anyway, I think the whole going-over-the-cliff thing has an air of unreality to all of us here, despite the dire warnings and predictions. There are more of those flying around this morning- the Federal Aviation Administration announced 2,200 layoffs, though I do not imagine that the bulk of those jobs are going to come out of the National Capital Region. They will be spread across fly-over country, the way things normally work as Rome- er, sorry, Washington- protects its unique interests.

Living here means you do not have to accept reality. Or better said, you only have to accept reality to the extent that you have to identify someone else who is going to pay for the return to normalcy.

Wait, that was the Harding Administration, wasn’t it?

Maybe the right answer is to ask those of us here in Washington to live in the same country you do.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

“The Ancient Mayan calendar speaks of 12-12-2012 as the end of times as we know it, and the beginning of a new cycle of evolution for planet earth, humanity and the cosmos. Mayan elders say that the Ancients were informing the modern world to be ready for a giant transformation for the human race…December 2012 is being looked upon as a significant spiritual event and a momentous shift in the collective consciousness of the planet.”
– Diomira D’Agostino noted channel, faery-crystal light-healer, energy-healer, breath-worker and intuitive. She holds a BA in Modern Language.

My eyes flashed open early and would not close, regardless of how I willed them to shut. The list floated up like that Star Wars thing in the darkness. So much to worry about, so little time. The list would go like this, according to the murmur of the BBC World Service in the background:

1. The End of the World
2. The North Korean Rocket Launch
3. The three mile wide asteroid which will zoom within 4.3 million miles of Arlington early Wednesday morning (Dec. 12).
4. The death of Sitarist Ravi Shankar
5. The imminent death of bantam dictator Hugo Chavez
6. Michigan goes “Right to Work” -24th State to do so
7. Detroit slides into receivership
8 The Budget Cliff
9. Doha Whimpers out on Climate Change
10. Egypt embraces a constitution of one.

“Fuck me,” I thought.

First thing I did, after making the coffee, was to check and see if the world had ended. Midnight brought us to the end of the ancient Mayan calendar, and many commentators expected things to fall upward into the sky, dogs and cats to lie down together, Boehner talking to Obama, that sort of thing.

I clicked onto the dashboard pane on Snow Leopard OS and checked the international time on the other side of the globe to confirm that nothing of the sort had actually happened. I was stymied. It was just after dinnertime on the 12th there, maybe some sashimi or a plate of eba and teka-maki in a bustling sushi bar? There are just a few hours of earnest drinking time until the clock clicks over to the unknown in Asia.

Hence, I will not know if the world ends until sometime after lunch.
That affects planning. Should I anticipate a salad, in case I need to move quickly, or something more substantial in case it is the last meal?

There are those who are more optimistic about the day. This is the last time in this century- thus the last I will see- when the digits line up in symmetrical union: was a surge in marriages on 07-07-07, 10-10-10 and 11-11-11.

Apparently it aids the memory, and forgotten anniversaries are a bad thing in my experience. But we run out of months for this century today, nothing available after the even-dozen is passed, and we will not see this again until the 22nd century, unless the Mayans were right.

So, no surprise that the plucky North Koreans shot a rocket over Japanese territory, scattering boost-phase rocket parts as they successfully- maybe- put a lump of metal into low earth orbit.

That means that this team of launch specialists probably will live into 2013, though I am not sure the previous group did. They only got two minutes of flight time- not enough to celebrate the centennial of the Great Leader himself, Comrade Kim Il-Sung.

(Vigilance by the DPRK’s Liberation Army, with rocket. Photo KCNA).

The North’s house organ, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) released the following report on what was Wednesday over there: “Scientists and technicians of the DPRK successfully launched the second version of satellite Kwangmyongsong-3 into its orbit by carrier rocket Unha-3, true to the last instructions of Dear Leader Kim Jong Il”.

Nine and a half minutes after the lift-off, the DPRK joined the Space Club.

Regardless of the significance of the day, I am not sure this development is the end of the world. Another chunk of metal in polar orbit is not going to change much, though I recall we used to call it a “national security orbit,” since it enabled a glimpse into places in the northern latitudes one might not otherwise be able to monitor.

Our national security launch site was normally Vanderburg in California, since we could shoot unobstructed south toward the Pole. That is not the only place we do spooky stuff- sometimes it happens at Cape Canaveral, as it did at just about the same time.

I suppose it is comforting that as we watch the North lob a little package of instruments into orbit, the US Air Force launched the third X-37B into an east-west orbit atop an Atlas 5 booster. There are several interesting wrinkles. The booster is made by a private concern, not the National Reconnaissance Office, and the X-37 is a Black Program mini-shuttle, unmanned. The USAF Rapid Capabilities Office chartered the mission, and it is way cool.

(Infra-red shot of the X-37B after recovery from a year+ mission last June. Photo USAF.)

It is comforting, here on the brink of a new Golden Age that we can still routinely launch things away from the planet. It is too bad the planet did not come equipped with life boats, you know? I applaud the Air Force for keeping us in the game.

Now, as to that Golden Age…what makes your top ten?

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicscotra.com

(The workers swarm up the flanks of Big Pink at 0730. Photo Socotra).

I am up but groggy. I do not want to go to DIA this morning, but off I will have to go to make an eleven o’clock meeting. Even a full pot of Dazbog Russian Roast coffee TM is not having the full effect I would like. The Little men are swarming over the flank of Big Pink, continuing their inexorable march along the façade of the building, chipping paint like sailors on a land-locked battle cruiser.

These guys are amazing. They work unless it is raining hard. They appear to be happy to have paychecks. Well, I don’t know if ‘happy’ is quite the right word. Maybe relieved. That is the way I feel when I can get out of bed in the morning.

I listened to the news from my old home state with curiosity this morning. The President was up in the suburbs of the Motor City yesterday, celebrating jobs provided by a German firm that happen to be located there. Mr. Obama thundered about the injustice of the Right To Work legislation that is working its way through the legislature.

The whole thing is sort of confusing. The bill apparently makes participation in unions voluntary, though of course that is already the law. Big Mama did not have to join the Teachers Union, for example, and she didn’t. She did not believe in strikes by public workers. The thing that irked her was that the union got her dues deducted from her check anyway.

I haven’t read the bill itself, so I consider myself as well informed as the Congressmen who voted for the Affordable Care Act. I gather that people who don’t have to give an involuntary contribution might not want to do so if they had a choice. Seems reasonable, and you can understand why the unions are so dead set against it.

I don’t know about the timing. This is a lame-duck session in the Michigan legislature. Apparently the Republicans have a bigger majority than they will have when they come back, and have decided to go for it. Governor Snyder has announced he is going to sign it, if it arrives on his desk as expected.

I am a little mystified by the new politics. The President’s appearance up in Michigan seems to be part of some campaign that never ends. The election was several weeks ago- my pal Space announced that he had just taken himself off suicide watch last week as he recovered.

The Judge was sitting next to me at Willow. He was in town on some matters of personal health from his retreat up at Deep Creek. He opined that it was a pretty grand time to be retired, since now he can spend all his free time talking to doctors.

I just sighed. The President apparently thinks that going out to the hustings will encourage people to pressure the Republicans in the House to go along with raising taxes. I am puzzled by the approach- the GOP members all appear to be in safe districts created by their determined redistricting efforts, so I am not sure who the target audience is.

The Judge laughed. The Democrats in Maryland just redistricted his distant county in the pan-handle of the state out by West Virginia into a new spaghetti-shaped district that is concentrated in the DC suburbs. He shrugged. “There are more people at the mall in Montgomery County than there are in Garret County. That is the way this stuff works.” He took an appreciative sip of Willow’s Happy Hour White.

“But that means your vote is worthless,” I said. The Judge just smiled.

I assume the thrust of all this is for most of us to get on board with raising taxes on those millionaires-and-billionaires making more than two married GS-13 government employees in Montgomery County. I am pretty resigned to it happening, as are most folks I know. The concept is particularly popular if it is someone else’s taxes you are raising.

I would be OK if they just raised Warren Buffet’s taxes, or maybe him and Matt Damon and those Hollywood people who are onboard with the concept. I mean, if you had a choice, would you willingly shell out money you didn’t have to?

Mr. Obama took advantage of a supportive audience yesterday to get beyond the tax thing and speak about the right-to-work legislation that might be passed today. Governor Snyder used to say that he did not have this on his agenda, but has changed course and announced he will sign it.

The news is reporting that buses are heading for the state capital in Lansing from all over, and so many teachers will be there that several school districts have announced closures.

It is about the kids, I understand.

The circus that occurred in Wisconsin when Scott Walker did this is probably a pretty good template for what is going to go on today, and I wish I was going to be there to see it.

Unfortunately, I have got to work.

More on all this tomorrow. With all the paint-chipping going on next door, I can barely hear myself think. I imagine the legislators in Michigan are going to be feeling the same way.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com