By the Numbers
I have to insert the caveat here, up front:
“I am no member of the GOP; I am opposed to a long litany of things, to include murder, particularly the murder of children; exploitation of same; gender and orientation bias; littering; pollution, generally speaking; crime; lies and the oppression of minorities. Further, I am in favor, generally, of goodness, and opposed to the machinations of cartels, foreign and domestic.”
So, that said, I checked the news this morning and got depressed.
As you well know, the President’s Budget is supposed to be submitted to Congress on the first Monday in February. We used to sweat the submission on our budget staff right through the holidays, which made the ho-ho-ho thing sort of suck. This morning, though, there are rumors that the law will not be followed. The PresBud may not be rolled out until early March, more than a month late. That would bring several scary things to a head all at once:
– Falling off the “fiscal cliff”
– Running out of funds provided by the Continuing Resolution
– Hitting the debt ceiling
– Late submission of the FY14 President’s Budget
That all is too much at once for the ADD-addled folks at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, and I noted that there are still several weeks before the Government shuts itself down. So, I decided to think about how to get by the disaster personally, rather than worry about things over which I have absolutely no control.
I was thinking about diversifying the pathetic little portfolio I have amassed since the divorce, and whether it is smart to include precious metals in the mix- You know, Silver dollars or bullion of some kind. In the process of trying to imagine how that would work in practice, I got wrapped around Illinois Senate Bill 3341.
I have think I have confided to you my belief that the United States Government is engaged in a variety of criminal conspiracies.
(Insert caveat here.)
This applies to both the Stupid Party and the Corrupt Party- but of course, only the former is subject to much scrutiny by the Press. Imagine what the reaction would have been if President Bush had been authorizing drone strikes from the Oval Office.
Consider the now-forgotten Fast and Furious gun-walking operation conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms; EPA administrator Lisa Jackson and her clandestine e-mail coordination of a covert campaign to bankrupt otherwise legal coal power plants; add in the bogus loans to well connected Green companies from the public trough; throw in the whole global warming thing that seems to change all the time.
Remember? It has gone from “warming” (which it has not for sixteen years) to “climate change” (of course it does, though not as quickly as the accepted narrative goes) to “Extreme Weather.”
My beloved NY Times was all over that this morning. “2012 was the hottest year ever!” screamed the article. I read it carefully to see if they were going to mention that the claim is based on preliminary data that is almost certainly going to be revised downward. I failed to see any disclaimer.
In fact, the article got better. Hot, Cold, dry, wet, all of it was mixed together in a mix that I could not decipher. The historical record indicates there have been monster storms since the dawn of time, and though there are more and more of us in vulnerable concentrations on the coast, we are lucky. The frequency of storm strikes is at a historic low.
Never mind. There is a relentless publicity campaign in progress to terrify a helpless population. That things don’t quite add up is quite beside the point. (Insert disclaimer, and add “I am no “denier,””) The evidence is fairly clear that the global temperature has bounced around over time and increased almost half a degree Celsius since 1840. The “why” of it is still not clear, and the science is far rom settled. I am uncertain why we are supposed to panic about it.
(Insert the disclaimer again here.)
“Men and the weather,” I thought, and went back to trying what to do. SB3341 was featured in one of the financial advice columns I read periodically, trying to figure out how I can best survive the rigged game played on Wall Street and at the Treasury. One gold-bug pundit was railing about the legislation.
I thought for a moment that it was new national legislation to track the sale of precious metals- establish a paper trail similar to that Senator Feinstein wants to establish about firearms. There can only be one reason for that, and it made me queasy.
Of course, there already is Federal regulation tracking the sale of precious metal above a certain denomination in value, I forget what, but this state-level law makes it illegal to pay for precious metal in cash. That would appear to violate the little motto above where Jack Lew is going to be placing his illegible signature. You know, the one that says “This note is legal tender for all debts Public and Private.”
The synopsis of the legislation reads:
“Creates the Precious Metal Purchasing Act. Provides that a person who is in the business of purchasing precious metal shall obtain a proof of ownership, create a record of the sale, and verify the identity of the seller. Provides that a person who is in the business of purchasing precious metal shall not pay for the precious metal in cash and shall record the method of payment. Requires the purchaser to keep a record of the sale for one year or, if the purchase amount is over $500, for 5 years.”
As we approach new regulations on firearms- apparently to be implemented by Executive edict rather than by Congress- it is worth a moment to contemplate what we have given up in terms of liberty lately.
I am getting uneasy about what we have surrendered to the central government without a shot.
At the time of its passage, I liked parts of the Patriot Act. I was in the government then, and I felt the time was long past that we should apply Constitutional protections to the avowed enemies of the United States- but other parts of the Act permitted my vacuum-cleaning associates at NSA to join Law Enforcement in vast data collection efforts, linking IP addresses to all manner of things with no relation to the GWOT or unrelated activities.
The Department of Homeland Security is so woefully inept (Remember, DoD took a half century to begin to get its act together) and its bizarre components naturally overreach.
The TSA is clearly out of control. Their “conditioning” activities against law-abiding citizens queued up like cattle are outrageous.
Think about the indignities we suffer in the interest of Higher Truth and let’s do the numbers:
The First Amendment is under assault. I vividly recall Sen. Chuck “Blowhard” Schumer (D-NY) last summer ruminating about imposing restrictions on speech on the floor of the US Senate.
The Second is under assault. We will see what edict emerges from the Vice President’s task force to land on the President’s desk next Tuesday. The Governor of New York has mentioned confiscation as a logical next step.
(Insert caveats and disclaimer here and here.)
The Third, Fourth and Fifth Amendments are increasingly irrelevant due to technology. As to the Third, I have no particular fear of foreign troops being billeted at the farm- though if a child, spouse or contract worker were found in possession of controlled substances on the property the Culpeper police might legally confiscate the farm and auction it off to pad their budget- even if I am innocent of any crime. And as to the 4th and 5th….
Well, a pal sent a note along about a suicide in a little town in one of the Square States. It turned out the former mayor of the city, a respected attorney and former state legislator, had been paid a visit by the law enforcement representatives of a cyber task force tracking down child pornography.
(Insert disclaimer here.)
Obviously, the matter was a huge controversy in a small place. The sensational nature of the arrest left the public generally with the opinion that the lawyer must have been guilty of something awful, even if it was simple possession of graphic images of minors.
That he was convicted in the court of public opinion goes without saying, and it struck me with a chill that there was actually a team of cyber analysts tracking file sharing and IP addresses- presumably under a duly executed warrant- but what of the IP addresses that were linked to his by virtue of his public service or private practice?
What of the lists and links that result from the hunt? That is, after all, what brought the cops to the attorney’s door in the first place. We do that sort of stuff all the time when we do links-and-nodal analysis to find High Value Targets. HVU is one of my favorite acronyms.
The Sixth Amendment ensures a right to a speedy trial- but we have gone beyond that. We have recently executed American citizens with drone strikes, being compliant with the Constitution by speedily proceeding from identification right to the post-sentencing phase.
Ditto the seventh- jury trials are supposed to be guaranteed, and I can find no provision by the Framers for the insertion of Hellfire missiles into the judicial process.
The Eighth? Ah, come on. What is cruel or unusual about being subject to summary execution?
The Ninth and Tenth? Neutered long ago, I am afraid. Both on their face were supposed to reign in the powers of the Central Government, which is supposed to have only specifically enumerated powers, the rest of them reserved to the States and the People, respectively. Thank goodness the courts settled that long ago- based on the interstate commerce clause, our benevolent government can pretty much do what it wants.
(Insert the usual caveat here.)
Thus was it ever in the course of human affairs- power tends to grow naturally and inexorably. The Framers knew that, and the Constitution was there to protect us in unambiguous terms.
Thank goodness the Government is there to protect us, since we the people have permitted the social contract to be undermined by the numbers, one through ten. It is in the interest of a Greater Good, after all. Pretty soon we will be just as civilized as Europe.
Well, gotta go. I need to fold up a new aluminum foil helmet and get ready for the day. And I need to stop at the gun store tomorrow on the way down to the farm. Some of the inventory there is not likely to be available after next Tuesday.
(Insert caveat here.)
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Common Sense
(When published in 1775, this little pamphlet was the biggest best seller of the day. Photo Wikipedia).
Well, the holidays are thankfully in the wake behind us. I may still have the Christmas lights up, but I will turn them off one of these days soon. It is only common sense to save the electricity. The days are getting longer, one by one, and I will be looking for the earth to begin once more to flourish with green. Maybe even this weekend.
The weather-guessers are saying that we may be scraping 70 degrees by Sunday.
It is the anniversary of the publication of a pamphlet written by a fellow named Thomas Paine. It was called “Common Sense,” and explored in plain English the case for putting the King of England (and America, among other realms) on furlough. It was, as a proportion of copies printed to the total population of 1775, the most widely circulated document in American history.
The next year, he contributed his greatest line to literature in his tract “The American Crisis:”
“These are the times that try (people’s) souls.”
I don’t know if that quote is directly applicable to the present, since there is no King breathing down our necks, but it certainly does feel like it. I wish this morning’s outing was going to feature a cool recipe, or humorous anecdotes about the Regulars at the Amen Corner at Willow, but it doesn’t.
We are back to work, and the peevishness that went along with it has dissipated a bit. There is a new Congress, and the Budget Cliff has been avoided. Unfortunately, nothing in particular was solved, except to provide more tax breaks to Hollywood and the NASCAR owners, for reasons best known to the United States Senate.
Left on the table was the unthinkable, which is to say the Sequestration package of automatic cuts to the discretionary budget in Defense and Civil programs. And that pesky debt-ceiling thing.
A mark of how insane this has become is the notion that the Treasury could mint a trillion-dollar platinum coin, deposit it in the Treasury (presumably on an annual basis) and make the problem go away.
I won’t presume to say whether any of this is “good” or “bad.” That would descend into some arcane discussion of right and left and how long Keynesian economics is supposed to support trillion dollar deficits or whether the Austrian School has got anything right at all.
The macro picture is important, I suppose, but we have to live where we are, and on this, I live in Washington and work in a business that depends on the government. So I will let the alleged grown-ups address the structural problems and continue to plan on how to keep living.
As you recall, Secretary of Defense Panetta wrote a letter to us all in December, advising us to stay cool and not panic. “Sequestration,” he said, “will be something we can deal with later in the New Year.”
You do not have to be a rocket scientist (Sorry in advance to my pal Natasha, since she actually is one) to recall that the Federal Government is already well into the Second Quarter of it’s fiscal year, and hence the time for adjustment is much closer than we normally think, as we are just getting used to calendar 2013.
According to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, unless the Congress manages to cooperate enough to make a deal on the spending cuts apportioned in the Sequestration legislation, DoD will be forced to begin monthly furloughs of the nearly 800,000 civilians who work for the Department.
That could happen as soon as March.
We were in a meeting with a partner yesterday, in one of those towers out in Tysons. The gray sky was spitting chill rain. Three of us sat on one side of a long conference table and we hammered out a deal about some prospective work. It went well, with the exception of the nagging little problem that we would have to get past whatever it is that is either going to happen, or not happen.
It makes assumptions necessary. It hard to plan, where there is no apparent plan, nor anything like a bipartisan effort to come up with one.
The Budget Cliff legislation- or as it is also known, the “American Taxpayer Relief Act” (an oxymoron, since everyone’s tax bite went up)- contains about 9% in cuts to DoD, and applied this far into the year, actually is the equivalent of a15% percent cut over the remaining seven months of the fiscal year.
Unless something changes, this happens automatically on March 1.
In like a lion, out like a lamb, I guess.
The people around the conference table did not have any good ideas about how to deal with something like that, or who to talk to if our customers are on unpaid leave.
It is weird. I guess they will figure something out. I mean, they have to, right? It is only common sense.
(Thomas Paine, with signature. He was a prescient guy: fiercely anti-slavery, he was in favor of a bunch of progressive ideas. He had a grand vision for society: he was one of the first to advocate a world peace organization and social security for the poor and elderly. His radical views on religion would undermine his influence, and when he died in New York in 1809, only a handful of people attended his funeral).
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
The Front Page
(The façade of the fall-back bar and restaurant in the vibrant Ballston neighborhood.)
I met Liz-with-an-S at the Front Page last night. A meeting was necessary. The mailroom at The Daily has been swamped with inquiries about her departure from the Willow bar staff. “Why?” read the torrent of lamentation. “She was so pretty, so smart, and she took such good care of you barflies.”
I had to agree, and as Liz-S’s unofficial publicist, I felt obligated to get the truth out there. She was at the bar, waiting with a glass of pinot grigio and a tall glass of water. I slid onto the stool next to her, struck by her beauty, Her fine chestnut hair was loose and draped across a sweater open just enough to suggest the generous curve of her figure. She looks great in civilian clothes.
“So what happened?” I asked, trying to get the attention of the bartenders who appeared to be studiously avoiding me. I thought about trying their version of Happy Hour White, but I waited long enough that I decided to go with hard liquor at happy hour prices.
“Seven and Seven,” I said, after Liz-S cleared her throat and managed to distract the bartender who had a wild shock of thoroughly un-Willow like hair. I decided that the investment in being a regular somewhere else was a pretty good idea.
“See, we aren’t family here,” said Liz-s. “You step right to the back of the bus.”
“Yeah, I completely agree. Willow is the whole package. I have been watching people come and go on the staff almost since the place opened. It hurts when people you like move on and you never see them again.”
Liz-S pursed her lips. “Big Jim, Peter, Tinker Belle. And all the others. Gone.”
“Well, I am not going to lose you,” I vowed, taking a deep draught of the 7&7. “You have a huge following in The Daily. Everyone knows about the way your pony tail sways on your delicate swan-like neck and that black leoptard top…”
“You are such a jerk, Vic”
“No, seriously, if I were only fifty years younger and you didn’t already have a significant other…”
“I would be your baby sitter,” she said with a grin. “I guess it is time to move on.”
“The food and beverage industry is not where you need to be. You are an attorney, for god’s sake. An officer of the court, admitted to the Bar in New York and New Jersey. Time to grow up and be on this side of the bar.”
“I guess you are right,” she said. “I think Mondays are the nights at Willow that the person I had the disagreement doesn’t work.”
“Then Mondays are when you come back to the Amen Corner on the right side of the bar. The Regulars need to stay in touch. It is a family thing.”
Liz-S nodded decisively. “You got it,” she said. “but in the meantime, what do I tell people about not being at Willow?”
It was my turn to grin. “Just what everyone says here.”
“Which is what?”
“Creative differences, and you wanted to spend more time with your family.”
“But I don’t have a family here.”
My grin got even wider. “Of course you do. It is just a family that meets Monday nights at the Willow.” I finished my drink, and signaled for the check, remembering I did not have to tip as lavishly as I do normally. He was definitely not family. “It is a little unconventional, but that doesn’t mean the relationship isn’t real.”
“Thanks, Vic. Creative differences. Family. I got it.”
“You certainly do, Counselor. Give it a couple Mondays, and we will see you at Willow.”
(Liz-S in a previous life, before creative differences and family obligations. Photo Socotra)
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Kodachrome
(The Socotras, circa 1959, foreground Vic, Annook and Spike. Raven in his Navy flight jacket behind. I have never seen this image before. Photo Socotra)
There were several things to deal with this morning and it is already out of control and not even morning any more. It is a Kodachrome kind of day out there- the skies are tall, the wind not so biting, and the sun promises to stay out another minute or so on the march to Spring.
First, it is not ENS Socotra any more- it is LTJG Socotra. The pinning of his new rank was conducted by the CO of the Nimitz OPINTEL Center, and I was not there but he did permit me to purchase him dinner.
We hooked up after work and had a great time at Willow with the usual cast of characters, Old Jim, Jon-no-H, the Lovely Bea and Sabrina behind the bar. There was an obnoxious drunk named Kevin who personified the worst of Washington- self important, intrusive and brazen in his belief that what interested him must be of interest to us. Old Jim finally told him to go fuck himself, reaching toward the inside of his jacket as though he were about to exercise his second amendment rights.
Kevin went away, presumably to comply with Jim’s request
Anyway, not too many beers but just right and I drove the telephone Lieutenant home in a bright mood. There was nothing at the conciege desk when I strolled through, marveliing that I could actually stroll, and when I got upstairs I saw that Rhonda the Day Lady had stacked three boxes outside the door.
The first I opened was from out West, and was a godsend: three bags of Russian-roast Dazbog coffee. I was about to have to go through a couple weeks without the feisty start to the day, and withdrawal would have been severe. I once was lost, but now I am saved.
(Saturday night in Kodachrome at the Enterprise Bar in Rico, CO. Photo b4uqzme).
The other two were mundane and curious, respectively. One contained a t-shirt from from the Enterprise Bar in Rico, CO, provided by the Dive Bar T-Shirt Club I joined, and the other was a curious package from my sister Annook of the North.
We have not been talking since the Big Melt Down, so I was a little apprehensive about opening it- letter bomb, perhaps? Anyway, the box contained an update on her memorial project for the folks- a bench with plaque for the Petoskey Historical Society, and a cute stocking-style ornament filled with mini-tobasco sauce bottles like Dad liked to pour over everthing everything, and a pair of mitttens. The stocking was crafted out of Raven’s ties, and the mittens from Mom’s old Christmas sweaters. Then, there was Ann’s riff on Big Mama’s annual Christmas letter, capturing the format and manner of the way she used to write, sometimes in verse and sometimes not. It was eerily right on cadance:
She is a talented woman, my sister is. This must have been part of her mourning process, and the year is now past.
A lot to process this morning. The BBC announced the UK Met Office was scaling down their estimates for global warming by about 20%- the cracks in that narrative are becoming too obvious to ignore- they even acknowledged there has been no measurable warming in nearly twenty years, despite the blather you hear on the media.In fact, there was a feature story on NPR about how we need a carbon tax that will fix the economy and the deficit. It is so preposterous that I almost broke the clock radio turning it off.
Then, I got an email notification that the 1,013 Kodachrome slides that were discovered in the basement of Raven and Big Mama’s house had been scanned. I got lost looking at them in proof format. It is incredible.
Here is Mom, circa 1968:
I had not seen any of these before, and the captured the period from the late 1950s to around 1970. Weird. Like visiting ghosts.
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Freedom
Hah! Just lost the veneer of one of my two front teeth on breakfast. Crap. New Year, new challenges. How can a fried egg demolish dental fixtures?
Add another thing to the list for the working week. Crap. I hate Mondays.
As we lurch toward the next artificial crisis here in town, the Administration is rolling out the Replacements. This should be fun.
Let us put aside the matter of the possible criminal conspiracy at EPA for the moment. We will see what results from the surrender of the 12,000 Richard Windsor emails soon enough. That was the name on the email account used by Administrator Lisa Jackson, who was at war with Big Coal, among others. The media this morning appears to be trying to spin her departure as an act of principal, opining that she is leaving in protest because the Administration will cave on the issue of completing the controversial Keystone Pipeline.
I think it is fear of jail, personally. But of course no one is really responsible for anything any more. John Kerry will be nominated as the next SecState, a through-the-looking glass nomination of that scruffy ex-Naval Officer who took such delight at attacking his erstwhile comrades before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee long ago.
Kerry was, at best, an ambitious stooge, and at worst a lying self-aggrandizing knave. I don’t know what to think about Chuck Hagel being the next SecDef, but am more willing than the GOP Senators who appear ready to turn on a man who was one of their own. John Brennan to be the next Director of the CIA? That is where he grew up, and he was only in the West Wing as the Counter-Terror Advisor because he was toxic on extraordinary renditions and could not be confirmed in 2009.
I had no problems with rendition at the time, but I guess we will see if anyone remembers to be outraged. As a general principle, I think the President ought to be able to appoint people he trusts to the jobs he needs done.
Being on the farm, I did not think about this particular rearrangement of the deck chairs on the SS America. I hoisted my American flag on the pole at the end of the gravel driveway and luxuriated in not being in Washington.
It was a marvelous crystal clear weekend, with temperatures that soared into the fifties. I did some work on the house, signed a check for the new awnings. I think that will be a worthwhile upgrade to life on the deck, enabling quiet moments sitting under cover in the rain. We had intended to do some shooting in the afternoon, but it did not work out that way.
Football games on the satellite television made it too drunk to have the firearms out, and as you know, nothing good can come from the combination of guns and alcohol. So, we decided to skip church on Sunday morning and shoot up the property before the resurgent Redksins took on the Seahawks. I had received an invitation to watch the game back up north with my old boss from the Phone Company and his lovely bride, and that was going to make for fine entertainment later.
In the meantime, we had a grand time at the farm complex. The pleasant weather had some of our neighbors out and about, and we could hear period gunfire from the range at Happy Acres and decided to join them.
We set up a range and blasted away with the Russian’s 9mm Glock and my Sig-Sauer Mosquito .22. I had the .45 Colt M1911 Combat Commander with me since Matt wanted to feed some rounds through it to evaluate what his next his purchase might be. Did the classic look of the Colt trump the high tech aspect of the new Glocks and Sigs?
We did not have a chance to see. Problem was, he offered to buy a box of ammo to defray depletion of my inventory, and he purchased a box of .45 long Colt, not .45 ACP. So, that pistol sat out the match.
(The Colt had to sit it out. Photo Colt Firearms)
There is nothing cooler than going through a clip rapid fire, heavy or light caliber. Natasha’s daughter Ludmilla was visiting from Moscow with her partner Boris and son Sacha. She could punch nice tight groups, and had an elegant stance and steady grip on the weapons. She shot like an ace- nice tight groups.
When she was done and the range was cold, I asked her where she learned to shoot so well. “We cannot own firearms in Russia,” she said. “We must join chartered shooting clubs. My dressage horse is injured, and I took it up to have a hobby.”
“I prefer to have my own,” I said, and Matt nodded in agreement. She looked a little wistful but brightened.
“Perhaps when I come to America for good,” she said. The Russians slipped effortlessly between English and their native tongue.
I can’t see that well anymore, but the Slavs managed to get me pointed downrange and I managed to punch some holes in the paper and was concentrating on the compromise between accuracy and rapidity of fire- that is the strong point of the .22; ammo is no object, price-wise, even given the run on the available stocks as the Congress prepares to contemplate the ten separate gun bills introduced for the 113th session.
(Sig-Sauer .22 long rifle sport pistol. Sweet little gun. Photo Sig-Sauer.)
This was the first outing for the Sig, and I liked it. Nice heft, crisp efficient action and impressive sight presentation. I like the Sig; so much so that I may get one in .40 or .45. “Not the right time,” you say, and I agree about the current price gouging among a panicked gun-owning population.
But given the times, the alternative is maybe never.
(Glock 9mm. Matt liked this as Natasha’s carry gun, due to the light weight. Photo Glock.)
I can understand why people like the Glocks- composite construction light, powerful and many fewer moving parts than the Old School semi-auto pistols. I still preferred the Sig; better feel on the grip.
We are going to have the range set up for when the young Russians come back in May. We are also going to build a berm for greater range safety (no problems noted, but hey, safety first) and the thought is to commit to reloading and recycling brass, at least in the larger calibers.
What freaking fun. Liberating. Empowering. The Russians liked it a lot. It is called Freedom.
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
The Farm Report
(Transferred to the Library of Congress in 1998, Mount Pony had been a Cold War structure with 140,000 square feet of radiation-hardened bunker space to handle the computers that handle all US inter-bank transfers. The Richmond branch of the Federal Reserve also had several billion dollars in cash stashed there against a nuclear winter day, including pallets of $2 bills. Now, it is the local movie theater. Don the Awning Guy did work for some of the other bunkers scattered around Northern Virginia. There are more of them than you would think).
This life thing is harder than one was led to think growing up, isn’t it? It is good, that goes without saying, but it is really contextual.
I think about that when I motor in under the looming presence of the Federal property on the top of the hill. Mount Pony is something else these days, home of the David Packer Center for preservation of recordings and film. I don’t go off the property much after dark, and I saw it with the lights on for the first time a few weeks ago. It was a marvel.
Context is everything. For example, I woke in the small hours of the night this morning down at the farm. The silence was broken only by that dog three or four properties up the road and the occasional whistle of the train crossing the grade at Winston. I fought consciousness for a while but eventually surrendered to the power of the night. I went out to see how the dwarf looked in the darkness with his map illuminated. He looked fine- but a fine rain had come in the frozen darkness and the front porch had a fine glaze of ice underfoot.
I was not going to risk the stairs and the possibility of a tumble.
Returning to the comfort and privacy of my new bed, I read that Michael Cronan had passed. He was a San Francisco-based graphic designer and marketing executive who coined the marketing terms for “TiVo” and “Kindle.”
He was 61.
(Michael Cronan named two ubiquitous devices that I don’t fully understand how to operate. Photo New York Times.)
It is not the first time I have been startled by abrupt departures, and now I understand why my pal Mac took delight in culling the obituaries and providing ones of interest to me for the stupid Quarterly. I suppose that each morning you can read about someone else is a small victory against the rising aches and pains.
Steve Jobs checked out at 56. Not me, but for no reason I can discern except dumb luck. And not Don-the-Awning Guy. He is a bluff man with a square jaw and round eyeglasses and all his hair. He is a quintessential small businessman, working out of Warrenton, where his old man had established the awning business. Like me, Don was a government guy during his time at the public trough. I was a Fed, of course, and Don was State and Local. Mostly Loudoun County, from what he said, and he had been a public health inspector until his Dad passed and left him the business.
You have to take this all in perspective, and that gets easier the further you get outside the Beltway, over which I passed around 10:28 AM yesterday. I felt the oppression of the continuing crisis begin to ease, and traffic was light. I let the miles slide under the Panzer with growing tranquility.
The Russians had showed up before Don did. There was a birthday we needed to observe. I won’t tell you which one, or the number of it. Not relevant. He was unpacking his bulky books of samples out on the deck at Refuge Farm as I outlined the problem: the door frames were getting soaked and I wanted permanent covers to cease the problem, which could recur just when- assuming I survive- I will not be able to do a goddamn thing about it.
We worked through some options, he named a number that seemed about right for a motorized canopy that would cover most of the seating area of the porch, and fixed covers above the two damaged doors. I wrote him a deposit as he continued a running commentary on life in the country.
He has been out here since before Loudoun County was a bedroom community, and was more like Culpeper is today. His favorite example, it turned out, was the tale of one of the businesses he regulated as a health inspector. The owner had purchased a worthless piece of land. It was more than a hundred acres, and not one square inch of it would “perk,” which meant that no structure requiring a septic system could be built on it.
The enterprising fellow had vision. He paid $200 grand for the property and ran a corporate picnic facility on it for years to cater to the burgeoning commercial trade in western Fairfax and Loudoun. When the building tide swept over that part of the county, the infrastructure came with it.
When city sewer service made the “perkable” nature of the property irrelevant, it was “location, location, location. The entrepreneur sold it for $50 million.
“Crap,” I said in wonder. “That is a profit of 49 million, eight hundred thousand bucks.”
“No kidding,” said Don, jotting some numbers on the contract. “I regulated that guy for years. I seem to be good at making other people money.” He looked out over the lower pasture where the Russians were setting up a target for some marksmanship training later. “Not much of it stuck.”
“That sounds like what the President meant when he said ‘You didn’t build that’ during the campaign,” I said. “Only in this case he was right.”
Don laughed, and regaled us with local stories. He knows everyone in these parts. He did the awning on the front of Croftburn Farms Market, and seemed gratified that Andrew had made it successfully through the first year of business- the toughest. Then we talked about the continuing crisis, and what it meant for his line of work if the bottom falls out of Northern Virginia.
Don has some illustrious clients scattered around the region, most of them who had acquired bolt-holes upwind of the Capital for the same reason that the Federal Reserve tunneled out the middle of Mount Pony above the farm to safeguard the post-attack supply of small bills.
The Russians meanwhile had the target set up and had enough information about the awning concept. They said they were going to light a bonfire of scrap wood and debris from the field, and they were going to sit out in the pasture behind the outbuildings and drink wine later. I waved goodbye as their silver SUV crunched out of the gravel driveway and Don and I got to the crunch of the cost of the awnings.
The check I wrote was bigger than I had anticipated, but I thought about sitting under cover during the Spring rain showers that will nourish the grass in the pastures and cause the dark of the winter woods go brilliant green.
The Russians are coming with high explosives later this morning. Life is good. Spring will come. Later, maybe we will take in a movie up the hill.
(The Mount Pony Theater. Note the organ which is used to accompany silent films from the archive. Private funds covered the construction of the facility, which is a half-mile from my gravel driveway. Photo Library of Congress).
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
renee lasche colorado springs
Under Cover
I like to “eat my peas” first and get on with more pleasant things. So, I checked the office mail to see if I had missed anything in the night, plowed through the Times and answered mail from around the world.
Now I am looking at the clock and sighing. Thank Goddess I got the Saturday chores knocked out on the way home from work- eschewing time on one of Willow’s bar stools in semi-protest over the decision to eliminate Liz-with-an-S from the staff. I need to think through my complete response to the event.
There was the usual political blather from the chattering classes. I have no idea what Alaskan fisheries, motor speedways or the rest of the pork in the Budget Cliff or Super Storm Sandy bills has to do with the Fate of the Republic. Looks like our elected chuckle heads managed to get their greasy fingers into our wallets without discussion as usual.
There is something astonishingly cynical about the ability of this system to take care of itself when there is so much that would appear to be more important and immediate. Actual matters of national survival.
Oh well, I need to get my butt in gear and get on the road. The Republic will stand or fall today without comment from me. The Awning Guy is coming at noon to Refuge Farm. As part of a general effort to get the place ship-shape and squared away I am working down a list of deferred infrastructure projects, just like Congress. My improvements do not require the cover of the dead of night to get past.
Of course, the critical difference is that I am actually paying for them, rather than forging a check written on my unborn grandchildren. The flagpole and slate replacement pavers were first, after re-sealing the deck and replacing the failed planks.
Now, I am in the process of replacing the back and side doors. The frames were rotting out- it struck me as odd, since the materials were originally of high quality. Then I realized that the flat sides of the house allowed water to flow down the siding and keep the wood moist, encouraging rot.
So, awnings or something are called for. Plain green, I think, to match the doorframe. At $550 a door, the expense should pay for itself over time- the place was new in 2002, so break even should be in just a few years. I can run budget numbers on that, and they are of human scale, unlike the numbers in DC.
(This Sun-Setter retractable awning might be just the ticket for rainy-day relaxation. Photo Sun-Setter Co,)
I like to sit out when it rains, at least in the three seasons of relative warmth. All the cover I had over the deck was a large umbrella over the big cast-iron table. When folded down, it created a perfect habitat for wasps and other flying nastiness, so down it came.
I am looking at a solution something like this, in matching green. It is more pleasant to plan for the farm than to think about what is happening in the government. I have never seen anything like what is going on here in my working life.
You are lucky if you are far enough away from it that the immediacy is not so…well, personal. But, meanwhile, it is me for the road.
More from Refuge Farm. The Russians are having a birthday today, and they told me to get ready for any contingency.
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
The Club House
(The Panzer to the left of the old ANCC Flagpole that fronted the Club House for a gazllion years and which had a jaunty nautical flair.)
Mr. Sluggo called out of the blue yesterday morning and said: “You wanna get a drink after work?”
I said, “Sure. I’d like to have a couple Grey Goose martinis and work on my string theory.”
“You are a dick, Vic. See you after work.”
Normally I am pretty hard over about going to Willow as first preference for post-work recreation. The Panzer knows the way to get home after traffic has abated a bit, and I am comfortable in navigating from there to Big Pink in the dark. I am leery about driving around elsewhere because I don’t see that well after dark, and that makes the summer a lot easier for embarking on swell ideas.
That made it easier to agree, since I am still working out the dismissal of Liz-with-an-S. I talked to her about her departure from the Willow bar staff, and she said it was “creative differences,” and she “wanted to spend more time with her family.” That is what we usually call it here in DC. Whatever. I think it is shoddy treatment and have yet to work it out in my mind.
So, it is not a Boycott, and it is just a phonecall that came at the right time. I have admired Mr. Sluggo for a lot of years. He was maintenance officer in the fighter squadron I joined out in Japan in the fairy-tale year of 1978, the last one in which we were not in a war, real or by surrogate, with Iran.
I laugh sometimes when that part of my service is called “Cold War.” Cripe, we have been butting heads harder and lost more people against the Mercedes Mullahs than we did to the Russians. I sort a miss the old ones. Vadlimir Putin makes me long for the Old Bolshies.
Anyway, I am closer to the Club than Mr. Sluggo is, but I wanted to see the place at the last light and see what they were doing with the transformation of the campus.
(The former Club House. My old locker was under the white structure in the middle distance. The Grill was to the left, and the Members smoking lounge was to the right.)
The Army-Navy Country Club has been around for a long time- it was established in 1924 by military officers of the two Services, most of them assigned to either the Service Secretariats at the Munitions Building or Main Navy, or the original Joint Staff in the Old Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House.
The officers liked that clubby thing. They established the Army-Navy Club, appropriately at Farragut Square downtown, but it was an urban thing, two blocks from the White House. There was a Bethesda-based country club that offered tennis and golf and aquatics- we met some of the great-grandchildren during a surreal County Club Swim meet reciprocal in a club we never could have afforded to join one summer long ago- but the pressure to add a golf facility resulted in a huge schism in the officer community.
See, there is not much money in what soldiers and sailors do, but there is enormous respect for protocol and privilege. Some of the rebels who railed against the downtown club wanted the organization to construct a golf course. Older Veterans (who remember, were still just grumpy Old Men then, not tombstones) didn’t want to spend the money.
Hence, the rebels quit the club en masse, purchased an old farmhouse on an agricultural property in a freedman’s village in down-at-the-heels Arlington, and got to work building a golf course. There is still bad blood between the clubs, and there is nothing better than watching the confusion of out-of-towners arriving at one club for a function that is actually being held at the other.
(The original ANCC Club House. The center unit was the original farmhouse and it was tinkered with for 75 years. Ballroom was to the rear of the center module, roof deck and the locker rooms beneath the long addition to the right.)
That is what I occupied myself with waiting for Mr. Sluggo. The old clubhouse was a hodgepodge of additions and re-modelings over most of a century. The former Freedman’s village is getting a complete make-over outside the gate. The old clubhouse, the one where Ike and Chester Nimitz used to hang out, is almost gone.
I would tell you more about that, and what Mr. Sluggo and I did after we hooked up in the eerie silence of the magnificent new clubhouse.
Apparently food and beverage service was not available due to employee comp time, and we were among the ten percent who never get the word, like the House and Senate.
I happened to have stopped at the Class Six store that weekend and the bottle of vodka was going to go to the farm eventually and happened to still be in the trunk, but unfortunately, I am running out of time. I am working with sadists who have scheduled a 0800 meeting in the wilds of Fairfax County this morning, and I am not going to finish the pot of coffee, much less a tale of a resurrected organization and a fighter pilot and a spook toasting the new year in a still bracing winter breeze in the parking lot.
(The new Club House. There is a lot to the left where members can drink unobtrusively when food and Beverage Service is curtailed.)
The view from the place is extraordinary. The one from the old Club House was horrible due to the placement of the outdoor deck’s vision of the National Mall, and the fireworks. Should have been better. The new Club House fixes it.
(Believe it or not, the earthworks discernable on the right are what remain of Fort Richardson, a part of the Civil War defenses of Washington that the Corps of Engineers turned into the 9th Green of the ANCC golf course in the 1920s. It was constructed by active soldiers at taxpayer expense for “training.” Which it was, I suppose. All photos Socotra.)
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
String Theory
I wasn’t thinking when I made the appointment with a young man who was looked for a way to crack into the intelligence business. I had a scheme that might work to do that, and could use the help with the expanded portfolio I have at the office, but there are a lot of uncertainties, and I am not sure I can justify creating a new position up the chain.
I was prepared to be honest and see whether the kid had the potential. I had told him to meet me at Willow at four. I was exhausted- the four hour Red Team review out in Reston was one of those excruciating line-by-line reviews that I hate. I think I might be ADD sometimes, particularly in a mass-editing meeting.
The weather was good enough for the drive out through the jumble of Fairfax County and traffic was light. I assume some folks just bagged the whole week, and I wished I was with them on this first working day of the New Year.
I cleared out some lingering crap at the office and looked at the clock, and as the electronic display clicked toward the appointed moment, I took the elevator down to G2, collected the Panzer and motored up the ramp to exit the building.
The curb next to Willow had plenty of parking. It appeared that everyone was partied out and trying to get focused again after a bleary and strange holiday. The pathetic drama about the budget cliff and all the theatrics that went along with it left me feeling drained and uncertain about the future. All that furor, the vague relief that someone else was going to have their taxes go up was tempered by the fact that they were going to go up for just about everyone with the failure to extend the payroll tax.
I guess we will just see what happens with the first paystub of January.
Old Jim was sitting at the bar with a pile of Christmas ornaments in front of him. They appeared to be hopelessly scrambled.
“Whatcha doing?” I asked. “Not done with the holidays yet?”
“It is a puzzle,” he said. “Sabrina took them down from the ceiling all at once and the monofilament strings got all wrapped up around everything.” He picked up the pile and I could see the delicate strands woven through the arms of snowflakes and colored stars and flittering icicles.
“Good luck,” I said, but I really wanted to reach over and start pulling on strings with him. The task had the appeal of a jigsaw puzzle. Chris the Marine came down bar and poured me a glass of white. “We had to let Liz-with-an-S go,” he said.
“What?” Jim grimaced. “Yeah, she just left. She was pretty upset.”
“Crap,” I said. “I really like her. She was one of the best things about this place.” Jim picked at a string, face impassive behind his reading glasses.
“No shit,” he said.
A young man in a dark sweater entered the place and looked around, expectantly. He was clean-shaven and neatly dressed. “If you are looking for Vic Socotra he is not here,” I said.
“He is lying,” growled Jim. “But you wouldn’t want to find him anyway. Bad news.”
Then I laughed and stuck out my hand. “Howdy. Pull up a chair.” He did, and I introduced Jim as my counselor. John-with-an-H arrived moments later as I was trying to explain whatever it is I do for a living, and how we might craft a job that would, in the ponderous timeline of the government, get him a clearance and the ability to work as an analyst in the community.
Andrew- that was his name- was an impressive young man. He had just completed an internship with one of the Florida Senators. John-with had been a staff in his time, and I realized I had a perfect panel of experts. “Jim was a senior official in the Nixon Administration,” I explained. “And John-with does Arms Control shit.”
Andrew nodded, a little uncertain about the format for a job interview that wasn’t exactly that- more a mentoring session with some grumpy old men. We talked about a variety of strategies, since my personal opinion was that he could do better to get himself a position than the sort of back-door approach I was possibly able to offer.
Turns out he was ghosting some articles for an active duty Admiral on the Joint Staff.
“Shoot,” I said. “Join the Navy. You don’t have to stay for a career. They give you a clearance and job experience and you can come out of that ready to go with the GI education bill. That is the smart thing to do.”
Andrew appeared to consider my recommendation.
“Or stay connected with the Senator’s office. Once you are in on the Hill you can do all sorts of stuff. The money sucks, but you could wind up on one of the pro staffs and do anything after that.”
Jim looked over at me, tugging on string. He was drinking much Budweiser with both hands occupied, and he only had about three beers as we determined Andrew’s professional future. “Wasn’t it about a year ago that your parent’s died?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Tomorrow is the anniversary- the third of January I got the one-two punch. I was a little surprised by Raven dying that fast after 88 years on the planet. Big Mama’s collapse still has me mystified.”
“Quite an afternoon,” said Jim quietly. “And then a hell of a year.”
“A lot of strings to pull trying to clean up the wreckage,” I said. “Not a lot different than that pile of ornaments. But it is just about done.”
“So you think I should pursue the Navy?” asked Andrew.
“It seems to have worked for my Ensign,” I said. “You have a real live Admiral in your hip pocket. Write yourself a glowing recommendation and have him sign it. It is a great way of life if the Chinese don’t drop a DF-31 missile on your ship.”
“They can’t do the mobile targeting that well,” said John-with. “Highly unlikely.”
“It is like string theory,” I said.
Jim looked contemplative. “String theory, in my view,” he said, putting down the tangle of cheery bits of glass and metal, “is not so much an attempt to reconcile quantum mechanics and Einstein’s elegant general theory of relativity as a good idea about attaching a cord to the wallet when drinking Budweiser so as to avoid losing it.
“I find that more than two Grey Goose martinis can lead to confusion about whether or not electrons and quarks within the atomic structure are zero-dimensional objects or one-dimensional oscillating lines.”
“Did I leave that Higgs Bosun with my car keys?” asked John-with.
Andrew just shook his head.
“I can’t believe they fired Liz,” I said, and finished my wine. “First working day of the new year and I am about done with it.”
“Well, at least she can drink on this side of the bar now,” growled Jim and tugged on a string.
(Elisabeth and Brett just before the parting of the ways. Photo Socotra.)
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Green Side Up
(Speaker Boehner re-laying the sod in the House yesterday. Photo House of Representatives.)
It is a lot like that old joke about the landscaping crew from Hamtramk. They had been off for the holidays and drinking a lot of distilled potato peelings. The days off meant that some training had to be re-instituted:
“Green Side Up!” shouted the boss as the workers were laying fresh sod. “Green side up!”
The little men are scaling the side of the my wing of Big Pink, grinder going, and it feels like being on the ship again, needle guns grinding endlessly on the rusting steel.
I have been up on and off since 0100 to greet the day. The best dream of the night was of taking photos of all my precious crap, writing the story of what the items are and where they came from and post it all on eBay. The dream made me feel buoyant and light as a feather.
I wanted to know what the House had done on the permanent crisis in the night, and it looks like the immediate catastrophe has been deferred for a month or so.
I was relieved to discover I am no longer a plutocrat. Those bastards not paying their fair share now start with the “millionaires and billionaires” making $450,000 for dual filers. It is enough of a concession to reason that I will keep my pitchfork and torch in the closet for the moment and not march on the castle.
Of course, the measure does nothing much to address the real problem of revenue and cash outlays from the Treasury, which is still working overtime printing money to meet that evil dwarf Mr. Bernanke’s perpetual Quantitative Easing and Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner’s sweetheart relationship with Wall Street. Somebody ought to remind him which side of the sod should be showing.
My favorite story of the surreal negotiations in Congress this week was a report in Politico of an encounter between the Speaker of the House and the Majority Leader of the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body. Apparently last Friday, the Cliff looming, and Mr. Boehner saw Senator Harry Reid just outside the Oval Office at the White House. Mr. Reid had publically accused the Speaker of running an undemocratic House. In fact, he called Mr. Boehner “a dictator.”
The encounter was illuminating about the level of discourse over these holidays.
Boehner: “Go F—-yourself.”
Reid, disconcerted: “What are you talking about?”
Boehner: “Go F— yourself.”
My first real tax this morning was a querulous call from a co-worker for a weekly report- and I thought briefly about giving a recap of the Michigan loss to South Carolina while drinking Bloody Mary’s at a kitschy bar in Clarendon.
Instead I threw something together and now find myself behinder than I would like and realized I am scheduled to be in Reston for a ten o’clock meeting with a mild hangover and no desire whatsoever to start the working week after all the travail of the holidays.
It is going to be a screwy and querulous day, I suspect, with more to come on Thursday and Friday as we start the new year with a triple Monday (two Monday Mornings deferred already this week) and the haze of the old year still hanging above everything.
I suppose it is good to know that I am not really a billionaire or a millionaire, but I certainly would have liked to have had the chance, even if it was just a hallucination.
Hey, Congress: “Green side up!”
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra