I did not know where I was this morning when I woke. Nothing unusual there, since now that Refuge Farm has become a legitimate alternate location it is quite normal to have the daily routine turned quite on its head.

I am near Detroit- Life is good out here, away from Kevin Orr and the Governor and bankruptcy.

Trapped behind the wheel all day yesterday, I listened to the news of the capital as it faded in the rear view and real America drifted by. That particular dog day of July was interesting- I watched the thermometer on the instrument panel climb slowly upward through the course of the bright sunny day that was softened by the haze of humidity and heat.

Turn by turn the scandals unfolded as I alternated between indie rock on the satellite radio and CNN and Fox News to keep it fresh. There are few points in common between the two news streams that emanated from the dashboard, where the condensation on the Panzer’s air conditioning vents produced droplets of chill water on the dark plastic.

It literally is like the outlets are reporting on two different Americas, and I suppose they are.

In the morning it was Benghazi- the revelations about the non-disclosure letters. The people from whom we have not heard yet, the Vanity Fair article notwithstanding.

We rolled smoothly down the Pennsylvania hills, the radio and I, and onto the flat earth of Ohio as the discussion of the IRS harassment of American Citizens was described in detail. The Cincinnati office underlings who were thrown under the bus in the early days of the scandal pointed fingers back to Washington, and to a Mr. Hull, who in turn ratted out his political boss, a Mr. William Wilkins, who has not been brought to testify yet.

The stonewalling has been impressive- I hesitate to call it obstruction of Justice, since the Department that has that word in its title is far too busy with important things than deal with the systematic targeting by the tax people of legitimate free speech.

I was rolling through poor bedraggled Youngstown at the time- a city that would declare bankruptcy if it could.

I listened to classic rock as I passed Cleveland, appropriate, I thought, since it is home to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, where according to billboards a new exhibition on the history of the Rolling Stones has opened.

Turning the corner off the Turnpike on I-280, to head north toward bankrupt Detroit, I turned back to the news. Apparently the beleaguered city’s Emergency Administrator Kevin Orr is being assailed at each turn by the special interests who somehow imagine that the city can be squeezed for a little more juice before its complete collapse.

But Orr’s petition for Chapter 9 protection is in the hands of a sympathetic Governor who has a great line: “There are 9,700 pensioners, true, and there are 700,000 citizens who are being denied essential public safety services. It is time to fix the problem.”

As the Jeep plant at Toledo shrank in the rear view and the cooling towers of the nuclear reactor at Monroe loomed to starboard, the President himself appeared on the radio. His rambling rumination on race was curious. Yes, we see things differently, and yes, the weight of the awful burden of slavery does in fact color the way the people of this nation look at things.

His description of the woman who clutched her pocketbook a little tighter when the future president got on the elevator was telling, and the feeling of hurt was conveyed nicely. It was useful context from the bully pulpit, I guess.

The President did actually touch on something relevant in his abruptly terminated remarks as he regally floated off to whatever he does on Friday afternoons. He took no questions, regally turning the podium over to that odious Press Secretary Jay Carney. I honestly don’t know how the man can live with himself.

I share the hope that Mr. Martin’s parents can find peace in all this, but I heard nothing of the killings in Chicago over the last holiday, which make an academic discussion of the evils of a law that was not invoked in the trial of a man acquitted of the crime seem a bit irrelevant.

With all the other things that could be topics for discussion on a dog day July, it seemed a little surreal. But I suppose that is better than talking about the things that the President does not want to talk about.

But one can hope that this storm will pass, like the one perfect storm that swept over southeastern Michigan in the late afternoon, when the Panzer was safely shut down. It was a powerful, lighting-filled fury of driving rain and thunder that swept the hazy heat away, leaving the air fresh and crisp and new again.

It is a pleasant morning, and I am headed for Auburn, Indiana, for the Rambler car show and some brief remarks at the banquet tonight before the long drive back to the capital. At least the fever has broken, for now, anyway.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

(Natashas’s first pickles of the season, from garden to Ball Jar in less than an hour).

This unemployed thing is way too busy for me. I got a fabulous swim in the sparkling blue Big Pink pool in the afternoon. It was a sunny day in the soggy mid-90s. I got in a run to the Commissary- I had not been there in months- and then started to think about what needs to get done before I drive to Indiana tomorrow.

I am kicking myself about that. I think I mentioned that I have decided to accept Gabriel García Márquez’ cosmic lens of Magical Realism, and a pal sent me a magical joke:

“This skeleton walks into a bar and sits down on a stool. He looks at the bartender with his eyeless sockets and says: “I’ll have a beer and a mop.”

A mop, get it? The joke fits into my current world view perfectly. I have mentioned before that I am absolutely convinced that there is a deeper relationship between the living and the dead. The Mexicans understand that- their “Day of the Dead” celebration connects the magical spirit world with the one we inhabit in a profound manner.

I cannot explain it- it may be all on our side, in the realm of the living, since our neurons are still firing (or mis-firing) and we are perfectly capable of seeing portents in random things.

But of course, the evidence of our senses suggests otherwise. There are too many instances of things that cannot be that are.

I have certainly been guilty of Magical Thinking myself lately. Like the realization that I really had agreed to be in Auburn, Indiana, to make a short presentation on behalf of Raven, and had not considered how I was going to get there. I was going through some of his papers, and I felt the eerie sense that touching what he had touched was brining him close enough to almost touch.

It was a case of thinking that my thoughts by themselves could bring about effects in the world, like teleportation, or maybe the belief that thinking something corresponds with actually doing it. I don’t think I am clinical- I have just been busy.

In that realm, the one of the brain, magical thinking is a condition that causes the patient to experience irrational fear of performing certain acts or having certain thoughts because they assume a correlation with their acts and threatening calamities. Of course, you cannot tell if it is actually irrational until events prove that you were wrong. It is only paranoia if they are not actually out to get you.

So I am going with Márquez as I contemplate the Pennsylvania and Ohio Turnpikes and the way West. Maybe the State Patrols will be in paisley-painted Crown Vic Police Interceptors floating above the surface of the road.

The is a lot of magical thinking going on since the Zimmerman verdict. People of color and those melanin-challenged citizens are both conducting exercises in magical thinking. Two completely disparate world views, believed fiercely, are at work. In one, teenagers are hunted down and executed by vigilantes. In the other, lawless youths terrorize neighborhoods. Both are complete belief systems, a complete ying-and-yang.

I can see both sides, viewed through my Márquez lens, and I have heard them expressed with high emotion.

I have no idea what to think; the melanin-challenged plurality of the population do not, I think, regularly think of race. To them it is almost irreverent. For those citizens who are not of that hue, I think they feel themselves defined by it. More magical thinking, or maybe a matter of fact acceptance of the nature of this particular society, and its history. I confess I have not felt a palpable tension like this in a long time- at the Class 6 Store where a woman of color asked me a couple weeks ago about why a young man should be shot down?

I did not have a good answer, or rather, the answer I had was not anything I wanted to say. Anyway, I was trying to puzzle my way through the world of Magical Thinking and its intersection ours when I realized the afternoon had flown away and it was Willow time. I thought about hot hot it was, and whether I should drag my butt from Big PInk and sit in the cool darkness of the bar. I called Old Jim to see if he was going, and he announced that he was already there. Decision made, nothing magical about it.

I changed my t-shirt into a more formal aloha ensemble and made a last pass through the email.

There was some exciting there. Natasha sent a picture of the pickles she had made from the first cucumbers to come from her sprawling garden. Heck, it isn’t a garden- she planted enough to make it reasonable to call it a truck patch.

I marveled at the cool green goodness. There is real magic in the world, and it does not require that much thinking at all.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

(People of a certain age who have- or had- internet accounts at AOL.)

If you have even a passing interest in the ongoing circus that is America these days, you probably have heard of the massive cyber assault by the Chinese on just about every aspect of our pubic life.

It is much cheaper to steal someone else’s intellectual property than either purchase it or develop your own. Purely a business case, right? There is a definite issue with the moral high-ground of the US Government, though, thanks to that self-righteous weasel Eddie Snowden; he not only violated an oath, but stole the intellectual property of our nation.

Not to say that there are no problems with what technology can do- and is being done to all of us. I am prepared to say that what the boys and girls at Fort Meade were doing was legal. I am also prepared to stipulate that the implications of what could be done with the fruits of their labor scares the crap out of me.

We are pretty much into the “star chamber” realm of justice now, and I think a wise person would opt to keep their head down.

I’m not, and here is why I am going to introduce you to a person- I am going to assume it is a male geek in his thirties – who is not dissimilar to Eddie Snowden.

Some even claim that the hacker who uses the handle “Guccifer” actually is Snowden, though I think he is on a lesser level of hell than the transit-zone Moscow fugitive.

I have decided that simmering outrage is not the way to look at Life in These United States. I am going to view life through the lens of the Latin American literary genre of of Magical Realism, since that is is how I am going to cope. Perhaps the mid-term elections will help me to decide how serious I need to be. Seriously, we need to confront the notion that our privacy is gone. I mean really gone.

I was sitting in the “secure” proposal room down in Charlottesville with a former Intelligence Community senior I like a lot. In a break between reviewing a proposal for a 32 Full Time Equivalent contract supporting a classified analytic contract, he mentioned something that had just happened to a former colleague and reserve Naval Officer.

This was something of which I was vaguely aware several months ago, when a reviled former President was outted as an aspiring watercolor artist. But I did not know who leaked the pictures- not until Monday.

An asshole with an apparent long track record of malicious hacking has been opening up the email accounts of some USG seniors, former and current. The list of notables is relatively bi-partisan, with the AOL accounts of Sidney Blumenthal, Hillary Clinton and Colin Powell (and many more) being compromised along with George W’s.

If you sense that he is targeting a known vulnerability in the AOL program, you would be right. The accounts targeted are those of early internet adopters who now (like me) are of a certain age.

As is AOL. Cripes, I make a joke out of it when I have to give out my e-mail address. “Yes,” I say. “I am that old.” I think I picked that internet provider because it once was considered a little daring, like almost twenty years ago.

I think I even pay them monthly for the privilege of being vulnerable.

Anyway, “Guccifer,” as he calls himself at the moment, takes delight in trolling through personal email and photos in the incoming and outgoing folder in AOL accounts. Apparently his modus operandi is to gain access through phishing, spook emails that can collect personal information. I get them, periodically, the ones labeled “From the AOL Team: we are going to shut down access unless you validate your personal information.”

With enough to crack into the account with the donated information, the asshole has access to the full address list and contents of the whole account, which can be used to target the next AOL chump on the list. Just because you are an Important Person doesn’t mean you can’t be stupid.

It is all bogus, but it sends a chill down my spine that I may have already have had contact with this creep, even if I did not open one of his communications.

Anyway, my pal told me to Google the name in question, and the , and and then rolling up other accounts in the target’s contacts list. Creepy- since it does not appear to be financially motivated, but guerrilla attacks to defame character and destroy reputations.

Here is what happened to our mutual pal:

“Hacker Guccifer recently breached the personal e-mail of Mr. X, who recently retired as Vice Director for Information Management and Deputy CIO at one of the three-letter agencies.

Guccifer provided a wide range of documents including an appraisal of Mr. X’s house, a photo of X with Arnold Schwarzenegger, and e-mails dating back to at least 2011.

Topics of the e-mails include the political (“it’s not Obamas fault at all. I’d say its at least 80 percent the fault of the Republicans, perhaps even 90 percent. But if Obama weren’t so weak he could blunt their stupidity”) and the personal (“I’m still hitting the gym hard — always will. I’m also hitting the girlfriend hard and often”).

Mr. X also wrote, “We are very involved in the Wikileaks stuff and have a lot of things on our network to prevent something like that from happening to us. Do we have enough — no, not by a long shot. We need a lot of money in order to be fully protected. We are in the process of building our case for a huge budget add to protect the network.”

I won’t add to Mr. X’s embarrassment, since the description of cyber intimacy with his fiancé was also reported in painfully graphic terms on several lascivious sites that have something less than the morals of TMZ, which is to say that there are still things you cannot say on television but you can say in graphic detail on the internet.

I write polemics all the time, and curse and all sorts of stuff, depending on who I am writing to. There even was a time when I considered the AOL stream to be semi-private, though with the risk that inadvertently offensive opinion (depends on who is determined to be offended, of course) will be forwarded to the entire cyber-universe.

Maybe it is time to scrap the AOL account and delete from this end, though of course the 3,470 outgoing emails on this account (soon to be 3,471 with this missive) will live forever on the AOL server, and in Salt Lake City with our friends at Fort Meade, should I ever be considered a target worthy of additional scrutiny, of course with FISA approval.

Poor Mr. X. He came to someone’s notice.

Just wait until all the new cars are all wirelessly linked into the grid, and our health records are centralized under the tender care of HHS and the IRS.

I don’t know anymore. I am not even sure that enough Magical Reality can account for what the technology is going to make horrifyingly possible.

Crap.

(Defaced page from the AOL account of a former President).

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

I feel a little divorced from reality this morning- suspended in air, if you will. I could chalk it up to aphelion, the longest point out there of the elliptical orbit of the earth around the sun.

It is one of those paradoxical facts that it is going to be the hottest week of the summer when we are actually the furthest from the sun. Well, not quite; the actual furthest point away was on the 4th of July at 94,511,923 miles. The shortest distance- perihelion- was on January 3, when Earth was two and a half million miles closer.

Distances like that are relatively small, in a universal context, but still more than I can process. Like the budget or the debt. I increasingly think of numbers as more elegant ways to spin fantasy. Hotter, though further away. More spending fixes debt.

I would say this is like Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass,” though Wonderland actually makes sense in comparison to the complexity of the world around us. I wrote yesterday that everything we know is wrong.

A noted economist and former championship team-mate wrote to summarize how it works:

“When a GOP is President, the Dems will publicize the alternate rates of inflation and unemployment as a way to show how the GOP is “cooking the numbers. When a Democrat is President, the GOP will publicize the same alternate rates as a way to show how the Dems are “cooking the numbers.”

They each argue that the sitting President sucks by citing these alternate numbers.

When a Dem is President (Obama) then the GOP and Fox will say that: “Obama is cooking the numbers MORE than the other Presidents did.” When a GOP is President (Bush Junior) then the Dems and MSNBC will say that “Bush is cooking the numbers MORE than the other Presidents ever did.” Thus, they both complain that the sitting President is worse than all other Presidents.

Anyone who is complaining about this NOW is a Republican.

Anyone who complained about this from 2001 through 2008 was a Democrat.

Most things I know are wrong; but the above is an observation based on teaching about Inflation/Unemployment since 1976.”

It made sense. Actually, it started to appear more like a unifying field theory for relativity. The information we get is all a variation on the same theme; fact is subjective and based on world-view, rather than any scientific objective standard.

At least if it has anything to do with humans, like Zimmerman and Martin, or even if it doesn’t, like the weather. Or is it climate? We have to believe in things- even those of us who make a profession in believing and fully trusting anything. It is the way we are wired.

Add in our natural venality, it is perfect. White really is black, and vice versa. This is very liberating. It was extremely good calibration for that Aphelion season.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

An alert pal commented yesterday on the topic of numbers. They are all wrong, as you are probably aware. Well, they are saying this is going to be the hottest week of the year, and I do have a relative confidence in the sweat factor of Northern Virginia. But specifically, Mr. Bernanke at the Federal Reserve is backing off his plans to end Quantitative Easing, the endless printing of fresh greenbacks.

Wall Street is happy, and all is right with the world. According to Big Ben, inflation is actually too low. He says it is about 1%, and he would like to see it a little higher.

The bureaucrats have to say things like that to keep us quiet. Long ago they quietly dropped the prices for food and oil out of the commodities they use to report inflation. The rational was something along the lines of “gas and corn are too volatile” to make for reliable reporting. If you eat or drive, you are aware that this is nonsense. Of course it is volatile. And the prices of food and gas (and college educations) is zooming. If we used the same criteria used in the days of Jimmy Carter’s Administration, inflation would be around 8%, which is wholesale and invisible theft.

If we reported the unemployment numbers, always a dodgy game, the real rate would be around 10%. In any other universe, we might be having a discussion about the impact of long-term joblessness on society. Things like the reinforcement of a permanent underclass that is growing as quality employment opportunities decline.

We have not talked about the debt in quite a while. The market is good with the cooked books, and there are more part-time crappy jobs being created as employers scramble to avoid the more onerous requirements of the Affordable Care Act. I guess things are just fine, and now we can worry about comprehensive immigration reform that will establish a path to citizenship for people who did not have the courtesy of respecting our laws.

That’s fine- we are not paying attention to our laws, either. The troublesome House is making things inconvenient to actually follow the Constitution, so the Administration has to rule by decree. It is sort of amazing that major provisions of law can be suspended and announced on a web site. This is very cool. Think of the things we can ignore!

I applaud the bipartisan effort to eliminate the truth from public discourse. Both parties are guilty of that, though I must say the current Administration takes the dissolution of the truth to altogether new heights. These days, I go with the assumption that everything I am told is wrong. But I agree with the President: it makes things so much easier, don’t you think?

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

I have been wasting my time on a piece I am not going to do anything with, since the Big Pink 2013 Pool Party was last night, and we were drinking tequila and making merry.

I came up from the farm to attend- I am the pool deck mayor emeritus, after all, and this is a significant event in the season. It was nice down in Culpeper, and I hosted- or better said, Mattski and the Russians hosted- a free form outing with some pals at the range down on the lower pasture.

We made all sorts of noise, but were very professional about range safety and nothing untoward happened, which was the standard you want to have around a dozen types of firearms.

It was grand fun, though the wet season has spawned mosquitos and increased the population of some other creeping bugs. I grilled some roll-ups for lunch when we were done, and ignored the stuff that needed to be done while I got into an emotional discussion with my Mexican pal about what was going on. What I considered black and white was also white and black. Glancing at the clock next to the flintlock pistol-based lamp, I realized I had to get on the road.

I made a point of listening to music on the drive back up to avoid any further reference. Some bone-headed driver caused a personal injury accident at the Vint Hill junction- you know the one, where the double camel-hump of Rt 29 obscures the traffic light. That caused a long back-up and a certain amount of anxiety, since I didn’t want to be too late to the party. Everyone rubber-necked to see if they could determine the level of injury as they crept by, doubtless thinking (as I did) what it would be like to be stopped at the light and have some moron plow into you.

Just the luck of the draw. Life has its little surprises.

We crept slowly forward, weekend traffic merging into a single lane northbound, but it eventually worked itself out, and the rest of the trip on the interstate from Haymarket was a breeze. I got a shower, inspected myself for ticks, pulled on an aloha shirt, trunks and flip-flops and grabbed a bottle of wine and padded down the stairwell to the first floor.

I managed to be just fashionably late to President Joe’s patio, where the lovely Mary Margaret was having the soiree. Marty 2 was bartender and hostess. Everybody who was anybody was there- Jiggs, Mila, Mandy, The Lawyers in Love (who have produced a tiny boy named Alexander), little Grant and his doting parents and Leo the Engineer.

There were also some new faces, and commemorative shirts for the occasion, and plenty of food and drink.

Which eventually included margaritas, once we had drained Joe’s supply of vodka, and which fueled all sorts of conversation. I was starting to think it was time to actually get in the pool before it closed and the evening was starting to dim the colors when it happened.

No shit- this was amazing. Mandy had gone up to her unit to get something, and Mary Margaret was standing in front of Joe’s door, chatting away. I was sitting over with Death Junior and her new Husband marveling at the changes the last decade had brought to all our lives when there was a violent clatter.

I looked over toward where Margaret had been standing, and there on the concrete were shards of…Big Pink!

Mary Margaret looked stunned. “What the hell was that?” I asked, standing up to walk over.

“It just fell.”

“Hey, are you guys OK?” came a voice from high above.

“What fell?”

Mary Margaret pointed to several large shards of what clearly were bricks from the stylish façade of Big Pink’s massive flank. “Holy crap!” I said. Where did that come from?”

Leo-the-Engineer looked concerned, since the building is his baby. Jiggs was looking up, his cocktail clutched in a beefy hand. “Look!” he said, pointing up. “A whole tier of bricks fell off the building!”

I peered up in the growing gloom Sure enough; below the open window to Mandy’s place in 507 from which her face shone fairly in the darkness a dark line perhaps five bricks across marred the harmonious dusty mauve of the uniquely-fired brickwork specified by Francis Freed, the doyen who had commissioned this place in 1964.

“Goddamn,” said Jiggs.

“Can you imagine…” I said.

“If one of those bricks fell five stories and whacked Mary Margaret on the head?” Death Junior finished for me. She looked concerned, and the more I thought about it the more concerned I got.

“We just dodged a bullet,” pronounced President Joe, and there was some nervous laughter. I picked up a fragment of the brick that I intended to keep as a souvenir of the near disaster. The pink side of it had little drak pebbles fired into the glaze. The sides were sharp enough to cut. Mary Margaret rubbed her forearm, where a shard had glanced her.

“I could have been hit in the head,” she said in wonder. “Do you think it might have been an earthquake?”

“Maybe damage from the quake last year that took a while to work out,” said Jiggs.

We stood around drinking for a while, looking up, and Mandy came back down to explain she had nothing to do with bombing us, and had opened her window after she heard a strange sound.

“It was sort of a whooshing sound. I am so glad no one got hurt.”

“I guess it is the luck of the draw,” I said. “In Chicago, some of the old fancy skyscrapers have things drop off all the time. It is a wonder more people aren’t badly injured.”

“Or killed,” said Death Junior.

That was worth a fatalistic shudder, a last margarita and a plunge in the pool. The event had sobered everyone a bit, and Leo told us to leave the pieces of brick where they fell for the investigation.

After toweling off, I decided to avoid any further potential danger and walked back up to the unit. It had been a long day, and a lot of merriment punctuated by stark reality- traffic and brick related.

I yawned and decided no to bother with falling asleep on the couch in front of the television and just go to bed. I took the iPad with me and scrunched into the covers with a sigh. I opened the leather folder and punched in the access code, and that is when I found out.

I don’t know what you think, but I know what I feel.

I felt like a brick hit me.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

The Weber Genesis Grill is up and running at Refuge Farm, a triumph of proven American technology. Like the Zippo lighter and the Harely-Davidson motorcycle, it is a design for the ages.

It is the last capital improvement for Refuge Farm. The old grill, heaved over the railing, was one of those Charmglow pieces of crap that I bought in a box and spent a weekend assembling. It rusted, of course, but I should blame the pine tree that collapsed on it during the Snomaggedon event in 2010 for its demise. The impact Sprung the wheels, knocking one off, so that ever after it was canted at an awkward cooking angle, balanced on a rock from the garden.

I can’t blame the failure of the gas jet of that directly, but it never heated up again to specs. The Weber, by way of contrast, caries a 25 year guarantee on most parts.

I hope so- it is the last grill I intend to purchase, and there is a pristine conventional charcoal grill in the garage as backup.

Proven technology. I fired it up and got to 600 degrees indicated within a few minutes. I did a country grill meal, and we had a mound of fresh cucumbers and tomatoes and cauliflower picked fresh from Natasha’s garden. We are going to make pickles this year, and the harvest bounty is inspiration for the next growing season.

Sasha the Russian Princess brought two enormous caterpillars who had been feasting on tomatoes, Tatiana brought a dozen fresh cucumbers, Mattski brought his banjo and a fine evening was had by all.

We did not talk about the Zimmerman trial, thought the Prosecution rebuttal that I listened to on the way down had me seething right through the assembly of the grill.

I cannot tell if it is the exposure to what passes for the legal process, warts and all, that reveals the astonishing power of the State to crush the individual. Poor Trayvon, who will never have a chance to turn around his life. Poor George, who has lost his own: both of them unable to escape a rising sea of lawlessness and a middle class under extreme pressure.

Both of them are symbols of something drastically wrong, and something that has been going on a long time since the Genesis of the bad public policy that is destroying us.

The prosecutor told the jury that Z-Man had hatred in his heart. I have no idea how he got to that- Z-man did not testify, of course, on advice of counsel, and the upshot of the legal commentary on the radio was that the defense summation was flat. The roles of the two opposing sides seems to have been curiously reversed; the Prosecution relied on emotion, having few facts, and those apparently tainted. The Defense had all the evidence on their side, and had a calm, almost phlegmatic approach.

I only heard the rebuttal in real time, just as it was being spoken. There was real anger there, since there were no facts except for death. I think the jury will decide on the lessor charge on manslaughter, since a boy is dead.

For the record, I think the Z-Man got jumped and defended himself.

But for the gun, he might have got off with an ass-kicking, a broken nose and a concussion. But for the gun.

Funny. I have a shooting party arriving in a few minutes to exercise their Second Amendment rights on the range in the back pasture. In my wildest dreams, if this is what you told me American would be like in 2013, I never would have believed you.

What is the sound of grass, by the way? It was some of the weirder testimony I have ever heard. But at the Farm, I think I understand.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

t was late afternoon. I was puzzling through life as an unemployed person. I swam for an hour and felt good. Is this what life could be like? I was uncertain about that and both giddy and apprehensive. Jon-without-an-H texted me while I was working on a pro-bono project that had me quite animated.

“You going to be at Willow?” I read on the Android.

“C U 2nite” I poked back.

I had no idea it was possible to be so busy while not doing anything particularly relevant to wealth creation, and that was how I found myself spending money I was not completely sure I could replace. It was unsettling to think that I was at the high water mark, and everything from here was going to result in taking things out of the rainy day fund.

Considering the amount of rain we have had this month, that may not bode well.

The feeling gave the Happy Hour White at the Willow Bar a little extra zing.

“It’s Ramadan in the morning,” I said. “Better drink up. Taliban might be watching, and who knows whether Arlington County is going to start observing Sharia Law.”

“No shit,” responded Jon-without. Actually, we may not have to differentiate any longer, since John-with-an-H got so famously outraged with Old Jim that he decamped the Willow bar, possibly never to return.

At the time, Jim shrugged. Perhaps we should have noted the sundering of the bar-room social fabric at the time. Perhaps it doesn’t mean anything, but I liked John-with, and still do, even if I don’t see him again.

“Did you watch any of the Zimmerman trial?” asked Jon-without.

“I just sampled it. The Prosecution didn’t seem to have much punch in their closing statement. They must be playing for manslaughter since they won’t get Murder 2.”

“I am sick of the whole thing,” I said. “This is not about justice or the law. It is a microcosm of everything else going on. The crisis in the lower middle class, for example. If shmucks like Zimmerman could move away, they would have and this never would have happened. They are stuck in a social situation that the cops can’t control, and besides, that isn’t their job anyway.”

“Well, what is their job?”
“Protecting themselves and cleaning up after something happens. Remember that saying? ‘When seconds count the police are only minutes away.’”

“What do you think is going to happen?”

“I don’t know. I guess it will depend on how the jury takes the defense summation. There seems to be plenty of room for uncertainty, and the State has to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt.”

“That means they can’t get Murder Two>”

“Absolutely. But then they threw the option to convict for manslaughter, which the jury might see as a compromise. The judge could still throw the book at the Z-man. Thirty years, maybe. Which is sort of awkward if he was defending himself.”

“Do you think they know just how divisive this has all been?”

“Despite the sequestration of the jury, you would have had to have been on the moon not to know how worked up people have been over the racial issue.”

“The media sure seems to have worked overtime to get everyone stirred up over this.”

“They sure have. There is a ton of violence in every city, though the numbers are down. It is still horrific, but it doesn’t fit the agreed narrative.” I lowered the level of wine in my glass. “Part of it is regional. The media reports things based on where they live. Most places in the Northeast have laws that say your legal obligation is to retreat when threatened, so that seems logical to them and they report the story that way.”

“Is that the whole stand-your-ground thing?”

I nodded as Tex the big ex-Marine came down the bar to see how we were doing. “Precisely,” he said, firmly. “In states like Florida, you have no obligation to retreat when confronted by some who is going to possibly deadly force against you. You can defend yourself anywhere.”

“That is sort of crazy,” mused Jon-without. “I mean, it seems like the only one to tell the story is the person who shot first.”

“I think it is pretty clear that if you discharge a firearm in public, you are going to get arrested. But I would rather be judged by twelve than carried by six,” I said, taking a modest sip of wine. “Virginia is a stand-your-ground state, but they have not implemented the statute. I have to learn to drink slower, given my reduced circumstances.”

“I sympathize with your position. Let me buy you a drink. I don’t think I am going to get laid off until next week.”

“You might learn to like it,” I said. But of course, you are not an ancient old fart like me.”

Tex took care of us, and upgraded us to hi-test for the one for the ditch. “Travel safely gentlemen,” he said gravely.

“It is the only way to go, Tex.”

Jon-without raised his balloon glass filled halfway up with dark brown liquid. “L’Chayim,” he said, as we clinked glasses.

“Ins’hallah,” I said.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
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Boats and I were shooting the shit about old times and old tales, and the nature of narrative, as I told you. We had about exhausted the topics de jour, though I confess I have never seen things going on the way they are, and I have been to the County Fair.

Boats has been to a few carnivals himself, and he is as authentic as a semi-submerged Louisiana gator, eyes bulging with hunger above the dark waters of the bayou.

I had remarked about how strange the Zimmerman trial was, now that the Defense had rested. We were back and forth on the likely verdict. I thought that the evidence at the trial should mean the case should be dismissed, since even the Prosecution witnesses seemed to support the idea that young Mr. Martin was wailing on Mr. Zimmerman, and that while deadly force is a final answer to a possibly temporary problem, by law, it was self-defense.

Boats was more phlegmatic about the matter, having come up through the Louisiana judicial system, which contains vestiges of the Code Napoleon, a French system in which innocence is not necessarily presumed on the part of the defendant.

“But even in France, the Emperor would not dispatch Inspector Javert to stir up the mob outside the courthouse,” I said. “You heard that the Department of Justice did just that.”

“Hadn’t heard,” he said.

“Yeah, apparently there is a unit in DOJ called the Community Relations Service. They sent a team down to Florida to coordinate the demonstrations demanding that Zimmerman be arrested for murder.”

“Do tell,” said Boats, looking thoughtful. “But that is hardly a new phenomenon in the South.”

“Yeah, the CRS was supposed to provide “technical assistance for the preparation of possible marches and rallies” related to the fatal shooting. I am opposed to murder, of course, but I didn’t know DOJ had assigned itself the community activist mission.”

“The central government stirring up disorder? Nah, I am sure it was an aberration. Justice is funny. I once worked a large self propelled dredge on the Mississippi. I was the “lever man,” and that is how I met the Judge.

“I have seen them,” I said, “but never had to work on one.”

“Yep. The Lever Man is the unlicensed officer in charge of the watch when the dredge is actually “spudded” down and digging. He operates the cutter head and suction systems, and serves as the officer of the deck for coordinating the dredge tending tugs, and approvals of all personnel comings and goings, etc.”

“So it is a combination of the in-port OOD and being underway, right?”

Boats nodded. “I was a pilot, of course, but when “spudded down”- you know, moored by long metal poles deployed through wells on deck- I had to stand watch and handle vessel traffic communications and meeting and passing arrangements. And keep the logs.”

“It was easier on a ship of war,” I said. “Not that the Spooks had to stand watch over anything except the nukes.”

“Soft. You ought to try being a working sailor for a change. I stood watch with a guy the crew called “The Judge,” because he was actually a Justice of the Peace somewhere in rural Mississippi when not in dredging season. “The Judge” was a font of wisdom on the world.”

“How old were you?” I asked idly. “I didn’t join the Navy until I was 25- almost too late in those days.”

Boats looked thoughtful. “I was about 27 at the time. He would have been ancient then- about 65 or so. Been on the water all his life.”

“Wait a minute- that doesn’t sound so old anymore.”

“Ha! You pup! Just wait! But the Judge liked to impart a lot of wisdom, feeling that I had a short supply due to age. I tried to think which of his pearls of wisdom about how things work might apply to the situation in which we find ourselves these days.”

“That would take some doing,” I said, “Finding the unifying Field Theory to all this madness.”

“The judge used to say:”Never sweat on the job, never shit off of it”.

“What the hell does that mean, Boats?”

“Let me translate. Life sucks the essence out of us and occupies most of our waking hours. We try to figure things out in the time left over. So, what the Judge suggests is that you digest while working, grow your hair while working, burn most of your calories, and then when you are at your low ebb, that is when you try to figure out what the government is up to.”

“I never think on the job. That is why I am so far behind.”

“Try it the Judge’s way. You should feel no guilt over bathroom time on the job, getting a haircut during work hours, taking a long lunch once in a while, taking care of a little personal business on the job, or coping an occasional nap on the clock.”

“You mean like the DoJ?”

“Precisely,” he said. “But look for everyone to get a lot of overtime if the jury does the right thing and acquits Zimmerman as a matter of law.”

“It is up to the Jury,” I said, “At least after the closing arguments tomorrow and Friday.”

“You should listen to what the Judge instructs the jurors,” said Boats. “I am not sure anyone is going to be satisfied with what happens.”

I nodded in agreement. “That seems to be the only thing you can count on these days, afloat or ashore.”

“Bet your sweet ass,” said Boats with emphasis. “How about another beer? I think we are still on the clock.”

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com