Between Storms

(There are only four ornaments on the tree, so far. Two I found in a plastic tray that must have been in Big Mama’s mud room, and commemorate the Central Building and the Rose Hill Schools where she was educated in the little Ohio River Valley town of Belleaire, and was the first of her family to be Valedictorian and the first to attend college. On scholarship, of course.)

The sleet commenced right on schedule, and continued through the afternoon, coating the bushes with a thin coating of ice, and rendering all flat surfaces slick and treacherous.

It was actually a pathetic amount, by Michigan standards, but the Inn at Little Washington Christmas parade, once on, was off again. There was no way I was gong to venture out onto the country lane. Too many Virginians out there for safety.

(The Rose Hill School, 1909-2001.)

I got some stuff done in the garage, at least until my fingers started to go numb, and then decided on a tactical retreat to the house and the warmth of a cheery fire, the cozy sound of large men impacting the frozen ground on the NFL games, and some interior projects made it a pleasant afternoon.

(This White House Historical Association ornament was issued under the reign of Mr. Bush, and commemorates the White House as it looked in the Rutherford B. Hayes Administration.)

I decorated the faux Methodist Tree- but that I mean no disrespect to the Methodists, but rather to the fact that is an artificial contraction) with two White House ornaments (2004 and 2009, commemorating both the Bush and Obama Administrations), and two from Big Mama’s Belleaire High School Class of 1941 reunions. And a strand of colored lights that came in the box with the parts of the tree, and which actually worked.

It is sort of down-market, compared to some of the displays I have seen, but I am happy with it.

(This 2009 WHHA ornament is intended to honor the Administration of Grover Cleveland, though I have to say that the image is one suspiciously of a New Dawn. Just a coincidence, I am sure)

The white stuff continued to pile up, and with an eye to the power going out, put all the devices on the chargers, located candles and flashlights and surrendered the rest of the day to the storm. And to the sugar plum and vodka fairies.

First wintry mix of the season, and according to the radio, more to come. I may have to get on the road to place myself squarely between the storm warnings.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

The Charlie Brown Tree

 

(The Official Refuge Farm tree, 2013, courtesy of the Methodist Church yard sale in Arlington, circa 2009. I had not looked in the box until I started work on cleaning out the office attached to the garage yesterday).

I glanced at the watch yesterday afternoon and realized daylight was going to run out on me, just like the clear sky that permitted me to move some of the debris field in the garage out onto the gravel between the garage and the barn and get at some of the things that could be moved without a bulldozer.

The key to this is the barn. I have an impressive pile of now-empty boxes and packing materials over there. I have moved the bookcases into the office, and hope to do the same thing with the filing cabinets later today, even if I have to stay under cover.

The wait is over, BTW. The snow has started and is starting to turn the deck white, though the pastures are still a dull brown. We will see sleet this afternoon, ice on the roads, and more snow later.

I am not getting on the highway until it is all gone.

I used a strategic pause to drive over to Croftburn Market to stock up on a couple necessities and fill the Panzer with gas, just in case this does not go as predicted. When I got back, I went back to the random re-distribution of junk, hoping to clear a space for the Ford inside the garage.

I found some interesting stuff- a thousand rounds of ammunition in a useful caliber I had forgotten about- Ka-ching! And some great books I am obviously never going to get to in this life.

Then I ran across- literally- a box that I had not seen in a couple years. When I got up I realized it was the product of pure serendipity, and had looked at it since the nice lady on the side yard of the Methodist Church in Arlington offered me a swell deal on a pile of things that I did not need.

I was coming back from the dry cleaners, and there is nothing I like better than a yard sale, which accounts for why The Farm looks like it does at the moment.

One thing I did like was the Hudson’s Bay woolen trade blanket that now rests in the trunk of the Panzer as part of the go-package- it was worth the ten bucks I had in my wallet alone. There was another batch of crap- including the fine tall silver trophy was another winner: Arlington County Church Bowling League 1948, apparently retired by the Arlington Forest Methodists in 1956, since that is when the engraving stopped.

Anyway, the box that wound up on the bottom of the pile also contained a mass of shredded green plastic wrapped into stout wire with a brace of poles that fit together and drilled out to accept the wire ends of the faux pine.

“Landfill?” I thought. This looked like something I did not need. Still, worth seeing if there was any value to it, this artificial Christmas tree that must have decorated the young congregation’s sanctuary in the years immediately after World War II.

It was time I did not have for a piece of junk I did not need. Still, it was sort of interesting to figure out how the thing was supposed to be integrated, and before I knew it, I had a Christmas tree. I liked it so much that I carted it up to the farmhouse and set it up in the corner near the bright blue corner hutch.

In the process of bending it to look relatively straight, I noticed there was still a tag attached to topmost bough. It told me the tree had a name: “Charlie Brown Tree.”

That animated special first appeared in 1965, the one with the round-headed kid and the bedraggled tree. The theme of the special was that with the right amount of love, anything is possible in the season of Peace.

“Charlie Brown Tree. Lights included! Please Give It a Good Home with Lot’s of Love. $1.”

(Don’t know if I qualify as a good home or not. But the tree fits raffishly with the rest of Refuge Farm.)

How can you beat that, I thought. Actually, the thing looked a little like the Norfolk Pines we used to get in Hawaii: spare, but purposeful.

There was a pocket of other decorations in that part of the rubble. What the hell. In for a penny, in for a pound. I dragged a couple strings of lights up to the house and found an extension cord to power them as the early dusk transitioned to darkness.

I will be damned, I thought. It looks positively cheery around here. Let it snow!

Merry Christmas!

(Pre-Dawn Farm. Snow coming.)

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

PS: Go Green! Well Done, Spartans! Big Ten Champs!

Everything We Know Is Wrong (Part 57)

I have been mystified by the numbers game as played by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. I mean, we all know the jobs report is bogus and played for politics. Still we are expected to believe it all, and it continues, like so much else in this Progressive media society, without question or critical thinking.

The real numbers, the raw and unadjusted ones, are what they are: this economy is being slowly strangled by the weight of an oppressive, regulatory State. We are actually in an environment where the true unemployment rate is over ten percent, and nearly a quarter of working citizens are either unemployed or underemployed, or just depressed out of the work force altogether.

I find myself- along with many others- like one of those ancient and apoplectic haters of FDR. What the man did was wrong then and it should have been obvious at the time to the most casual observer. Instead, the media of the day, Mr. H.L. Menken and Colonel Robert McCormick of the Chicago Tribune notwithstanding, played along as if he was the savior of the American people.

Mr. Obama is the recipient of this same unquestioning fealty by the media today. The latest whim of the President- to extend unemployment benefits for another year at a cost of $25 Billion- just slid right by. Like his “tweaking” of the implementation of other Laws of the Land.

We have become inured to these raids on the public purse. I mean, if the Fed is permitted to print $85 billion a month in the Unicorn Bucks, what is another $25?

John T. Flynn analyzed the Roosevelt Myth in a book of the same name in 1948. It has recently been updated and reissued, and I find some cold comfort in knowing that everything in the accepted narrative about our Sainted four-term President is wrong.

Still, criticism of FDR now constitutes nothing less than sacrilege against the civic religion of the United States, just as skepticism of the catastrophic nature of Global Warming (it is under a degree Celsius since 1840, so the panic is about what again?)

A realistic look at the narrative produces a different result. Roosevelt can be viewed only as a near total disaster. The “Roosevelt-haters” of the 1930s and 1940s, have been vindicated, not that anyone who is reporting on the current cast of amateurs in the Executive Branch.

The central issue regarding Mr. Roosevelt is the same as that we confront with Mr. Obama: how can such a vain, intellectually shallow person be so attractive in his delusions? Since his priority is not the economic health of the United States but the desire to retain at all costs, now that he has obtained that goal, can he really be that dangerous?

Despite Roosevelt’s shallow intellectual basis, his Brain Trust of Socialist theorists came up with schemes to extricate the United States from the Depression were not totally aimless, and have an eerie similarity to those of the Obama Administration. The New Dealers found some of the principles of fascism much to their liking, and Mussolini’s corporative state was the model for Roosevelt’s National Recovery Administration. Mussolini now is a cartoon villain. But in 1933 he was a towering figure who was worthy of imitation for efficiency and prosperity.

What they liked particularly was his corporative system…. The NRA provided that in America each industry should be organized into a federally supervised trade association. Anything sound familiar?

Flynn’s book concludes with the argument that an irresponsible and ambitious president unleashed the forces of state planning and militarism in order to keep alive his power. As we all know, FDR’s end is a cautionary one: dying, FDR was unable to think clearly, yet clung to power. In the “interest of the Republic and Victory.” Naturally, he proved no match for Stalin in the conferences at Teheran and Yalta.

Sort of like Mr. Obama’s lame negotiations with the Iranians that seem to have validated their right to enrich uranium to weapons grade.

Perhaps like Mr. Roosevelt, Mr. Obama will consider that his personal well-being is actually that of the Republic and decide by decree that he should run for a third term, due to the economic emergency? We have already seen OpEd pieces in the NY Times calling for revocation of the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution. It was, I hasten to add, the first such amendment since the 21st, which repealed Prohibition.

But certainly we could see adjustments in the numbers to justify whatever he wants.

Even if such an apocalyptic scenario does not come to pass, we have three more years of adjustments that promote a slow but steady improvement. And yet it is not. We are contracting in most of the Blue States, and under this strange man with his stranger ideas, we will have to become more and more creative with the numbers.

Thanks for this one. I would have been a “Roosevelt Hater” back in the day. For Mr. Obama, I can only dredge up contempt. And suspicion. I am minded of the tome penned by former Army Chief of Staff Gordon Sullivan: “Hope is Not a Method.”

I hope Mr. Obama’s lack of intellectual curiosity and interest in governing will permit him to exit the stage without further catastrophe, but as I said, there is plenty of time for mischief.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
WWW.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Remembrance (of Things Past)

(This image of Building 213 at the Washington Navy Yard is an overhead image with one-meter resolution, which is to say that a skilled photo interpreter can distinguish objects measuring about a yard in length or width. Such a capability was pretty cool, back in the day, particularly when you could not fly over head to take the picture. Photo NGA.)

I was not reading Proust. Heck, I am not reading much of anything these days except this unending cascade of digital mail, but it The Day got me again. I thought the Anniversary of the sneak attack on Pearl was tomorrow, or Monday or something. I told you that I wanted to tell the story of a featureless building down at the Washington Navy Yard that is going to be destroyed pretty much without comment.

Mac Showers played a role in what happened in that building. I will have to go back through my cocktail-napkin notes. His work in targeting the Empire of Japan for Curtis LeMay’s B-29s required aerial photographic data on which to base target nominations and re-strike options. LeMay was not getting the information he needed from the Air Corps Strategic guys back in DC, and on the sly, used the target deck generated by Mac and his comrades at the forward CINCPAC HQ on Guam.

Anyway, I was thinking about Mac this morning when I realized that the day was here, and I needed to acknowledge the sacrifice that came from the singular moment when the first wave of fifty Nakajima BN5 Kate bombers swept over the imposing green wall of the Ko’olau Mountains to usher in an entirely new world.

Mac described his arrival at Pearl in February of 1942 many times. He was not there for the attack, of course, though the imposing bulk of USS Nevada was resting on the bottom near Hospital Point, and the big ships were still on the bottom along Battleship Row where they were sunk at their moorings.

That was the alpha of his career in our business, and targeting from the air was a huge component of it, whether the targets were in the old Soviet Union, or the PRC or Vietnam. That is what brings Mac’s story around to Building 213, the featureless six story white building at the Yard where so much secret history occurred.

The leap from military photo interpretation to strategic photo intelligence, augmented by Communications Intelligence was pioneered by Mac and his comrades in the Estimates section of JICPOA. It rose again in 1950 at the new Central Intelligence Agency. Mac told me about one of the early iterations, located in an anonymous office space above a car dealership in the District. I will have to check my notes, since I was going to try to find it someday. An official, though redacted account of the early days can be found here.

The days of high speed photo aircraft making simulated runs at Soviet coastal targets provided images for exploitation; later improvements included the celebrated Dragon Lady U-2 and the remarkable SR-71 Blackbird.

And of course the early Corona imaging satellites and their successors, the electro-optical systems that my Uncle worked on. I have a framed picture at the farm from one of the Ranger survey missions to the moon. It is an otherwise unremarkable image of the lunar surface, except for one curious thing: the raster scans that make up the image mean that no film ever returned from the moon. Rather, the picture was transmitted digitally back to earth in a stream before impact on the pumice-gray surface.

Uncle Jim winked at me when he told me about it. Peaceful space exploration always served a dual-use function. With the advent of electro-optical transmission, images from orbit (not of the moon, hahaha) could be captured and exploited in near real time for timely strategic intelligence of military movements, construction and shipbuilding.

That is what surprised me when I was sitting waiting for Ben, my Tunisian barber ,this week. He still had a guy in the chair and I sat down in the waiting area and picked up the Metro Section of the Post. There was an account of a big empty building at the Navy Yard that was temporarily being used for an open-air art project.

I blinked in amazement. It was Building 213, a place that should be remembered with the same sort of reverence as Ford Island at Pearl Harbor. The things that were done at the Yard still boggle the mind. The Cuban Missile Crisis. The Vietnam War. The Single Integrated Operation Plan (the nuclear SIOP material) that mapped the way to nuclear Armageddon.

The Pizza Trucks that sped away from the building, surrounded by barbed wire each morning, rigid two-man control for the imagery flats that looked vaguely like delivery pizzas to Spook Agencies all over the city.

Unlike Pearl Harbor, where I lived and the kids were born, I was only at Building 213 once. The visit was to examine another of the series of technological miracles that marked the long chilly struggle: a machine that enabled the digital manipulation of the digital images. The machine was so powerful that the electronic signature could be monitored dozens of feet away, through concrete walls, and thus the machine was housed in a copper-lined room.

The old-fashioned light tables used by photo interpreters since the dawn of aerial photography were gone, and Building 213 moved into the modern digital world.

The Post article did not reference the building number, nor the people who had worked there for decades. Those were the days when the area around the Yard was lower than slum, and the only activity outside the wall was at the liquor store across M Street. Gunshots could be heard most mornings, and you could not blame the Federal guards at the checkpoints in the barbed wire from being a little edgy.

There were huge secrets to be protected, and some of the most highly cleared personnel in the government routinely ran the gauntlet to go to work, examining the target decks of the adversary each day for indications and warnings of the end of the world.

In that context, the Post casually mentioned that Building 213 is now itself not long for the world. The last inheritor of the photo-imaging mission was the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA). They moved out last year for their palatial new headquarters at Fort Belvoir. It is an impressive building with a soaring seven story atrium and fancy paneling. It is the last of the Post 9/11 palaces erected to serve the new National Security State.

Building 213 was stripped of top secret communications and satellite gear, and all the machines that displayed the images of places the spies could not safely go. Then it was de-SCIFed and the metal ripped out until there was only bare concrete and the guards walked away without looking back.

The Post breezily reported that the building would be razed sometime in the next year or so. Rumor is that it might be replaced by a gourmet supermarket like a Whole Foods Store. That part of the SE District has been waiting for something like that for a long time.

Still, I found it sort of amazing that no one is remembering what was done in that building, and its role in the long Cold War and the hot ones since.

Since this is a day to remember Pearl Harbor, we need to do that to honor the dead of the Pacific War that began there. But the peaceful harbor in which USS Arizona still weeps drops of fuel oil from her corroding bunkers, with USS Missouri’s imposing bulk anchored astern will be there next year. They are the Alpha and Omega of the struggle, and an inspiration.

Building 213 will not be there. The secret history of it will vanish as completely as the structure. Pity really. People should remember what was done there.

(National Photographic Interpretation Center annotated image of a Soviet missile site in Cuba, 1961. Work similar to this was done at Building 213 for sixty years. Photo CIA).

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Free

Free Nelson Mandela
Free free
Free free free
Nelson Mandela
Free Nelson Mandela

21 years in captivity
Shoes too small to fit his feet
His body abused, but his mind is still free
You’re so blind that you cannot see
Free Nelson Mandela

Visited the causes at the AMC
Only one man in a large army
You’re so blind that you cannot see
You’re so deaf that you cannot hear him
Free Nelson Mandela

21 tears in captivity

You’re so blind that you cannot see
You’re so deaf that you cannot hear him
You’re so dumb that you cannot speak
Free Nelson Mandela

– The Specials in 1983

I was driving over to Willow to raise a glass to the anniversary of the restored right to raise a glass when I heard the news. Prisoner and President Nelson Mandela took his leave of us yesterday, at the ripe old age of 95.

Rest in peace, Mr. President. He may be the last of the giants to depart from the great struggle against a colonial past. We are left with political midgits.

I remember when his heroic struggle against oppression burst into my consciousness. It must have been ’84. I was in Hawaii then, stationed at the numbered Fleet Headquarters that was then located on Ford Island, in the middle of Pearl Harbor.

It was a little surreal, being surrounded by all that history, and thus the time on the island within an island has a special part in the cavalcade of memory.

My pal Agent had just reported to the staff, and one of our jobs was to prepare the morning intelligence update for the Admiral in Command. Much of it was nothing more than a classified version of the news- it was great fun putting it together to tell a story- but it was also plodding work, putting together the Vu Graphs to accompany the presentation.

We were not Power Point Rangers in those days, and with the restrictions on recording devices, we were limited to an AM/FM radio down in the Secure Compartmented Information Facility where we labored. We preferred harder alternative rock, but KSSK with morning jock Hal Lewis- a haole whose stage persona was J. Akuhead Pupule- would take us on a romp through the curious nature of local politics in Paradise.

Aku, as he was affectionately known, was not long for this world. He was a connection back to the days of the Hawaiian territory; islands seized by local planters and an expansionist America determined to gain coaling stations for the Fleet and becoming a Pacific power.

It could have gone another way. Queen Liliokulani would have preferred to keep her throne, perhaps as an overseas dependency of the British Empire, like South Africa. The state flag to this day includes the Union Jack as a point of reference about the vagaries of history.

The world of the Pax Brittanica was just about gone, though things continued to crash around in the attic of Empire. The Crown Jewels were gone. Rhodesia had gone grudgingly, in 1979. The tiny Falkland Islands had required the last gasp of the Royal Navy’s prestige in 1982 to save them from humiliation of forced occupation by the Argentinians.

Only the white separatists of South Africa stood their ground with Afrikaner stubbornness against the winds of change and justice.

At the time I was in the Islands, the far away pressure on the Apartheid regime in Pretoria was mounting. It did not have much to do with us, or our mission, but there was a song that personalized the struggle: “(Free) Nelson Mandela.” It was catchy, and made your feet move, and it became our theme-song for the preparation for the morning brief, and we would sing it before picking up our slides and heading up stairs to talk about the estimated locations of Soviet Ballistic Missile submarines on patrol, and how we might destroy them in a timely manner should events require us to do so.

(The Specials in 1980. Jerry Dammers is pictured third from right, and his smile is legendary. Photo: Keystone/Hulton Getty).

Jerry Dammers wrote the song that left-of-center magazine “The New Statesman” listed as one of the “Top 20 Political Songs” of all time.

When Dammers started on the joyful brass riff and African-inspired melody, he later said he didn’t actually know much about Nelson Mandela. The icon of those days was martyred Steve Biko, murdered by South African authorities in 1977. Dammers was an activist of the ‘60s school: he had joined the demonstrations against the Springboks, the South African Rugby team during their tour of the UK in 1969.

(Steve Biko. Photo Wikipedia).

The African Sounds festival at Alexandra Palace Pavilion, north London, in 1983 changed all that. The twelve-hour event was timed to celebrate the imprisoned ANC leader’s sixty-fifth birthday. “Free Mandela,” chanted the crowd and South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela’s blasted out the music. “Free Mandela.”

It was the 1995 embrace of the largely white Springboks that cemented Nelson Mandela’s reputation for conciliation and forgiveness against his one-time oppressors.

To this day I cannot hear the sound of that tune without wanting to dance. The band was The Specials, who also had some other iterations, and they specialized in an ironic take on the mod dress of the 1960s- think porkpie hats and mohair suits- and harnessed the power of danceable ska with a rock-steady beat and a certain snide punk attitude.

It summed up a lot of us, in the day, though perhaps distinct minority in Naval Intelligence. The tune and the lyrics were infectious, and the cause was just.

I won’t try a eulogy for a political and social giant. I will leave that to those with better credentials than mine. But I could not pass this morning without mention of him, and for my admiration of his life, and the accomplishments of one man against an oppressive state.

Mr. Obama lifted the words of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, on the passing of Mr. Lincoln to describe the gravity of the event. “He no longer belongs to us, he belongs to the ages.”

He is in good company. Nelson Mandela is free now, free for eternity.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Repeal Day

Well, I blew off some steam this morning with a flash of exchanges with the usual suspects, starting long before dawn. I will not burden you with the spleen. Catharsis is good, though I have found it is not necessarily good for reading.

Anyway, there is a story on which I am working that is not ready for telling just yet, one that starts out like the annual thriller from Craig Johnson or C.J. Box that I wait for impatiently each year. That will have to keep for a while. I need to work on the manuscripts for the book about our pal Mac, and the one about Raven and Big Mama. Those are past due, and the holiday makes me think rationally about their collective passing.

Or worry about the weather. It is killer cold out west, and it may be coming our way.

First cup of coffee came along with the ten day forecast for Washington. Unseasonably warm and wet, they say. I don’t know where the Canadian chill is going. With luck we can avoid a pre-Holiday Snowmaggedon. But you can never tell in this strange confluence of the Chesapeake and the Piedmont.

Anyway, with all the talk about how good things are going with some major legislation these days, I thought it might be appropriate to remember another Grand Experiment in the American Experience.

This is the anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition, and all of us who enjoy a nice glass of something at happy hour time should raise a glass to a quainter time.

Remember? Some social crusaders had a fabulous idea. The people did not know what was good for them, and people Who Knew Better had to take action to save the people from themselves.

In 1919, the Great War was over, and millions had not survived the deadly Influenza Pandemic. The was something apocalyptic in the air. The prototype of the Nanny State succeeded in getting the requisite number of State Legislatures to ratify the 18th Amendment to the United States Constitution.

It was widely believed that Prohibition would protect families, women, and children from the effects of alcohol abuse, eliminate the influence of the Saloon culture on the political process and all sorts of great stuff.

The Women’s Christian Temperance Union was one of the driving forces behind the 18th Amendment (and the Volstead Act that implemented it) made it the law of the land.

It is interesting to note that the forces promoting Prohibition made all the correct steps in the Constitutional Process. The drafted an amendment, and went to the States to gain a majority. It did not require making things up as implementation went along, or Executive tinkering or legislation by edict.

Proponents of the Amendment believed that banning alcoholic beverages would reduce or eliminate a host of social problems, some of them pre-exiting conditions like public drunkenness, crime, mental illness, and poverty.

In 1925, my favorite curmudgeon, H. L. Menken, summed it up. My pal Old Jim reminds me a great deal of the Sage of Baltimore. He stated with confidence that consequences were going to be the direct opposite of what was claimed, and as it turned out, he was right.

There is not less drunkenness in the Republic, but more. There was not less crime, but more. There is not less insanity, but more. The cost of government was not smaller, but vastly greater in order to enforce an edict that no one respected.

Prohibitionists argued that the Great Experiment could work, if only more resources were poured into it. “We are so close,” they said. “Just a few more police, and a little more money.”

Stop me if any of this seems familiar.

Anyway, the realization was growing that the widespread disregard for the Law of the Land was having a negative impact on all of the laws. It made one out of five Detroiters participants in a whole-sale illegal industry. Taxes were lost. Gangsterism was enshrined as an alternate government.

Republicans were the Drys, and Democrats were the Wets in the struggle over the notion of whether the Government could control the people. The campaign for repeal gained ground after The Crash in ’29. America needed a stiff one.

An organization called the United Repeal Council lobbied at both the Republican and Democratic national conventions in 1932 to integrate repeal into their respective presidential election campaigns. Ultimately, the Republicans continued to defend Prohibition, true believers in the Grand Experiment.

The Wets joined with the Democratic campaign and supported Franklin Roosevelt, and another Constitutional Amendment.

Doing it the right way resulted in the 21st Amendment. The states fell in line, one by one, and on this day in 1933, FDR was the first president since Woodrow Wilson to have a legal beer. The Great Experiment was over, at least for a minute.

Of course, the people who know what is good for you are still around, and shriller than ever. It takes constant vigilance, you know?

Writing that was thirsty work. On this special day, consider joining me, Old Jim, Tex the Bartender, Jasper the Best Pool Player on Guam, Pert Brenna, Chanteuse Mary, John-with and without, placid Jamie and the Lovely Bea in celebrating Repeal Day. No costumes to buy, no rivers to dye green.

Pick up a six-pack on the way home from work. Take a nip off the office bottle. Have a glass of Happy Hour White at Willow. Because we can.

It’s the law of the land.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

The Russians Are Coming

I have taken a certain solace in writing about things that have nothing whatsoever to do with politics, but when you hang around a place that is all politics all the time, it is hard to avoid tripping over it.

You have heard the talking points already this week. I was talking about it with John-with last night. He was staying only for a single glass of wine. He wanted to get down to Screwtop, where there is a more target-rich environment.

“They are doing another roll out,” he said, rolling his eyes. “You know, the one that the President’s political people have devised, touting the great benefits of the Affordable Care Act .”

“Didn’t it didn’t it have another name a few minutes ago?” I asked.

John-with gave a wolfish grin. “Yes, it did. It was going to fix a system so flawed that only 80% of them were satisfied with their existing coverage.”

“Twenty percent is a big deal,” I said, watching the cocktail nook fill up with the senior management of the Fish and Wildlife Service. I noted that the Fish Head himself was first to arrive, and he shot the shit with Old Jim while waiting for his people to arrive.

“The Russians are coming,” he said. “A big bilateral delegation to compare notes on how we enforce the regulations in wild places against heavily armed people.”

“Could be interesting, if these Russians are like my Russians,” I said.

John-with wasn’t letting it go. “The website- you know, the one whose back end is not built yet- is working just fine.”

“Sure it is. They need to get beyond this and get back to promoting all the swell stuff that is in it.”

John-with scowled. ”Yeah, the law is fine. The tinkering with the bill itself by the Executive Branch- hey, those are just tweaks, really. Not a problem. And those darn Republicans not signing up to help fix some minor problems.” He laughed and reached for his overcoat.

“It is working for the vast majority of Americans,” I said. “I heard that on the radio.”

“It is all fine,” said John-with. “Like the cop tell you: Move along, nothing to see here. File this little glitch with the other phony scandals. It is Bush’s fault. Toodle-loo, Gentlemen.” Then he headed for the door.

Jim looked over and growled: “What got his knickers in a bunch?”

“Same deal as always. Relentless expansion of government, redistribution of wealth and crushing of individual rights. You know, the usual.”

“This would be the same government that pays his salary, and the one that supported you when you were in the Navy? And pays your retirement.”

“That’’s the one,” I said. “But of course someone else gets my pension. It is called spreading the wealth around.”

“Don’t let the Russians hear you spouting off like that. They are all capitalists now.”

“Of a sort,” I said pensively, taking a deep draught of Happy Hour White. “Look out. That could be the delegation from Moscow coming up from the Metro.”

Jim looked over at the door as some large and vaguely European people stepped through the door on the bar side of the restaurant.

The Fish and Wildlife folks normally take up the whole cocktail nook, but things were completely out of control now. They had clearly been told to make a good show of this, and between their number and the dozen or so Russians, the apex of the Amen Corner was packed in.

An attractive woman with dark hair cut in bangs across a face with prominent cheekbones and teeth as perfect as Chiclets was doing parallel translation for the Fish Head, who was welcoming his counterparts from the Russian Federation.

Jasper and Tex were scrambling to keep up with the demand for craft-brewed draft. One of the Russians actually touched Jim. In fact, he was getting manhandled at his usual stool.

He scowled. “I believe I am going to get out of here before we get the bum’s rush.”

“I second that,” I said, trying to get Tex’s attention and with it, the check. “Too crowded.”

“I have never been run out of here before,” he declared. “Screw this.”

“Roger,” I said, and slid my credit card across the bar toward Tex’s beefy fist. “Run it on this, if you would. I swear I will pay you next month.”

“There is a lot of that going around,” he said with a grin.

“No shit,” said Jim, and he grabbed the cane with the bulldog head, and I grabbed my backpack. It was easier to get around the crowd by retreating back to the restaurant side of the house and go out that entrance.

“See you tomorrow,” I said, savoring the cool air.

“No accounting for taste,” he said, and disappeared around the corner.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Living Over the Store

During the time I was doing the 800 mile round trips to Petoskey, I began to get muscle memory of little places like Cranberry, PA, and Strongsville and Elyria, OH, as refuges from the Turnpike. It was always a relief to get clear of those pesky low Appalachian mountains, punching through Hole in the Wall at Alleghany Mountain and starting the long downgrade to the Buckeye State from the Piedmont of Pennsylvania.

And the weather. Good God.

We are in it, now. A pal is getting four inches on his driveway this morning, and starting to watch with alarm the front coming east. He is doing now what I was doing the last five years: looking in on his Mom.

I shudder when I recall the imperative of the holidays, and travel when things are at their worst. I recall a trip when the Big Left Turn East after the long leg south from Northern Michigan coincided with a violent ice-snow-wind front that left semitrailers pitched over, and tense, white knuckle driving at ten to twenty miles speed of advance, and doing the math.

Home in as little as twenty hours- much faster than horse and buggy.

God.

No big drives now. It is too late in the season, even if the Panzer does have on-demand four-wheel drive. Even the little jog down to the Virginia Piedmont is fraught with peril. I was talking to the guy at the table next to me at the Raven’s Nest yesterday morning about a front coming through, maybe with ice. He was using the Raven’s wifi hot spot, enjoying a croissant and some sort of latte.

Me? I was alarmed in equal parts about alarming reports of violence in a town where a pal lives, and out of whole-bean coffee, and now about the weather report.

(The newly updated interior to the Moving Meadows store on East Davis Street.)

I had left the farm with a low-caffeine warning light flickering in my central nervous system. Fifteen minutes later I was parked in a “free” two hour parking place on E. Davis Street looking blankly at the storefront at number 253 where Raven’s Nest Coffee used to be.

If they had closed up since my last visit in the summer I was doomed- I would have to trek to the Starbucks inside the front door at the Super Target, and get that awful disoriented feeling I always get there.

Now, the space was occupied by an enterprise called “Moving Meadows Farm,” which purports top “offer the ultimate in good taste! From locally grown produce to While Grain Baked Goods and Spa Chicken, Salad Bar Beef and Gourmet Goat. Sold OUT.”

They look like direct competition to Andrew Campbell’s Croftburn Farm Market, so I wanted to check them out. As a local food consumer, I am in favor of competition, but I have my loyalties, you know?

I stuck my head in and introduced myself to Wally Hudson, who was prepping for weekday business after the Thanksgiving weekend. Sure enough, the usual story. He and his wife Amy had been residents of Alexandria a decade ago, when the world changed and airliners started flying into buildings, and they decided to get out of town.

(Wally and Amy- fellow refugees).

“Started in Fairfax,” Wally mused. “But we finally wound up down here on 47 acres. Built our own house. If you had told me I was going to wind up with a store in downtown Culpeper and a heard of short-poll cattle I move to new grass twice a day with free-range chickens, I am not sure I would have believed you.”

“Exactly how I found myself down here,” I said. “Weird. Feels like home, though.” I asked if Raven’s nest had gone out of business, and Wally laughed.

“Nope, she moved across the street in July.”

I thanked him and hurried across the street. Looking to my left, I saw a knot of people at the depot, waiting for the Amtrak train that goes to Union Station in downtown DC. Damn, I thought. This could actually work without the drive. I am going to have to check it out- bike in from the farm?

(The classic Depot at the foot of East Davis Street where the Amtrak train can take you right back into the madness inside the Beltway each morning).

Davis Street is a trip. There’s a restaurant to tempt every taste- from the pastries at Raven’s Nest to fine dining at the Copper Fish and It’s About Thyme and the real down-home comfort cooking at the Frost Café. If I had a need for a three-egg omelet or a fried bologna sandwich on white, that is definitely where I would start my day.

I needed coffee, though, and grabbed a bag of Dead Man’s Reach whole bean as I moved back to the island where owner Jessica Hall was hanging out. I showed her the bag of beans and asked for a large coffee.

“For here, or to go?”

I considered the options, and said “The heck with it. Here, please.” She produced the largest mug I have seen- it would have accommodated a half a box of breakfast cereal- and doctored it up with half-and-half and some local honey.

When I took up position at a table in the alcove behind the comfortable front room with the cozy chairs, I was fairly sure I would never get to the bottom- and as things happen in Culpeper- got to talking to the man who introduced himself as Danny- a retired psychologist who had decided it was too nuts back up there. Another refugee from the City.

We naturally started talking about the weather, since that is much more important than what we used to do, or the political tempest of the moment.

“Weather supposed to be coming in Thursday.”

“Crap, I was planning on traveling Thursday or Friday. I may get pinned down up north.”

“Can’t drive in snow?” he asked.

“No, no. I am a Michigan kid. I can drive anywhere. It is just that the Virginians on the road can’t.”

He nodded sagely. Hearing about the weather expected to come in was a sobering realization that the Winter is here in the Piedmont. “Of course, why would we pay any particular attention to a prediction more than five days away? That is from the same people who claim to be able to predict the weather fifty years from now with precision.”

“Hubris,” said Danny. “You start to lose that when you cross out of Prince William County and hit Fauquier on the way down.

“Man, you got that one right. It is a madhouse up there, no offense to your former clients.”

Jessica offered to top off my cup as she bustled past. She is a nice and enterprising lady, one of the dozens of entrepreneurs who are making something out of nothing with the fruit of their labor. Completely unlike people back in the capital, who are living off the labor that other people do.

“Thanks, I would love some more. I have to ask you the question, though. Why did you move?”

“This Building became available. They had been planning on making it a conference center, so there is an executive kitchen on the second floor and updated electrical. I bought it, and now live upstairs.”

“Hah,” I said. “Living over the store.”

She smiled. “Yeah. The commute is fantastic.”

We laughed at the notion, and I sipped the rich coffee and thought about snow and ice on the roads. I think I would rather be pinned down here than back up north.

I wondered how I could structure a decent swim at the Powell Wellness Center and get coffee each morning at the Raven’s Nest. Even coming in from the farm, the commute is not that bad.

We will see- I have to look at the weather.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Stratigraphy

There was a time in my life, a long time ago, when I thought I might have a talent for stratigraphy. It was a lower-level geology course in which the concept was introduced to us through analysis of sedimentary and layered volcanic rocks. Looking at the folds and thrusts in the rock was like being handed a key to the history of the organic and inorganic activity of the world.

Fossils below, rock folded and fossils above. Intrusions that suggested a molten world, one with the consistency of play-doh.

I wonder at the might-have-beens in all that. A decent stratigrapher could have made a pretty penny in the oil and gas game during my productive life, and what that path in the hard science of rock might have been like.

I was reminded of that long ago classroom time when I was starting on the office yesterday.

It is so nice in the country. The cold snap had snapped. It was comfortable in a wool shirt, and I marched resolutely to start in on the pile.

There is nothing whatsoever interesting about cleaning out the garage, except that the project revealed the sedimentary layers of a life. It was clear that the process that molds the earth molded me, too. The card-table from the barren little apartment; distinct levels of biologic stratigraphy evident. Five ominously large boxes labeled “Family Photographs.”

I know the contents of at least one of them is the mystery box that Big Mama once showed me in despair, saying she knew none of them- so that would be a pre-Cambrian igneous insertion in black and white amid Raven’s trays of Kodacolor slides.

I found clothing that needs to be washed and taken direct to the Good Will- must have been in those boxes for a good decade. Boxes and papers from the Phone Company- must have been from the period when the French Telecommunications giant Alcatel inserted thrust itself into my life.

And more. Some trash, and was marched over to the growing stack of boxes in the barn. Others poignant, and documented an upending of the regular strata into something that flowed like lava in passion.

The biostratigraphy of life, of interest only to me.

The challenge is to get it all in order so the kids can have someone haul it to the dump.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Catty Wampus

Cattywampus:
ADV. Performed in a non-straightforward manner; approached from an unexpected angle; askew; askance.

“Poets may go at the big truths a little cattywampus, but sometimes they do get to them” (Ted Kooser writing in The Poetry Home Repair Manual, University of Nebraska Press, 2005. 141)

(Ready for the snap in a game between arch rivals that hearkened back to the days of Bo and Woody. Photo Ann Arbor News).

I could not finish the NYT article about the disaster of the health care roll out this morning- too many sections and not enough time. Maybe later. I was (as is increasingly the norm) lost in several quests down a variety of rabbit holes and things had become all cattywampus.

The big deal was that the emotion-fueled nap after the dramatic resolution of The Game this year left me awake all the way to eleven, so I was behind before I even began.

I still did not know what to make of the game. The valiant drive by the Wolverines in the closing minute to close within a point of the hated Buckeyes, and then the bold attempt to just end it- go for two, screw ‘em.

Didn’t work, and I blinked at the screen as the game went into the record books, 42-41, a loss that contained the elements of greatness, and a whisper of those titanic struggles between Bo and Woody.

Crap. Still groggy, I drove over to the Russians to catch up on events of the week, and managed to start puttering on the contents of the farmhouse, the garage, the office and the barn.

See, things arrived here in waves. The initial wave was the wreckage from the efficiency apartment at Big Pink- second-string stuff- overlaid by the mass of crap from the Little Village By the Bay, untouched by human hand since the movers jammed it into the garage and the office annex.

Then a last wave from this summer, when the Stager directed we pare down the mass of knick-knacks and bric-a-brac to a spare, bare-bones look for showing the place. That is the shopping-bag phase of the pile of debris, and it is beyond time to get organized.

The World’s Fastest production pick up needs air in the tires, and an oil change from two years ago, and the cargo bed is filled with a jumble of loose object d’art and books and clothes and canned goods.

When I shut things down last night, pleased with the cheery glow of the Christmas lights that had emerged from the pile last week, I thought that I would have an entire day to get to work and wrest order out of chaos.

Hahaha! Not so fast, Dummie!

I overslept, of course. There is nothing like that pillow-top mattress for extending the passion of the dreams into the faint gray light of dawn, filtered through the trees as the pastures gleam with silver frost. And then the usual nonsense from the outside world, once the coffee was made, and the computer booted up.

First up was an acid comment on the article posted by my professional group of Old Asia hands- it was some poppycock about the “bold flight of B-52s into the new Chinese Air Defense Identification Zone.”

“Wait, I wrote. “This mission was ordered months ago- the idea this was a clever and rapid response by a resolute US Government is nonsense.”

I don’t know if anyone responded to that fit of pique, since by then I was off on an ongoing and exchange about the nature of media, and why the Casper, WY, media is dredging up the e murder of a local Professor by his son (with a bow and arrow, no less, and in the classroom- quick, ban bows!) after the kid had also killed the Dad’s girlfriend off campus. It happened a year ago- maybe it is the millstones of justice grinding exceedingly slow.

I was looking at the picture of the police emerging from the building where the slaying happened- the one officer as one visualizes what the cops should look like, the other representing the new reality of law enforcement as we have talked about this week. The tactical cop looks like he is going on patrol in Sadr City in Baghdad with M4 automatic rifle (and probably grenades). With the obligatory K9 unit, of course.

WTF, I thought. I didn’t see the up-armor tactical vehicle, but I imagine it was around there somewhere.

(German night-fighter with remarkable early air intercept radar and upward firing 20mm cannons to savage the unprocted underbellies of the RAF Lancasters. No branch of the armed forces- except the submarine force- took bigger casualties).

Then, my Navy buddies were conducting an in-depth analysis of WW II night fighter tactics, playing that off with the philosophy of Air Marshall “Butcher” Harris, the Royal Air Force strategic bombing chief. That rapidly devolved into a discussion of horrific slaughter of the RAF bomber crews, German civilians, and then the personalities of the top German night-fighters (almost all of whom died, since there was no retirement in Hitler’s Luftwaffe short of unconditional surrender).

Then there was the usual back-and-forth with other old farts about the triumph of the Vanguard of the Party in the Seattle city council election. Some woman there wants to seize the assets of the Boeing Company for the workers, and that, of course, lead directly to an analysis of the New York Times article about the ObamaCare roll-out I had not completed yet.

I am thinking about framing my copy of the New Yorker cover that seems to sum it up the best.

So, I am, like, behind, and am completely cattywampus for a story this morning, and I need to start working on the garage.

I am absolutely committed to getting some great work done today- which probably involves a ladder- and as you know, nothing good can ever happen when at the top of a ladder- and the prospect fills me with more than a little dread, but we have to start someplace, right?

Anyway, I am hoping it all passes without significant event, and there is every possibility that it could actually happen. Either way.

Lurking out there someplace is the prospect of the late NFL game, and a cheery fire, and some nice local vore food to cook for dinner and perhaps a festive beverage.

This is great living, but it is still a little cattywampus at the moment. I swear I cam going to get it all straight one of these days.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303