Surrender

Doppler radar shows the snow is already falling out on the Shenandoah at Winchester, and I wonder if I should turn my day on its head? Go to the office briefly until the snow begins to come down here and at least be outside for a bit today. The heavy dump is supposed to come just before lunch, and continue through the day, tapering off in the evening as the wind backs around and temperatures plummet from the upper thirties (now) to the single digits.

That is why I came up yesterday to be in the Imperial City when things slow to a crawl, and then are buried.

Our friends at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) have already thrown in the towel- the Federal Government, normally so swelled with hubris, has acknowledged that it is powerless in the face of what the earth is about to do to it.

Early surrender is positively French: in 1982 (Air Florida crash) and 1987 (Veteran’s Day Disaster) the bureaucrats decreed that the government was open despite the clear predictions of the meteorologists, only backtrack as the sleet turned to ice and the snow began to mount. They cut us all loose at the same time to choke the roads, hinder the plows and generally create mayhem.

For the first of the great snow events, I looked in horror from my residence in the Sandwich Islands at the coverage of the results of the imperious OPM decision. There was an impenetrable traffic jam attempting to leave the city via the 14th Street Bridge, and the cars were pinned in place as Air Florida Flight 90, a Boeing 737-200, made it’s 30 second flight out of National, via the bridge and then into the Potomac.

That was a horrific morning. A jet was in the Potomac: A Park Police helicopter was the first official responder, and flew so low to reach survivors that its skids were immersed in the icy water. But the officials were not the only ones who came. Ordinary- or perhaps we should say ‘Extraordinary-’ citizens plodded through the rising snow from the bridge and the nearby Pentagon.

Passenger Priscilla Tirado miraculously survived the crash but was too weak from exposure to grab the line thrown from the chopper. Those survivors in the water were minutes away form death by hypothermia.

Extraordinary events make men rise to the occasion. Congressional Budget Office assistant Lenny Skutnik emerged from his vehicle, stripped off his coat and boots, and in short sleeves dove into the icy water and swam out to successfully pull Priscilla to shore.

Others were not so fortunate, but I will never quite look at the CBO the same way again.

The early snarl naturally frustrated the response time of emergency crews, but it also meant that the new Metro system trains were jammed full. A half hour after the Air Florida jet went down, three Metro riders were killed in the first subway crash. It was a weather trifecta: Washington’s nearest airport, one of its main bridges in or out of the city and one of its busiest subway lines were all closed simultaneously, paralyzing the entire metropolitan region.

I managed to be here for the second greatest example of hubris in the face of the elements. On Veteran’s Dayi n 1987, I was in the wilds of Fairfax and walking to my car in the drive of the modest little house to head in to Arlington, early.

It was dark still, and the thin sleet rattled off the roof of the car. It grew in intensity as grew I drove up I-395 toward the Bureau in Arlington, parked the vehicle and trudged up the hill toward the Navy Annex. Looking out the window from my desk, I saw the sleet transition to white stuff, and then begin to mount impressively in the alley between the office blocks.

OPM finally surrendered about 1030, and decreed that we might flee the city. It was too late, of course. We huddled in the office and I elected to leave my car and travel with my boss Drew back out Route 50 in hopes that the major non-interstate roads would not be so chaotic.

When all was said and done, 14 inches fell. It took eight hours to get home, all of 14 miles away.

I think I have lost the Michigan attitude about the white stuff, and now am sympathetic to a Gallic approach to snow. The elements remind us that we cannot impose our will on the earth, only upon each other. So here’s to OPM this morning: Surrender!

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Halloween Jet

(Spike in the initial roll-out of Raven’s Halloween Jet. He is in the side yard of the house in Grabbingham at Chester and Frank in 1964. The concept was identical to the rib-and-fabric construction of the flying models Dad used to build. Photo Raven).

So, down at the farm and not a thought about the State of the Union, nor the fun and games of ruling the Republic by decree, which had seemed vital to me a couple days ago. The Judge wrote from the wilds of western Maryland to tell me to read the local paper and chill out. Nothing we can do about it for a while, so why get aggravated?

Considering that even the much more intrusive claws of Annapolis across the border seem more tenuous with mountains and distance, I decided to agree and get on with things. The Clarion-Bugle reports that the Waterloo Bridge is near collapse and cannot be used to connect to Fauquier County on Rt 613. The thing is 136 years old, one of the first constructed in the period when the Old Dominion was trying to heal from the scars of the brutal war that had been fought largely on this soil.

Raven could have fixed it, I am convinced. He could fix anything. I was watching the football games in the Great Room yesterday afternoon, feeding 35mm slides through the digital scanner, drinking a modest red wine, and marveling at the images. I have done two carousels so far, of the dozen of more of them in their square boxes.

I think the projector and silver screen went to Good Will in the little village by the Bay- you can’t keep everything, right?- and I figured I would get to the digitizing project some time. Watching Payton Manning disassemble the Pats and the Seahawks triumph over the Niners was the perfect time to do it.

There were some cool and vague recollection of participating in some of the events- Annook’s sixth birthday, trips to the Big Lake and yachting on a smaller one. Shoveling snow in 1959- hah! Most of the images were a half century old, and showed Raven and Big Mama as they were as young parents, full of vim and vigor and not at all what was seared into our memories as the great decline and fall worked its course.

It was enough to take the breath away, bring moisture to the eye and a rueful smile to my lips.

But the one that took me back was the series of pictures that documented the epic project of the Halloween Jet. It is the essence of Dad.

At the apex of his fixit-and-fabricate-phase, he had a full machine shop in the basement, which included an industrial flatbed lathe, drill press, band and table saws and all manner of specialized tools.

I remember one day a chest of drawers came into the inventory from some relative. It had a lock to which the key had long been lost. He machined a new key out of a block of brass just for the challenge.

The fireplace tools I have at the farm have delicate turned aluminum handles. Naturally, he knocked them out and threaded them to attach to the poker, shovel and whisk one weekend. I think it was therapy, but it was also something else: he taught us how to used the tools, and the methodical steps required to turn an idea into something concrete.

It ran in the family in Raven’s time. Grandfather J.B. was an engineer- he put the phone system in Panama and Bermuda and Rio for Western Electric- and Uncle Jim, 17 years senior to his kid brother was an aeronautical engineer of vast repute. I could tell you some of the things he designed for Uncle Sugar, but I would have to kill you. Strange that we wound up in the same line of work, though of course, I just looked at the products that came from the systems he built.

It was natural that they taught Raven the art of making- and fixing things. He, in turn, tried to teach us.

The inspiration for this project came from brother Spike. He had an idea, probably derived from one of the WWI airplane models that Dad would have in progress from time to time. They were intricate things, totally different than the plastic models we used to slap together in gooey concentrations of exotic smelling- and toxic- glue. It is amazing what they used to let us play with.

The real flying models were constructed of delicate balsa wood ribs and bulkheads, fixed in place, and then clad with fabric which was shrunk to a tight fit with dope- an aromatic petroleum-based substance used in the construction of the first airplanes and the origin of the term we use for the substances that enable us not to think at all.

(Raven used to knock these out for fun- part of the original model-making from the twenties and thirties of the last century. It is exactly what he did to create the Halloween Jet. Photo courtesy: furwoodworking.wordpress.com/)

Anyway, Raven took the idea of building a rolling mini-float for the 1965 Grabbingham Halloween Parade to heart as a teaching opportunity, and one night he presented us with the detailed plans to make a dart-shaped jet that would roll on wheels from a Soap Box Derby racer.

The project went on for weeks in the basement, after dinner and on the weekends. The process was exacting and we watched in fascination as the major parts were fabricated, and jigged together. The major components slowly came together and were staged in the garage for final integration.

Finally, in the crisp days of the Michigan Autumn came time for the roll-out. Spike was the pilot, as was completely appropriate, since it was his idea. He ducked under the fuselage and popped up in the cockpit, able to propel the craft simply by walking along with gentle forward pressure on the interior of the cockpit. My job as the “Crew Chief” was to wear Raven’s leather flight jacket and goggles and wave a couple of Navy pennants that signified the letter “P,” for “papa,” which in retrospect, seems entirely appropriate.

I miss him.

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Standard Day

(T.I. Martin Field in Culpeper. Image courtesy wikipedia).

Hey- it is ‘Ceiling and Visibility Unlimited’ to the waning moon at the farm this morning- and a little colder than the Standard Day. If we were going flying out of T.I. Martin Field today, we would have nice dense, still air and plenty of lift.

“Standard day” is the term used to forecast the weather and fly airplanes. Techincally, it has something to do with “Lifties” and “thrusties,” or something. The warmer the air, the less dense it is. More density give greater lift from the elegant flow of the air over the wing’s graceful curve.

I was thinking about the standard day and how it differs between the city and the country. Naturally, Washington’s Standard Day has less lift in it due to the hot air it spews. Regardless of where I am, the morning back-and-forth in the email stream deals with the same issues. This morning there was an analysis of the impact of Mr. John Podesta’s return to the White House, and the ability of the new commentator on Fox News, Ms Lea Gabrielle, to land F-18 Hornets on aircraft carriers.

That naturally led to some dissections of the officer corps, and a side conversation on Great Leadership we have seen over the last few decades- I am not going to mention who they are, but there was general agreement that some should have been court marshaled. It was a Standard Day on the Internet, but the natural world calls out here at the farm.

Just before dusk I saw at least three of the local deer- a yearling and two others that stayed back in the woods had survived the season to gambol through the winter. Good news, generally,

The thermometers in the front yard and out the kitchen window were in general agreement that it would be chilly but stay above freezing. When I was briefly awake at 0230, I noted we had received a dusting of snow on the porch, but it was gone by the time daylight swept up the pastures and poured into the windows.

At T. I. Martin Field, seven miles north of downtown Culpeper, the standard day is defined by the altimeter setting at sea level at 29.92 at 59 degrees F. With the temperature likely to be fifteen degrees below that, conditions are excellent to get larger aircraft with greater payloads in and out of the field. There is talk about adding a new terminal to the flight line and upgrading the facility, which is known to the FAA as “CJR.”

The International Air Transport Association has not thus far deigned to give us a letter designation, but we have hopes.

Culpeper Mayor T. Irving Martin was the visionary who decided to move the local airstrip from south of town (across from the Best Western motel at the junction of Business 29 and the through road south) to the location at the edge of the Brandy Station battlefield. The runway originally measured 3200 ft. by 75 ft., but that wasn’t enough. In 1983, the year before T. I’s grandson joined the city council, the runway was lengthened to 4000 ft. In 2004, the runway was expanded to 5000 ft. by 100 ft. It can handle corporate size jets and large twin-engine aircraft.

I wish I had a corporate jet to get down here on the weekends. Maybe that will be Socotra House’s first major acquisition when we hit the lottery. T.I.’s grandson’s career expanded like the airport, rising to become Vice Mayor until that unfortunate misunderstanding about the insurance fraud thing came to light. In some ways, the standard day in the country is not that different than the Big City.

There have been other definitions of the standard day in this now-placid place. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia had gone to winter quarters here after their victory at Chancellorsville a couple dozen miles down Rt 3, then known as the Germana Highway. Longstreet’s Corps was bivouacked here on the farm lane under Mt. Pony, with JEB Stuart’s Calvary placed as a blocking force at Fleetwood Hill north of Town.

T. I. Martin Field is where Pleasanton’s Union Calvary, 11,000 strong, swept forward from Beverley and Kelly’s Forfs across the Rappahannock River in a pincer movement to squeeze Stuart, not knowing he was covering the bulk of Lee’s Army. They went back and forth over the hill a dozen times in the largest cavalry battle ever fought in North America.

That was a tipping point no one recognized on that standard Civil War Day, but the bold Confederate cavaliers would never again over-awe the Union horsemen, and from this winter camp in Culpeper, Lee rode north that summer to a place called Gettysburg.

So, away from the standard hot air in Washington, it is useful to remember that times have been both better and worse, just like the climate.

I note that it is afternoon now, and this is thoroughly un-standard, with the NFL conference championships happening this afternoon. That will require some serious couch time, a decent single malt scotch and some total disengagement.

Accordingly, I need to get to Target and disclose my personal credit information to some 17 year old in Russia along with some supplies necessary complete a couple projects around the farmhouse on this thoroughly standard day in Culpeper.

(Overview of the Battle of Brandy Station. I am sitting in the circle around Longstreet’s position to the lower left.)
Confederate
Union

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Rules of Engagement

Another disastrous morning from the staff of The Daily. Twice this week I have launched off on topics that (when I got to the end of the essay) made me a bit queasy.

This is another one. I think it is fairly good, and touches on some of the issues one confronts with the idea of firearms in this society. I know where I stand on the matter, and further understand it is another of those that are completely intractable, like the issue of abortion.

I am fortunate on that one- I am permitted my opinion, which is that it is probably better to be born than not- but I think it is irrelevant in light of the fact that I am unlikely to find myself in the position where the matter is personal, rather than philosophical. A libertarian position, I think, is consistent with holding that the matter is none of my business, and certainly not the business of the State.

Ditto a host of other issues regarding basic civil rights, guaranteed under the Constitution. Same Sex marriage, pot, blah blah blah.

One of the reasons I have been so concerned about so much of late is the demonstrated willingness of both extremes of the political spectrum to harness the power of the government to impose solutions on the people.

At some point, the whole firearms thing enters into the discussion. I have a learned pal who is of the opinion that the Second Amendment contains no personal right to the possession of firearms. He is only one Supreme Court vote away from being more correct than I am, so I have to take his opinion seriously. I can’t agree with it, of course, but that leaves one in a ticklish situation.

That sort of wound around the rose bush to a 0230 email I read in between tossing and turning over some issues that are real enough but not Daily material. It was an invitation to read a review of a neat carbine that fires pistol ammunition.

You can look up the specifics of the Kel Tec Sub 2000 if you wish, or refer to the information at http://www.keltecweapons.com/our-guns/sub-2000/rifle/

(Kel Tech Sub 2000, folded for storage. Slick little piece. Photo Kel Tec.)

I was interested, naturally. Having a carbine that consumes the same caliber of ammunition as a pistol is obviously efficient, reduces the logistics train associated with it, is not a handgun, is accurate, and folds to a length of only 16”. Models come equipped to handle a variety of magazines (restrictions in some states make that a must) and make things much simpler from a time management perspective.

I can hear another pal saying: “It’s all Cowboys and Indians,” and to a degree I am sympathetic. It would be nice, I suppose, if there could be a world in which these machines did not exist. But that is not the world in which we live.

The courts have decided- for the moment- that we can own these things, and accordingly, I do.

But were one to consider them to be something other than ornamental, it behooves one to think through the consequences of ownership. I always had guns around, from my earliest days. In fact, Raven would take us to a gun shop out in Pontiac as a treat on the weekends. The proprietor had a barrel of war surplus rifles of exotic calibers that made them essentially useless except for decoration.

Dad let us buy them, take them apart, put them back together and play with them. No ammunition, of course. But consider what the consequences would be today if you saw ten-year-olds running around with real guns in the neighborhood playing Capture the Flag?

There was an old Springfield rolling block rifle that dated to the Civil War, along with some other family blunderbusses more than a century old. I took the Springfield to school for show-and-tell one time, without incurring a Mark in my Permanent Record.

That permanent record later included a few decades with one of the larger armed gangs on the planet, bristling with not only firearms, but rockets and bombs of all the types.

Yeah, I know. A long time ago, and a different sort of country. And because it is a different sort of country, a lot of people are armed to the teeth in preparation for the unimaginable, and applying for permits to carry pistols in many states which previously did not permit it for most law-abiding citizens.

Anyway, that got off onto a heated exchange about training and personal rules of engagement.

That was an illuminating conversation. One pal opined that a useful training exercise is to go to a supervised range and have them turn off the lights, pick up a flashlight and remove your hearing protection and see what it is like to fire a pistol in an enclosed space with a muzzle flash that destroys night vision. Disorienting is the most polite way to describe it.

That led to a discussion of what you would do if you needed to do something. The consensus was that any use of a firearm is going to be a problem. One pal submitted the problematic nature of the law. Naturally, this case is from Massachusetts, which is a unique large-scale asylum, but it is relevant to the discussion.

(F. Lee Baily in his prime. He was a remarkable lawyer.)

Legendary trial lawyer F. Lee Baily was called to argue the defense of a woman
who was charged with murder because a man broke into her house with a knife and attacked her and her two kids. She ran with the kids into the kitchen and there stabbed the man, who died.

The prosecution’s argument was that because she did not use every means to escape, her attack on the man constituted murder, since she could have used the kitchen door to escape with her kids. She was found guilty.

We went back and forth on “Stand Your Ground” laws and the continuing debate on whether you really have the right to defend yourself.

F. Lee Baily’s assessment of it was this:

“If someone breaks into your house back into a room from which there is no exit” – he preferred a large closet – “and when the man approaches yell at him so that he turns and faces you – shoot him and make certain he is dead. When the cops arrive tell them you can’t really talk, you
are badly shaken up, that you were in fear for your life, and request a lawyer.”

“The defense would be: you tried to escape, you were scared, you backed into a corner and trapped yourself, and then you shot him.’ Even if the authorities think otherwise, they will find it virtually impossible to prove in court.”

That at least was Bailey’s argument. Don’t consider the warning shot as an air-tight deterrence, by the way. A lot of places are making that illegal, despite what the Vice President says.

The whole thing makes you a little queasy, you know?

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Tito Meets Guapo

(The contents of last night’s Socotra medicine chest. Clockwise from lower left, el Cubano Bitters, Deer Park Cparkling Warer, Tito’s Handmade Vodka, el Guapo Tonic Syrup and the finished product. Forget to garnish with fresh lime. Damn.).

I was listening to National Public Radio yesterday afternoon as I motored in the Bluesmobile toward the Class Six Store on post at Fort Myer. There was some discussion about cutting military retirement benefits and some of the perks that go along with it- booze without federal taxes being one of them, and my stock was running low.

I shrugged. Some of this is necessary to maintain a ready active force, and I have always thought that the All Volunteer Force was a pretty good idea until we got to a steady-state always-at-war. Maybe if every young person had to serve we would have a more rational discussion about what we are doing, and perhaps even decisively win the wars we select.

Or elect not to have them.

Now that there is less than 1% of the population in uniform, and the Greatest Generation passing off the planet, the constituency is diminishing, and the temptation to cut there will increase. So, I figured I would stock up.

Anyway, I normally drink an industrial grade vodka at home, since there is no reason to show off and mixing rocket fuel with commercial tonic and lime is good enough for government work. But being in a pensive mood, I was strolling down the clear spirits aisle after gassing up outside, and saw a row of Tito’s Vodka, modestly advertised as a critical component of “the world’s Best Vodka and Tonic!”

Concerned that the impending budget cuts could curtail access to critical roket fuels, I grabbed a bottle to pair up with the el Guapo Tonic Syrup and el Cubano bitters. I did not worry about proportions. These things have a way of working themselves out.

Tito’s Handmade Vodka is produced in Austin at Texas’ first (and oldest )legal distillery. It’s made in small batches in an old fashioned pot still by Tito Beveridge (actual name), a 40-something Geologist, and distilled six times. That is the sort of purity I prefer to pump through my liver.

I will let Mr. Beveridge speak for himself: “My Handmade Vodka is designed to be savored by spirit connoisseurs and everyday drinkers alike. It is microdistilled in an old-fashioned pot still, just like fine single malt scotches and high-end French cognacs. This time-honored method of distillation requires more skill and effort than modern column stills, but it’s well worth it.”

I mixed one when I go home, and damn if he wasn’t right. It might have been the best damn V&T I have ever had. I was scrolling through the email when I came across a note from my pal Boats, who is a native of the Crescent City metropolitan region, and a citizen of Great Texas, where Tito’s comes from. He commented on the phenomenon of the el Guapo company, run by a former Marine.

“Thanks! You discovered a New Orleans Business that even I had not heard of. It seems we are literally being invaded by an army of young copperhead entrepreneurs starting up new businesses. They seem to like the business friendly laws and attitudes of “Greater Texas”, but for some reason the folks who start these types of firms seem to gravitate to New Orleans vice Houston.

There are a number of ex-marines running everything from a magnet school, and a boutique on line merchandising site, to a full blown ex marine/minority owned offshore service vessel fleet.

We’ll take all we can get, and INS be damned, we’re keeping all those Mexicans who came up to rebuild the town after Katrina as well. Many stayed to start businesses. Many are probably illegals but they are not on welfare, are paying more taxes than the welfare recipients they replace, and creating jobs mostly for the other Mexicans who didn’t have the capital to start businesses. We’d love to be able to legalize them and bring them fully into the tax base. But the Feds are in the way.

So the town figures to just hide them out until their “anchor babies” who will have American birth certificates inherit the businesses and the entire revenue stream is taxed like everybody else’s. We think of the illegal period as a sort of de facto business incubator. Mexicans, Copperheads, Ex and retiring Marines, our attitude is the same as our early attitude toward the Mexicans….”They’re our Mexicans and we’re keeping ’em.

Greater Texas is open to entrepreneurs, sorry about the rest of the country.”

So there it is. Demographics and a decent cocktail, all in one afternoon.

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Giving Credit

(Front, L-R, John-With, Chanteuse Mary, Lovely Jamie, Joy, (second) The Architect, TLB, Vic Incendiary, Jon-without (back) some guy and Chris-from-Montana. Photo Jasper).

Now in the morning pre-dawn, smoking the first cigarette of the day- I don’t smoke in the apartment except for those irritating eCigs and looking out over the parking lot at Big Pink I realized the Bluesmobile is sleeping next to a sign that appeared overnight advising me it can’t be there at 0800, so I wound driving in my pajamas at 0530 to find a new place to put it, and I gave complete credit to having to be someplace else early, and then back inside to inhale coffee and get through the mail, to discover all the US-versions of the Beatles albums are available for $120 pre-order, special price, AND since I heard about it at Mary’s birthday at Willow, which was also holding Restaurant Week and in complete chaos and was interested but I am not sure I even still like the Beatles, but heard some of the BBC sessions on NPR and what the hell- they were the framing band of high adolescence and then into the nightmare of the Apple Store, which has been hacked, apparently, and I can never remember if it was just an “identify” or an actual complete email address, or which one of those, the personal or the account that I use for commercial purposes, and that went around and around with new security questions and rescue addresses and a wilderness of verification and I think, at the end of that, I have preordered music I rarely listen to.

(Another masterpiece cake from the talented hands of Willow’s pastry chef Kate Jansen. Photo Jamie.)

Anyway, in the process of updating my credit card information- why do I store it with the Apple people anyway? Since Steve Jobs died I have no personal relationship there except with the laptop although the Android phone I have had for a couple years only holds a charge for a couple minutes these days, particularly if I am taking cool pictures like the ones of the canal in all modes, so maybe I should upgrade to an iPhone 5a so only me and the NSA know who I am talking to. I like the idea of a new phone, but really, with over 70 million compromised card accounts out there from Target (yes, I shopped at the one in Culpeper in the period of vulnerability) and Neiman-Marcus (I didn’t) and three other vendors (I don’t know), I was wondering what the fuck? A third of the US population compromised? What do they have on me? And should I do a credit lock just in case? I looked the people up who will reportedly “freeze” credit unless I ask for it specifically by opening my account and that, Ami, just makes too much freaking sense. Why on earth do we do it the other way around, so some Bulgarian punk can open a new account, change the mailing address and be off on his merry way buying all sorts of crap-maybe Beatles tunes- that I will never know about, much less listen to?

(Chanteuse Mary starts a new decade by blowing out the candle. Photo Jamie)

Anyway, like I said, I have to be somewhere way too early this morning, but if you want to galvanize your day, and think about why everything is completely nuts, I have three articles for you, and a link to Credit Freeze. I don’t agree with all of it, but there is certainly a lot to think about, nest pas? I need to talk to Marlow about Paris:

(Marlow’ pic of the canal St. Martin. Photo Marlow)

Credit Freeze:
http://www.experian.com/consumer/security_freeze.html

What’s next on the Climate:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/15/the-rise-and-fall-of-global-newspaper-coverage-of-global-warming-and-climate-change/

How we are being altered by our devices:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2014/01/if-a-time-traveller-saw-a-smartphone.html?utm_source=tny&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailyemail&mbid=nl_Daily%20(96)

And then finish it off with this dry demolition of the mess that is foreign policy and why:
http://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/id.2060/article_detail.asp

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Le Burger du Comptoir

(Heather and Liz-with-an-S. Photo Socotra.)

Vincent <http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000237/?ref_=tt_trv_qu> : And you know what they call a… a… a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in Paris?
Jules <http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000168/?ref_=tt_trv_qu> : They don’t call it a Quarter Pounder with cheese?
Vincent <http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000237/?ref_=tt_trv_qu> : No man, they got the metric system. They wouldn’t know what the fuck a Quarter Pounder is.
Jules <http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000168/?ref_=tt_trv_qu> : Then what do they call it?
Vincent <http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000237/?ref_=tt_trv_qu> : They call it a Royale with cheese.
Jules <http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000168/?ref_=tt_trv_qu> : A Royale with cheese. What do they call a Big Mac?
Vincent <http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000237/?ref_=tt_trv_qu> : Well, a Big Mac’s a Big Mac, but they call it le Big-Mac.
Jules <http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000168/?ref_=tt_trv_qu> : Le Big-Mac. Ha ha ha ha. What do they call a Whopper?
Vincent <http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000237/?ref_=tt_trv_qu> : I dunno, I didn’t go into Burger King.

– Pulp Fiction, a film by Quentin Tarantino

So, we may get smacked with another Polar Vortex or something. I managed to forget about it yesterday- a day so glorious that even the drive back into the capital from Culpeper could not spoil it.

Neither could ConeGate (why is a traffic jam bigger news than the use of the IRS to punish political opponents?) or the failure of the young folks to sign up to give money to the Feds for something they don’t want or think they need.

I don’t know about you, but when I was 24 I would have taken umbrage at someone stealing my beer money, but I guess we will see how it goes.

I confess I am uneasy about the possibility that the failure of healthy people to buy insurance they don’t want will result in a demand to throw people like me- or other government employees- into the health exchanges. I can remain philosophical until then, right? Why am I not freaking about the fact that some assholes just stole 70 million credit card numbers, including mine? I wonder what they have?

(Tinkerbelle was at her best.)

Anyway, what is a simple citizen to do? I went to Willow to celebrate being back in the belly of the beast, and was rewarded with an outstanding turn-out. It was Chanteuse Mary’s birthday and Old Jim had his distemper shot- or Camus the dog did, it was not clear which. Brenna was on the civilian side of the bar, and Liz-with-an-S was back for a guest appearance, looking quite the professional with excellent prospects of burrowing into the Government as a paying gig. Tinkerbelle had an unusual Monday shift, and life was generally good.

We stayed a little longer than usual in a display of New Year’s exuberance that things would get better in 2014, and you can never tell.

I turned my attention to the daily mail, not the one in the UK, but the myriad of issues and pleadings in the electronic queue.

There were the usual issues, beaten to death, but one came from my vacation pal Marlow, who is in Paree, and which could use a new nickname. He apparently was in my favorite Arrondissement, the 10th. He wrote:

“Vic,
We just ate two if these mini- burgers each along with BA glass of wine and sides of salad and fries. They were exquisite.

http://www.aucomptoirdebrice.com/au-menu-du-comptoir/le-burger-du-comptoir/

A bientot!- Marlow”

I went to the link and got lost in the magic of Paris. I could feel the unease about the Great Issues of the Day melting away like Tracey O’Grady’s duck confite in a hot skillet. Chef Brice Morvent is a smart nutrition kind of chef, and I was captivated by the way he posted his recipe for the sliders. Apparently he was literally born in the kitchen, the passion for his art being conveyed to him by his father, who forced a love of the profession in him.

(Brice, in the PR photo from Counter Brice, his fresh food restaurant).

Brice was featured in the television cooking competition “TOP CHEF”, and he did well enough to strike out on his own and realize his dream with the opening of “Counter Brice.” In November 2011, he won the “price of food encouragement” awarded by the Mayor of Paris. In 2012, he started a campaign to promote the consumption of fruit and vegetables by becoming sponsor of the “Week Fresh Attitude”, organized under the patronage of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Rural Affairs and of the land.

I love the French, you know? Anyway, he is very much in the tradition of the localvores down in Culpeper, and here is the way he does a fresh slider.

Brice vous explique la marche à suivre pour réaliser un hamburger entièrement « fait maison ».

Temps de préparation : 1 h
Ingrédients : Pour 6 personnes
Pour la pâte :
250 g de farine
20 cl de lait tiède
30 g de levure
50 g de beurre pommade
5 g de sel
5 g de sucre
Pour la garniture :
Moutarde aux condiments
cornichon
ciboulette
persil
salade
oignon
oeuf
Comté
boeuf
Huile de colza
Ustensiles :
Batteur
Recette :
Verser la farine dans un batteur
Ajouter un jaune d’œuf
Diluer la levure dans le lait tiède
Ajouter le mélange dans le batteur, puis le sel et le sucre
Ajouter le beurre pommade
Une fois la pâte bien pétrie, faire six boules égales que l’on aplatit
Les badigeonner d’un mélange jaune d’œuf et lait
Ajouter du sésame
Laisser pousser la pâte pendant une heure en la couvrant avec un linge propre
Faire chauffer de l’huile de colza, ajouter les oignons émincés à feu doux
Pour la sauce, mettre dans un saladier un jaune d’œuf, une cuillère à soupe de moutarde, les cornichons hachés, la ciboulette et le persil
Monter la sauce avec un peu d’huile de colza pour lier les ingrédients
Mélanger avec la salade émincée
Au bout d’une heure, enfourner les pains à 180° pendant dix minutes
Cuire le steak haché
Ajouter une tranche de fromage dessus
Couper le pain en deux
Garnir avec la sauce sur un pain
Ajouter du ketchup sur l’autre et les oignons confits
Dresser

Vive la France!

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

El Guapo

Man, the farm is sort of like a narcotic. I waded through another in the excellent series of NFL playoff games as I scanned old color slides from Raven’s extensive collection. This particular slide carousel contained evidence of a trip to London and Brussels conducted, according to the time stamps on the back of the little cardboard square, in the summer of 1968.

I stayed awake with the Christmas lights on one last time until nearly midnight, and I slept it was heavy and right through the alarm.

That made me late to an ongoing discussion of the schisms in the conservative side of the aisle, and then a vigorous discussion of the lunacy that masquerades as fiscal policy. I concluded that the Mises school of thought- that hyperinflation is the logical outcome of all the central bankers of the world having taken leave of their senses- with this admonition:

“I have been covering my bets with commodities to balance the securities in the 401k and IRA. Ammunition, silver and guns seem to be solid investments as part of a balanced portfolio.”

But it was way too much absorb with the endless coverage of those traffic cones on the George Washington Bridge. Plus, I was a little blurry from a life-altering discovery, which still had me both invigorated and fortified.

Naturally I am talking about the little jug of El Guapo British Colonial Style Tonic Syrup that arrived in the mail a few days ago, and which I took for a test-drive during the football game.

This was a big deal for a creature of long established habit such as myself. I will confess to a fondness for whiskey-and-branch (7&7 in a pinch) when the weather is crisp. Most other times of the year I enjoy a stadium tumbler of crushed ice with a generous dollop of pedestrian vodka augmented with a few fingers of Schweppervessent diet tonic water and finished with a dash of Nellie & Joe’s Key West lime juice for tart goodness.

It is a delightful drink to have at poolside or on the patio at Big Pink, or grilling out on the deck at Refuge Farm.

I was surfing through Bourbon and Boots in between Payton Manning TDs- http://www.bourbonandboots.com/ – a vendor that specializes in “authentic southern gifts and novelties.” It is an entertaining enterprise, and do not take themselves too seriously. I have purchased a few items from them, including the sheath-knife forged from a high-carbon content railroad spike that is quite handsome.

Anyway, their advertising includes an eclective variety of southern foodstuffs, none of which I buy, but which stimulate a certain culinary whimsy when I feel like cooking. Looking through the latest set of offerings, I saw that they were marketing some bitters and such from a company called “el Guapo.”

The company is from New Orleans, and their product line includes several offerings of aromatic bitters, which I occasionally have used as a change of pace from the limejuice in my vodka. Angostura bitters is the only brand with which I was familiar, being a creature of habit, but this blurb seemed interesting:

BRITISH COLONIAL STYLE TONIC SYRUP – 16.5 oz

The blurb went like this: “This tonic was created through much research of classic recipes from a time when tonic was for more than just flavor.

As you know, the original tonics came from the days of the Pax Brittanica and the British Raj on the Indian sub-continent. The tonics were created using cinchona bark, as it was the source of quinine. It’s purpose? To prevent malaria!

The trouble was that quinine is extremely bitter. With that in mind, sugar was added for sweetness and citrus added for tartness. In addition, other herbs and spices made it into various recipes that one could sip at the Club or with the Mem Sahib under the languorous ceiling fan while combatting the dread disease of the tropics.

The company went on to explain that “Through research of those original recipes, we offer this for your drinking pleasure. Is this what tonic tasted like “way back when”? It is close if not dead on accurate. AND IT IS DELICIOUS!”

I clicked on the icon and bought a bottle, thinking I could magnify the full-bodied tonic taste without having to use a lot of it out of the bottle. “Full of fresh bright citrus and slightly floral flavors with a lingering but pleasant bitterness. This is what your gin and tonic was meant to taste like!”

Ingredients in the concoction were plain enough: Cane sugar, cinchona bark (quinine), limes, lemons, grapefruits, oranges, lemongrass, ginger, grains of paradise, & a few other secret herbs & spices.

The box arrived without incident and Rhonda the Chief Concierge propped the box up by the back door. Arriving intact is always a factor with goods in glass purchased on the web. I will not trouble you with the disaster of the case of Pond Hill Farms Unrefined Honey, which still has me distraught.

The cap of the tonic bottle was sealed with real wax, which I peeled off as I packed a short glass with ice and splashed in a couple fingers of Popov Brand industrial vodka. I uncapped the el Guapo and followed their recommendations- they said the liquid was “highly concentrated and very thick to give you the best value as well as the best flavor on the market.”

By proportion, I added 1/2 of an ounce of Tonic Syrup, and then splashed about 3 ounces of sparkling mineral water on top and stirred. I raised the glass and realized this was a real winner. The concentrated flavor bucked like a bronco, and was not watery as many V&T (G&T if you swing that way with Bombay Sapphire or some other) come in a highball glass.

I had a couple while I digitized the 70 slides from Raven’s trip to London and the Continent, he being younger than I in the pictures. Handsome guy, he was. The images had not seen the light of a projector (much less day) since he got back and had them developed 44 years ago. I saved them all on the memory card and uploaded them onto the laptop at the Farm, having another drink or two as the football game droned on in the background.

The el Guapo was so effective that I have sort of lost track of what directory the pictures all wound up in. Maybe now that morning has come, I might be able to find them again. In the meantime, the staff of the Daily Socotra is effusive in praise of the British Colonial Style Tonic Syrup, a product that may very well have changed our collective lives.

“Now available in 2 sizes: 8.5oz bottle – (up to 32 servings) 16.5oz bottle – (up to 64 servings) $19.99.” Oh, by the way, El Guapo is owned by a Marine, and he donates 10% to the Wounded Warrior organization.

I wish the stuff came by the drum… “OUR BITTERS ARE ON AMAZON.COM & BOURBONANDBOOTS.COM”

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com <http://www.vicsocotra.com>
Twitter: @jayare303

A Completely New Day

We are going to have a roller-coaster winter. They are talking about another Polar Vortex (there is apparently a difference from the usual Alberta Clipper) coming to town by next weekend. It may not be as severe as the last one, but it will bring the National Capital Region snow and more chaos. I mean, not the usual chaos.

Anyway, I saw the editorial in the NY Times applauding the joint letter issued Last week by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights and the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division (where there have been other interesting developments we have talked about before). The letter contains what the Times called “an extensive set of guidance documents, informing school districts of the law and showing them how to identify, avoid and remedy discriminatory disciplinary policies.”

Apparently the whole zero-tolerance thing is what is out of whack. School administrators have no options in dealing with violations of policy- sort of like the mandatory sentencing for drug violations.

You know the litany of lunacy- children being punished for biting Pop-Tarts into the shape of pistols, or cocking a finger at one another in an ominous manner. A 100% prohibition of guns in schools is being applied to the idea of guns, which is a separate thing altogether.

The Times takes things a step further. The Editorial board supports the DoJ view that it is wrong that some ethnic groups are being disciplined in different percentages than others under the zero-tolerance regime.

I don’t claim to understand it, nor, I think, does the Justice Department. There is some sort of magical thinking going on in public policy that takes statistics for justice, and then inverts it into justice by statistics. The recommendation is that all ethnic groups should be disciplined in precisely the same proportions.

I think there may be a case here that demonstrates with equal validity that some other significant public policy issues have failed, clearly and miserably, but that isn’t where I was intending to go this morning.

I have an ambivalent relationship with The Times. Once, that Gray Lady was the paper of record for the United States. My Dad gave me a subscription to the Sunday issue when I was shipped off to Korea, and I savored the sections right through the week. By then I knew the news, but the features were fabulous.

I still subscribe, though I look at the Swiss cheese that used to be a firewall between opinion and reporting with a jaundiced eye. I used to love the “On This Day” footnote that featured stories from the paper’s long history to match the date.

For example, today’s commemoration is of the House of Representatives vote to reject a proposal to give women the right to vote in 1915. Seems ridiculous, doesn’t it?
I didn’t find anything there with which to go wild. The 19th Amendment passed a majority of states and was ratified into the Constitution only five years later. But I did poke around enough to find that the Times is mucking around with the past.

There is normally a link to the actual front page that contains the contemporaneous original story. I followed it this morning to follow up, and discovered a frank discussion about what the present thinks about the past. There being 365 days in most years, and 366 on leap year, that was the total number of “On this Day” vignettes, going back to the 1867 Dredd Scott decision in the Supreme Court that arguably helped pave the road to the Civil War.*

Anyway, the master list of stories had been updated only twice since the feature was established in 1997. Last summer, the Paper decided to “reboot” the section. Times editors conducted a thorough review, busily adding and subtracting events with the “goal of keeping the balance and richness of the old list while including the biggest headlines from the last 14-plus years.”

They made 26 changes in a process that reminded me a bit of the same process used by NASA’s Dr. James Hansen when he controlled the GISS temperature data base- you know, the adjustments that cooled the past to make the present seem warmer.

The Times made some interesting discoveries in reviewing the list. I will summarize briefly.

What is out:

Space exploration (20 entries)
Winston Churchill (7)
President Andrew Johnson’s impeachment (3)
Amelia Earhart (3)
Princess Diana

What is in:

Hurricane Katrina
The Death of Osama bin Laden
Fall of the Berlin Wall (how did they miss that one the first time?)
Rwandan Genocide
The Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004
Introduction of the iPhone
The Surgeon General’s report on smoking
The Supreme Court decision to stop the Florida Re-count

Thankfully, this is not like the revised GISS data base, in which changes are buried anonymously and without attribution. That is indeed Orwellian. The changes made by the Times do have links to the original list and if they are not one-to-one correlations, you can at least find what competed to be mentioned as history.

1984’s Winston Smith had a job that involved changing the past at the Ministry, much more like Dr. Hansen. Winston summed it up pretty well himself, speaking to his paramour Julia: “Do you realize that the past, starting from yesterday, has been actually abolished? If it survives anywhere, it’s in a few solid objects with no words attached to them, like that lump of glass there. Already we know almost literally nothing about the Revolution and the years before the Revolution. Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, and every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day-by-day and minute-by-minute. History has stopped.”

Well, he has a point there. Those that control the present do control the past in large measure, and can chart the way to the future that is, as yet, unwritten. But on the whole, I think Winston Churchill might have something to say to our present that the Times would just as soon have us forget.

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

* I recommend the historic courthouse in downtown St. Louis for its commemoration of the context and court events in that magnificent building that helped propel Mr. Scott’s case to the national level, BTW.

The Fifth Dimension

Mister Mxyzptlk: (/mɪksˈjɛzpɪtlɪk/ US dict: mĭks·yĕz′·pĭt·lĭk or /mɪksˈjɛzpɪtəlɪk/ US dict: mĭks·yĕz′·pĭt·l·ĭk), Backwards, Klptzyxm (kil-pit-ZEE-zim /kɨlpɨtˈziːzɨm/)
– Wikipedia

The lights at Refuge Farm flickered briefly as I breathed the last letter of my name, spelled backwards. “V,” I said, and the great room seemed to swell and gain color and then diminish and snap back into focus. The Methodist Christmas Tree swayed languidly as though standing in a mild breeze.

I stood up, blinking. Had it worked? Had the simple act of saying my name backwards transported me into the Fifth Dimension, the home of the 76th most influential villain in the history of DC Comics? According to the lore from the Golden Age, such transit between the worlds resulted in an expenditure of energy that would take a full calendar quarter- ninety days- to regenerate and permit a return to the First World.

That is a little longer than Attorney General Holder gave himself to investigate allegations of misconduct on his part, but I was confident I could get to the bottom of it. Just like the DoJ did. They discovered everything was just fine, releasing the report late one Saturday night. At that point, said the Department’s press spokesman “what difference did it make?”

I decided to go outside and see what the Fifth Dimension looked like, up close and personal. I opened the front door- it swung inward, just as it always did, and the storm door still swing out as I stepped onto the porch. The lawn was unchanged from what I recalled at dawn: a desultory mist was coming down, just as it had in the First World.

The skies were the same uniform gray, and the Panzer- or what could have been the Panzer- was still parked next to the yellow sign with the image of a tank and the admonition “Violators Will Be Crushed.”

Situation normal, it appeared. I stepped back into the house and smelled the dark-roast Russian-blend Dazbog coffee. Completely normal. I shrugged. Inter-dimensional travel wasn’t as big a deal as I had thought.

I turned on the Boze Acoustic Wave stereo system. WJMA is the local country radio station, but they were doing one of those year-end wrap-ups, and they were in mid-story.

“Exiting the political stage this year were some memorable figures. Shortly after the President opened all the sealed records of his educational background and social security numbers, he announced he would return to Honolulu and learn to play the ukelele. “I am truly sorry about all that stuff. And the stuff in the autobiographies? We mostly made it up.”

Former First Lady Michelle announced that she would return to Chicago with senior counsel Valerie Jarrett to do good works. President Joe Biden announced that he had been pretty much wrong on every significant foreign policy issue in the last forty years, apologized, and asked Robert Gates to return to government as Secretary of State.

Hillary Clinton’s public apology for the fraud surrounding the Clinton Foundation was largely accepted by the electorate, as was her abject explanation of the terror attack at Benghazi. “I am sorry about that,” she said. “We sort of panicked when we realized that the bad guys not only were not on the run, they were running towards us. It is daunting when everything you know is revealed to be sort of…well, wrong.” Her press secretary announced that she would return to Arkansas to manage the successful Whitewater Resort.

Governor Chris Christie announced that a cheap political trick had resulted in the inconvenience to many New York media personalities and resigned. As an act of penance, he will be personally picking up traffic cones around the Garden State.

The repeal of the War on Poverty Programs had resulted in savings of trillions of dollars and the elimination of the budget deficit. Speaker Boehner immediately stopped using that stuff on his skin that turns it orange.

Al Gore announced that the continued slight decline in global temperatures probably made his assumption that warming was associated with Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere was wrong, and apologized after returning $500 million to the Al Jazeera Network in exchange for the return of his low-rated cable television channel. He vowed to use to set the record straight and support the Keystone Pipeline.

Al Jazeera, in turn, broadcast the entire Reformation and Reconciliation Conference from Mecca in which Sunni and Shia Islam made up and vowed to be more tolerant. “The whole thing was a colossal misunderstanding about what the Prophet meant about jihad. We are dropping the whole thing and we really apologize for the inconvenience.”

As a gesture of good faith, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani appeared at a press conference to say that the Israelis were actually pretty good guys and the whole nuclear thing was like “so fifteen minutes ago.” He ordered all the enrichment centrifuges to be destroyed immediately.

In Washington, Attorney General Eric Holder revealed that his Department of Justice had discovered several troubling ethical lapses regarding wiretapping and gun-running to the drug cartels. He announced that serious charges would be brought against him, and he immediately recused himself as AG pending the trial.

Colorado and Washington legalized recreational use just about everything, with Governor Hickenlooper vowing to “just get government out of everyone’s face.”

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen announced that regaining public trust was his number one objective. As a demonstration of good faith, he reduced the Federal Tax Code from 80,000 pages to one, and imposing a progressive flat tax in its stead. “Gosh darn thing was just too complicated and rewarded those with the money to lobby Congress,” the Commissioner said. “And all our people really could use the opportunity to get real jobs and help stimulate the economy.”

Senator Harry Reid agreed, and in a rare display of bi-partisan amity, the entire House and Senate resigned.

I looked at the radio in astonishment. This was the Fifth Dimension, all right. I realized I needed to get out of there before I started to do the right thing, too.

Maybe the ninety-day thing was bogus, and just a story to keep us from jumping dimensions. I took a sip of coffee and stared off into space. V-I-C-S-O-C-O-T-R…..

Poof!

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303