Author: Vic Socotra

Tridemics

(The late Christine McVie, noted composer and vocalist. She became famous as a member of the band Fleetwood Mac. Her public obituary cited her ‘passing from a short illness.’ Image courtesy Wikipedia). Someone rose in the darkness and screwed around with the coffee maker and the bacon. We like the bacon crisp and as flat […]

Letter to the Editor: Tridemics

Amen to short-illness-syndrome being quick to kill you. We caught the early OG version in January 2020 at a Chinse soup dumpling place down on South Florida’s Dade County where the servers were from mainland China. How did we know where they were from, you might rightfully ask. Well, at our table was our guide […]

Life & Island Times: Vengeance

Editor’s Note: One of us was on Dr. Fauci’s SARS-1 team twenty years ago and recalls being lectured by him on the dangers of lock-downs and over-reaction to that disease. To avoid restrictions on US biological research, the Good Doctor moved the operation overseas. To China. –       Vic Author’s Note: I’ve been thinking about how one half of […]

Arrias and His Muse: War Is Hell

Author’s Note: My Muse in somber mood this morning… Wading through a host of reports on Ukraine, the fighting around Bakhmut seems to be growing in intensity, and the trench warfare is getting nastier and nastier as the weather gets colder, and yet there is a story in one of the big foreign policy journals that that […]

Weather Report: Winter Arrives!

Traditionally, this is a pivotal week in the average year. We have celebrated a joyful holiday replete with good food and fellowship with family and fellow citizens. Then, Friday dawned with a traditional surge toward the malls to commence the frenzy of Christmas shopping, to be followed by a gigantic buzz on Cyber Monday. We […]

Life & Island Times: Georgia Election

Editor’s Note: Marlow contributes an update on his Coastal Empire election marathon. Since all the rest of us have been wondering (for months?) about who will lead the U.S. Senate, this account of the endless series of tabulations may be useful. Current standing? 50 Dem, 49 Rep, with the Peach State still undecided. – Vic […]

Order and Results

(Reports this morning are that China’s former leader Jiang Zemin has died at the age of 96. He came to power after the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, an event that echoes some of the growing frustration with China’s response to the Covid virus. Image from our friends at Reuters). We have veered from our […]

Secular and Liturgical Grammar

There was a vigorous discussion about Latin out on the balcony this morning. A bit chill and gray skies that suggest the onset of moisture falling from the sky.  Well, actually the vigor was more about something called ‘grammar.’ That would normally start with a lower-case letter unless it referred to your Mom’s Mom, both correctly […]

Through a Looking Glass

Morning! We glanced in the mirror this morning and saw everything reflected back in a weird amalgam of shifted shapes. Attempting to unscramble them took the first cup of coffee on a new week. Slow on getting to the laptop, we found a cool set of headlines on one of the sites the group scans […]

Round the World?

(This caricature of a sailor named “Salty” was found in the piles of paper shipped from The Farm to Arlington. It was drawn in 1945, and we are 99% sure of the year. We also believe he has been 99.71% of the way around the world). We are not confused this morning. We are addled. […]