Author: Vic Socotra

Battle of Midway

The 80th Anniversary of one of the historic battles in Naval annals is almost on us. For those in the National Capital region with an interest, a ceremony will be held at the World War Two Memorial on Friday, 03 June: Our intelligence community mentor RADM Mac Showers was an Ensign in The Dungeon at […]

Weather Report: Sultry Day With Storm Clouds

Our usual “All this stuff is going on” holds for this week, avoiding the tiresome responsibility to actually have to talk about it. Of course, some of the issues that will affect our society are clearly already in progress and worth a medium effort. Things that are developing: Ukraine is a still a big one […]

Life & Island Times: Chicken Fried

Author’s Note: On this past Memorial Day, W and I were headed south down on US-17 to Jekyll Island while listening to some peckerwood small town FM station railing on about proposed gun control legislation and the last week’s school shooting particulars, while a song was played as an intermission before the next speaker wanted […]

The Unofficial Start

So here we are in Summer. Not official, of course. Management did their usual short note to the various Socotra Sections advising the color “white,” much maligned of late, is now socially permissible. In certain contexts, anyway. Notably, that includes the Chairman’s option to transition to seersucker for those events in which slightly upscale attire […]

Arrias: DoD’s Augean Stables

Editor’s Note: Arrias steps away from Ukraine today…a brilliant sunny one tinged with memory for those who gave their all… – Vic DoD’s Augean Stables If you have been keeping up with current events you will know that there is a war going on in Europe, a big, ugly, high-end war with one of America’s […]

A Place of Rest

(Culpeper National Cemetery, Memorial Day, 2022) It was a brilliant clear morning, cool at dawn but likely to soar to ninety on this Memorial Day under bright blue sky. There is a National Cemetery right here in town. It is not far off the main drag, and well posted. I had never stopped despite it’s […]

Arrias and His Muse: Remembered Faces

We sat and joked about the day, And then out the door we went, We all addressed our own missions, But he was part of that two percent. Another time, another friend, Off target, headed back to the ship, In the dark he flew into the sea, Into death’s cold, cold grip. Some good friends, […]

Decoration and Memory

There is a brightness in this Piedmont morning. It is not unusual, since this is a lovely place with new bright green illuminated by the equally brilliant heavens above. It contrasts with the gloom of the past week, the perfectly natural parade of clouds and rain that in their time nurture the growing foliage that […]

Life & Island Times: Sunny Day in the Garden

It is a fine sunny spring day and great matters loom across the approaching horizon of American history. We think that ​Carthage is in our rearview mirror and that we’ll blend into time. What a bunch of dolts. America’s blood is soiled, and a dark angel sits in its brain. Will it take a “point […]