Author: Vic Socotra

Waxing Gibbous

“You may as well talk about the cycles of the sky!” That is how our assigned Attorney greeted the weekend. We had been talking about the waxing gibbous Moon that under clearing skies the bathed Refuge Farm in silver-colored light sharp enough to cast shadows. She stood up, almost flounced in emotion and went to […]

Life & Island Times: Original Sin

Author’s note: After a blue-skied St Patrick’s day with friends, food, good cheer and our town’s first parade since 2019, these thoughts surfaced: When I used to go to the refrigerated section in liquor stores to pick up some beer back in college, I’d stand by the cooler’s glass doors and search past the Cokes, […]

Mixed Demeanor

The crew was of mixed demeanor this morning. Splash was unusually subdued, perhaps still working off the celebration recently passed. Melissa looked radiant and wore a long flowing dress of practical construction, themed in a sort of dark fabric with flashes of bright green like the jungles in which she had once lived. Loma and […]

The Hills Around Us Are Green

(These are the Chaplains of the Civil War Union Army’s Irish Brigade. It is an image courtesy of Alexander Gardner through the Library of Congress). This is a special day. No, I am not referring to the global tensions that could slide us all abruptly sideways into personal and international horrors It is a collective […]

Weather Report: Law on the Edge

Goodness gracious. There is commotion at The Farm this morning. A crew- all Hispanic, we think- but certainly with the working language being Española- is laboring at vast cost to clean up the debris of the savage January season that brought down trees and branches all over the sprawling property lines. The Chairman is apparently […]

Crisis in Transition

Marlow is off-site, but he started off discussion with a rumination received late yesterday about conditions today. He talked about the change of life many of us call “retiring.” It hit the group standing around the Fire Ring with half-drunk coffee and an occasional puff of gray Marlboro smoke for those who still do. It […]

Life & Island Times: Retiring

On this first weekday of this year’s sainted day of Patrick, I’ve foresworn reading or watching any current events reporting to share some thoughts about life’s post job phase. Take it from me, if you’re asking yourself about this post’s topic, I do not know much for certain. Your mileage may will vary. Wildly. -Marlow […]

Arrias: Blessed Ambiguity

Most wars of conquest have several phases; often (and this is true in the past as much as it is today) wars start with a few brilliant victories in short order. Then they seem to separate out into several categories: the loser of the battles surrender (less common); long, slow grinds follow in which both […]

Life & Island Times: Code Red

As fragmented reports of impending Russian use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Ukraine and Russian TV analysts openly discussing how to invade NATO’s Baltic countries and Poland clutter our news feeds, here’s an old tale. -Marlow Today’s American politics are sorta like being in junior high with nothing going on in the whole […]

Spring Ahead

You could hear the muttering early on a spectacular clear morning in Virginia’s Piedmont. You already know what it sounded like as people looked at clocks, mystified that an hour of restful rejuvenating sleep had been sacrificed to the people in Richmond and Washington who seem to still be living in some old time of […]