Author: Vic Socotra

Arrias & His Muse: Still

Barking, growling, running about, I guess it’s time to rise, Puppies playing in the dawn, I leave my dreams with several sighs. She was so close, I held her hand, We walked, we almost kissed, Almost kissed as we danced, Now gone, and she is missed. Walk the dogs, then feed them, Go about my […]

Life & Island Times: Cats

Over the weekend, we were planning to pick up the outdoor feral cat, Barbie, whom we’ve been fostering, from a three week stay at the vet to cure a nasty tunneling infection when we spied the following doings at our place. Here is some color commentary on their play by play. To tell the truth, […]

Lunar New Year (Redacted)

The junior Attorney attached to the Writer’s Section at Refuge Farm was clearly frazzled. It was a nice enough morning, some sunshine amid the clouds, and temperatures might even break freezing later. She waved a regular sheet of paper from the printer that was completely blacked out with china marker. “See? This is what you […]

The Rotunda

Author’s Note: This was a rough from 2005, a long time ago in modern terms. In that year, Minneapolis-Saint Paul was still a bustling modern city that had few immigrants beyond the ones who had come from Scandinavia. We don’t want to pick on any particular group, since these days the discussion spins off into […]

Life & Island Times: Road Choices

The Hostess City and her surrounding Empire are not hard to take going 25 mph on Bull Street or the Coastal Highway at 45 Mph with the architectures, hills, rivers, marshes, old trees, fields, wild and garden flowers, and empty-lot BBQ drum places where guys are shooting the breeze as entire pigs and quarter cows […]

Arrias: Virginia, Denmark and Putin

A few weeks ago I was driving across New England, and found myself among some mountains. I hadn’t been on that particular road in a number of years and I was struck by how the once beautiful mountain scenery was now cluttered up with towering windmills, each several hundred feet high. It had snowed just […]

Of a Feather…

The Attorney was missing this morning. She was required to attend some proceeding in town, or at least that was the rumor, but naturally the Writer’s Section was uneasy with the possibility of veering into non-compliant discussion. Splash was already concerned. “I counted twenty-one buzzards in the trees this morning at first light. Now there […]

What the Buck?

Morning had brought a disconcerting blue tinge to Splash’s unshaven visage. Not that it was unattractive, but consensus polling suggested he ought to try warming up before launching on the day. There is a lot going on at The Farm on Sundays, so a certain amount of morning confusion is the norm. There are holy […]

Weekend Warriors

There was silence as the first of the blue skies broke over The Farm. There had been some minor discussion, nothing critical, mind you, but just some observations from people who had been looking and occasionally participating in some of the events that will someday be viewed as “historic.” We were ‘warriors,’ of a sort, […]