Author: Vic Socotra

LTJG Winky is en route California!

USS Midway (CV-41) is prepared to accept the return of LTJG Winky, USN-Ret., after forty years on The Beach. He felt the need to serve again. He will arrive on the bet damn carrier in the Navy tomorrow! Copyright 2021 Vic Socotra photos Pat Alderman www.vicsocotra.com

Homeless in Arlington

As you may have heard, I am attempting to leave my happy home up in Arlington. The Condo went on the market a couple weeks ago, and one of the Dirty Dozen denizens wrote to tell me what is happening in our happy neighborhood. These photos are from one of her walks in the neighborhood. […]

Timed Withdrawal

(The view from my place at Big Pink. She Who Prefers Anonymity is still there, in her unit, but the Dirty Dozen is in the process of timed withdrawal from a changing place). I was talking to an old pal from Big Pink, a happy residence for nearly twenty years on the edge of the […]

Arrias: Closing the Umbrella

Well before being sworn in as President, Eisenhower was considering options to end the fighting in Korea. Eisenhower’s solution was to make it clear to the leadership in Russia, China, and North Korea that South Korea was now firmly under the US nuclear shield, the nuclear umbrella, as it came to be known. Consideration of […]

Gentle Comes the Fall

The Sunday editorial meeting has certain characteristics common to each week: some excesses of exuberance that follow the conclusion of a full week of laying about the fire ring, thinking creative thoughts. The accumulated wreckage of shipping containers, coffee grounds, assorted cans, trash and soggy papers went to the Dumpster, which was thankfully done smoldering […]

Trouble in the Stadium

The morning meeting had all the usual issues of the editorial process colliding with the dull sensibilities of a Saturday morning. Loma was blurry, for predictable reasons after starting his weekend at Belmont Farms Happy-Hour to Hip-Flask celebration. Rocket was anything but explosive in his limp approach to the matter since he rode along to […]

Life & Island Times: Seaman Recruits

Editor’s Note: Marlow takes on the challenges of generational change in our new and strange world. There questions flying about how to respond to public health emergencies, changing norms in social behavior and even the nature of how our Constitutional Republic functions in these times when “crisis management” supersedes the old regular order. In older […]

642 Ways…

“Truth,” or what passes for it these days, descended on the Writer’s Section shortly after the morning editorial meeting, and thus got mixed up with everything else. DeMille was concerned, while Rocket, Loma pursed their lips against a plaintive cry from Splash, lost down in the underbrush beyond the lower lunging ring at The Farm. […]

LTJG Winky Returns to Duty

(LTJG Winky, lower right, reviews historical records and imagery from his time in a leadership position onboard CVA-41. He will be returning to a permanent station as a special “stuffed docent” at the Museum on 23 September 2021). A pal instrumental to the management of California’s popular USS Midway Museum wrote Socotra House to inquire […]