Author: Vic Socotra

Antlers!

Got up yesterday morning a little later than usual and hobbled from bunkhouse to the Great Room at Refuge Farm. The phone was resting quietly by the powered chair, which was one of the devices that had called out for emergency back-up electrical power so I could extricate myself from its warm embrace in time […]

Life & Island Times: When Words Fail

Editor’s Note: Unfortunately, we will soon see the real. Not later. Marlow’s thoughts on that matter have a dramatic echo from other times. It is a reverberation of words and events that we may see again soon. Not later. – Vic #### We start life alone as wee, wet, wrinkly strangers and end as stooped, […]

Marlow’s Thirteen

When an American soldier dies in distant scrap heaps we are trying to turn into leafy town squares with suburbs and malls via combat, the space he or she occupied is immediately filled with dozens of people. And these people — relatives, friends, neighbors, reporters from both TV and print — create a lot of […]

Out With the Old

03 September 2021 Out With the Old I am working on a project that surfaced with the move out of Big Pink, and selling the last of the units I lived in or owned in that stately old place in Arlington. I lived there as long as we at war in Afghanistan, and for just […]

The Inspection Process

Dawn is cool, clear and dry. The Lady in Red on the flat screen told us the tropical depression that used to be a hurricane would pass us by in Virginia’s Piedmont, and usher itself out to the north and east. It will be replaced by cool, clear and dry air coming down from Canada […]

Storms in Progress

There are tipping points in the natural world and similar events in the world of humankind. With the change of the calendar date, we now find ourselves looking toward the end of this new month, and the impending arrival of Autumn. There are all sorts of changes contained on the calendar as we get through […]

That Heavy Feeling

(Dana Perino is one of the few media people we enjoy these days. She grew up in Wyoming, after all. Recently celebrating her 50th birthday, she also got a neat update to her on-screen look. The Writer’s Section at Socotra House wishes they could afford something that effective. But we share a feeling she expressed […]