Author: Vic Socotra

Arrias: Billions and Billions

Editor’s Note: It is Martin Luther King Day. He is one of my heroes from the old days, but his beliefs- Christianity and Non-Violence- seem to have lost some of their old energy. There are other things in motion now. Arrias and I have been thinking about numbers lately, since there appears to be actual […]

Life & Island Times: Workplace Violence

Editor’s Note: A blessed Sunday in the country. Even the animals who normally join us for sunrise were subdued. There is some attempt to rile us up. Part of Saturday was devoted to deconstructing a news flash about a man with non-government credentials and hundreds of rounds of ammunition attempting to gain access to the […]

Zoom

Just got off a Zoom call with pals. I have a couple groups that try to do it, in keeping with new social protocols of the Emergency era. I would call it the COVID Emergency, but there has been such enormous success with Emergency rule from the State and Federal governments over the pandemic that […]

America, Then and Now

Editor’s Note: There is more going on today than I can process. It includes the physical presence of a Direct installation specialist, a strange smooth voice from the Subcontinent and upgraded equipment. So, in the interest of “context,” this is how we arrived in the Great Room at Refuge Farm in the morning. It is […]

Life & Island Times: Healing

Editor’s Note: Strange day at the farm. Satellite connectivity was sporadic and required long conversations with service agents who do not work near here by a few thousand miles. So, news coverage of the remarkable emotions abroad in the land were punctuated by long sessions reduced to old DVR’s, originally purchased to provide coverage when […]

Swamp Postcard: B & W in Technicolor

So, all that stuff is going on. It is difficult to keep track of, and we were expecting a bit of a lull between the Congressional Joint Session and Riot on the sixth, and the Zoom version of an inauguration on the 20th. This morning’s show was unexpected, though it followed some familiar forms. This […]

Being Bitzer

(Wolf Blitzer, then and now). I may have mentioned this before, but I have been startled this week. Having come from a career that involved actual warfare, rather than the virtual version we have seen in the Plague Year it almost passed me by. I had a piece of humorous writing from one of Socotra’s […]

Life & Island Times: Faces, Clothes, Shoes

Editor’s Note: Morning! I was wrestling with the topic of the tale this morning. I had several back-and-forth exchanges with old pals yesterday. For my part, I got over the events of last week as most of us have who have been to a war or three. The rising state of emotion about what was, […]

Arrias: Der Reichstag Brennt Nicht

Editor’s Note: I was reading the various strings of information this morning with interest. We have moved on from “Insurrection” to something else. In defense of truth, the current President has been banned from Twitter. Others have been expelled, still others have “quit” a social media service on which I once had an account. Still […]

Life & Island Times: Theme Song for Our Times?

Editor’s Note: There is a lot of emotion in the air this week. As a senior retiree, I hope for peace and understanding. That seems to be in short supply at the moment. A large percentage of people seem think everything is fine. Another large percentage think they have witnessed a large Federal Crime. I […]