Author: Vic Socotra

Arrias: A Lesson From the Gracchi

19 October 2020 Editor’s Note: I don’t know how you are handling the coming election. I have been relatively diligent in attempting to follow the twists and turns of the narratives driving both sides of this strange election. The most recent developments, captured in the last two weeks of the normal cycle have been curious. […]

Life & Island Times: Short Story

Editor’s Note: This is Marlow’s take on the last part of the frantic cavalcade that is happening around us. There are 16 days to go in this part of the most amazing election we have had a chance to witness. It is a humorous version on the view conveyed from ancient times and distant places. […]

Stones of the District: SE9, Third Time the Charm

Author’s Note: It is about time to put the manuscript to bed for the search for the District Stones. It was a grand adventure, and included history both known and unknown. It was a minor epic worth living amid urban elegance and squalor, the worlds of the living and the dead. I will have the […]

Life & Island Times: Socotra House Journalists

Editor’s Note: Each day, inching toward one of the several election milestones, I glory in the association of some unrepentant Authors In The Yard. Marlow has a shot at it today. Go, Doctor. – Vic Author’s Note: To lighten our moods and prove that we mechanical pencil pushing Socotra House journalers are not always ill […]

Swamp Postcard: Final Stretch

This shambling monstrosity of two campaigns is being crystalized into the chosen two narratives in time for the final stretch down to the election. Before this morning’s news, I had the COVID alarm coming down in emphasis, with the various interpretations of the President’s hospitalization last week. His narrative is that there is only fear […]

I like Ike

Author’s Note: There is a fair amount of activity going on this morning. It is lovely and clear skies in Culpeper. The national top bill, of course, is the Barrett hearing on the Hill. Quick reaction from listening to parts of it, is that the opponents to her nomination are essentially folding on the matter, […]

Life & Island Times: Dog Tags

13 October 2020 Editor’s Note: Marlow brings his sense of place and time to these curious dreamscapes approaching the election. It may be an important one, from what I have heard. Certainly there will be more cheerful chaos to come. – Vic Author’s Note: This draft appeared to me in my dreamscapes. I may be […]

Arrias: Words

12 October 2020 Editor’s Note: On the Hill today starts the ACB confirmation hearings. It will be interesting, I am sure. Rain here in Virginia, and our three deer were spotted on their knees in the pasture below the house. I am hoping we all get dry, eventually. Then back to ripping down statues and […]

Words, and a NOREX

(Most of the 1980 USS Midway Intelligence team on the flight deck, in front of two F-4 Phantoms from VF-151 and VF-161). Legendary Key West resident and Intelligence Officer CAPT Dave Carrington, USN-Ret passed this first note on the web more than a decade ago. It struck me, even at this distance. We ran the […]

Notes on Nuttiness and Prologue to a Cruise

11 October 2020 Author’s Note: The morning stream of messages got me agitated straight off. Not in an angry way. More a state of bemused confusion. Apparently a participant in a political rally was shot dead by a personal security guard, who naturally was carrying a loaded firearm to a big social gathering which was […]