Author: Vic Socotra

Arrias: Who Protects Your Family?

There’s lots of talk about new gun laws, and further narrowing who may carry weapons and what weapons they may carry. But before we go there, let’s ask a more basic question: Who is responsible for protecting you and your family, personally and specifically? If your town was invaded, the police, or the National Guard, […]

Life & Island Times: Come together, right now, vote for me

Author’s Note: The winnowing process of 2020 Presidential candidates has halved the field after the initial summer debates. The horse race still looks about the same with the pack leaders still in their same approximate Win-Show-Place positions. Still leading the polls despite frequent stumbles, the leader as the field enters turn one is Biden his […]

Life & Island Times: Coming Ashore

Coastal Empire, Dorian Edition Editor’s Note: I am getting this out a little late, but wanted to get the latest on Hurricane Dorian’s landfall- or partial landfall- in the Carolinas. The below accounts from Marlow outline the last preparations at his house in Charleston. The Navy has sortied the Fleet to more welcoming waters, and […]

Swamp Postcard: Storm Warnings

As the Hurricane passes the Caribbean enroute a close-aboard pass of the US East Coast, my heart goes out to the people of the Bahamas. They suffered repeated blows from Hurricane Dorian, the scourge of cable news for the last week or so. Dorian stalled, making only a mile-an-hour progress to the northwest and seemed […]

Arrias: Patrick Henry and Saving the Elephants

If saving the world involved killing all the elephants, would we do it? Or, what if a cure for leukemia was developed but it somehow required killing every dog and cat on the planet? While you ponder that, consider this: How much methane does a head of cattle produce? That is important because it’s going […]

Life & Island Times: Shootings

Author’s note: I had planned to send this out later this month, but then Odessa and Midland Texas happened yesterday. – Marlow Alternate Thoughts on America’s Mass Shootings Guns for sale at Walmart Editor’s note: Now that the media has moved onto the next bright shiny new toy, it’s time to share these random thoughts […]

Life & Island Times: Storm Season 2019

We’re now officially halfway through Storm Season 2019 in the Coastal Empire lowlands. It’s been a quiet one thus far, so the Weather Channel gnomes have been staying at home and biding their time. Dorian and his grey, wet and windy skies appeared on our 7 day predict horizon very early this week; and, man […]

Point Loma: The Green Monster

310. The distance from home plate to that green edifice and a number embedded into the DNA of all members of the Red Sox Nation. To get there you have to be able to hit a major league fastball hard and high enough to clear its 37 ft height. Along with the ivy walls of […]

Swamp Postcard: Tanned, Rested and Ready

It is the bittersweet end to high summer on the farm. County fairs in the lush green country. Advertising out for the Harvest farm tours. I like the Fall here at Refuge Farm. Labor Day still looms, but the ordinary rhythm of the seasons is as perturbed as everything else these days. My thoughts go […]

Arrias: Out of Misery

I think one of the more entertaining productions of the last decade or so has to be “Downton Abbey,” which follows the lives and fortunes of a fictitious British Earl, his family and their household over a decade and a half, from just prior to World War I to shortly before the Great Depression. The […]