Author: Vic Socotra

Look Up

OK- I appreciate and apologize for the fact that I inflicted my current bucolic lifestyle on you yesterday. It was kind of fun recounting the morning routine at the farm. It is almost as if the full moon was blasting a beam of bright white light through the bedroom window long before dawn, so bright […]

Arrias: Free Hong Kong?

Hong Kong: an amazing blend of east and west, with shades of both London and Shanghai, an incredible, bustling city full of energy. And freedom. That started changing in 1997, when the British ceded Hong Kong back to the People’s Republic of China. Beijing promised Hong Kong would remain, well, Hong Kong, that there would […]

Standard Days

I dunno if it is climate change or what. I am no denier- I mean, the global temperature, based on limited samplings, has rocketed upward by almost a full degree (Celsius) since 1850. So, things change. But it was a cold winter here and I am still chilled in the middle of June when I […]

Swamp Postcard: Games Back in Town!

(Proud new crop of black-headed turkey buzzards in the barn, the birds contemplating doing something foul to my tractor). So, we are all tired. That may account for a certain lethargy on the Congressional Committees, what with the transatlantic travel required to keep up up with the peripatetic 71-year old President Trump. In the last […]

Back to Normal

(Mr. John Dean, disbarred attorney and convicted felon lectures us on the finer points of obstruction of justice.) This has been a tough couple days- Manhattan shuddering with the helicopter crash yesterday that made some think 9/11 was back again. There was a curious void in the regular broadcasts- all the talking heads tried to […]

Dee Em Vee

The approach of this day filled me with dread- not the fear of it arriving, but rather the things that get swept along with birthdays. This had been an emotional week, what with the memorials and celebrations surrounding the ancient conflicts that shaped our world. At some point I had to turn to my own […]

Arrias: Son of Sam, Tiananmen and A Collision at Sea

Imagine “Son of Sam” David Berkowitz has been paroled and is moving into your neighborhood. Can you forgive and forget? Should you? June 4th marked the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre, the Chinese government’s violent suppression of student demonstrators calling for reform; they killed several thousand students. Since then policy “sages” have insisted we […]

When Time Stood Still

I had a great little story line going for yesterday’s Daily. It had everything, or would have, if I hadn’t spent the morning at the Culpeper branch of the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles office, on the left just off Lover’s Lane. They work miracles there- they can actually make time stop. Virginia is for […]

D-Day and Midway

I was sitting with Admiral Mac nearly a decade ago at the Willow Bar. Life was good. We were all alive. It was the night on the eve of the Battle of Midway, the Navy’s greatest triumph. I was embarrassed the significance of the date did not come up, and that was sort of strange, […]

Swamp Postcard: London Edition

This has been a busy week for the amateur historians out there. The decisive battle at Midway began on the 4th, ending on the 7th. Two years later, Allied Forces made a bold gamble when Ike looked at the skies on June 5th, and decided the largest amphibious operation in history- and perhaps the most […]