Author: Vic Socotra

Life & Island Times: A Few Parting Irma In(s)anities

Yes, another major hurricane is pushing its way westward across the Atlantic, perhaps it’ll make it to the US east coast. But if that occurs, it’ll be next week. So, let us briefly relax and review. I used to think that the full moon brought out man’s inner crazy. While the police departments and the […]

Life & Island Times: Strung Out and Allergic

Editor’s Note: Still strung out from an evening in the ER to start the weekend. Home and fine now, just…allergic to the the cure, perhaps. Marlow sums it up nicely in the wake of the temporal storms, and the more existential ones here in the Emerald City…We are not done with hurricanes this season, even […]

Life & Island Times: Storm Interview

Editor’s Note: The Cleveland Indians- are we supposed to say that these days?- have done something quite remarkable, and I enjoy seeing it. 22-straight victories, and they seem prepared to accomplish something Joe DiMaggio-esque in the next few as we roll into the divisional play-offs. We will see how they do. But Marlow has an […]

Postcard From The Swamp #13

As a function of habit lately, I got out of bed and shuffled to the living room to check on the storms. We are just looking at reporters under blue skies looking at heaps of wreckage. From what we have been hearing, a difference of just twenty miles in the storm track may have saved […]

Life & Island Times: Waters High and Risin’

Hurricane Irma destroyed many oceanfront businesses, such as this Islamorada bar. (Photo By Dan Campbell/The Citizen) After providing documentation such as proof of residency or business ownership, Florida Keys residents started streaming back yesterday into the Upper Keys, including Key Largo, Tavernier and Islamorada. The Lower Keys, including the chain’s most distant and most populous […]

Life & Island Times: Key West: Where the Sidewalk Ends

Editor’s Note: Very emotional day yesterday, shared with a bunch of shipmates who also remember. The news coverage this morning, like the eye of a storm, has wobbled back to the usual political sniping. We had two really bad things happen from the Skies over the past two week, but this is not the catastrophe […]

That Day

(Pentagon, 11 September 2001. I thought I lost my whole GDIP Budget Staff. Instead, I lost my pals in the CNO IP). I have already been in tears this morning. I must be getting soft. Or just old. One of the cable networks was re-running the coverage from The Day sixteen years ago on the […]

Life & Island Times: Brinner

Scenes in Key West as Hurricane Irma lashed the lower Keys on September 10 2017 Author’s note: Sketchy reporting indicates the Florida Keys and Florida peninsula, while pretty roughed up, dodged a bullet yesterday. Sixteen years ago, America wasn’t so lucky. The tragedies that took place in NYC, Washington DC, and a farmer’s field in […]

Life & Island Times: Season of the Wicked

Waves crash against the Southernmost Point in Key West, Fla., Saturday, last at night September 9, 2017. Hurricane Irma’s leading edge bent palm trees and spit rain as the storm swirled toward the Florida Keys Sunday morning. (Rob O’Neal/The Key West Citizen via AP) Author’s note: Irma was so strong that national media reporters scooted […]

Arrias on Politics: Not Self But Country

It’s said that real love only comes with sacrifice, that real love requires placing some cause or some one first, and truly giving of yourself for that person or cause. Several stories have “percolated out” following the two recent US Navy collisions at sea which include a number of sailors who gave their lives for […]