Author: Vic Socotra

Life & Island Times: Past Reckonings

Author’s note: As a brief respite from my series of ARB pieces, here are some musings about post storm flood reckonings. – Marlow During the 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons, while sitting in my former isle seat, friends and I dealt directly with the aftermaths of the floods of seven hurricanes’ storm surges. They came […]

American Dunkirk

I really can’t get the cognitive dissonance out of my mind this afternoon between the concept of natural disaster and inimical evil. The North Koreans are launching missiles in a manner that suggests they would like the option of turning someplace like Los Angeles into a molten slag. I am aware there could be a […]

WHEN CELEBRITIES WERE ‘RATIONAL’ AND CARS WERE BEAUTIFUL

Editor’s Note: It is car show season, though it has been a cool summer here in DC, and I regret not getting out there to see the magnificent vehicles that have survived, based on the passion their owners and aficionados have for them. Me? I am a Rambler kid. This is from peripatetic contributor Jim, […]

Life & Island Times: Alt Radical Bleak

Editor’s Note: Marlow nails some important stuff here- particularly what happens to those of us of a certain age in the midst of the night, and the thoughts that come in the small hours, when the powers of darkness are exalted. – Vic Author’s note: I have been kicking this around in my head for […]

Postcard From The Swamp #12

Events near and far shaped a week that contained despair and inspiration- and contained news that increasingly seems to come from the satiric site The Onion rather than real news organizations. The breathless account of the First Lady of the United States (FLOTUS- says so on her ball-cap) and her choice of footwear seemed to […]

Life & Island Times: Deep Blue Sea

Editor’s Note: I have some shipmates I am eager to see at the Fleet Landing on the other side of the Styx. Well, not that eager. I am happy to take my time if I am granted it. My family had river sailors in the Civil War- Union, of course, part of Operation Anaconda- but […]

Stormy Weather

Life is still good in Northern Virginia. I am going swimming this afternoon, rain will not be here for another several hours, I have no statues in my neighborhood, and no one is marching around. Certainly not the way tropical storm Harvey is stomping on and punishing Texas, which has changed and my whole idea […]

More Reconstruction

(Looking and feeling my best on a Sunday morning). I sent along one of Arrias’s fine ruminations this morning about what happened after the American Civil War. It was an affirmation of how the wounds of a nation could be bound up, and let the healing begin. It was particularly poignant, considering the current hysteria […]

Arrias on Politics: Reconstruction

Here’s a quiz: What song did President Lincoln have the band play shortly after the surrender of Lee’s Forces at Appomattox? In 1869 President Grant, filling various positions of his administration, nominated James Longstreet as Surveyor of Customs for the port of New Orleans. General James Longstreet, West Point class of 1842 (Grant was class […]