Author: Vic Socotra

Arrias on Healing Health Care

The President is looking at unraveling the Affordable Care Act (the ACA, commonly referred to as Obamacare) and replacing it with something that is less expensive and at the same time giving citizens more options in their health care. Less expensive is key. Since the ACA was passed in 2011, health insurance costs have soared […]

A Matter of Trust

(Tinker Belle holds down the Willow bar). Willow was having one of those golden afternoons where the doors to the patio were propped open and the dust motes glowed in the rays of the lowering sun. Jasper was running around as always- I don’t know when he doesn’t work- and Tinker Belle was handling the […]

Life and Island Times: Kootenai & Corner #2

Over breakfast at Two Dog Flats Restaurant, Augustus reviewed for Rex and Marlow the next two days’ itinerary. It would be two easy segments of mostly straight roads through a park, nature preserves and then the Cascade Mountains and forests along Washington’s northern border with corner #2 being the final stop. Two Dog Flats was […]

Walk Like A Japanese

Purposeful Japanese people walking, Perfectionists in navy, black, and gray, Each carrying the weight of their Ancient tribe, in a Japanese way. Diligent Japanese people talking, In controlled and quiet tones, All crowded on verdant islands, Home to gods and ancestors’ bones. Quiet Japanese people stalking, In moments short and rare, Happiness, hidden somewhere deep […]

Green Eye-Shades

Editor’s Note: You can’t accuse me of recycling this morning. Instead, we are going to go time traveling in an all-new action packed adventure in the wild and exotic world of government Program and Budget. There is so much swirling around these days that it is much easier to just live in the past. Of […]

Showers, Followed by Showers

Editor’s Note: I was castigated severely this morning for “syndicating” the contents of The Daily over the last few dozen weeks. I took umbrage at the criticism, though upon further consideration can be viewed as a valid one. In defense of the hard-working staff here at Socotra House, there is so little that anyone can […]

Life and Island Times: The Edge of the World at 60 MPH

They awoke the next morning to slowly clearing skies. They found the land around the motel was a dairy farm with milk cows grazing nearby. One by one they exited their room to survey the scene. This land was domesticated, neat, pastoral and pleasant. This landscape was everything yesterday’s was not. It was after they […]

Cagey Five

Editor’s Note: It is appropriate that we arrive with Mac at the end of the Pacific War just as Winston’s bust has been returned to a place of honor in the Oval Office and the British Prime Minister is in Washington to take the measure of the new administration. Mac would have laughed- there is […]

ERNIE (and Mac’s) WAR

(WWI sailor and WWII War Correspondent Ernie Pyle, seen here on USS Cabot when he was making waves with the Navy Department. Mac met him on Guam with the CINCPAC forward staff. Photo US Navy.) I tried to look at my notes from the most recent session with Mac at Willow and they are not […]

Life and Island Times: Devil’s Cathedral

Editor’s note: In these middle aged riders’ view, the staggering velocity of the 20th century was not just historically weird. It had been unsettling. Second Editor’s Note: Marlow’s tale of the Four Corners has been with me for several years. I am a firm believer that the saga of that epic ride on two wheels […]