Author: Vic Socotra

Cruise Boxes

Editor’s Note: Bear with me. We will get everyone home tomorrow- well, maybe… Cruise Boxes (Navy Cruise Boxes: an open and shut case.) 08 APR 1990: The realization that things are almost over fir this cruise suddenly struck home with reality today. Yesterday, we were trapped in a time dimension in which there was no […]

The Island is Burning

Life and Island Times – June 1 2016 The Island is Burning It was only half way into the month of May, when the island caught fire this year. Fire was no stranger in Key West; yet, modern Conchs had lost their sense of vigilance for fire once the US Navy laid the water pipe […]

Going Home

31 May 2016 Editor’s Note: Yeah I know. I hate going back to work the day after a long weekend. The pile of stuff that needs to be done….oh well. That included feeding some old papers through the scanner to retrieve the end-bits of that story about the Med Cruise that spanned the end of […]

Remembering Arthur Sawyer

Life and Island Times -30 May 2016 Arthur Bates Sawyer October 1, 1916 Last night W and Marlow watched the movie American Sniper. Its unwavering gaze at the collateral damage that endless war wreaks on its players put both in an appropriately reverent frame of mind for today’s memorial services at two lower keys cemeteries. […]

In Memory

(Culpeper National Cemetery on a lovely Saturday in May. Our little county may have been the most fought over in all of Virginia back in the day). We were drinking white wine at The Copper Fish, my favorite place on historic East Davis Street in downtown Culpeper. I was going to stop at the Culpeper […]

First in the Water

I was watching the clock like a hawk. I had been up in the small hours, read and then dozed again with the vague sense that I had to be watchful about sleeping over the moment of the official opening of the pool. Tapping on the iPad to clear the email queue that accumulated overnight, […]

The Vic Special

I was avoiding crowds, to the extent that I can, which is pretty easy since I m mostly working from home these days. That means I rarely see any coworkers on the way to the men’s room, which I have dutifully re-labeled as a multi-gender, inclusive facility to confront of the major issues of our […]

Cruise Book

(Ground Zero monument at Nagasaki). I got lost this morning, looking at papers generated on another carrier in another ocean far away from the Wine Dark Sea. I was looking to see if I had written an account of the Fighter Squadron One-Five-One visit to Nagasaki when our ship was in Sasebo, on the island […]

Island Whimsy

Life and Island Times – 23 May 2016 All state and local public buildings, schools and courthouses on these coral islands are all named after locals. There is no Roosevelt High or Washington Elementary. US Presidents might get a street (or several blocks if he was a Republican) named after them, but that is it. […]

INDEF

I had a Milestone yesterday, a minor but important one, amid the landmines in the battlefield of about to turn 65 summers old. It wasn’t about the pool, though that is the milestone of Memorial Day, and I can’t wait for it to open. I won’t go into the first one- the dreaded Medicare, Parts […]