Long-Suffering Readers, I have subjected you to a short series of tales from a book I wrote long ago, during the last Cold War cruise of a Carrier Strike Force in the Mediterranean Sea. I recently discovered the missing last third of the daily account, which has an eerie similarity to the Daily Socotra that […]

01 April 1990 ROTA: APRIL FOOLS We slid out of the wine-dark Mediterranean Sea via the Straits of Gibraltar during the night, and there were no glimpses of the Pillars of Hercules. By morning we had arrived off the Atlantic coast of Spain, near the bustling little town of Puerto Real and the naval base […]

14 March 1990 (IDF F-16s fly over Masada. Photo Wiki). Back at the Tel Aviv Hilton from the Rapture Tour, we waved farewell to Svi, who served us well. We gave him a decent tip, and wished him the best of luck, which seems something good to have here. We visited the Admin to dump […]

13 March 1990 As I walk down the road I sit up some The lambs were coming homeward one by one I heard a sheep bell softly calling them Along the little road to Bethlehem – Lyrics by Michael Head and Margaret Rose So, off we went to Palestine, late in the afternoon. There had […]

13 March 1990 Editor’s Note: Things keep getting stranger and stranger in the political life of the Capital, and there is snow falling to a depth of six inches, so far, and everything is being cancelled. I am in for the day, with the ice bath to come later. So join me in the Eastern […]

13 March 1990 Editor’s note: It is Valentines Day. If you have someone to hug, please do so. We have more weird weather here in Washington, restricting travel, and adding to the complexity of political life is the passing yesterday of Associate Justice Antonin Scalia. RIP. Nomination of his successor is going to be another […]

12 March, 1990 Editor’s Note: I am dragging this out not because I am too lazy to do original content, but rather because it is the missing third of a book I wrote 26 years ago about an interesting part of the world that is in the process of unraveling. One of the manuscripts once […]

HAIFA, ISRAEL: INTIFADA FOLLIES 11 – 17 MAR 90 Editor’s Note: I wrote a book composed of daily stories from the 1989-90 Med Cruise of USS Forrestal (CV-59). It was intended to document something that happens all the time, in excruciating detail, so that I could remember it. They say the human body can’t really […]

I was reading some pages from past Socotras and I marveled at how different the world was only short years ago. Or at least it seemed so. I’m having my doubts. I have mentioned before that things began unraveling, in my humble opinion, with the horror of President Kennedy’s assassination. I periodically revisit the era, […]

(This Toyota Camry started life as an-EPA ‘certified’ street-legal passenger car. Now, it is apparently a threat to the earth). I still have no idea what to make of the New Hampshire primary, nor the Iowa caucuses, for that matter. How does Bernie administer a historic defeat to his opponent and gain 13 delegates to […]