Author: Vic Socotra

In the Garden

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 […]

On Temple Mount

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 […]

The Hill Of Spring

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 […]

Among the Believers

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 […]

Special Operations

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, […]

The War on NASCAR (and Us)

(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 […]

By Firelight

It was a red-letter weekend, featuring just about everything. Friday and Saturday were sort of like old times, approaching the bacchanalia of the Super Bowl, and Friday night’s excesses morphed into the grand adventure in the District on a chilly but brilliant Saturday, and a return to the scene of the crime at the Front […]

Odds and Ends

(The fabled Cardinal Stone of the North. Near 1850 East-West Highway, Washington, DC. Navigation by Jon-Without, transport and driving by Vic). Let’s see: I got a call about a birthday party at the Front Page and decided to stay in Arlington for the occasion. I get the feeling I might not be here that much […]

Anacostia Dreaming

(Scenic View of the 11th Street Bridge heading into Anacostia in SE Washington DC. The new lanes hooking the highway to Maryland Rt 295 might have been the only shovel-ready construction project funded in the 2008 stimulus bill). I had occasion to be at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling (JBAB) yesterday. It was sort of an odd […]

It’s What’s For Dinner

It is a rainy winter day in Washington, and gray and the piles of snow that remain are dirty and weeping. Having been down the rapids of all the email and websites since rising, I am pretty sure I am not going to be able to make it through the rest of this extraordinary silly […]