Author: Vic Socotra

Broadmoor Art

(I could not remember the name of this conference room in the South Building of the resort to save my life until I got serious this morning). I am blinking at the breakfast table. I appear to be in Arlington again and I am not sure exactly why. The radio tells me there is wreckage […]

Hacked Off

I am looking out the window of a nice room in a nice hotel in Colorado. I am hacked off. partly in panic and partly in despair. The ducks and the swans on the pond seem unaffected. The mountains are stoic, and the white puffs of clouds drifting across the peaks aloof. I opened the […]

Spring Break

I think I am going to go to the airport- I am not sure which one yet- and take a flight some place. I am done with the resurgent cold. My pals up in Michigan just made the record for snow accumulation, and to cap it all off, they lost power in much of the […]

Boston Strong

Ah, the running life! My brother Spike is headed for Boston tomorrow to run the Marathon, his second, I think. I am very proud of him. I was pretty cocky about having completed seven of the 26.2 endurance contests, but while he started his marathon career later than I did, his accomplishments quickly eclipsed my […]

A Degree of Honor

The Blood Moon could have been a great symbol for something or other. Regrettably, the vestiges of the Polar Vortex weather pattern that kicked our ass so thoroughly through the course of the last unlamented winter are back. I peered out the window at 0215 last night- having cleverly set my alarm to document the […]

Blood Moon

“They are coming out of the woodwork, aren’t they?” is what Mattski said when he came over to borrow the Turf Tiger to assault the first cutting of the year on the pastures. You have to stay on top of these things in the country. It has been wet, and the end of the cooler […]

Opposable Thumbs

There is some crazy stuff going on out in the wide world. Mr. Putin’s troops appear to be maneuvering to take the eastern Ukraine, just as they did the Crimea. Chemical weapons have been used again in Syria, according to the regime in Damascus, by the good-guy-bad-guy rebels. The big stand-off at the barren Bundy […]

Paint it Black

The primal scream from comic or deranged man Sam Kinnison back before he was famous might be the way one would describe Lewis Black, who is in town with his 2014 “The Rant is Due” tour. I say might because I didn’t see it. I had the fifteen seat, in the middle, in the Warner […]

Baked Beans and O’Sullivans

(This is what O’Sullivan’s looked like when I worked across the street. I have no idea what Sam was selling out of his place on the corner, but I never saw a soul there. Ever. I wonder if he was surveilling the building where we worked? We were the Government, after all.) I don’t eat […]

Three Felonies a Day

The Republican running as an independent here in Blue Arlington won handily in the special election, 57% to 41%. The remaining votes were me and the Wiccans. We tried, but could not prevail. Some folks are apparently pretty upset with what is going on in the County: the last openly Republican candidate elected to the […]