Author: Vic Socotra

City Mouse, Country Mouse

Tough transition day yesterday and I missed the production schedule completely. It is hard to veer between the Country Mouse stuff- bees, country culture, heritage tomatoes, good neighbor stuff- and city mouse madness of legal nonsense and urban chaos. I had to do some city things yesterday- I had not glanced at the city “to […]

Bee Culture

I don’t know if I will get to a story today- the relentless rain and the one o’clock meeting up north have me a little edgy and I need to get out the door. If I did have something to tell you , it would be about yesterday, out in the front yard in the […]

Errata

(Still life of an improvised Spring country salad , featuring the first thing to emerge from the garden. Photo Socotra). It is often far easier in this business to simply leave the dead on the field and move on, day-by-day. Still, a shred of obligation to truth remains with the vestiges of honor, and periodically […]

Guest Post: Putin Proves ONI Right

Gentle Readers, Sometimes something comes over the transom that is worth passing along. For example, my Cajun pal Boats often chimes in with some interesting commentary from Louisiana, a component of what he calls “Greater Texas,” a mysterious world in which the follies of Washington seem completely dispensable. In the case of the below article […]

Spring Zephyr

The excitement was building all morning as the weather guessers tried to determine if the crowd was going to need umbrellas at Nationals Park. There were the usual promotions to help whip up the emotions of the fans- dollar hotdogs and free wifi- though the t-shirts were held back to give out at Saturday’s game. […]

Home Opener

So, Old Jim called and asked if I was coming out to play- I had been home all day, and decided it would be nice to get out in the open air on the way to a dark bar. Jim said he had a late lunch at Willow for business purposes and was still there, […]

If WWI was a Bar Fight

First, let me tell you that I am not lazy. I am not lazy. Nor drunk, like the sailors in the image above. Not yet, anyway. I was up this morning in plenty of time to do all sorts of great stuff that you will not see, not because it isn’t endlessly fascinating, but because […]

April Fools

(Final Jepordy question Monday involved my homeland. Screen shot from an alert reader in Ann Arbor.) What a day yesterday! It was filled with the remarkable, and the absurd- a perfect April Fools Day. Here is how nuts it was: I met someone who had a good experience with the Affordable Care Act! Stranger things […]

And Then There Were None

  (UCONN ties up the Spartans on the way to the Final Four. Picture USA Today) Fabulous day yesterday- I mean, they don’t get any better, do they? Oh, sure, the sky was gun-metal gray, the temperature stayed in the 40s, though the fresh breeze made it feel colder, and bands of rain continued to […]

Carousels

  You don’t know what you got till it’s gone, they say. I guess that is true, but there is the corollary, of course. Sometimes you don’t know what you have until you actually look at it. I had a great morning with a Pal from up north- did the Clark Brothers stop and navigated […]