Author: Vic Socotra

…And the Broom You Rode In On

You may have had the Halloween experience last night, the 31st of the late lamented month of October. It was All-Hallow’s Eve, which must mean that it is All Hallow’s Day today, largely uncelebrated in today’s secular West. Back when the Government was joined by The Church as the dual oppressors of liberty, it was […]

Love Story

  Fred L. Miller, age 75, of Gore, VA, died Friday, October 18, 2013, at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD). He was a long way from home. He got to the Charm City from the lovely Shenandoah Valley by medevac helicopter piloted by a veteran Army Blackhawk pilot and accompanied by two hot EMTs: […]

Orange is the New Black

I felt pretty productive by the time I ambled on to the end of the day. The light was lowering, the temperature had climbed to nearly seventy, the trees were nearing some spectacular colors and the sky was Culpeper Blue with a few puffy white clouds. Raptors wheeled in the air above the farm. I […]

All Engines, Large and Small

Sorry- I was going to scribble something profound and moving this morning, replete with emotive imagery and passion. There is plenty to talk about, after all, what with the collective bill of goods being peddled back up in the Emerald City, but the hell with it. The road to the barn is paved with good […]

Deer in the Pastures

You can feel the season in the air. The foliage at the farm is turning, maroon and orange and bright yellow, and the deer are in the pastures, maybe getting a last bite of clover before the Men in Orange come for them in a couple weeks. East of the Blue Ridge, the bag limit […]

Tailgating with the Terps

Well, that’s it for football. There may be more games on the schedule, but from here out it is just too damned cold for me, anyway. Earlier in the day, I thought it was God’s Own Football Weather: bring, cloudless blue skies, and just enough crispness to bring up the thirst and hunger. And actually, […]

A Matter of Focus

(College room-mate? I have no clue.) I lacked focus all day. The problem- one of them, anyway- was the large box that had arrived from the Scan Café people out in California. They run a decent service in digitizing old analogue photos, and they had done a pretty good job on the first load of […]

Catching Up

I had a chance to make a new friend yesterday, and things being the way they are, that is a good thing. There were some challenges getting together- the town does not look the way it did when Jinny and Jack lived here years ago, but we managed to locate one another and I drove […]

Penny for Your Thoughts

(USS Forrestal (CV-59) on her first Med deployment in 1957. Photo USN). They did it- sold her for scrap. The ignominy of the transaction- the price- is what got me. The famous warship and my former home- the First Supercarrier- was sold for a penny. Ex-USS Forrestal (CV-59) went for a sliver of copper amalgam: […]

Ticket to Ride

The government is back at work, just like it never left, and the Fish and Wildlife crew were occupying the cocktail nook in force. Jon-without was standing next to Old Jim, who was sitting at the stool I normally occupy at the Willow. Some young guy- business suit- was sitting in Jim’s usual place. I […]