(Mom and Raven, Rector St. John in the background, 2008. Photo Socotra) I looked down at the pool last night around two. Up in the middle of it, again, not out of anxiety. It just feels natural these days. The blue water of Big Pink’s pool was steaming in the night, the water vapor ghostlike […]

(Arlington National Cemetery, 9/11 burial section, September 11th, 2010. Photo Socotra.) It is still before dawn, with just the faint graying of the sky to the east. The light, filtered by the gray skies will be along soon enough. There are a couple chores to do, but for now I will try to sort through […]

(Resting place of CDR Dan Shanower, USN, Arlington, 2010. Photo Socotra) Thinking back, 1968 might stand as the worst year in our collective life as Americans. At least in my time on the planet. There was something going on that we still do not understand back-stage in the nation’s life. The famous malaise that strung […]

No word from the Village, or from our network of agents up there in Michigan, though I did get a note from my sister at midnight, Alaska-time, so the day may have passed without execution of the Secret Plan. I don’t know. I do know that the last week- can it only have been that […]

(Richard Milhouse Nixon in a contemplative moment. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images)   My sister Anook arranged a baby-sitter for Raven today so Mom can get out of the Village for the fall kick-off meeting of the Coterie, her social group.   Mom has been active in a variety of groups in the little city by the […]

  I was 548 miles from my most immediate set of problems, and the tension oozed out of me with each one. There is a peace and tranquility that comes with V8 power, though as the sun lowered in west behind me and the ground rose in western Pennsylvania the technical skill required to flog […]

(The view from the North Side of the Bay. Photo Socotra)   After lunch I drove over to the other side of the Bay. Just at the top of the hill that slopes down to the village is Bay Bluffs. My friend was right. An extensive modernization had been recently completed. The lobby area was […]

(Michigan Labor Day sunshine…finally. Photo Socotra)   It was a day of labor on the eponymously-named end-of-season weekend. A sense of dread followed me throughout. I did not have a show-down, exactly, with Mom. She sat next to the sofa where Raven was prostrate at eleven in the morning.   “I have to go back […]

(Potemkin Village under gray skies. Photo Socotra) It was a day that split me down to my gut. Started with a hearty breakfast of lies and a road trip to hell.   Mom expect me at ten, I had told her eleven, and I split the difference, pulling up at Potemkin Village with palpitations a […]

(The view of gray sky and gray waves, with whitecaps, from the deck in little city by the bay. Photo Socotra) As a midwesterner, the Labor Day weekend marks the change of season. There are weeks of summer left here in the Northland, months of it back in Virginia, but this is when the Fudgies […]