Author: Vic Socotra

Loading Dock

The back door to our new building looks out on the service drive between the Westin hotel, a fancy high-rise condo and the old office building the government used to rent for the Navy Spooks, and later the Customs and Immigration Service, before it was eaten by the Department of Homeland Security. The boxy 1970s […]

Clinging to Power

Fidel announced via midnight letter to Granma, the official Cuban newspaper, that he is stepping down, and does not want to “cling to power” after nearly fifty years. It is not an obituary; we will still have to wait for that. It sounded a lot like the old Castro we have known for so long, […]

Clinging to Power

Fidel announced via midnight letter to Granma, the official Cuban newspaper, that he is stepping down, and does not want to “cling to power” after nearly fifty years. It is not an obituary; we will still have to wait for that. It sounded a lot like the old Castro we have known for so long, […]

Not Fade Away

Can there be coincidence that this President’s Day, honoring Lincoln and Washington, can simultaneously be the commemoration of the independence of Kosovo and the anniversary of the election of Jefferson Davis as president of the Confederacy? Perhaps it is just that history is bunk, as Henry Ford maintained, and there are only so many days […]

Not Fade Away

Can there be coincidence that this President’s Day, honoring Lincoln and Washington, can simultaneously be the commemoration of the independence of Kosovo and the anniversary of the election of Jefferson Davis as president of the Confederacy? Perhaps it is just that history is bunk, as Henry Ford maintained, and there are only so many days […]

Route 210

I get a lot of mail, and this curious thing was in the in-box this morning. It is from another owner of a Hubrismobile, a real one, complete with the AMG speed-and-performance package that I could never afford. She goes by the screen-name “HotOne,” which is predictable enough. She has been encouraging me to attend […]

Route 210

I get a lot of mail, and this curious thing was in the in-box this morning. It is from another owner of a Hubrismobile, a real one, complete with the AMG speed-and-performance package that I could never afford. She goes by the screen-name “HotOne,” which is predictable enough. She has been encouraging me to attend […]

Jack Malarky

Mardy 1 sent the note around to the usual suspects yesterday, and it caught me up short. Jack is dead. Gone. Checked out Big Pink for good. I knew he was ill, had been ill, I corrected myself. Carol B told me about it when I called on her briefly in the office on the […]

Jack Malarky

Mardy 1 sent the note around to the usual suspects yesterday, and it caught me up short. Jack is dead. Gone. Checked out Big Pink for good. I knew he was ill, had been ill, I corrected myself. Carol B told me about it when I called on her briefly in the office on the […]

The Lupercal

Every year on this day, the Romans celebrated the founding of their great city by killing two goats and a dog, smearing the blood on the foreheads of two noble youths. The rite referred to Romulus and Remus, the Original Romans, half divine and half mortal, by Mars, out of Vestal Virgin Rhea Silvia, to […]