Author: Vic Socotra

Roaring Twenties

We think it is over now. Or, perhaps better said, now that the Chinese reconnaissance mission is complete we were permitted to shoot it down. It is possible that the PRC intended to fly their “balloon” around the world. Then they could recover the innocent scientific camera and blameless electronic devices back in their own […]

Ninety Miles to Damascus

If you missed yesterday, the Writer’s Section was on the way to someplace warm. It may be the cold blast of air that caused some old memories to emerge, or maybe the invisible rays broadcast from that Chinese balloon. Loma had been talking about one of the significant benefits of government travel, since he stopped […]

Life & Island Times: Detour Version 1.0, Day 4

May 2001 Detour Version 1.0 Day 4 “No Livestock Unloading in the Pet Exercise Area. Corral at the End of the Rest Area.” -Sign at an eastern New Mexico I-40 rest stop At other Day 4 rest stops only “livestock feeding” was “prohibited on any concreted areas.” Revelation #2: Saw the earth’s curve today in […]

A Trip to Someplace Warm

(Cyprus, officially the Republic of Cyprus, is an island country located south of the Anatolian Peninsula in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. It is geographically in Western Asia, but its cultural ties and geopolitics are overwhelmingly Southeastern European- Wiki. Addendum: this is a trip a couple decades old, when we could still rise and walk without […]

Weather Report From Gobbler’s Knob

Can You Spell “Punxsutawney?” We had a vigorous discussion about movie rentals this morning. You know the one we are talking about. The crowd at Gobbler’s Knob up in Pennsylvania has already dispersed. The land-beaver named Phil has spoken, although his remarks were unintelligible. “Six more weeks of Winter,” is what they say he said. […]

Life & Island Times: Detour Version 1.0 Part 3

Day 3 Trailers for sale or rent. Rooms to let fifty cents. No phone. No pool. No pets. Ain’t got no cigarettes. Two hours of pushing broom Buys an eight by ten four-bit room. I’m a man of means, by no means, King of the Road. King of the Road by Roger Miller The initial […]

Back to the Bombe

(Arlington Hall Station, where some of the tools of victory in 1945 were forged). This used to be part of a story we couldn’t talk about. That changed just before the careers (and lives) of some of those folks who worked at Arlington Hall left us. Keeping secrets was a component of the Spook trade […]

Arrias and His Muse: Ice Dragons

Editor’s Note: Arrias maintains the front on the Chesapeake. We were brushed by the same swath of cold wet air last night. It brought the first barely-measurable snow of the season to the Commonwealth. We had other communications from a square state out west with wind blowing a dozen degrees below zero (F) behind a […]