Author: Vic Socotra

Life & Island Times: Detour Version 1.0

Editor’s Note: The Writer’s Section at Socotra House is attempting to clean house by actually opening the closet/garage/cellar doors to see what is contained within. This afternoon, we share Marlow’s version of something those of you of a “certain age” will recall: Getting Ready to Get Up and Go. His requires two wheels. And a […]

Ebenezer Baptist Church

(This image is of the memorial to Dr. King on the Mall in Washington DC. We like this one, and choose to run it today instead of the more stylized one unveiled in Boston this weekend. There is some controversy about the design of that one, and we prefer the resolute character of the one […]

Arrias: Sweepers, Sweepers

If you’ve ever been on a US Navy ship, several times per day you’ll here a call over the 1MC (1 Main Comm – a “public address” system that goes to every compartment in the ship): “Sweepers, Sweepers, Man your brooms, give the ship a clean sweep down fore and aft. Sweep down all decks, […]

Borders, Borderlands, Heartlands

Editor’s Note: This essay from Marlow is about an epic trip around the four corners of the Continental United States. That complete account of life on two wheels is a work still in progress, and still takes our collective breath away. –      Vic Author’s Note: This new life frontier situation caused me to dig up and rewrite this 20+ year-old, […]

Free to Move

(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed below are those of the authors and do not necessary express the views of Socotra House Publishing. They are not an argument against climate change, since it does, but rather an expression of dismay that we are embarking on a series of radical and dramatic social changes without demonstrating that they […]

National Debt and Breakfast Pasties

OK, it is a little warmer out on the balcony this morning. The previous cold hanging over us had artificially extended the holiday regime (for some) all the way from Thanksgiving through the Epiphany, with a last surge to commemorate the legacy of Dr. King. That required libations from the Belmont Farm Distillery in Culpeper. […]

More Tales From Big Pink

This morning is a product of the continued bedlam of the new year. We have a Speaker of the House again, a new one, and there is all sorts of squirming around on the partisan political front. Some of it involves the President’s Corvette, which we understand is one of those cool ones from 1967. […]

When There Were Boundaries

(The larger of the two small signs affixed to this utility pole marks the boundary of the District of Columbia. Marlow sent it along this morning with only a mildly exasperated observation on how things change. In this image, there is a bus line that operated in a satisfactory manner on a street that defined […]

Weather Report: Runners Out of the Blocks!

After some-inside-the-park legislative activity in the first week of the legislative New Year, the second dawned bright with the new majority in America’s House of Representatives. Some members of the old majority who liked the spotlight have been dismissed from positions of higher visibility than they previously enjoyed. Another series of the sort of partisan […]

NOTAMS

There was a little confusion as the New Year finally came out of the blocks. This morning we are grounding aircraft and the first articles of impeachment have been filed already. It was delayed a bit with the election of Speaker McCarthy to take the gavel most recently handled by Madam Pelosi. The Secretary of […]