If you were watching the Games, we were on the Big Screen at the business end of the Conference Room at Socotra House yesterday. There was a reason. Miles claimed he missed the production meeting due to an episode of sleep apnea. We suspect he was curled up in the Transient Suite on the 6th […]

(Sugarland Mail Order Moonshine, office chair and Dragonfire Tree) It was a surprise for the Boomers who trickled in that morning. Based on the messaging streams they were attempting to manage, there was already vigorous discussion about how to finish out the week. Splash was seated languorously at the end of the Conference Table, in […]

Miles was uncharacteristically abrupt at the Morning Meeting. “Something seems about to happen with the Iranians who are threatening to sink aircraft carriers. They’re still talking, though, so we probably won’t have to work too hard on military issues until next week.” He paused. “It is also Ash Wednesday. For the faithful, a time for […]

Miles was wearing a strange costume for a retired Navy Patrol Aviation Captain. Splash was confused, since he was between romances. Rocket and Melissa clearly had plans for a lavish luncheon at 801 Chop House up the road, and the kids—who can’t afford such things—had a plan for chocolate, wine and flowers outside in the […]

Our Section Leader Miles was struggling to get back in the leader’s chair at the North End of the Conference room. Outdoors, the white snow-crete cloak remained, shining bright light into the conference room from the floor-to-ceiling walls on the east side of the building. There is mud where the sledders frolicked in front of […]

Naturally, someone brought up the big cavalry charge when we heard the Vice President was coming to Arlington on the 3rd of March to raise money for the GOP Mid Term elections. We can feel the temperatures rising to start the melt of the snow-crete that has imprisoned us for more than two weeks.. In […]

The south end of the Conference Table rests on stacked cinder blocks. Vic’s recliner failed this morning. It had been his command chair since the move. Getting it out of the apartment and the matching chair repositioned into the office nook became a major operation — one of those logistical campaigns that feels outsized when […]

Rocket was unexpectedly alert this morning, and he raised a hand at Miles to make a statement at the Morning Meeting. “The Buddhist monks are doing a Fifteen Minute County demonstration today. It took a while. They started walking northeast from Fort Worth, Texas, 108 days ago. The national media has been distracted by kidnappings, […]

Dick Nixon told us that “everything we knew about Vietnam was wrong,” except for the end of it. Our pal Jake served in Saigon in the waning days, and then as a promising young officer in the Intelligence Plot of the Chief of Naval Operations. By the spring of 1975, it was all over but […]

That was true in 1972, when a Jethro Tull album cover sat in a Chi Phi basement room and rocked hard, long before the Islamic Republic was a news item and before any of us imagined how strange the future would get. It’s still true now. There was a time when our curious carnival of […]