Author: vicSocotra

Just Darker

We spent the beginning of lunch with the Governor of Minnesota. It had been an interesting morning filled with angry white women and former Vice Presidential candidates. The discussion was animated ad filled with the imagery of N utomobilie being put into “drive” and striking a Federal Law Enforcement officer. As a group, we took […]

12-Time-Zone world

That sentiment was expressed as an urban planning tool that showed up a split-generation ago. It held that modern living should be oriented toward neighborhoods that hold everything necessary within a fifteen-minute walk, or a scooter ride. They had commenced putting three-and-four story vertical additions on some of the little Cape Cod houses purchased for […]

So, That Was the Week That Was

This is Red Square as it was in late summer of 1998, the last time any of us were there in person. We are running it this morning with a sense of loss, since we are 13 time zones away from Pyongyang, North Korea. We were playing with some of the images from the trip […]

4th Week of Advent, 2025

To mark the Solstice and the week, we turned off the news in the conference room. No panels, no crawls, no updates from the wider human derailment. Instead, we wandered into the seasonal video entertainment we’d been ignoring while waiting for Santa—this one with the stout beared fellow improbably trapped in an AI-generated psychic globe […]

Traffic Accidents, Resignations, & Mood of the Year

(A distant view of the world famous Shopping Bag high-rise, the “Good Luck Bear” taped to the overhead of the group mobility van, the wreck, the Fire Fighters and the Fairfax Police responded and alert drivers found a cut through off the big road and we got around it. Without use of horn. Things in […]

The Gens

This is an unusual edition of the Socotra House Daily. it begins with an apology for allowing the past catch up to us as the future arrives. Some of the Boomers in the group are now proud grandparents of some attractive “Gen A” kids, and that is what started the discussion, since we didn’t know […]

The Bow Tie Rule

t back to my office and ordered a dozen clip-on bow ties. If a tie was required at all times, it would be one I could put on in seconds and forget about. I never wore a long tie again. Only later did I notice the line running backward. My grandfather, in his customary bow […]

Happy Holidays!

There was a certain pensive air that wafted through the Holiday Spirit we are attempting to festoon around the conference room. The big flat-screen at the north end of the Conference Room was featuring that 5-ft-8-inch stocky-built alleged murderer from Brown University, plus another run through on the killings in Sydney, Australia at the Bondi […]

Changing Change

Rocket was holding a glowing image of the horrific events at Bondi Beach at the South End of the conference table. Splash sat across from him with his iPad flat, glowing upward with a hazy image of a man in dark clothing walking around the corner at Brown College in Rhode island. Holly had a […]

RiverHouse Swells With Joy

(4th Floor Elf Staffers mixed it up with Santa Claus this morning about the Comet Thing. The kids thought the arrival of an interstellar visitor to the solar system might mean an alien invasion to coincide with Christmas. The Boomers sighed at the notion of a trajectory required for something that big to have traveled […]