August 26, 2025 vicSocotra

Arrias: Change of Weather

I looked out on the back, there was a young doe under the maples, a shaft of sunlight through the trees despite the clouds above – as if out a master’s painting of a forest scene, but there is already a scattering of gold and red leaves Autumn Approaches Speckled sunlight filters through the trees,A […]

August 4, 2025 vicSocotra

Arrias: Roses in the Stone Garden

I wasn’t sure until this morning, but… I drove up to Arlington today for a funeral, then came home – long drive, but necessary… Roses in the Stone Garden Place the rose on the ground, By the flower of stone, So many stones, row on row, Dear Lord, how they have grown. I placed roses […]

July 7, 2025 vicSocotra

Arrias: Arras & Independence Day Muse

Arrias: “Got home about an hour ago, have now unpacked, and fed the puppy! Yesterday was a wake and funeral for CDR Effie Petrie, in Marietta, Ga. Drove home this morning, crossed the Saluda just west of Colombia - just before it turns and runs right into Columbia… Early morning, thick mist rising of the [...]

June 25, 2025 vicSocotra

Arrias and the Cicadas

A heavy chorus of cicadas as I walked Rosey – it was almost as if they were singing two parts – scores would click away for perhaps a second or two – must have been hundreds of them, a slight pause, then another section of the choir with a different pitch for a second or […]

May 29, 2025 vicSocotra

The Status of Forces

Korea has always had a tug on my spirit. Maybe it goes back to my fourteen-month assignment in what had, originally, been the steam bath for Japanese Forces assigned to occupy the ancient capital of a unified nation. We looked at the frontier a couple dozen miles to the North, and the irksome antics of […]

May 23, 2025 vicSocotra

Local Story

That picture is the way part of the Jewish Museum in Washington used to look. It was fifteen minutes across town, and is about the way it looked the last time we saw it in person. The majority of it, in fact, before Lillian and Albert Small made a commitment to move the original synagogue […]

May 18, 2025 vicSocotra

The Newest Socotra Book! Dick Ranger, Third Eye!

This is the all-new special edition of the book that started it all back in 1980 or so. I will quote Roger Hull in the below introduction he wrote at the time, not realizing the next 46 years would have many a drop and tittle in them. With war with Iran looming again, we thought […]

April 26, 2025 vicSocotra

Target Three

I had to take a wave off on Target Two yesterday, and though I regret it, the decision was correct and pulling the ejection handle was the right thing to do. Target Three was accomplished this morning with a modicum of effort, since I only had to roll full left and nearly full right for […]

April 25, 2025 vicSocotra

SITUATION REPORT: “Lift Here”

A tizzy of a day here that was part of life’s treasure. Got word Grace has found a line on suitable lodgings for herself and we may be able to pull the handle on the unit at Big Pink as the summer real estate market comes on and there is real optimism on getting us […]

April 23, 2025 vicSocotra

Situation Report 23 April 2025

Sorry, Folks. Got caught in charging hell and some details went down with devices dead as door-nails. Sequentially. The Apple laptop got hung up on something, iPhone cord got snapped in the hospital bed moving parts. Then the phone died and had to be dispatched to the nursing station in the next Zip Code. The […]