Author: vicSocotra

Holly’s Autumn Olive

Slow-Cooked Pork Butt Hi, Gang! Holly here, with a chance to start a new week in a new month—and to bring you one of the fine pork projects I have been working on whenever Deirdre spins that arrow thingie around. I served as a consultant to Rocket when he did that hot-dog project and stumbled […]

PEACE? or Vic’s Tequila-Lime Shrimp Platter

Or, Vic’s Tequila-Lime Shrimp Platter Word this morning brought several elements of the Creative Section to the Conference Table on the Fourth Floor just as the first light appeared in the east through the big glass windows. Did peace just break out in the Middle East? That is one of the streams playing on the […]

Sunday Word With Pastor Frank

Morning, Gentle Readers! Miles had asked Pastor Frank if he might contribute a short liturgical note on Sundays—nothing compulsory, nothing too ecclesiastical, and only when the Spirit, the headlines or the breakfast coffee moved him. Frank said he would, and this morning’s announcement of what better actually termed “a Reciprocal Pause,” in combat operations over […]

60,000 Young Men Visit Spain

The morning graphic shows the actual location of Spain’s extraordinary immigration crisis. That matters when between 50,000 and 60,000 people- almost all young males of military age- cross the border in two days. For simple scale of this movement—not as a description of its organization or intent—a modern army battalion may contain roughly a thousand […]

A Pleasant View

We are about to get sucked back into an assessment of what we may be doing to Iran this afternoon. Word from the Flatscreen at the end of the Conference Room is that strikes could be renewed today—and that they may do something significant. That follows Friday’s strikes, which fragmentary reporting suggested lasted approximately two […]

THE FINAL FLIGHT OF A ROSIE

It is with sadness that we note the passing of Jeanne Gibson, one of the last surviving “Rosie the Riveters” of the Greatest Generation. Jeanne died Wednesday, July 29, 2026, at the remarkable age of 100. Her family and friends mourn the loss of a woman whose courage, dedication and unwavering spirit helped shape history—and […]

Chicken Under a Brick

POLLO AL MATTONE WITH GRILLED PINEAPPLE SIDES Splash takes four plump birds, four wrapped bricks, six pineapples and one busy Weber to feed the afternoon watch.  AFTERNOON EDITION Thanks for bearing with us through the morning Conference Table flail. The news cycle was already moving when the Galley discovered that a box of pineapples […]

THE FINAL FLIGHT OF A ROSIE

Inline image It is with sadness that we note the passing of Jeanne Gibson, one of the last surviving “Rosie the Riveters” of the Greatest Generation. Jeanne died Wednesday, July 29, 2026, at the remarkable age of 100. Her family and friends mourn the loss of a woman whose courage, dedication and unwavering spirit helped […]

The Originals

There are people who create things. Then there are Originals. Those are the people who change the way the rest of us see the world. Vics’s father, William Edwin Reddig, was one of them. [Bill and the Kelvinator Design Team] George Romney didn’t hire Bill because he could draw. He hired him because he could […]