Legal finished sealing up a busy week of topics Saturday afternoon. The war is big, of course, and it has now entered its third week with American heavy bombers reportedly able to roam at will in the skies over Iran. Civilians have been warned by both sides to stay indoors. That has produced some interesting […]

Arlington / Socotra House PI DAY! 3.14 Pi Day began in 1988, when physicist Larry Shaw organized the first celebration at the Exploratorium Science Museum in San Francisco. The date — March 14 (3.14) — honors the mathematical constant π, the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. Its digits continue infinitely without repeating, […]

There are enough stories this morning that we have quite run out of fingers. As our Boomers are a group of world ramblers, we were always sensitive to how people lived overseas. When moving through other societies we tried not to intrude too far into what their culture accepted as normal. The idea was to […]

(This is an image of a fellow named Bairon Hernandez, produced through police reporting. Our interns spent more time removing the NYPD markings than digging into his history. They assumed it was bad. Which is what started their contribution.) Miles asked the interns to take a look. It was another in a continuing string of […]

It is 83 degrees yesterday at The Trillium, home of “Vibrant Senior Living” in the posh new building that looks down on what was Farmer Tyson’s Corner. Miles had Boomrs, Zoomers and Tweeners down on the benches greeting residents and their visitors with Springtime cheer. Concierge Christian and Old Jim were on patrol around the […]

Spring is breaking early along the Potomac. Across the river, the Washington Post promises to explain the Middle East to us again. David Ignatius and Jason Rezaian will hold forth this week on what Iran means today. We could walk over to the Post HQ on K Street and listen, as if the paper still […]

Spring is breaking early along the Potomac. Across the river, the Washington Post promises to explain the Middle East to us again. David Ignatius and Jason Rezaian will hold forth this week on what Iran means today. We could walk over to the Post HQ on K Street and listen, as if the paper still […]

Apologies for digging into the Socotra Archives, Gentle Readers, but the Chairman sent a note to Section Leader Miles with a copy of a battered old green notebook attached. He suggested we could use it as the conflict overseas enters a second week of steady-state explosive activity. It began a long time ago. The notebook […]

Miles gestured at the big flat-screen at the North End of the Conference Room. “OK. We have conflict in progress overseas and it is International Woman’s Day. Vic had a story about a miscalculation he made in writing an official message with a reference to how the Soviets observed the day 45 years ago. It […]

Fog, Bagels, and the Shape of What Comes Next There was a little friction at the Morning Production Meeting. Not confusion exactly—just the mild turbulence that comes when three different generations show up early, push through the fog, and gather around a conference table with bagels and incomplete information about a war. Frank had dropped […]