There will be plenty more swirling about Dolly and her legacy today. There should be. Yesterday afternoon, her passing stopped what we were doing here at Socotra House. The sausage soup show went back into the Galley, the Dance-Off changed direction, and for a little while we joined millions of other Americans remembering a woman […]

Miles thought we should run the Dance Off today with a rolling joke about Vic’s big appointment this morning down at Fair Oaks. He had cataract surgery six months ago, and this was the follow-up. The Creative Section sent a small delegation along, since they were interested in a stop at Shake Shack while Vic […]

Cutting Through Geography! This is how Vic’s PaPaw, like VP Vance’s, made a passage between seas in 1913! A century before anyone started worrying about getting Saudi oil around the Strait of Hormuz, America confronted its own inconvenient geography. Getting from one American coast to the other by sea meant going all the way around […]

There came a pause in the bustle of the mid-afternoon sorting for the Dance-off. Miles told us we would go with a Deirdre story involving an interesting sausage pasta recipe with a hearty soup. That changed with the word about the legendary Dolly Parton. She was famously self-deprecating about the extraordinary public persona she maintained, […]

There are some adventures to celebrate today, and we want to note them in roughly the order they occurred. The British burned much of Federal Washington, including the White House, on this day in 1814. Vesuvius had done something considerably more comprehensive to Pompeii in AD 79, back before anyone involved knew that someday we […]

Goodness, what a day! The medical stuff for Socotra personnel went pretty well this morning, with only a couple of mild discombobulations getting most of the gang back into the SUV for the return to The Trillium complex. Then we discovered that the Treasury Secretary had declared war on Iran. We are a little unclear […]

The passing clouds yesterday dropped a few sprinkles that made the still-bumpy DC streets shimmer as the IndyCar racers went through their practice runs. The result this morning is bright pavement, seemingly washed clean beneath sunny skies, low humidity and nearly perfect conditions for the Big Race this afternoon. There is an energy in the […]

There was excitement in the air with a dramatic fly-over of bombers and fighters also doing work overseas. The President spoke, and took a roll around the course in the armored Beast limousine. The drivers brought that energy to the course when the green flag flew! The high-pitched whines rose over the narrow turns and […]

Rocket escorted Deirdre to the start of the festivities downtown. You can see the weather-guessers getting up to their tricks today, with the possibility of thunderstorms and showers adding a little excitement to the prospect of running at something approaching 180 MPH on Pennsylvania Avenue. They were out for the first practice laps at 9:00 […]

So, Rocket and Deirdre are off on some adventure down in the old Refuge Farm territory in Culpeper. They just announced that they would not be back until tomorrow night. You can imagine how that made things get quiet around the Conference Table. Deirdre normally has the afternoon hot meal going at least in concept, […]