So here we are- Christmas roaring down, the new year looming, and there is too much going on, nationally, professionally and personally to really deal with. I think this is going to go down as One Of Those Years when we think about it, as a prelude to something really big that might have been […]

  Editor’s Note: This is a a feeble halting step in putting together the next book, while I await some editorial work on the recently completed first draft of the unconventional biography “Cocktails With the Admiral.” I did a pretty good job of keeping notes on the last years of my folks. It is a […]

(Fred, wearing #92 goes after Quarterback Don Bunce in the 1972 Rose Bowl). 13 December 2017 Frederick E. Grambau (born August 30, 1950) at Salt Lake City, UT. He was with family at the time of his passing. Known as “Kool” to his college friends and team-mates (and #92 to his fans), he played college […]

OK, so our current favorite bar is shuttering its doors on the 30th. One of our Polish lifeguards is back and determined to build a new life in America- on a tourist visa. I have no idea how to help. Yesterday, another jihadi attacked New York..and failed spectacularly. I am not going on the Metro […]

I like George, the affable Greek owner of the Front Page Bar, the watering hole whose tender embrace we sought when fabulous Willow shuttered i’s thick mahogany doors two years ago. Spirit of the season, I had to go to the UPS Store just up the block a week or so ago. Things for the […]

Editor’s Note: One of the basic tenets of American policy after the formation of the japanese armed forces in 1954 was that US would provide the external military capabilties of the the Alliance, while the Japanese would maintain a defensive posture. The North Koreans have changed that equation significantly. The landscape of East Asia is […]

This week’s poem: Department of Motor Vehicles Never underestimate The ability of bureaucrats To dither and obfuscate { https://carllafong.blogspot.jp } Copyright Carl LaFong www.vicsocotra.com

(Charlie Brown Tree with magnificent decoration) The ‘net has been alive this morning. I put up the artificial tree this year in an attempt to get with the holiday spirit. Put some lights on the bushes outside to go with the cheesy shiny wreath on the outside door. It is nice in the evening, and […]

(“Ground Zero,” a print by artist Don Kloetzke). It is seventy-six years and a world away now, the great surprise. I used to think about it a lot when we were young sailors in the Great Patriotic War against the Commies. In that year we were assigned to the staff of the Theater Anti-submarine Warfare […]

(World’s worst Christmas Tree is up. I got it for a buck at the Methodist Church yard sale a few years ago. Even Charlie Brown would have a hard time loving it, but it suits my mood.) Yeah, I know. The first sentence literally writes itself: how could things get any stranger than last week? […]