It has cooled off a bit at Refuge Farm, and it is almost enough to make us miss the raisin and sultry heat of the mid-summer. Soon enough September will be on us, and we will miss it. There are some things we will not. That includes two troubled young men who ran amok in […]

Screen Shot 2019-07-31 at 11.21.55 AM.png I watched the debates last night as a matter of civic duty. The most impressive aspect for me was the restoration of the downtown Fox Theater, a moving picture palace of a different age. As a sometimes Detroit, I used to go by the place in the years after […]

I am at the farm, watching the House hearings on the Mueller report. I should have stayed in bed. On the other and more immediate hand, two buzzards were perched on the Panzer roof when I rose. I have to say a single round of 9mm discharged into the ground seemed to get their attention […]

Lord, another one of those weeks to which we seem addicted here in the sticky mire of The Swamp. It would make you tired if you had to dog-paddle. Oh, wait. That is what we do here. Copyright 2019 Vic Socotra www.vicsocotra.com

My bother was here for a delightful visit. He arrived by train, a sort of sepia-toned mode of transport, and he seems to like the farm, worked a bit on the truck, and we swapped old stories and memories, some good and others not. It culminated (I hope) the astonishing procession of grandkids and old […]

Nope, no explosives today, unless the buzzards encroach on the human jurisdictions of the farm. Maybe the Marine down the lane will blast some off later, as the dusk blends into the velvet darkness of this special summer day. I luxuriate in the memories of an epic trip bringing the Pepto-Bismol 1959 Rambler wagon to […]

Ah! the legendary Nat King Cole’s “hazy, crazy days of summer” are here again. I am here to testify to that. As a chaotic prelude to the holiday celebrating our independence from a tyrannical despot, a total of five children occupied the headquarters compound of Refuge Farm. It was fantastic to see the kids taking […]

Well, here we are at midweek, and sort of confident that the world will continue until at least tomorrow. We are walking a variety of planks strewn willy-nilly all over the globe. It is not quite bewildering- I mean, winnowing 24 candidates for the Presidency is going to be an anguishing process over the next […]

Well, it happened again. The long swing from winter, in the northern hemisphere, anyway, to our sweltering summers in the Virginia Piedmont is accomplished. From here, we advance (or recess) by a minute or so of less daylight until we shudder and shiver again in the darkness, and wonder at the vagaries of our orbit […]

It was the 19th of June, 1865. The blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico glittered in the brilliant sun. The sand was white as sugar on the barrier island. Major General Gordon Granger, late of the Army of the Cumberland, read General Order #3 to the people of the former Confederate city of Galveston, […]