1980 Special Edition at Lunch After the Super Bowl Daily Pyongyang, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) Editor’s Note: In 1980, United States Forces Korea (USFK) operated amidst intense political turmoil in South Korea, marked by the May 17 Coup d’état and the subsequent Kwangju Uprising. USFK maintained security as the ROK students rioted. We […]

Miles was frustrated this morning. No one could blame him. There was too much news, and it was ironic, since there had been excitement from the Olympics in Italy. He had deliberately not mentioned the Winter Games as they kicked off last week. Today, though, brought a story of triumph and tragedy, as Breezy Johnson […]

Before the shooting starts, the lifting does. That Iran Thing “While public attention rotated through spectacle — medals, commercials, halftime choreography — a different kind of movement continued largely offscreen: the slow, deliberate stacking of lift, fuel, and steel across the eastern Mediterranean and Gulf. Not the sound of war beginning, but of options being […]

Our Socotra Legal Section said we had to run a disclaimer first thing this morning. Leon got all puffed up about it. So, there it is, first and foremost. What we are disclaiming, specifically, had to wait until Section Leader Miles had something like a quorum in the Conference Room up on the 4th Floor […]

Miles frowned as he set down his iPad. There was a time when a “rara avis”—rare bird in Latin—meant he would have to amble around outside in the parking lot looking for the slightly less expensive rental car. This was not that, exactly, but it was enough to make him move the mug of Flat […]

Dick Nixon told us that “everything we knew about Vietnam was wrong,” except for the end of it. Our pal Jake served in Saigon in the waning days, and then as a promising young officer in the Intelligence Plot of the Chief of Naval Operations. By the spring of 1975, it was all over but […]

That was true in 1972, when a Jethro Tull album cover sat in a Chi Phi basement room and rocked hard, long before the Islamic Republic was a news item and before any of us imagined how strange the future would get. It’s still true now. There was a time when our curious carnival of […]

We tried the new header graphic the other morning. It was supposed to show what we thought might be happening on Monday, but what showed up was the bedraggled green note book with the when the air came out of the Budget and the Government shut down and the SnowCrete that still has everything frozen […]

Socotra House starts chipping the sidewalk. We were set to roll out the new header format this morning, now that we’re coming back online. That’s on hold—for the same reason most things are. Groundhog Day ceremonies kicked off at 8:30 across the river at Dupont Circle. Clear as a bell. Rocket and Melissa took an […]

We were waiting for the Bomb Cyclone to arrive yesterday afternoon with a certain apprehension. The publicity has been a little hysterical. The storm had not been given a proper name, so the talk drifted to the subject of bombs instead. It was already 1600 local. Skies went gray for an hour or two before […]