Category: DailySocotra

Dinner With Family

Editor’s Note: This piece fits in the back of the book; not the end, though the dinner it describes certainly was a real ending. It is sort of in keeping with my mood this morning. The dinner was an affirmation of a grand life lived in perilous times, and with honor and courage. I have […]

Running AMOC

Editor’s Note: I stirred around 0200 and saw an alert on the tablet computer. I fumbled for my glasses and turned on the bedside light. The New York Times informed me that Uncle Fidel was gone at the age of ninety. I read the obit in the NY Times, which was extensive and ad obviously […]

Written Approval

29 July 2010 Editor’s Note: Turkey Day passed without untoward incident. Jon-without and I camped out at the bar of The Front Page, waiting for the precise moment to swoop down on the lavish buffet that featured all the classic holiday meals. Neither one of us was in a particularly festive mood for a variety […]

Helsinki Calling

23 November 2016 Editor’s Note: 2011 was a good year to hang with Mac. Willow was at the zenith of its culinary achievement about to win back-to-back Washington-area Burger cook-offs, and it did not seem that there was a thing wrong with the world. I was still employed, Mac was active and engaged, and the […]

Frozen in Amber

Editors Note: This was the beginning of the great decline. It is still amazing to me that Mac was still so vital and engaged even as the end was beginning. It is particularly poignant as the holidays come crashing down around us. Gobble gobble! – Vic Frozen in Amber It was the beginning of fall- […]

Purple Dragon

20 November 2016 Editor’s Note: I was pleased. I managed to pry myself out of bed right around noon. I slept most of the hours after Michigan pried a victory out of the Hoosiers, and the somnolence seemed to have gone a long way to knitting up the raveled sleeves of care, or the flu. […]

The Clip-on Bow Tie

19 November 2016 Editor’s Note: I am sick as a dog this morning, and have had to cancel traveel plans. I am shaking under the covers in bed, an with a severe case of mal de mere. i am very disappointed nd hope this passes swiftly so we can get back to bashing one another […]

Two Out of Three

Editor’s Note: The cabinet nominations are starting to drop. This morning it is Mike Flynn, America’s angriest General (press) for national Security Advisor. Sen. Jeff Sessions for Attorney General and a congressman I have never heard of to be Director of the CIA. I wish Mac were around to talk about all this. He might […]

Regime Change

(Demonstration in Tehran, 1953, opposing Operation AJAX. Photo Public Radio International). “I told you the other day that I was sent to London in May of 1950 from DC.” I nodded in agreement, and got out my pen and prepared to take notes. “I rented the flat, picked up our 1949 Mercury four-door sedan at […]

Binding Commitment

Editor’s Note: I stayed up late watching Monday Night Football, something fewer and fewer of us do these days for a variety of perfectly good reason, some of them akin to the reason we have a President-elect with orange hair. I talked at length about that with Liz-with-an-S at the bar last night. She was […]