(Chiang Kai-shek Tomb Guard, Taipei, Taiwan 1981)

It is a sunny Monday to start things after the conclusion of Holy celebrations for three major faiths. Easter was great here, with a joyous family brunch across Route 50 under cloudless skies. By the time we were able to focus again, word was spreading from across the Pacific about military movements. Big China put on a demonstration of resolve in the waters around the island. It included dozens of ships and aircraft that crossed the median line of control in the Taiwan Strait.

It was described by Chinese state media as “an encirclement.” It was part of the cognitive-kinetic offensive that has gone on since we were kids alarmed about the status of Quemoy and Matsu, remember? It seemed to be pretty emotional but far away. It seems we are headed for something dramatic in the neighborhood again.

The current situation is in response to a series of diplomatic message-signaling by both parties. The latest is a ramp up in tension derived from a polite visit to Washington by Taiwan’s President, Tsai Ing-wen. That was described as a “dangerous” trip that required a strong response. In response to the strong response, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul said sending US troops to the island was “on the table.”

We are too old for recall should things heat up. Our kids have served and are no longer vulnerable to being called up for duty. This represents a generational change. Next it will be the Grandkids whose lives will placed in the balance. After the energy and commitment devoted to the other invasion, it is possible that our children’s children are at risk in a two-front war to overturn the balance of power that has endured since Mao Tse Tung expelled Chiang Kai-shek and his Nationalists from the Mainland in 1948.

We had a chance to visit Chiang’s tomb in Taipei a few decades ago after living in Japan, and during a break from a 14-month stay in the Republic of Korea. The structure was impressive in scope, but the Taiwanese Trooper who stood guard near the remains of (one of) China’s emperors was equally resolute. If he had grandkids in his future, it will be them standing guard.

We have talked “here” about “there” in the context of ship’s movement and rockets. We are a little unsure we are ready for a two-front conflict with lines 5,000 miles apart. We mentioned that same topic in Taipei. The perspective is a little different when Big China looms just over the horizon.

The trooper we saw that day in Taipei seemed ready when we saw him. We do not know how he is doing today, but we will make a call this afternoon to see how- or “if”- our kids are getting ready. We won’t mention the debt we accidentally piled up on the credit cards they haven’t been issued yet. There should be plenty of time for them to adjust to it. We hope so, anyway, as responsible grandparents. We are mildly thankful it won’t be us who has to deal with it.

Copyright 2023 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Port Call Al-Iskandariya, 1990

Downsizing is an interesting evolution. We are in the process at the moment. Looking through the different old directories stacked up in the computer was interesting in attempting unscramble the past. Part of it is a numbers thing. Did we make all 50 States? How many nations? And was it six or seven seas? A lot of stuff turned up. Below are some images from the USS Forrestal (CV-59) Med Cruise that included three of the current Seven Seas and ended the Cold War.

Below is the Great Pyramid at Giza as we walked up to it from the buses, surrounded by ‘HeyJoes’ actively marketing souvenirs. Then a hike up the side of the massive thing to an entrance carved into the side, and then the hunched transit down to the Burial Chambers below. I briefly occupied part of it in 1990.

It is an interesting walk up about a third of the height of the thing to enter the passageway down to what had been the tomb gallery. The passage is designed for smaller people than live today. Mildly oppressive in still ancient air, there still was a place to stretch out for a moment:

It was an interesting Med Cruise, since our underway time before making the East Coast transition had all been out in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. What turned that deployment into something unusual was the nature of the historic moment in progress. The Malta Summit meeting between Gorbachev and Bush in late 1989 had (maybe) ended the Cold War (we weren’t sure).

In Alexandria- Al-Iskandriya they call it- I asked Diocletian, the guy they put up the Pillar to honor in Al-Iskandriya. No luck on that, since it turned out he had retired a few centuries ago when the Black and Caspian Seas were still “distant waters.”

That is when the phrase “Seven Seas” originated, but there has been change in what was described. In ancient times there were six areas named as “seas” in just the Med. The adjoining Red Sea covered the waterfront, so to speak.

In our time, the ‘Seven Seas’ had changed to bodies of water along trade routes in the Med, Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. The northern and southern extremes of those oceans were termed ‘Arctic,’ and the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico fill it out. We have looked north from Adak in the Aleutian islands to the northern Arctic waters. So, we got to six of the modern Seven Seas on warships underway. We have no plans to return to complete our presence on all of them, but we have steamed on six and put a boot-toe into the seventh.

After the Summit, we received subsequent deliberate direction from our Commander at 6th Fleet to accomplish everything on the existing schedule but minimize the PR sort of stuff that usually goes with the exercises and port calls. We wound up with a lot of time on the hook in some amazing places. We had a great liberty in Egypt, accomplishing the “presence” mission and the later magic four days of improvised pilgrimage in the Holy Land.

There was something else about the uncertainty. For the only time in our careers there was not the looming possibility of an incident that meant real and personal trouble for all hands. On whichever of the Seas we happened to be.

The last few months of that somewhat unsettled cruise? I think we were on the Cote D’Azur (Marseille and west to Nice and Canne) for more than three weeks. But that is another story…or three or four!

The whole tale is also available in book form, the one we immodestly call “The Last Cold War Cruise.”

(That is The Sphinx under scaffolding behind that guy.)

https://www.amazon.com › Last-Cold-War-Cruise-Forrestal › dp › 1638211752

Cheers!

Vic

Copyright 2023 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

…(( Behind us as the ruling party, all Party members and cadres must really imbibe morality, really need integrity, impartial work, must keep our party clean, must preserve our party in books, must conflict with the party being a healthy person of the people…))
Ho-Chi Minh

We would expect nothing else, of course. But the quote had become a mystery the instant we saw it more than thirty years ago. It was 1996. We were visiting the National Capitol complex in Hanoi, Socialist Republic of Vietnam. We were providing support to a movement to “end the War,” which had some loose ends then. The POW/MIA issue was on top, as it was in North Korea. But we would have to change tone on the nuclear “Agreed Framework.” That was the very small list of things on which there was general agreement.
In Vietnam, after concluding the official meetings, our hosts let us wander off through to find the car. This appeared on a wall in one grand corridor, and we naturally wanted to capture whatever saying of Ho Chi Minh they thought was important. It popped up occasionally over the years.

I had seen the image in the archive and instinctively moved my finger on the track screen to capture the words, paste them on a translation site and read them in English. It was not the first attempt to understand, but I looked down at my index finger. I was going to have to type it in Vietnamese to then copy and post somewhere to ask the question. We had a general idea that it might be a quote from the 1930 Party Congress speech, or perhaps the the 1945 Declaration of Independence. That was a memorable one that incorporated some of a Declaration that we used back here in 1776.

There are doubtless better translations, but we read this one and enjoyed it. It is funny to think that Uncle Ho would be one of the GOP now, you know?

– Vic
Copyright 2023 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

(Easter Baskets aligned. Delightful Carrot Cake prepared. Today’s observance underway!)

The Legal guys told us we could go back to casual commentary regarding religion just as soon as things cool down a little on the litigation front. Just a precaution, they say, but they note the tide of stuff rising around us.

We respectfully demure with the temporary restriction. Some of us had the chance to visit Jerusalem and the West Bank of the Jordan River. We walked the list of quite assuming and unassuming monuments to events regarding something quite significant. So, we think we are still free to commemorate Easter even if we mention it as a “travel event” rather than a spiritual one.

It certainly had not been a pilgrimage to get there in 1990. The boat we were riding (USS Forrestal, CV-59) was in the Mediterranean. We had served as a scenic backdrop to the Malta Summit, a mass of steel national resolve, and then directed to maintain a low operational profile. We wound up on the hook off Haifa in Israel. The gracious Air Wing Commander gave us four days to disappear into the holy hinterlands.

We may have been making “peace” in our Cold War context. But ashore, there was unrest at the time. It was a “boycott” of trade in what was termed the “occupied territories.” That included the slow walk across the Temple Mount that included the Dome of the Rock- the al Aqsa Mosque- and some masonry said to have been part of the Second Temple. The disturbance was minor by today’s standards and we were determined to see a few things on the West Bank. We had litany list checks to mark there- Dead Sea, Bethlehem and Masada- and knew we were unlikely to be back. We had our hired driver take us across.

We saw many holy and alternate-holy sites along the way. Our pace was quick. Being in a hurry to get to the next check on the litany list, some of the lessons from the remaining stones got a little frayed. But three decades ago in life they remain bright in jumbled memory. There was something real in the air that made energy palpable in the streets.

On this day the winds have diminished under clear skies. The temperature is coming up and the optimism of Spring makes us smile at the energy on display around the patio! The human stuff is entertaining all around, and the growth of new life all around is a positive joy.

Happy Easter!

Copyright 2023 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.comi

This is part of the ‘immersion theme’ we have been musing about in modern social behavior. It parallels another social aspect of what we call “weaponized advertising.” Both terms are still a little experimental. Both include other large impact areas, some completely incidental and others now harnessed in ways not previously exploited. That occurred to us when the last episode of Season Seven ended late yesterday.

We surrender any credible analysis of the old minor annoyance about “binging.” Advances in technology make this occasional habit now widely shared due to the combination of external circumstance and digital access. It has been possible to do it for a while, but it was a different sort level of effort. It required towering stacks of bulky cassettes, all properly labled. You can understand that takes commitment and organizational skills last demonstrated in this building by Margaret in her famous Sex in the City-themed parties.

Reunited with bandwidth up in the city, we responded by selecting individual series in the dizzying content world to watch in the order they were produced for release. With the added ability to dump the junk video connectivity and leap directly through emotional moments in the narrative. Which was enveloping, since the characters on the screen were bigger (and much better looking) than we are. The company sprang for the 70-inch television in the conference/breakroom. It conveyed, but is not our fault.

It was an intense change. We just identified the shows we wanted to see and then streamed them in order, hitting “pause” only when overcome. That process of viewing eliminated tension about some of the season-ending episodes. We didn’t mind, but it added poignancy to the last episode as the series “ender.” We stayed up nearly forty minutes past bedtime to see the last episode of the latest binge: “Army Wives.”

Melissa is part of the selection process, vocal in preference but as a former Air Force Spouse sensitive to the fuller consequences of military life than the males. Consequently, we are now a bit lighter than usual on the violence-resolution themes peppered with many explosives. We have now streamed series from the Hallmark and Lifetime Networks. We had never been immersed in their product. Lifetime did the show “Army Wives,” which got on the list with moderate support to both terms in the title.

It was filmed across 2010 in about equal sides. The seven seasons included 117 episodes following the lives of four Army wives and a husband. With families, of course. The story was adapted from the “Under the Sabers” book by author Tanya Biank. The series follows the lives of four army wives, one army husband and their constantly deploying spouses. Constant in the background is the theme that “Afghanistan” was going to turn out differently and be an endless present place of duty. The families provide their assorted issues amid sometimes co-mingled families.

We enjoyed the immersion, though by episode 90 we noticed it took a moment to transfer attention between content streams. Considering what else is going on- a “blip” in the “binge” was news of an attempt to impeach a SCOTUS Justice yesterday. No idea if that is going to become a story they will try to immerse us in. We have found a way to avoid what is coming over the next nineteen months, you know? There is going to be an awful lot of noise. We think we are going to binge something else to keep the noise down.

Copyright 2023 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

There is some junk in the system. Some of it was junk when entered, other parts have achieved that status through age. We are not apologizing about that. Socotra House readers are familiar that characteristic of our production. Our archives recently have become a curious jumble of hidden masses of digits. They have transitioned through several iterations of desk, phone and laptop computing devices. Lately, due to circumstance, most were limited to the laptop.
We have only recently become aware that they are also jumbled in all sorts of other places, both here and abroad.

We tried a scan on the hard drive this morning to identify redundant material for elimination. We hope to save time loading things up for the first go in the morning. On the summary screen after running through 187,526 files, we were only moderately surprised by the appearance of 17 copies of an old Powerpoint version of an even older trip report. That journey went all sorts of places, including Taiwan, Vietnam, China, Burma and both Koreas. We should have just deleted the extra dupes and saved the disc space. Instead we looked at one version to see what sort of memories were contained in it.

We jumbled one of the versions onto one screen to help recall some of the moments of the Navy’s Overseas Family Residency Program (OFRP). In that scheme, capital ships like Ma Midway were assigned to home ports in Japan to save on response times from ports in the Continental United States (CONUS) and Hawaii.

It was an adventure for all who participated, but it surfaced this morning in the necessary scan. We have had some continuing tech support issues on the production front. There was a pile of notes that Legal had signed out on Good Friday. They contained recommendations on how to handle old and new issues for the Daily audience. The messaging, we were told, shares the events (and some of the emotion) of the time they were drawn.

Back then, Iranian “Students” had occupied American diplomatic facilities in Tehran, a surprising event considering we had done push-ups under the humid Pensacola sun with Iranian students- a different sort who had been sent by the former Shah- who were taught to fly the F-14 jet fighter. So, action by one of the student groups led to the failed rescue attempt at Rescue One. And the other one is still flying F-14s. Against us.

So, that was four decades ago but sort of the same story we have this morning.

This Easter there is tension on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. This morning was word of an attack on tourists in Tel Aviv, with one European visitor slain.

So, that is today. Tomorrow is Easter. We await the long-rumored Ukrainian counter-offensive in a continuing kinetic struggle against the Russian invaders. This morning, the NY Times ran stories about a leak of a hundred classified documents about variations on the coming plan. They appear sensitive, but we don’t know whether they are “real” or “misinformation” from either side.

Rocket had reviewed the rest of the traffic, and there are several issues Legal told us to stay away from. Some could be related to experience in previous service. Or, they could be construed as such in extended litigation ruinous in cost to private participants. To avoid cost to the company, we all got outsourced as “independent contractors.” The government costs are also shared by all of us- and you- so it is an ultimate in labor sharing.

We are pleased at the progress, you know?

Copyright 2023 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

It is Good Friday today, and with some minor chaos we will attend to a scheduled medical mystery of our own. It has been scheduled for weeks, so there is no spiritual surprise. Just minor confusion in automotive direction.

Holy Week was always a great one for walking in Washington. This season has turned, finally, and it is temperate on the city streets. The Cherry blossoms have passed, but other new shades remain in purple and alabaster hues. The Victorian row houses across the river in Kalaroma and Dupont are dotted with yellow in the little gardens beside their steep wrought-iron rails and concrete steps.

A few blocks from the Bus Station where we once worked is Ford’s Theater, where President Lincoln was murdered on Good Friday one hundred and fifty-eight years ago. The story of that day is not as fresh as it once was. In Jerusalem, there has been holy week trouble. The trouble includes elements of Ramadan, Passover and crucification amid civic disturbance.

We were at the Circle a few years ago when walking was still a popular thing. We were near the statue of Admiral Dupont, and had the choice of taking the Metro or walking back to the office or strolling south into the commercial district to get back to the office. We chose to walk, and wander through the Mayflower Hotel and pretend we were conventioneers.

The brass fixtures gleamed on the white marble floors of the Grand Concourse, and we fit right in with our badges on lanyards around our necks. We were not challenged when we used the restrooms and not asked about our pronouns. We enjoyed the snowy white hand-towels.

Emerging from the rear entrance, across the street from the bronze wolves that flank the entrance to the Defenders of Wildlife Building, there were banners advertising a new exhibition at the National Geographic Society Headquarters.

Given the choice between being early for a conference call, and seeing something new, we crossed the street and went north up the block to the Geographic. The Kimonos of the last authentic Geisha were on display, and a gallery featuring pages from the original Gospel of Judas Iscariot, the betrayer of Christ the King.

It was the middle afternoon, and there was no line. We were able to lean over the display cases and look at pages frozen in glass plates, the characters on the brown pages still legible after nearly two millennia. They were written, according to the Geographic, as far from the Crucifixion as we were from the murder of President Lincoln.

There is controversy about the Gospel, of course, though that week it seemed to be about ownership, rather than provenance. The story told by the betrayer of Christ appears to be that the treachery was actually an inside job, a tactic to deliver the Redeemer to the hands of his enemies to in order to reveal a higher truth. The theme seems more familiar this year than in the past and echoes some of our recent conflict.

The exhibit shared a confidence between the Son of God and a beloved disciple. That was the way this good day appeared only fifteen years ago. For this observance, we have decided to go to the Doctor and present our blood for routine periodic examination. That is a good thing on a good day. We intend to honor the weekend days that follow as the culmination of a week devoted to religious memories.

There are other aspects of the holiday season that represent the big change. We are going to celebrate in the way we always have. It is a little more comfortable that way for the Old Salts, you know?

Copyright 2023 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

We could start with reports of the hundred rockets fired at Israel from Lebanon to contribute to the Passover season. But that sort of thing has become a sort of tradition. Here is the jumble of other reporting on a week transitioning to Spring.
– Vic

It is past the tipping point this week, so there is merriment as we slide toward the weekend!

We got to “half-way” sometime around the second margarita yesterday at the famous El Paso Cafe. Nice place for lunch near the new corporate HQ here in Arlington. It is a little better than most neighborhood Mexican places across the nation. It was good enough that someone from the second Bush White House got the First Family to have a meal there. We laugh about it when we go, since the Staff knows we are not showing up in armored limousines. While merry in demeanor, we committed no offenses that could be considered “misdemeanors.” It was daylight when we went in, but not when we left:

Screenshot 2023-04-06 at 8.49.58 AM.jpg
Those aspects demeanor could have occurred during time limits assigned to the crime. Back then, they might have been “bookkeeping” errors. We are pretty sure that all those papers we are supposed to retain can be trashed after what- seven years? Maybe we need to keep them forever, which could account for some confusion in Presidential record maintenance.

So there is some of the uncertainty this morning, walking in political terra incognita. It is an “unknown land” in our political affairs. Crafting the weather pitch for this week occurred before the mid-point. We decided to go with proven strategies. We think the way to start is to say “Good morning! All this stuff is going on…” Then, we would sit upright and mention something else as a distraction. Maybe the murder of Bob Lee, the cyber entrepreneur stabbed on the street of San Francisco. His death reflects some of the random chaos about money in our new age.

Some of the events in that category may reflect the impact of a “new world order” the Chinese, Russians, Iranians, Brazilians and some other folks have been talking about. They apparently want to replace the “dollar” with something else. Candidates at this moment are “rubles” and “yuan,” and you can imagine there may be consequences to changing what we call “money,” since cash itself seems to be on the way out. Part of it makes perfect sense, since our $23 Trillion The term for some of the players in this frenzied activity has been around for a while. We called them “BRICS,” like the rectangle of hardened earth that can be used in construction. Brazil, Russia, India, China and someplace that starts with an “S.” We are not sure about that one- Senegal maybe? In any event, it is all going on.

Events over the course of the day gave us two narratives about what was happening in near real time. The indictment itself is interesting from several aspects. From one somewhat dyspeptic view, the arrest over an offense dated to 2017 was interesting. It was not deemed to be an imprisonment-level offense when it occurred, nor when the statute of limitation expired on the original offense. The key to the current storm is the contention that the misdemeanor was committed in order to justify elevation to “felony” in the 34 charges announced yesterday. All of them require “bootstrapping” the original minor expired offense to commission of a few dozen more serious crimes. There was some controversy over whether time limits would render the new more serious charge also expired, since New York Prosecutor Alvin Bragg did not specify what the exactly the additional crime might have been.

A pal wrote to express support for the “concerned citizen” position. We remember our parents being members of that faction back in the 1950s. They worried about all sorts of reasonable public policy issues. Public debt, taxes, schools and public safety used to be some of them. There was a correction to some of the areas that produced others. Remember the controversy about “Three Strikes” and “mandatory sentencing” that resulted in places of incarceration outsourced to the public sector? The most recent bumper-sticker on that matter is “defund the police.” That is part of the “school-to-prison pipeline” we have heard about. We grew up with the “don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time” as a sort of reasonable approach that worked for a while. Because of disparate impact, of course, we now are encouraging the former while ignoring the latter.

Our society has been a successful one. It was filled with plenty and blessed with free mobility. It can hardly be described as “perfect,” but it was something we took a great deal of pride in serving and protecting. We expect the unique strengths of our system to lurch back to some kind of “reform” that will attempt to set things right. Normal things, in which people who intend to do harm are apprehended and incarcerated. Like we said, we have seen this before and are in the process of seeing it again with a new cast of characters.

The best part was the interview with “Stormy Daniels” we saw this morning. We mean no disrespect to her, or course, except to note the news of any potential relationship with her might be worth a non-disclosure agreement, just in case it came up at dinner some evening. So, with that as a perfectly reasonable basis for old controversy, It is possible that this will turn out to only be another brief spate of media activity from the Narrative Development Section. Based on the preliminary scheduling, they intend to keep this going through at least December of this year as two other matters play out- the Georgia matter about “finding votes,” and the “6Jan” series of events that is said to represent an attempt to overthrow the government of the United States.

We took a poll here about “How Serious Is This Stuff?” There is a little fatigue in the personalities involved, since we have been hearing about formerly minor expired offenses resurrected to shape the future. As a practical matter, we would prefer to worry about the stuff that hasn’t happened yet. There could be some excitement there, since one of the Kennedy clan announced he was going to run against the incumbent Chief Executive. A Kennedy-Biden primary contest might be fun, and we would not have to learn anything new to feel strongly about.

So, this week provides a backwards vista as the future remains cloudy with a chance of rain. It is in keeping with the Weather Report, you know? The last time we were in the Holy Land, we kept good notes on what the heavens were bringing to the trip. That way, we would be well prepared to deal with “yesterday” in case it happened again. And tomorrow could just take care of itself.

Copyright 2023 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

We attempted to stay awake for the address by a former Chief Executive. Sadly, we only made it to the Tucker Carlson fifteen-minute lead-up to the surprisingly contained and focused remarks by the former Chief Official of the United States Government. The new sleeping Gummies that Splash contributed earlier may have contributed to our lack of attention to the culmination of Indictment Day.

It was not surprising to see the hullabaloo on Day Three of Bloomeroo. We have adopted part of that term- the Bloomeroo- to match the blossoming of the season. There is also the real blossoming of other issues associated with the 20-month Long March to the 2024 Election. It appears to be quite a hike.

True fact: We in the Writer’s Section at Socotra House operate as a collaborative group. Some of us continue old bad habits despite rational pleading. So, the animated dialogue- the stuff the Legal Section prefers stay off direct distribution- spend a few minutes of each hour on the patio, since corporate decreed the tobacco abusers could no longer smoke inside. “Building Policy,” they say. What we noticed outside through the smoke was the magic of the Azalia bushes. They were blossoming just as the big private jet flew to New York. There were some bright shades of color to mark a visible change of season, but to see the small buds march to bright white over the course of the afternoon was cool.

We naturally talked about the indictments and added context. We have colors independent of Spring. Big Pink, the new corporate HQ, is intended to comport with the new 15-minute City initiative we are supposed to manage on the electric scooters that are piled near the building’s back ramp. We are in a solid Blue area. Arlington is filled with Bureaucrats in both the government and non-governmental organizations who call DC a spiritual home. So, in addition to local blue sources we take the Square State Cowboy Daily electronic version. It provides a little balance to the fevered narrative rhetoric. The Square State is about as “Red” as a place could be, and have friends out there. It is useful as a resource to see how things are working away from the lodestone of national politics.

So, the indictment out there in fly-over America was interesting. The Square State Supreme Court disbarred an attorney named Leigh Anne Manlove. There were no pro-noun issues associated with her service as county district attorney from 2019-2023. She was not accused of bold decriminalization or homeless issues, but for not being very good at her job.

The verdict announcement was similar to the one in New York, with punishment to be imposed early next month for:

“…aggravating and mitigating circumstances… number of rule violations… severity of rule violations…pattern of conduct… pervasive dishonesty…conduct on the legal and criminal justice system… state of mind…”

The Square State concluded disbarment was the proper sanction for that litany of charges and directed implementation. We read the piece a couple times so we could place it in context with other legal circus in New York. There were smiles at the idea that the same charges could have been used for both cases. Out in the Square State, we don’t know if Ms. Manlove was a blue stalwart from Sheridan or Casper surrounded by a shallow but broad red sea of oppression. We are familiar how it works the other way. The interesting part of it is that the former public servant was also fined $32K along with having her professional means of living stripped away.

The discussion of Square State local justice bounced periodically off the parallel but distinctly different things happening in New York. We agreed long ago to try to stay away from lawyers, not that they aren’t perfectly splendid people. They are just awfully expensive and there are so many laws, you know?

We have resolved not to worry about it until the blossoms are down and some of the indictments work themselves out.

Copyright 2023 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

(Fair Use of the term in Lo-Res for identification of a re-purposed National Holiday named “Bloomeroo 2023!” with the year planned for annual updating).

You can imagine the hub-bub around the patio on a Spring day with all sorts of stuff flying around. There is the legal event up north in New York today, and the rhetorical flourishes in both streams of information are pretty dramatic. It is a little different than the “walls are closing in” mantra, since there are actual walls involved this afternoon for an indeterminate amount of time. Another digital one showed up in a text from the company Legal section. It advised ‘a middle ground approach’ to commentary of any possible event or digital image, used only under “fair use” provisions in lo-res for identification purposes.

That diverged attention from what is going on now to creation of a new footnote to go with the list published on the Company website protecting the Chairman from possible future violation by the independent contractors who provide daily content. The new note (‘foot’ referring to a universal ‘upper’) attempts to bring together the previous jumble of disclaimers into a more unified format, including the non-profit small disabled veteran-owned business angle. DeMille had a draft of the proposed new footnote. He passed it around on his glowing tablet device. “Socotra House does not necessarily agree or have any responsibility for anyone else’s eccentric contention.”

Rocket is normally on the leading edge of events and leaned forward on his deck chair. “Contention of what? There are people shouting “Lock Him Up!” and others gravely saying “this marks a significant change in how the judicial system works.”

DeMille smiled. “It is supposed to be a nice day with temperature near 80 for the first time this season.”

“Come on! Doesn’t the new footnote mean we can say what we actually feel?”

“Sure. Just include Legal on “CC” for the outgoing stuff. They say they want to be prepared in case an expired misdemeanor turns into a felony charge to the company about a seven-year-old then-legal contract being mis-booked in another city.”

Universal agreement on that matter, and with it out of the way we were ready to start the day. The Ukrainians say they shot down 14 drones overnight and there was interest here, since the Russians have turned the old supply lines around. They have hundreds of the drones apparently provided by the Iranians. And the Russians are arresting American journalists. Or spies, depending on who you hear it from.

Don’t worry. Events may be kind of chaotic, but we are working on a new footnote so Legal can get it on the website to protect any inadvertent disclosures by contract personnel. DeMille says we may shift to another stream in the information torrent. He thinks we can go back to promoting ‘Bloomeroo 2023!’ as the name for a new National Holiday period to mark this time of dramatic change. He says “just stay away from any specifics for which anyone might be accountable.”

We are in! Happy Bloomeroo2023!

Copyright 2023 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com