I ran across something on the top of the files in Mom’s excellent library in the Little House on the bluff above the Bay. It was part of the flotsam and jetsam  of a long life, and an active and playful family. This was a story from Uncle Jim. It was contained on a couple […]

  A groundswell of interest has risen over Mac’s revelation at Willow the other night that he is a past master of the pressure cooker, the mostdangerous single device in the Socotra Test Kitchen. Check that. The pressurecooker is the only device that actually could produce high velocity shrapnelduring the cooking process. The deep-fat fryer […]

  Mac had some back problems last week, but he came roaringback and was ready to hit the bar at Willow on Monday. The weather wasloosening up just like his sacroiliac- unseasonably warm in Arlington, and therising temperature featured the best of both worlds- the ladies shed theircoats to revealing advantage but kept their tall […]

I woke on the farm this morning. I slept on the couch in the great room, listening to the mournful sound of the freight trains sounding their whistles at the grade crossings over by the hamlet of Winston. I thought of my Irish ancestors at work on that very track, heading south and west to […]

    Bobbie got back on Thursday. She had gone to see the elephant. She arrived happy and in good shape, according to my pal Joe, who was beaming with relief and paternal pride. His little girl was out of the war zone. She had been part of the surge of troops intended to knock […]

  (Stacey with an e holding one of Kate’s famous red-velvet cupcakes with butter frosting. Photo Socotra.) I am about done with the hot-button topics of the week. It is Friday, after all, and thank God for that. I was thinking, something I normally do right after mashing the “send” button on the story that […]

      Socotra House is a concern without specific ideological agendas.   Oh, hell, that is nonsense. Sorry. I know when we start out on these little soap-bubble voyages that we are going to wind up taking a shot at people and things, but I assure you there is actually a vague attempt at […]

I tried to watch the State of the Onion thing on the tube last night but got bored after the first half hour of celebrity blather. I toddled off to bed before we got to the class warfare thing. Apparently will be the basis of the campaign this year. I surrender. As Michelle has observed […]

    The strongest radiation storm since 2005 is raging on the sun. You know things have been ominously quiet up there, but that is over. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded a monster ultraviolet plume on Sunday, a colossal jet of “coronal mass ejection”  from sunspot 1402. The charged particles will strike the earth this […]

  Gentle Readers, We screwed up here at The Daily yesterday. Not unusual, as I am sure you will attest, but I got caught this time by two senior intelligence officials and I need to explain. Typing quickly, I noted that the ship from which my pal Mac acquired the “small” battle flag- the mighty […]