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 […]

There was befuddlement in the 4th Floor Conferences Room. We had closed out the evening with festive beverages and the basketball game up in East Lansing. We had expected the next storm to sweep Iin starting late yesterday afternoon. The bets for what was had been for nine inches of new fluffy snow. Instead, sunrise […]

(Photo Socotra, 29 January 2026)“Waxing” is a term Rocket once applied to caring for his car. When the second word becomes Gibbous, the phrase usually refers to what’s happening up there in exo-space. The Moon. That’s also how the weather feels. The image above was taken yesterday morning—a cold, fanciful reminder that we’re spinning on […]

The Trillium building’s majestic lobby seems like it is busier this week. That is a function of some of the staff being forced to stay over at the building due to the snow compacted under the ice coating of the frozen sleet. We support the stay over, since that means a slightly shorter wait for […]

We think Bob an Edith decided to delay the announcement of the closing of their North Arlington location until the Snow Days we are trapped in are over. That diner has been serving up hotcakes and eggs for more than twenty years. The chain has been a family-owned business for 55 years and we can […]