There was some unease this morning at the Conference Table. Miles was late, thinking the talk about the coming snow north of the Maryland line would be covered by the graphic Splash did yesterday about being a soldier without boots when your commanding General decides to cross the Delaware River. Turns out he was wrong […]

“Intifada. This piece of old Jerusalem Wall thrown through my cab window, 13 March 1990.” Section Leader Miles was not particularly energized this Friday. There was the usual post-holiday requirement to drag at least some of the alleged Creative Group back into the conference room to generate something timely to set up the last weekend […]

That slide was what Vic claimed was going to be his Christmas Eve, Eve contribution. He ran into Santa down at the Sled Shop where he was doing some last minute adjustments to the clean fusion power cell that will propel him across the globe, bringing treats to those on the Nice List and dropping […]

(On the Way to Manger Square, Bethlehem, 1990) It was 2008 at Big Pink, on the West bank of the Potomac River. I reached over and turned the station. I was starting to analyze the Somali threat, and what we got wrong in our adventure in Mogadishu a decade ago, and the sponsored Ethiopian invasion […]

To mark the Solstice and the week, we turned off the news in the conference room. No panels, no crawls, no updates from the wider human derailment. Instead, we wandered into the seasonal video entertainment we’d been ignoring while waiting for Santa—this one with the stout beared fellow improbably trapped in an AI-generated psychic globe […]

(A distant view of the world famous Shopping Bag high-rise, the “Good Luck Bear” taped to the overhead of the group mobility van, the wreck, the Fire Fighters and the Fairfax Police responded and alert drivers found a cut through off the big road and we got around it. Without use of horn. Things in […]

This is an unusual edition of the Socotra House Daily. it begins with an apology for allowing the past catch up to us as the future arrives. Some of the Boomers in the group are now proud grandparents of some attractive “Gen A” kids, and that is what started the discussion, since we didn’t know […]

t back to my office and ordered a dozen clip-on bow ties. If a tie was required at all times, it would be one I could put on in seconds and forget about. I never wore a long tie again. Only later did I notice the line running backward. My grandfather, in his customary bow […]

There was a certain pensive air that wafted through the Holiday Spirit we are attempting to festoon around the conference room. The big flat-screen at the north end of the Conference Room was featuring that 5-ft-8-inch stocky-built alleged murderer from Brown University, plus another run through on the killings in Sydney, Australia at the Bondi […]

Rocket was holding a glowing image of the horrific events at Bondi Beach at the South End of the conference table. Splash sat across from him with his iPad flat, glowing upward with a hazy image of a man in dark clothing walking around the corner at Brown College in Rhode island. Holly had a […]