The Salts on the patio were in an uproar, and you can imagine why. Word had floated out from the big five-sided Building on this side of the lazy brown river that the smaller alabaster building on the east side of the same Potomac might need our services again. We are aware of some of […]

We have another of the month-long festivals to observe today, one of five this July alone. It has a curious bridge to another one on the list, which is a tribute to mental instability. It is called up specifically on this date among the 31 other options since it celebrates something specific on this one: […]

I was happily lit up from the vodka I inhaled at the ritual Folks At The Railroad Track End of the Subdivision Happy Hour.” Two of us from the street were heading out to the Forrestal that night, so the gaiety was slightly muted by the realization that the crushing schedule was beginning to roll […]

It is funny to tread the steps we took to arrive at this place in our national history. There are a variety of issues flying about. One of them is the Deep State and how it works. It is funny to feel some old emotions come back these days. The ones most powerful were about […]

(US Navy image attached of the facility at GTMO, Cuba). There is some commotion out there in the wider world this morning. In Lithuania, the big NATO conference is underway. We don’t recall this much excitement about one of those since the last time the European alliance was blustering about Bosnia, and Russia’s attempt to […]

The Ukrainian President took a moment to observe the 500th day of the Special Military Operation being conducted in his nation over the weekend. The second-string commentators on Fox filled the air-waves both days with stories a day or so out of phase in the re-run stringss of shattered Ukrainian tanks. It made us think […]

There is a little wiggle room this morning in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Not that we are wiggling that dramatically. The Patio Space- once known as “The Lanai,” is not quite ready for that yet this morning, and the excesses of some in the evening hours last night is still playing out on the margins […]

The attachment is a photo dated sometime in 1981. It features the Gang assigned to the US Pacific Fleet’s Ocean Surveillance Information Facility. We knew it as the FOSIC. It was a component of a global system intended to track the motion of Soviet Naval Units worldwide, with emphasis on the ballistic missile submarines that […]

Copyright 2023 Vic Socotra www.vicsocotra.com

So, we have brushed past some of the interesting ways our government responds to crisis. Our last exposure commenced in the wild response to 9/11. In part of the immediate response, we found ourselves attached to the person of the Cabinet Secretary designated to be the one who would survive the next attack. The means […]