![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/080326-dearborn-1.jpg\")
\nAdvisory in effect until the escalator works again. And without further ado, a counterpiece to the furor over the Spanish border trouble…<\/p>\n
Socotra House 15-Minute County Travel Advisory
\nPastor Frank Note: “Morning, Folks! Miles is still out tis morning and he said from his bed he is not coming back until the shooting starts again and he comfortable. There is a lot flying around about US Embassies warning people not to be where they are, wherever that might be. Fast Eddie from our Socotra Legal Shop says we can tell people to be alert but not alarmed and be happy to travel anywhere in the DC or greater Metropolitan Detroit area. And if you are headed downtown here, we are pleased to report the flooding at the Ballston Metro stop by the old Socotra complex in Arlington is starting to dry out. But be alert, please. Anything could happen!”<\/p>\n
\nAdvisory in effect until the escalator works again. And without further ado, a counterpiece to the furor over the Spanish border trouble…<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/080326-dearborn-2.jpg\")
\nDearborn From Our Dreams
\nThe gray skies rolled in after the church obligations were complete for the week, aside from the novena and the occasional private conversation with the Infinite Spirit. They say the flooding in the DC subways may be receding, so we hope this afternoon has clearing skies in case someone needs to cross the River. We hadn’t intended to wander back to Detroit this morning.
\nBut somehow, we did.<\/p>\n
Only Vic and Fast Eddie are Michiganders around here. Both were born there, though Eddie took the hard road through Detroit Vice and Wayne State Law School, while Vic escaped into Naval Intelligence and eventually Washington.<\/p>\n
Neither of them lived in Dearborn during the long reign of Mayor Orville Hubbard.<\/p>\n
He served from 1942 until 1978, dying four years later. His departure marked the end of an era and the beginning of a transformation that, looking back nearly half a century later, is remarkable in both its speed and scale.<\/p>\n
Hubbard became nationally known for his outspoken opposition to African Americans settling in Dearborn, even while Ford Motor Company\u2014headquartered there\u2014was one of America’s largest employers of Black workers. The city he governed was very different from the one that exists today.<\/p>\n
The image on the left in the image above captures that earlier Dearborn.<\/p>\n
The image on the right is from this past week, showing demonstrators in Dearborn participating in a march that included calls for the implementation of Islamic Sharia law. Whatever one thinks of the demonstration itself, it illustrates just how dramatically demographics and public life can change within a single community over time.<\/p>\n
The discussion reminded us of events in Ceuta, Spain, where tens of thousands of migrants briefly overwhelmed a city of fewer than fifty thousand permanent residents. That situation eventually eased, but it demonstrated how rapidly local governments can find themselves dealing with entirely new realities.<\/p>\n
If you did not grow up in places with well-defined neighborhoods and long-established civic identities, these sorts of demographic shifts may seem abstract.<\/p>\n
For those of us who did, they are simply history unfolding in real time.<\/p>\n
From our Fifteen Minute perspective, government should ultimately reflect the wishes of the people who legally comprise the community.<\/p>\n
Simple enough.<\/p>\n
Of course, that naturally leads to another question: who makes up that community, who is eligible to vote, and how are those elections administered? Those questions have become part of today’s political conversation across much of the country.<\/p>\n
Here in Virginia, for example, Governor Glenn Youngkin recently restored voting rights to thousands of individuals with felony convictions through the Commonwealth’s existing restoration process. Others continue to argue for broader or more automatic restoration policies. Like many public issues, reasonable people disagree about where the proper balance lies.<\/p>\n
Part of what makes all this so fascinating is not simply the issues themselves, but the extraordinary speed at which change now arrives.<\/p>\n
Miles reminded Eddie over in Socotra Legal that our job is simply to observe the torrent of information washing over us every day, sort through it as honestly as we can, and occasionally smile at the human comedy unfolding around us.<\/p>\n
Eddie nodded.<\/p>\n
“Keep it mildly ironic,” he said. “Generally optimistic.”<\/p>\n
Miles replied that we would certainly try.<\/p>\n
It really is an amazing time to be alive. And good heavens, the sun just came out!<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 Vic Socotra<\/p>\n
www.vicsocotra.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Socotra House 15-Minute County Travel Advisory Pastor Frank Note: “Morning, Folks! Miles is still out tis morning and he said from his bed he is not coming back until the shooting starts again and he comfortable. There is a lot flying around about US Embassies warning people not to be where they are, wherever that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-socotra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33827"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33831,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33827\/revisions\/33831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}