Daily Entries for the week of
Sunday, April 26 2020
through
Saturday, May 2 2020
It’s Saturday, May 2
Welcome to the 756th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
Collage by Howard D
Here’s a list, even less complete, of the dishes shown here:
shrimp paella
ragout of chicken, chestnuts, and winter keeper apples
turkey pot pie
chicken bibimbap
skillet chicken with caramelized onions, shallots, and chard
savory tart with leeks and chard
mujadara (Middle Eastern ragout of green lentils and farro) with leeks and greens
Indian-spiced chicken with chickpeas and spinach
chicken piccata over egg noodles
chicken stroganoff
Thai tamarind chicken stir fry
Pierre Franey’s turkey chili
meyer lemon and artichoke braised chicken with polenta and broccoli
authentic (allegedly) Bolognese lasagna [i.e., without mozzarella or ricotta]
turkey Bolognese
I hope you enjoy looking at these.
See Howard’s thoughts in the mail box, this section, #5.0
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2.0 Commentary
Pell mell openings across the country
ignited by the expiration of stay-at-home orders.
Why is the sight of thousands of beachgoers sharing the same breaths upsetting?
Contagion?
Are some of us listening to our scientists and
others not?
God save us.
I am liking the saner Charlie Baker approach: creating watchdog agencies to prepare the protocols for the Imminent controlled openings of a variety of businesses.
I think redundancy and repetition are welcome in these times so a repetition.
Chief among the checklist of conditions in place as a backdrop of business re-openings are:
An abundance of testing sites.
An abundance of beds for the victims
Quarantine available for all victims.
An easy handling of the surge coupled with
the imminent prospect of a decline in new cases.
Tracing available to track the source of a contagion.
The empowerment of watchdog agencies.
And active and hopeful corona virus vaccine research.
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4.0 Chuckles and Thoughts
…some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.
~Albert Camus
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5.0 Mail
We love getting mail.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
This from Howard D, Covid Cooking:
No despair.
Food.
(Hint: I don’t cook if I’m depressed; further, if I don’t cook, as usual, all things from scratch, we don’t eat nearly so well, in all respects).
And by the way, I’m still on track to continue to lose weight, healthily: about 30 pounds now in the last 18 months.
Here’s a photo album, by no means complete, that I’ve entitled Covid Cooking… It actually does include some dishes I made going back to December (but remember, Covid was already rampaging then in Wuhan, China, however clueless was the American response to this foreboding news). We here in Merion PA already had to be semi-sequestered, as we have periodically for the past 16 months.
And I very much hope you stay safe. I know you know better (you’ve even begun to admit it out loud around the edges), but I’m not always sure you believe what you know, realistically, is how to be safe.
No despair, plenty of hope, and a lot of faith, as I’ve had all my life, in the cluelessness and ignorance of too many of my fellow Americans, most of them, thank God, not of my acquaintance (which makes them even more untrustworthy).
Take care Dom, and stay well.
love
h
Blog Meister responds: Some pretty serious cooking going on.
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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Thursday night I enjoyed a 1 ½ lb lobster steamed in 1 cup each of white wine and water.
I made a risotto, sauteing 1/3cup of arborio rice until transparent with 2oz of finely chopped onion in 1TB butter.
I added a pinch of saffron and salt to the hot stock from the lobster-steam and
ladled the stock into the sautéing rice to cover and
as the rice absorbed the stock, kept ladling the stock until the rice was done to the consistency I preferred.
I dismembered the lobster, reserving the tomalley.
I added 1TB quality mayonnaise (check the ingredients label: principally oil, eggs, and vinegar) to the tomalley and stirred that into the cooked risotto. The last of my takeout vegetables from several days ago rounded out the dinner.
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I am very sorry that weeks go by without plans for a dinner party.
Friends, long meals, wine.
But that’s social distancing.
As for regular meals, nothing has changed for me.
My meals are all planned in advance.
Daily shopping is done with the next two days in mind.
Daily.
Especially with the stay-at-home order in place,
having a rationale to go out is imperative to keep my sanity.
I depend on a 2 ½ hour daily outing to stay sane.
I depend on leaving at 10.30am every day to help structure my day.
I begin the outing by donning my mask.
My building requires masks at all times.
Before leaving the apartment, I always consult the Track the T app for
an amazingly accurate prediction of the TOA of the next train.
That tells me if I have to walk fast or can be leisurely.
(Although, armed with my kindle and loving my book, I don’t mind waiting.
It’s reading.)
I check for the T anyway.
Perverse.
I call for an elevator (I am thirty floors up.)
We only allow one person or party in an elevator at any time.
In normal times, the elevators have days when they run busy and slowly.
Not in these days.
The response is immediate.
I walk the three to four minutes to the T.
While waiting at the Aquarium station I am almost always alone.
I board a 10% full car and take the Blue Line two quick stops to Government Center.
There I switch over to the E line which takes me to the Prudential Center.
Why there every day?
This is where I’ve worked for the last eighteen months.
Every day.
As Maggie Smith so brilliantly said, “What’s a weekend?”
Habit.
But also energizing.
At the Pru I can bank and walk through Eataly for their latest sales.
Which I some times buy.
Then I walk out to Boylston Street.
Sometimes buy takeout on Boylston St.
Then over to Newbury and the Thinking Cup which
marvelously has stayed open.
They deserve a commendation.
Not many cafes serve coffee as wonderful as does Thinking Cup. And
the baristas, Brenda and Nev, I have known for years. And
their pastries and cakes and muffins are in the top echelon of bakeshops in our city. And
that very hot cappuccino is so richy and creamy and caffeiney it’s like a sip of heaven.
Every day.
All weather.
Then I walk to Whole Foods for my shopping.
The one at Charles Plaza, while strictly adhering to the social distancing protocols, always has room for one more.
I take my time.
While I have a list, a short one, I like drifting, getting ideas.
Careful: aisles are one way now.
Then I walk home.
To face the long afternoon waiting for dinner time.
Alone.
Mostly.
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It’s Friday, May 1
Welcome to the 755th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
Pig's trotters, served as Irish-style Crubeens in Illinois
Helen - Flickr: Crubeens
What the Clancy Brothers called the original fast food of Ireland.
[below] Wonton noodles with pig's trotters braised with nam yu (fermented bean curd)
Banej - Own work
[below]
Pig: sow with piglet
Scott Bauer, USDA
http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/graphics/photos/jun01/k9441-1.htm
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2.0 Commentary
Doesn’t it look like we’re making healthy decisions on our march to May 18?
The day the mayor of Boston and the Governor of Massachusetts set to turn on the spigot of reopenings.
Looking from here as a day of rejoicing.
Of returning to eking out a living?
Delighted to ignite a conversation on pork products.
With these happy notes, add an uptick in weather.
Much anticipated spring warmth is here.
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4.0 Chuckles and Thoughts
The money power preys on the nation in times of peace, and
conspires against it in times of adversity.
It is more despotic than monarchy,
more insolent than autocracy,
more selfish than bureaucracy.
It denounces, as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes. ~Abraham Lincoln
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5.0 Mail
We love getting mail.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
Pigs’ feet.
Who’d a-thought someone else ate that vile jelly?
And yet, I do have a soul-mate in South Carolina
whom I love and
I shoulda known.
From Tommie T:
Hey, Dom,
When I was a little girl in Alabama, pickled pig's feet with saltines was a favorite snack.
It was a special treat from my grandparents.
The feet were in a huge jar on the counter of the local grocery store.
I just remember how delicious they tasted.
My grandmother also made pigtail pie similar to chicken pot pie.
I made it one time for Leigh, Jake, and Don, and it wasn't a hit, but I savored it.
As a child in the South during the 40's and 50's, we ate everything - nothing wasted.
My uncle was a hunter so we had fried squirrel, rabbit, and quail and we had to watch for the buckshot.
I would love to have had a bite of your braised pigs' feet with the gravy (which I have made from your recipe several times).
Think I will make it soon with pork neck bones.
love,
tommie
Blog Meister responds: The trough: where immigrant culture and dyed-in-the-wool Americana meet.
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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Wednesday night I enjoyed a 14oz boneless rib eye with an assortment of vegetables from the last Chinese food order.
In my head, thinking of a lobster risotto, to take advantage of the low-prices.
Do you realize it’s cheaper to eat lobster than many fish?
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A pig's trotter, also known as a pettitoe, is the culinary term for the foot of a pig.
The cuts are used in various dishes around the world, and experienced a resurgence in the late-2000s.
Before sale, the trotters are cleaned and typically have the hairs pulled with a hot tank and beaters.
They are often used in cooking to make stocks, as they add thickness to gravy, although they are also served as a normal cut of meat.
Chef Marco Pierre White has long served trotters at his restaurants, based on the original recipe of mentor Pierre Koffmann.
In the New York City restaurant Hakata Tonton, 33 of the 39 dishes served contain pig's trotters.
Following the late-2000s financial crisis, there has been a boom in popularity of pig's trotters in the United Kingdom as a revival in cheap meat recipes occurred.
In 2008, British supermarket Waitrose reintroduced trotters to its stores, and
found that they quickly became popular.
In 2009, Pierre Koffmann set up a pop-up restaurant, and found that diners ate an entire month's stock of 500 pig's trotters in less than a week.
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It’s Thursday, April 30
Welcome to the 754th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
"Admiral Porter's Fleet Running the Rebel Blockade of the Mississippi at Vicksburg, April 16th 1863."
Colored lithograph published by Currier & Ives, New York, 1863.
Ships depicted are (from the front to the rear, all USS except as noted)): Benton (Flagship); Lafayette with General Price alongside; Louisville; Mound City; Pittsburg; Carondelet; transports Silver Wave, Forest Queen & Henry Clay; and Tuscumbia. Text under the print's title reads:
"At half past ten P.M. the boats left their moorings & steamed down the river, the Benton, Admiral Porter, taking the lead -- as they approached the point opposite the town, a terrible concentrated fire of the center, upper and lower batteries, both water and bluff, was directed upon the channel, which here ran within one hundred yards of the shore.
At the same moment innumerable floats of turpentine and other combustible materials were set ablaze. In the face of all this fire, the boats made their way with but little loss except the transport Henry Clay which was set on fire & sunk."
Currier and Ives - http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/images/h76000/h76557kl.htm Courtesy of the U.S. Naval Academy Museum, Beverley R. Robinson Collection. U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph - Photo #: NH 76557-KN (Color)
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2.0 Commentary
Fits and starts or
should we say ‘starts and fits’?
We are in a jerky moment within the pandemic.
Open. Don’t.
Here in Massachusetts, the governor has established a Reopening Advisory Board, which is charged with informing his administration on strategies for a phased reopening of the economy. Their first report will be ready for the May 18 expiration of the stay-at-home advisory.
A start.
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4.0 Chuckles and Thoughts
The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend.
~Abraham Lincoln
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5.0 Mail
We love getting mail.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
This from Terry K who was part of a writers group that met at my apartment to critique our work and
then share a meal together.
Great moments that helped shaped me as a writer.
From Terry K:
Hi Neil, Allan and Dom,
Hope you are healthy and safe, and that your writing is going well. I wanted to let you know that I have a new short story collection, Coping Mechanisms, that's now available as an ebook from Amazon.
It's brand new, so as of now there are no reviews posted. So, awesome of course if you want to buy it, but if you think you might be willing to post a review I'd be happy to send you a copy of the manuscript. It's very short, 10 stories with an average length of 1200 words, so 12,000 words total. Let me know...
Thanks,
terry kitchen
Blog Meister responds: hi terry, congratulations! when i have time to read it i will buy it and write the review.
meanwhile, i will post this letter and hope for the best for you.
i have fond memories of our writers' group meetings.
formative.
love to all of you,
dom
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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Tuesday night I enjoyed a plate of Gravy with big Pasta called Cannoni.
I added Pork Feet to the Gravy.
I saw the Pork Feet at the Whole Foods meat counter: a first for them.
I slowly fried the pork for half an hour on each side, and
then I added wine and braised them (two pig’s feet) for another hour and
then I added chicken stock and braised them for another hour.
I deglazed the fry pan with some of the Gravy and added the well-cooked pig’s feet and
the pan juices to the Gravy pot and simmered that for another half hour.
While the Gravy was notably more tasty, eating the pig’s feet is the main interest.
This is a plate for the trolls among us who love gnawing bones.
There is little to no meat on the bones but
there is a lot of cartilage rich in collagen.
Collagen is helpful in building strong bones and
I think it’s helpful in reducing arthritis.
But do not go by me.
Aside from the health benefits, the cartilage is perfect for
bone lovers: lots of ripping and tearing.
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The Vicksburg campaign was a series of maneuvers and battles in the Western Theater of the American Civil War directed against Vicksburg, Mississippi, a fortress city that dominated the last Confederate-controlled section of the Mississippi River.
The Union Army of the Tennessee under Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant gained control of the river by capturing this stronghold and defeating Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton's forces stationed there.
The campaign consisted of many important naval operations, troop maneuvers, failed initiatives, and eleven distinct battles from December 26, 1862, to July 4, 1863.
Military historians divide the campaign into two formal phases: operations against Vicksburg (December 1862 – January 1863) and Grant's operations against Vicksburg (March–July 1863).
Grant initially planned a two-pronged approach in which half of his army, under Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, would advance to the Yazoo River and attempt to reach Vicksburg from the northeast, while Grant took the remainder of the army down the Mississippi Central Railroad.
Both of these initiatives failed.
Grant conducted a number of "experiments" or expeditions—Grant's bayou operations—that attempted to enable waterborne access to the Mississippi south of Vicksburg's artillery batteries.
All five of these initiatives failed as well.
Finally, Union gunboats and troop transport boats ran the batteries at Vicksburg and met up with Grant's men who had marched overland in Louisiana.
On April 29 and April 30, 1863, Grant's army crossed the Mississippi and landed at Bruinsburg, Mississippi.
An elaborate series of demonstrations and diversions fooled the Confederates and the landings occurred without opposition.
Over the next 17 days, Grant maneuvered his army inland and won five battles, captured the state capital of Jackson, Mississippi, and assaulted and laid siege to Vicksburg.
After Pemberton's army surrendered on July 4 (one day after the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg), and when Port Hudson surrendered to Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks on July 9, Texas and Arkansas were effectively cut off from the Confederacy, and the Mississippi River was once again open for northern commerce to reach the Gulf of Mexico, and as a supply line for the Union Army.
Grant's Vicksburg campaign is studied as a masterpiece of military operations and a major turning point of the war.
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It’s Wednesday, April 29
Welcome to the 753th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
The Voyage of Life: Old Age
Thomas Cole
Thomas Cole - National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C., online collection
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2.0 Commentary
I think that the mayor of Boston is missing the boat.
We should not be in an ‘all or nothing’ frame of mind.
We are edging to the point where
it will be entirely appropriate for the Museum of Fine Arts to
generate a protocol to open their doors;
to the point where they can reopen on the 4th of July.
That destination-point assumes:
An abundance of testing sites and
beds.
A steadily declining number of new corona virus cases.
The empowerment of watchdog agencies.
And active and hopeful corona virus vaccine research.
Reaching that point, now just days away,
the end of April as
predicted five weeks ago in this blog.
Attaining that point
it’s entirely appropriate for businesses, the Museum of Fine Arts one of them,
to present the public with their reopening protocols
which will include:
Timed ticketing.
A room-to-room reduced capacity.
Ample opportunities for hand-sanitizing.
Restaurant protocols.
Mandatory masks for all on museum premises.
Limited picture-by-picture standing spots.
Self-policing by viewers to avoid the irritating emergence of
a Social Distancing Police Corps.
Time for an educated return to a just, empathetic, energetic, optimistic American capitalism.
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4.0 Chuckles and Thoughts
No one has ever become poor by giving.
~Anne Frank
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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Monday night I enjoyed sushi takeout from Fin’s.
For Monday, I have a nice steak but I also have a Gravy with
meatballs.
Might buy a hot sausage,
add it to the Gravy and
enjoy a modest plate of pasta on the side.
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Old Age is the fourth in a series of allegorical oil-on-canvas paintings by American artist Thomas Cole, entitled The Voyage of Life, which represent man's journey through life.
The final painting is an image of death.
The man, still in his boat, has grown old, and the waters of the river have calmed as they flow into the sea of eternity.
The figurehead and hourglass are missing from the battered boat;
the withered old voyager has reached the end of earthly time.
His guardian angel hovers close to the boat,
while angels descend from heaven in the distance.
The landscape is practically gone, with just
a few rough rocks representing the edge of the earthly world, and
dark water stretching ahead.
This painting, along with the other three in the series, was painted in 1842 and
is held by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
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It’s Tuesday, April 28
Welcome to the 752nd consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
Caroline Rémy de Guebhard
This picture of Rémy is a carte de visite taken by French photographer Nadar sometime between 1889 and 1899.
The photograph, entitled "Séverine, debout, un poing sur la hanche" ('Séverine, standing, a fist on her hip'), is in the collection of the Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand in Paris.
Photograph credit: Nadar; restored by Adam Cuerden
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2.0 Commentary
The positive trend on the corona virus battle continues.
Death and destruction still surrounding us.
Yet conditions seem to be improving.
My God!
We can’t dwell in the gutter of despair.
Leave that for other cultures.
We are the descendants of John Wayne.
We overcome.
And we shall overcome.
Yet, make no mistake.
Days of wine and roses are distinctly behind us.
We must now apply the lessons we learned from our Great Depressions.
Recognize that vast resources of wealth have been obliterated.
Hopes for the immediate future must be tweaked to accept loss.
Graduating classes.
College students.
Sports stars.
Wherever we turn, we and people close to us have already been deprived.
We can’t pollyanna this away.
But we will tough through it.
And be understanding, sympathetic to others.
God bless us everyone.
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4.0 Chuckles and Thoughts
You can always-always-give something, even if it's a simple act of kindness!
If everyone were to give in this way and
didn't scrimp on kindly words,
there would be much more love and justice in the world!
~Anne Frank
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5.0 Mail
We love getting mail.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
This from Joanna E:
Hello my friend,
I hope you’re having a good week.
Your story about waiting for Yan when you couldn’t find her lifted my low spirits and is my fuel for having a positive attitude this weekend.
Love you.
Joanna
Blog Meister responds: I did find Yan today and asked her where she bought her lunches.
"Supermarket," her answer.
Perfect.
Now I can envision a complete meal for her, filling and healthful.
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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Tonight I emptied the refrigerator which resulted in a turkey dinner for supper.
Leftovers.
And delicious they were.
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Caroline Rémy de Guebhard (27 April 1855 – 24 April 1929) was a French anarchist, journalist, and feminist, best known under the pen name Séverine.
She was associated with Jules Vallès and became involved in his socialist publication Cri du Peuple, taking control of the newspaper when his health deteriorated.
She left in 1888 after a confrontation with Marxist journalist Jules Guesde, but continued to write for other publications, promoting women's emancipation and denouncing social injustices.
A growing militant in her views, she became friends with fellow journalist and feminist Marguerite Durand, but following a confrontation with the Marxist Jules Guesde she left the newspaper in 1888. She continued writing for other papers in which she promoted women's emancipation and denounced social injustices of all kinds including the Dreyfus affair. In 1897, she began writing for Durand's feminist daily newspaper La Fronde.
A staunch leftist, Rémy backed some of the anarchist causes including the defense of Germaine Berton and participated in the 1927 efforts to save Sacco and Vanzetti.
She supported the Russian Revolution of 1917 and in 1921 she joined the French Communist Party; however, only a few years later, she quit the party in order to maintain her membership in the Human Rights League.
Shortly before her death, she took part in the campaign to support the candidacy of Dr. Albert Besson, who was elected councilor of the district Saint-Fargeau, general counselor of the Seine then deputy chairman of the Council of Paris and the general council of the Seine.
In 1933, in memory of Séverine, he had the Paris council vote for the attribution of the name "Séverine" to the square created at his initiative Porte de Bagnolet (Paris 20).
Caroline Rémy died in 1929 at her home in Pierrefonds, Oise department in the Picardy region of France. Some of her papers can be found in the Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand in Paris.
Bernard Lecache, a founding member of the Committee of Honor of International League Against Anti-Semitism (LICA), (now International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism (LICRA)), wrote her biography.
Her portrait was painted by Pierre-Auguste Renoir in 1885 and now hangs in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.
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It’s Monday, April 27
Welcome to the 751st consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
Anne Frank in 1940
Unknown photographer; Collectie Anne Frank Stichting Amsterdam - Website Anne Frank Stichting, Amsterdam
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2.0 Commentary
Loved reading pieces in the NYT relating to the problems of the opening of the economy.
A perfect way to start the process:
put ideas out;
invite comments;
push and pull.
And at some point, try it.
We already have templates in place.
Supermarkets.
From day one of this cursed pandemic
the markets have had to deal with changes.
The shock of running out of inventory.
Limiting hours.
Senior hours.
Limiting the number of customers in the store.
Xs marking where standing and waiting is permitted.
Traffic control at the door.
Face masks.
Shields.
I haven’t tried to list them.
Just the ones that popped into my head while I typed.
Get a surplus of tests in place.
Get a surplus of beds in place.
And let’s expand what we already have going.
A pet project:
open the National Parks for goodness sake.
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4.0 Chuckles and Thoughts
In spite of everything I still believe that
people are really good at heart.
I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation
consisting of confusion, misery, and death.
I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness,
I hear the ever approaching thunder,
which will destroy us too,
I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet,
if I look up into the heavens,
I think that it will all come right,
that this cruelty too will end, and
that peace and tranquility will return again.
~Anne Frank
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5.0 Mail
We love getting mail.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
This from Sally C:
With regard to your photo of the Igbo persons in church, I can’t help but marvel at the ladies’ magnificent headdresses! How do they get them to stay in those large shapes? And I always love to see the brilliant colors that natives of many African countries wear. They make a lot of the rest of us look drab. But I won’t take it to heart – I’ll just appreciate their glory.
Sally
And this from Grace F:
Hi Sally,
It is glorious isn't it?
The 'secret' to achieving the elaborate look is really the fabric.
It's a bit like origami because you need to use fabric that has enough stiffness to hold its shape. In West African countries, damask, brocade and a fabric, also called aso oke, originating from the Yoruba ethnic group are very popular choices for creating these headdresses.
As far as the vibrant colors are concerned, I have a theory that perhaps folks are just inspired by the natural world around them-- across continents.
In cities like New Delhi, Rio de Janeiro and Lagos there is a genuine fondness for bright and bold colors.
In Seattle, London, and Vancouver the preference may run to more subdued colors.
What are your thoughts?
Grace
Blog Meister responds: Vancouver?
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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Had a leftover roast lamb sandwich with broccoli rabe.
Terrific.
Grace had a lobster sauce on chick pea spaghetti.
Just as terrific.
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Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank (12 June 1929 – February or March 1945) was a German-Dutch diarist of Jewish origin.
One of the most discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust, she gained fame posthumously with the publication of The Diary of a Young Girl in which she documents her life in hiding from 1942 to 1944, during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II.
It is one of the world's best known books and has been the basis for several plays and films.
Born in Frankfurt, Germany, she lived most of her life in or near Amsterdam, Netherlands, having moved there with her family at the age of four and a half when the Nazis gained control over Germany.
Born a German national, she lost her citizenship in 1941 and thus became stateless.
By May 1940, the Franks were trapped in Amsterdam by the German occupation of the Netherlands.
As persecutions of the Jewish population increased in July 1942, the Franks went into hiding in some concealed rooms behind a bookcase in the building where Anne's father, Otto Frank, worked.
From then until the family's arrest by the Gestapo in August 1944, she kept a diary she had received as a birthday present, and wrote in it regularly.
Following their arrest, the Franks were transported to concentration camps.
In October or November 1944, Anne and her sister, Margot, were transferred from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they died (probably of typhus) a few months later. They were originally estimated by the Red Cross to have died in March, with Dutch authorities setting 31 March as their official date of death, but research by the Anne Frank House in 2015 suggests it is more likely that they died in February.
Otto, the only survivor of the Franks, returned to Amsterdam after the war to find that her diary had been saved by his secretary, Miep Gies, and his efforts led to its publication in 1947.
It was translated from its original Dutch version and first published in English in 1952 as The Diary of a Young Girl, and has since been translated into over 70 languages.
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It’s Sunday, April 26
Welcome to the 749th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
Igbo Roman Catholics in the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, Los Angeles, California
Eric Chan from Hollywood, United States - the Igbo
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2.0 CommentaryA glorious day, Saturday.
To be out.
Planning the day, thinking.
With so much closed today,
with many, many others also wishing to take advantage of the weather,
the demand for sites will be high; very high, perhaps.
Perhaps a frustrating experience: parking a real issue.
Perhaps a trip to revere Beach.
Haven’t been for years.
Or perhaps to Mt Auburn Cemetery at noon followed by
a trip to Walden Pond,
arriving there near 3pm, still
plenty warm,
plenty of sun,
but on the cusp of the daily visitors’ exodus,
parking opening up,
paths less crowded.
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4.0 Chuckles/ThoughtsI believe in the sun,
even when it rains.
~Anne Frank
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5.0 Mail
We love getting mail.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
Yan continues to impact our community.
Reprinting here two emails, this from Joanna E:
Hello my friend,
I hope you’re having a good week. Your story about waiting for Yan when you couldn’t find her lifted my low spirits and is my fuel for having a positive attitude this weekend. What have you been up to this week? How is Grace doing? Love you.
Joanna
And this from Ann H of Boston Spot-lite:
Love your interactions with Yan - you are such a wonderful person.
xo
Ann Heimlicher
at www.bostonspotlite.com
Blog Meister responds: Thank you for your kind words.
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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes Roast duck reached my table again last night.
I’ve simplified my approach to the duck,
treating it very much like our roast chicken.
I’ll be making changes to our posted recipe in next few days.
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7. “Conflicted” podcast Conflicted, by Dom Capossela, is a spiritual/fantasy/political story about a sixteen-year-old mystic-warrior conflicted internally by her self-imposed alienation from God, her spiritual wellspring, and, externally, by the forces of darkness seeking her death or ruination.
Today we post Chapter 28 in which Dee goes mano a mano against the devil and Laini passes.
The podcasts are also available on Sound Cloud, iTunes, Twitter, and Facebook.
Search: dom capossela or conflicted or both.
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11.0 ThumbnailsThe first people of Nigerian ancestry in what is now the modern United States were brought to the Americas by force as slaves.
Calabar, Nigeria, became a major point of export of enslaved people from Africa to the Americas during the 17th and 18th centuries.
Most slave ships frequenting this port were English.
Most of the slaves of Bight of Biafra – many of whom hailed from the Igbo hinterland – were trafficked to Virginia.
After 400 years in the United States and the lack of documentation because of enslavement, African Americans have often been unable to track their ancestors to specific ethnic groups or regions of Africa.
Like Americans of other origins, at this point most African Americans have ancestors of a variety of ethnic backgrounds.
Most of the people who were kidnapped from Nigeria were likely to have been Igbo, Yoruba, and Hausa.
Other ethnic groups, such as the Fulani and Edo people were also captured and transported to the colonies in the New World.
The Igbo were exported mainly to Maryland and Virginia.
They comprised the majority of all enslaved Africans in Virginia during the 18th century: of the 37,000 Africans trafficked to Virginia from Calabar during the eighteenth century, 30,000 were Igbo.
In the next century, people of Igbo descent were taken with settlers who moved to Kentucky.
According to some historians, the Igbo also comprised most of the slaves in Maryland. This group was characterized by high rates of rebellion and suicide, as the people resisted and fought back against enslavement.In the colonies, slavers tried to dissuade the practice of traditional tribal customs. They also mixed people of different ethnic groups together to make it more difficult for them to communicate and band together in rebellion.
Modern immigration
According to the United Census Bureau, 4 percent of Nigerians hold the Ph.D. degree compared to 1% of the general US population. 17% of Nigerians hold a master's degree and 37% have a bachelor's degree.
Since the mid-20th century particularly, after Nigeria gained independence, many modern Nigerian immigrants have come to the United States to pursue educational opportunities in undergraduate and post-graduate institutions.
In the 1960s and 1970s after the Biafra War, Nigeria's government funded scholarships for Nigerian students, and many of them were admitted to American universities.
While this was happening, there were several military coups, interspersed with brief periods of civilian rule. The instability resulted in many Nigerian professionals emigrating, especially doctors, lawyers and academics, who found it difficult to return to Nigeria.
According to a data provided by Rice University in Texas, Nigerian-Americans are the most educated ethnic group in the United States.
According to the Migrations Policy Institute 29% of Nigerian-Americans have graduate degrees (compared to 11% of the overall American population).
Furthermore, a minimum of four percent of Nigerian-Americans are also Ph.D holders. This is at least three times higher than any other ethnic group in the United States of America.
Nigerian-Americans are also known for their exploits in medicine, science, technology, and literature.
Nigerian culture has long emphasized education, placing value on pursuing education as a means to financial success and personal fulfillment.
Famous Nigerian Americans in education include Professor Jacob Olupona, a member of the faculty at Harvard College of Arts and Sciences as well as Harvard Divinity School. Migrating to the US from Nigeria more than 40 years ago, Professor Olupona has furthered the academic study of traditional African religions, such as the Yoruba traditional religion, and has been a vocal advocate for Nigerian Americans and education initiatives.
A large percentage of black students at highly selective top universities are immigrants or children of immigrants.
Harvard University, for example, has estimated that more than one-third of its black student body consists of recent immigrants or their children, or were of mixed-race parentage.
Other top universities, including Yale, Princeton, Penn, Columbia, Rice, Duke and Berkeley, report a similar pattern.
As a result, there is a question as to whether affirmative action programs adequately reach their original targets: African Americans who are descendants of American slaves and their discriminatory history in the US.