Daily Entries for the week of
Sunday, February 14, 2021
through
Saturday, February 20, 2021
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It’s Saturday, February 20, 2021
Welcome to the 1029th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
Perseverance and Ingenuity
NASA/JPL-Caltech - https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA23962 / https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA23962.jpg
PIA23962: Portrait of Perseverance and Ingenuity (Artist's Concept) In February 2021, NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover and NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter (shown in an artist's concept) will be the agency's two newest explorers on Mars. Both were named by students as part of an essay contest. Perseverance is the most sophisticated rover NASA has ever sent to Mars. Ingenuity, a technology experiment, will be the first aircraft to attempt controlled flight on another planet. Perseverance will arrive at Mars' Jezero Crater with Ingenuity attached to its belly. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory built and will manage operations of Perseverance and Ingenuity for the agency. Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages JPL for NASA. For more information about the Mars 2020 Perseverance mission, go to https://mars.nasa.gov/perseverance. For more information about Ingenuity, go to https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter.
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2.0 Commentary
Liking the news this Thursday morning.
Two weeks ago, after watching Biden’s efforts to fully engage with the covid issues,
we here spoke of 3,000,000 vaccinations a day as doable.
Yesterday, someone credible on the news predicted 3,000,000 vaccinations a day as doable.
We’ve been speaking of Valentine’s Day as the winter watershed.
Thursday’s long-range weather forecast sees temperatures by Tuesday rising to above forty and staying there until 53* on Saturday, the 27th.
March just a couple of days away.
Liking the news this Thursday morning.
Getting my second shot today.
Anxiety level rising.
Cousin Lauren drove me to CVS in Saugus where I was taken on arrival, thirty minutes early.
From the shot to Kowloon’s for a big lunch (my main meal)
and then back to apartment, watching Enola Holmes.
Lauren went home, on call if symptoms flashed and became difficult.
A full 24-hours later I experienced no symptoms.
One of the lucky ones.
Earlier this week I took a chance and bought a bottle of Tannat, a wine from Uruguay.
Turned out to be a wonderful value for $20.00.
Today, after my second shot and after lunch, we drove to Total wines and
I asked if they had any wines from Uruguay.
They had six reds and two whites, none more than $20.00.
I bought one of each and will report on them.
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3.1 Sacco and Vanzetti
Worked on the agenda for Friday’s Board of Directors’ meeting.
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4.0 Chuckles and Thoughts
Most people work just hard enough not to get fired and get paid just enough money not to quit.”\
~George Carlin
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5.0 Mail and other Conversation
We love getting mail, email, or texts.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
or text to 617.852.7192
A dozen emails re: tomorrow’s Board of Directors meeting re: Sacco and Vanzetti.
Blog meister responds: With a clear agenda the meeting will be constructive.
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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Wednesday night I enjoyed a tuna fish salad sandwich.
It’s been a long time.
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11.0 Thumbnail
Mars 2020 is a Mars rover mission by NASA's Mars Exploration Program that includes the Perseverance rover and the Ingenuity helicopter drone.
It was launched on 30 July 2020 at 11:50 UTC and touched down in Jezero crater on Mars on 18 February 2021 at 20:56 UTC.
Perseverance will investigate an astrobiologically relevant ancient environment on Mars and investigate its surface geological processes and history, including the assessment of its past habitability, the possibility of past life on Mars, and the potential for preservation of biosignatures within accessible geological materials.
It will cache sample containers along its route for retrieval by a potential future Mars sample-return mission.
The Mars 2020 mission was announced by NASA on 4 December 2012 at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.
The Perseverance rover's design is derived from the Curiosity rover, and will use many components already fabricated and tested, new scientific instruments and a core drill,
The rover also boasts 19 cameras and two microphones allowing audio recording of the Martian environment.
Mars 2020 was the third of three space missions sent toward Mars during the July 2020 Mars launch window, with missions also launched by the national space agencies of the United Arab Emirates (Hope orbiter) and China (Tianwen-1, with an orbiter, lander, and rover).
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It’s Friday, February 19, 2021
Welcome to the 1028th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
Planet of the Apes
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2.0 Commentary
In the event I did not go lifting on Wednesday.
My Soda Stream ran out so I had to replace it.
Not exactly because I always keep an extra to buy me time to replace a cartridge that has run out.
But, since I was on the edge of whether I should skip lifting, that little errand pushed me over to the negative side.
Not happy about not lifting,
I should say that I’m not happy with my weight, either.
I’ve got to do better.
Starting today.
Writing this on Wednesday night.
Getting excited about tomorrow: my second shot.
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3.1 Sacco and Vanzetti
Work was done on Sacco and Vanzetti but not by me.
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4.0 Chuckles and Thoughts
We have multiplied our possessions but reduced our values.
We talk too much,
love too seldom, and
hate too often.
We’ve learned how to make a living but not a life.
We’ve added years to life, not life to years.
~George Carlin
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5.0 Mail and other Conversation
We love getting mail, email, or texts.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
or text to 617.852.7192
A lot of talk about the first chapter of my manuscript, sent out to half a dozen readers.
We like the story.
The point of view and structure might be changed.
Blog meister responds: The ideas are well received. I will rework those pages now. Thank you.
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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Tuesday night I had a double pork chop, slow-roasted then fried to finish.
The pan fats and vinegar peppers made up the pan sauce.
Delicious.
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11.0 Thumbnail
Planet of the Apes is an American science fiction media franchise consisting of films, books, television series, comics, and other media about a world in which humans and intelligent apes clash for control.
The franchise is based on French author Pierre Boulle's 1963 novel La Planète des singes, translated into English as Planet of the Apes or Monkey Planet.
Its 1968 film adaptation, Planet of the Apes, was a critical and commercial hit, initiating a series of sequels, tie-ins, and derivative works.
Arthur P. Jacobs produced the first five Apes films through APJAC Productions for distributor 20th Century Fox; since his death in 1973, Fox has controlled the franchise.
Four sequels followed the original film from 1970 to 1973: Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Escape from the Planet of the Apes, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes and Battle for the Planet of the Apes.
They did not approach the critical acclaim of the original, but were commercially successful, spawning two television series in 1974 and 1975.
Plans for a film remake stalled in "development hell" for over ten years before Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes was released in 2001.
A reboot film series commenced in 2011 with Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which was followed by Dawn of the Planet of the Apes in 2014 and War for the Planet of the Apes in 2017.
The films have grossed a total of over US $2 billion worldwide, against a combined budget of $567.5 million.
Along with further narratives in various media, franchise tie-ins include video games, toys and planned theme park rides.
Planet of the Apes has received particular attention among film critics for its treatment of racial issues. Cinema and cultural analysts have also explored its Cold War and animal rights themes. The series has influenced subsequent films, media, and art, as well as popular culture and political discourse.
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1.0 Lead Picture
Planet of the Apes
Painting by Sir Frank Dicksee, 1884
Frank Bernard Dicksee - http://www.odysseetheater.com/romeojulia/romeojulia.htm
Representing the famous balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet.
Public domain
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2.0 Commentary
The posted picture deals with dating.
In 11.0 Thumbnail, below, I have a piece on my real life dating in college.
Here’s Wikipedia’s excellent definition of dating:
Dating is a stage of romantic relationships in Western societies whereby two people meet socially with the aim of each assessing the other's suitability as a prospective partner in an intimate relationship.
While the term has several meanings, the most frequent usage refers to two people exploring whether they are romantically or sexually compatible by participating in dates with the other.
I’m writing this on Tuesday morning.
With just 50 hours to go before my second shot I am edgy about staying healthy.
Is that weird?
During these last months I’ve taken my temperature 200 times.
Approximately.
Invariably, 97.8
Except for perhaps a couple of times I went down to .7 or even .6.
Never above.
Today when I took my temperature I worried.
I didn’t have to: 97.8.
Normal.
For the next 24 hours I will have very little contact up close and personal.
Tuesday I’ll go to W Foods for a double pork chop.
And the bank for small bills.
And I’ll visit Thinking Cup café on Hanover St for a two-hour cappuccino and work on my computer.
And then home.
Little contact danger.
Monday I lifted weights.
So I’m scheduled to return on Wednesday.
The gym I do consider a dangerous event: intense surface contact; poor ventilation; discreet distancing constantly violated; more than 30 minutes on site.
I also think not lifting weights is a dangerous event.
I’m trying to rebuild after months of inactivity and it’s a tedious process at age 80.
(I’m calling myself 80 years old from now on. I’ll be 79 in March. A weak age, 79.
80 is much more robust. And it will be my 80th year. So 80.)
My first goal at the gym is to regain 67% of my former levels.
Skipping Wednesday is bad since I certainly will not be going on Thursday: my shot venue is a bit of a hike (Saugus) and, with a sore arm, a certainty after the vaccination, and possibly other symptoms as well, I likely won’t be able to lift on Friday either.
And that’ll make me sad.
As well as limp.
As for Wednesday, we’ll see.
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4.0 Chuckles and Thoughts
Cloud Eight actually is cheaper, less crowded, and has a better view.
~George Carlin
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5.0 Mail and other Conversation
We love getting mail, email, or texts.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
or text to 617.852.7192
This from Collen G:
Wow Dom!
I really enjoying reading about your writing evolution with Howard. I, too, had to rewrite my novel from 3rd person to 1st person. It's a long process. And then his suggestion to use your blog entry--what a wonderful, modern "journal entry" format so many great novels have used, but with a more modern "blog entry" angle.
It's always a gift to have friends who are truly invested in what you are doing and then able to make such insightful suggestions. Also, fun for the writer to see a project a completely new set of eyes. I look forward to reading what you've sent.
Enjoy the week! Congrats!
Cheers,
Colleen:)
Blog meister responds: It really is great having friends. And when they’re talented? A bonanza.
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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Monday night I had slow-roasted rack of lamb.
Great.
And I had leftover vegetables: garlic/oil spinach and roasted asparagus.
So easy and so good.
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11.0 Thumbnail
My daughter’s Christmas gift this year was a series of weekly questions about my life.
This week’s question was:
Who did you date while in high school?
Dating in the North End was a little edgy.
We hung in affiliated gangs:
One girls’ group and one boys’ group.
Dating was not a free and easy piece.
Not only did we have to overcome any rookie shyness, but
if you liked a girl from your group, dating had to be in context with the rest of the gang.
Is she ‘going’ with him?
How tight are they?
Will asking her out cause a rift in the gang?
If she’s in another gang, very serious issues.
If she’s connected with a boy from another gang, there could be a war.
So you always made quiet inquiries from your target’s best friend.
Then proceeded forward.
Or stopped short.
My own high school experience: a bit out of the ordinary.
For two and a half years I was either in the seminary or seminary bound,
so repressing dating impulses.
My freshman year in high school?
We went to dances which I loved but, other than a couple of formal dances, I did very little dating.
Only my senior year proved available, but fully stepping away from the seminary, rejoining a crew I hadn’t been with for almost two years, proved difficult for me.
Rather, let’s talk about my first true love, Georgianna Boyle, an Irish actress I met when I was a freshman at Boston University.
At age seventeen I entered the Boston University College of Business Administration.
What did I know about non-Italian women?
Who could I ask?
My two best friends that year were both from BU’s SFAA: the School of Fine and Applied Arts.
Rob Polomski who is a brilliant artist and a Roman Catholic priest living in England.
We still talk regularly.
And Doug Parker, long passed.
At the beginning of my dating, it was Doug who I hung out with to meet girls.
One night, we went to a play together.
I think it was an Ibsen.
I believe it was Brand. (It might have been Hedda Gabler.)
At intermission, I remember hanging out with Doug’s friends.
I was an outsider.
The talk was on the play.
The conversation among the creative types might have excluded me, a lowly business student.
Except that I peremptorily summarized what had gone on in the first half and what we should expect to unfold in the second half.
Reducing them to silence was an edifying moment.
Doug laughter reminded them he knew who to hang with.
The play, pretty sure it was Ibsen; reasonably sure it was Brand.
In any case, the star of the show, the star of the school, in fact, was Faye Dunaway, a gorgeous, high-boned woman.
Six years later, in 1967, Faye became an international star for her role in the American neo-noir biographical crime film directed by Arthur Penn and starring Warren Beatty and our own Faye as the title characters, Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker.
She was beautiful and she was talented.
But it was a supporting actress, Georgianna Boyle, an Irish girl, who stole my heart.
Second act, she entered stage right, and spoke her first lines.
An angelic voice.
I wish I could quote her.
Hear her recite them again.
I fell madly in love with her.
I know her, Doug said. Shall we go backstage and I’ll introduce you?
We did go backstage.
We first congratulated Faye.
She acknowledged us in an offhand manner, never guessing that fifteen years later she would call me at home to ask me to dinner.
(Yes, I accepted.)
We turned to Georgianna.
Doug hugged her.
So jealous, I.
He introduced us.
We talked.
What do you do after a performance?
Right now I am starving.
Let’s go to the Regina for a pizza.
Is Doug coming?
Doug looked at me.
No. I have a project I’m going to be up all night to get done.
Georgianna looked down at her feet, raised her head and smiled in a way that a No! would have killed me.
Will you drive me home afterwards?
We drove to the North End.
We waited in line and finally got a table.
One by one, each of the waitresses, North End friends of mine, came over to say Hello.
And to look over the obviously Irish girl I was squiring around.
That night defined our relationship.
Remember Paul Simon? I know what I know?
She looked me over
And I guess she thought I was all right.
All right in a sort of a limited way
For an off-night.
But I didn’t care.
Georgianna was smart.
Pretty.
A sophomore, so much more educated than I.
Over the next year we probably went out twice a month.
Always to a play or to a recital.
She was my educator.
Georgianna introduced me to the Messiah.
She had tickets to the Oratorio and her first six options didn’t pan out, so she invited me.
I had never been to a live classic music performance before.
I had no idea what to expect.
I watched the theatre fill up: everyone in tuxedos or gowns.
Me in a sweater and jeans.
But in center orchestra seats, accompanying Georgianna, I couldn’t care less.
The music started.
The tenor sang:
Comfort ye.
Comfort ye, my people.
His rich, powerful voice resonated with something in me that had never been reached before.
And I began to cry.
Out loud!
I didn’t know what to do.
Every other attendee was still, almost non-responsive.
I was practically bawling.
My stomach muscles knotted and released at points throughout the performance, causing my body to shudder.
So embarrassed.
Until Georgianna reached over and squeezed my hand,
I’m proud of you, she said.
That night drew us romantically even, but my affection didn’t last.
As a freshman, I joined the Newman Club, the Catholic club on the Boston University campus.
As a sophomore, I ran for and won a leadership position, and found myself involved in planning a weekend pilgrimage from Boston to the Trappist Monastery in Spencer, Massachusetts.
My friend, Rob Polomski, planned it with me.
In the event, 140 BU pilgrims participated, Georgianna being one of them.
As a second semester sophomore, I had become sure of my organizational talents, my friendships, my politics, my sensitivity, my desirability.
I even found the job that changed my economic life.
Without experience, I took a job as a waiter at the Harvard Club, and from then on, the restaurant industry was in my blood.
I stopped chasing Georgianna.
But Georgianna had become fixated on me.
When we went out, it was I doing her the favor.
But I wanted out.
Entirely.
One of the Paul Simon’s fifty ways reared its head during the pilgrimage.
We started the event on Friday at 9.00am.
At 3.00pm, Rob and I, at the head of the mile-long line of pilgrims,
reached the apex of the trip’s highest hill.
We stopped and scanned the walkers.
The sun was setting but blazed down on a young woman dressed in orange culottes.
Although it was the end of the day, she still walked with energy and a smile.
Gorgeous. Wow!
At the end of the day, we were welcomed in a religious community for dinner, a meeting, and sleeping accommodations.
After dinner we adjourned to the gymnasium for notes on today’s and tomorrow’s events, plus prayer, song, and Good night.
I was a bit late but still stopped outside the gym to peer in.
I spotted Georgianna across the gym floor so I opened the door just wide enough for me to slip in and I jumped to the floor, a long diagonal across Georgianna. No way we would hang out tonight.
I looked up to see who my conversation partner would be this evening.
Would you believe it was the orange culottes from the afternoon tableau?
In the event, Toni-Lee and I talked and chuckled the entire time, and I walked her back to the girls’ dorm.
Back at the boys’ dorm, I spent the night telling Rob I was in love.
He tried to calm me; to dissuade me.
I did not sleep a single minute.
Fifteen minutes before we were scheduled for chapel, I went and sat on the lowest step outside the girls’ dorm.
Toni-Lee was happy to see me and she and I spent at least part of every day together for the next 27 years.
As we boarded the buses that were driving us back to Boston, Georgianna approached me with a bouquet of wild flowers she had picked.
“For you,” she said.
“Thanks. I’ll give them to Toni-Lee.”
In retrospect, I realize that was cruel.
Nothing to be done now.
There is no postscript to Georgianna.
But a PS with the bus home.
I sat, of course, with Toni-Lee.
This soon we were ‘of course’.
I should tell you that there was never a couple with less romantic experience than Toni and I.
Holding hands on the ride back was heavy.
She held the flowers on her lap.
The week end had exhausted us and the bus’ droning got us drowsy.
Her head dropped closer to my shoulder.
I watched and prayed that it would, and then it did come to rest on me.
I was in heaven.
When we disembarked in Boston, our relationship was established.
And accepted by our friends.
Smoothly.
No hoopla.
Some time later, Toni confessed: the shoulder to my head was premeditated.
I’d never have guessed Toni had that bit of the rascal in her.
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It’s Wednesday, February 17, 2021
Welcome to the 1026th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
The Pirate Publisher
An International Burlesque that has the Longest Run on Record, from Puck, 1886, satirizes the then-existing situation where a publisher could profit by simply stealing newly published works from one country, and publishing them in another, and vice versa.
Original artist: Joseph Ferdinand Keppler (1838-1894) Restoration: Adam Cuerden - https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2011661385/ by way of http://adamcuerden.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d5onmxh
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2.0 Commentary
In reworking my manuscript, Conflicted, I am dealing with the issue of copyright of certain illustrations I’d like to use.
Today’s lead picture deals with the subject.
Post-impeachment.
America’s blazing heat abates.
The most divisive figure in the history of American politics has been beaten.
The impeachment was a huge success.
Some significant segment of the tens of millions who voted Trump have permanently turned away from him.
Republican bloodletting faces us, but it will be an offstage event.
The individual contests within the party will command comparatively less national attention than did the impeachment.
Hopefully they will demonstrate that center-right Republicanism trumps the cult of the individual.
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3.2 Conflicted
A good deal of work has gotten done today.
Especially with readers.
Major and minor suggestions will result in a better product.
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4.0 Chuckles and Thoughts
I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman,
'Where's the self-help section?'
She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.
~George Carlin
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5.0 Mail and other Conversation
We love getting mail, email, or texts.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
or text to 617.852.7192
This from our dear friend Sally C:
Dear Dom,
Your new manuscript: “a cocktail of Deathwish, the Exorcist, Joan of Arc and Peter Pan.” Here’s the opening on page one for you: “Deathwish, The Exorcist, Joan of Arc, and Peter Pan walk into a bar …”
It has a certain je ne sais quoi about it, don’t you think?
J
Sally
Blog meister responds: Now you’ve got me trying to finish the piece.
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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Sunday night I made duck wraps from the remainder of the duck I roasted earlier in the week.
Loved it.
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7. “Conflicted” podcast
Conflicted, by Dom Capossela, is a spiritual/fantasy 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.
https://soundcloud.com/user-449713331/sets/conflicted-dom-capossela
The podcasts are also available on Sound Cloud, iTunes, Stitcher, Pinterest, Pocket Cast, and Facebook.
Search: dom capossela or conflicted or both
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11.0 Thumbnail
The Pirate Publisher—An International Burlesque that has the Longest Run on Record by Joseph Ferdinand Keppler, published as a centrefold in Puck, v. 18, no. 468 (1886 February 24).
A commentary on the state of copyright laws that, prior to a 1911 treaty, generally offered no protection to foreign authors and works.
In the cartoon, hordes of German, Norwegian, French, English, and American authors surround a publisher who republishes their newly-created works without attribution or royalties in a foreign country, as international law then allowed.
Of note is W. S. Gilbert, fifth from the right in the front row, as the many unauthorized or "pirate" productions of H.M.S. Pinafore caused him and Arthur Sullivan to première The Pirates of Penzance in America, to at least gain the initial profits there before anyone else could exploit it, and the title and subject of The Pirates of Penzance is sometimes - although somewhat dubiously in my opinion - considered to partially be a reference to the issue of pirate productions of their works.
Other authors shown include Mark Twain, Tennyson, Robert Browning, F. C. Burnand, Émile Zola, Jules Verne, Victorien Sardou, Wilkie Collins, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., as well as many others.
This has been a very difficult restoration - there were actually 3 or 4 false starts as I tried to get around a very nasty crease in the original.
I think it came out pretty well in the end, though.
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It’s Tuesday, February 16, 2021
Welcome to the 1025th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
The Bathers, Paul Cezanne
1898–1905 National Gallery, London
Paul Cézanne - 5gHEvzxt0pVZCw at Google Cultural Institute, zoom level maximum
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2.0 Commentary
Writers achieve that great opus is a variety of ways.
Here’s one of mine.
Several years ago I wrote a story. A saga, actually.
I took a portion of the saga, polished it, and sent it out to literary agents,
to dismal reception.
Frustrated.
Didn’t understand why the rejections.
A great story.
Then I took a solo 25-day car trip through central USA to the Grand Canyon, then south to New Orleans, east to Savannah, GA, Swarthmore College to visit Kat, and home.
On the trip, so many hours on the road alone, thinking so many ideas, lots of them about the meaning of life, birthing the idea of the blog to share these thoughts.
The name chosen, pretty mundane: existentialautotrip.com.
A thousand + days ago I published the first post.
In the thousand days, my writing has improved and the blog has grown a healthy daily readership.
Spurred on by daughter Kat’s Christmas gift, I started writing weekly stories of my life, and publishing them here.
Your enthusiastic response told me I struck a chord.
Thinking, now I may have it, I pulled out the first eight pages of my unpublished manuscript, Chapter One, and rewrote them.
The rewrite did not change it much.
But I sent it out to several readers who responded variously, none of them saying it was the great American…
I wasn’t reaching them and didn’t know why.
You’ve seen Howard D’s work in these pages many times.
He’s pretty special.
He’s also an accomplished editor.
His first suggestion was that I rewrite the manuscript in the first person.
I did. It was well-received by other readers but still far from being the panacea the manuscript needed.
I returned to Howard.
He tried to explain to me what was missing in my submission.
I didn’t understand his comments and asked him to illustrate them.
His response:
From:Howard Dinin <howard@bertha.com>
Sent:Saturday, February 13, 2021 12:40 PM
To:Dom Capossela <domcapossela@hotmail.com>
Subject:Brainstorm
So, a couple of things.
I’ve been thinking about your re-write project and your quest for a strategy on how to reshape the materials you already have in the finished manuscript, which you seem dedicated to continuing to work on…
I’ll say it explicitly one more time, and then I’ll try and refrain from repeating it in the future. You’re doing yourself no favors, from the point of view of expressing yourself as your best most articulate self, as a compelling, moving, expressive voice that is yours, and stripped of the worst features of what the language has become at its worst in the hands of the collective of internet users.
All that said, it doesn’t help, certainly not with my previous comments and notes of the last two days about what you can try to think about or be influenced by in your literary quest. As you said, to paraphrase, it’s not easy being you. It’s even harder for me to be you. I can’t make you analytical about these things in the ways that might be useful to you in doing the hard work of crafting a way of shaping this material and then doing the even harder work of grinding out the words so it’s a credible and engaging rendering of this tale of an adolescent religious warrior…
However I did have, as the subject line indicates, a brainstorm about what you might think about as a way of doing this. And it will, you’ll be delirious to learn, be easy as it calls for you to use practices and skills you’ve acquired or ginned up on your own (hampered as you were by technological challenges that still, apparently, beset your efforts – no one’s fault, least of all yours, as you simply don’t have that kind of brain, just like others of us unfortunates with shortcomings in areas that others find effortless can’t even take baby steps, say, in understanding how to make music).
The brainstorm is this: you’ve spent the past two years-plus evolving a blog format and palette of blog writing styles, and a framework for this material that somehow makes it easier for you to meet your self-defined obligation not to miss a day posting something, even though, if I may say, it doesn’t make it easier for someone who visits only occasionally to keep track, never mind find what he missed in order to catch up.
So why don’t you, in your imagination, when you enter that space where you go to tell the story of Diana, your heroine, imagine what her blog would be like, and reshape all your material that you have in one form, which, for reasons of your own, you want to re-craft into some other form. If you use your own blog “template” as it’s evolved even only in a rough way, you’ll have a chance to tell some pieces of it in first person, some in third person, you’ll be able to drag in illustrative and descriptive explanatory information from elsewhere (though you can also simulate or make-up, say, your own Wikipedia articles on the arcane allusions in this narrative – especially about the mystic Christian stories and legends and practices and ceremonies you have made part of the story.
In other words, rewrite Conflicted as if it were Diana’s blog.
xo
h
A thunderbolt.
I immediately responded to Howard: I love it.
and immediately started the rewrite.
With the first two lines I felt the tremor.
I immediately sent Howard the two lines:
Have you ever been shocked awake?
Of course you have!
He responded that I finally understood.
Three minutes later I wrote eight more lines.
Sent them.
Same response.
Finally, I sent this:
From: Dom Capossela <domcapossela@hotmail.com>
Date: Saturday, February 13, 2021 at 1:16 PM
To: Howard Dinin howard@bertha.com
Subject: last one submission until the Chapter is done. Sorry.
ell me if i'm too far afield
And then the exhilarating answer from Howard D:
perfect
Perfect.
I spent the afternoon on Chapter One and went to bed smiling.
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4.0 Chuckles and Thoughts
“I’ve never owned a telescope,
but it’s something I’m thinking of looking into.”
~George Carlin
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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Saturday night I had leftover roast duck.
It was as good as the first time.
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7. “Conflicted” podcast
Conflicted, by Dom Capossela, is a spiritual/fantasy 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.
https://soundcloud.com/user-449713331/sets/conflicted-dom-capossela
The podcasts are also available on Sound Cloud, iTunes, Stitcher, Pinterest, Pocket Cast, and Facebook.
Search: dom capossela or conflicted or both
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11.0 Thumbnail
Modernism is both a philosophical movement and an art movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, and social organization which reflected the newly emerging industrial world, including features such as urbanization, new technologies, and war.
Artists attempted to depart from traditional forms of art, which they considered outdated or obsolete. The poet Ezra Pound's 1934 injunction to "Make it new!" was the touchstone of the movement's approach.
In the visual arts the roots of Modernism are often traced back to painter Édouard Manet, who, beginning in the 1860s, broke away from inherited notions of perspective, modeling, and subject matter. The avant-garde movements that followed—including Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Expressionism, Constructivism, de Stijl, and Abstract Expressionism—are generally defined as Modernist. Over the span of these movements, artists increasingly focused on the intrinsic qualities of their media—e.g., line, form, and color—and moved away from inherited notions of art.
For myself, I’ve always preferred the Post-Impressionists such as Manet, Van Gogh, and Gauguin to the Impressionists, and among the Post-Impressionists, Cezanne above all others.
In addition to painterly brushstrokes, Cézanne's paintings are also characterized by a recognizable color palette.
While many of his early works are rendered in somber tones, he eventually adopted a preference for planes of saturated hues.
This tonal treatment is particularly pronounced in his landscapes, like his radiant views of Mont Sainte-Victoire. In this sun-baked series, Cézanne reduces the mountains, trees, and Mediterranean homes of the Provençal countryside to fragmented-yet-harmonious blocks of color.
These polychromatic planes add a sense of depth to each panoramic depiction and showcase Cézanne's avant-garde approach to representing nature. “I was pleased with myself when I discovered that sunlight could not be reproduced,” he explained, according to Renoir. His Life and Work. “It had to be represented by something else…by color.”
In his paintings, Cézanne often rejected realistic portrayals of space in favor of more creative compositions. This is particularly evident in his still-life depictions, which frequently feature fruit, bottles, and other everyday objects balanced on tilted, topsy-turvy tabletops.
In these paintings, Cézanne played with perspective and flattened surfaces to show the same arrangement from multiple angles at once. He achieved this by emphasizing each individual object rather than the scene as a whole, culminating in eye-catching, off-kilter compositions. This principle of distortion would later play a major role in Cubism, as artist Georges Braque noted in 1957: “The hard-and-fast rules of perspective which it succeeded in imposing on art were a ghastly mistake which it has taken four centuries to redress; Paul Cézanne and after him Picasso and myself can take a lot of credit for this.”
Cézanne's magnum opus, which is also widely regarded as one of the masterpieces of all modern art, is called The Bathers. This large oil painting spans about 7 x 8 feet and depicts a group of naked women relaxing by a lake. Cézanne painted several versions of the subject throughout his career and spent seven years working on the most famous representation, which was left unfinished at the time of his death in 1906.
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It’s Monday, February 15, 2021
Welcome to the 1024th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
COVID-19 Outbreak World Map
Total Deaths per Capita from Template:2019–20 coronavirus pandemic data and List of countries and dependencies by population using code at the talk page of the file on Commons.
1000+ deaths per million inhabitants 178–1000 deaths per million inhabitants 32–178 deaths per million inhabitants 6–32 deaths per million inhabitants 1–6 deaths per million inhabitants <1 deaths per million inhabitants
No deaths or no data can be double checked against statista.com and realclearpolitics.com, but let us note that the map was being updated once a week lately.…
Dan Polansky and authors of File:BlankMap-World.svg. - Own work;
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Cousin Lauren spent the night at my apartment in anticipation of extreme symptoms from her second covid vaccination.
In the event, nothing. Nothing to very little.
Note that Lauren had the virus and was ill for a couple of days.
Thinking she gained some immunity from that.
In any case, except tp protect the rest of us, she is freed from the threat.
I go for my second shot on Thursday.
Lauren will return to apartment then to tend to me if I should experience severe discomfort.
Today’s news broadcast a new website show the availability of vaccination appointments.
At the moment, very few.
But as the supply ramps up, American businesses are preparing to deliver as many vaccinations as needed.
Who among us doubts the efficiency of the profit motive to get things done?
And reports abound re: the continuing drop in the positivity rate.
Now more than ever is it incumbent upon us to adhere to the safety measures we all know so well.
Masks. Use a good one; double up according to protocols.
Distance. Six feet from others. Stay home as much as possible.
Ventilation, especially when indoors, must be thought through to constantly remove and replace fresh air.
Healthy habits. Cover your mouth and nose with a tissue or your sleeve (not your hands) when coughing or sneezing. Avoid touching your eyes, nose, or mouth with unwashed hands. Take your temperature a couple of times a day. Get plenty of rest.
Sanitizing. Clean your hands by washing them with soap and water for at least 20 seconds or using an alcohol-based hand sanitizer that contains 60-95 percent alcohol immediately after coughing, sneezing, or blowing your nose. Soap and water should be used if hands are visibly dirty. Also, frequently sanitize doorknobs and all frequently touched surfaces.
Monitor your health closely. Take your temperature daily. Get plenty of rest. Keep hydrated.
And stay especially alert to the frequent covid symptoms: Fever, coughing, and shortness of breath or difficulty breathing.
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4.0 Chuckles and Thoughts
Some people have no idea what they're doing, and
a lot of them are really good at it.
~George Carlin
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5.0 Mail and other Conversation
We love getting mail, email, or texts.
I asked a dear friend to read the first chapter of an unsuccessfully marketed manuscript that I wrote.
He took a day and then made a suggestion that I believe will recast my manuscript into something saleable.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
or text to 617.852.7192
Blog meister responds: I am going to rewrite those pages and serialize them here, by way of a link. The manuscript is a cocktail of Deathwish, the Exorcist, Joan of Arc and Peter Pan.
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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Friday night cousin Lauren and I had roast rack of lamb while we waited for her post-second vaccination symptoms to arrive.
The lamb was cooked perfectly and the spinach with olive oil and garlic and the roasted asparagus were delicious accompaniments.
We drank wine, a small glass each of Gavi di Gavi and a second small glass of Garzon Tannat Riserva 2018. The Garzon, a not well known wine from Uruguay, was less than $20.00 and it was splendid. This is the producer’s description: A ripe blackberry aroma mixes with a touch of saline on the nose. The palate of this Tannat from a benchmark vintage is ripe and full in feel. Blackberry jam and spice flavors are ripe and satisfying, while this is warm and complete on the finish.
The symptoms never showed.
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7. “Conflicted” podcast
Conflicted, by Dom Capossela, is a spiritual/fantasy 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.
https://soundcloud.com/user-449713331/sets/conflicted-dom-capossela
The podcasts are also available on Sound Cloud, iTunes, Stitcher, Pinterest, Pocket Cast, and Facebook.
Search: dom capossela or conflicted or both
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11.0 Thumbnail
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). It was first identified in December 2019 in Wuhan, China. The World Health Organization declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern in January 2020 and a pandemic in March 2020. As of 13 February 2021, more than 108 million cases have been confirmed, with more than 2.39 million deaths attributed to COVID-19.
Symptoms of COVID-19 are highly variable, ranging from none to life-threatening illness. The virus spreads mainly through the air when people are near each other.[b] It leaves an infected person as they breathe, cough, sneeze, or speak and enters another person via their mouth, nose, or eyes. It may also spread via contaminated surfaces. People remain infectious for up to two weeks, and can spread the virus even if they do not show symptoms.
Recommended preventive measures include social distancing, wearing face masks in public, ventilation and air-filtering, hand washing, covering one's mouth when sneezing or coughing, disinfecting surfaces, and monitoring and self-isolation for people exposed or symptomatic. Several vaccines are being developed and distributed. Current treatments focus on addressing symptoms while work is underway to develop therapeutic drugs that inhibit the virus. Authorities worldwide have responded by implementing travel restrictions, lockdowns, workplace hazard controls, and facility closures. Many places have also worked to increase testing capacity and trace contacts of the infected.
The responses to the pandemic have resulted in global social and economic disruption, including the largest global recession since the Great Depression. It has led to the postponement or cancellation of events, widespread supply shortages exacerbated by panic buying, agricultural disruption and food shortages, and decreased emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases. Many educational institutions have been partially or fully closed. Misinformation has circulated through social media and mass media. The pandemic has raised issues of racial and geographic discrimination, xenophobia, health equity, and the balance between public health imperatives and individual rights.
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It’s Sunday, February 14, 2021
Welcome to the 1023rd consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
A Ride for Liberty – The Fugitive Slaves
Eastman Johnson - Brooklyn Museum
Eastman Johnson (American, 1824-1906). A Ride for Liberty -- The Fugitive Slaves (recto), ca. 1862. Oil on paperboard, 21 15/16 x 26 1/8 in. (55.8 x 66.4 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Gwendolyn O. L. Conkling, 40.59a-b
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2.0 Commentary
Big day today.
Cousin Lauren got her second shot.
She’s staying over a night to see what help she may need.
We bought yogurt, made Jello, have two soups, duck, and rack of lamb.
We’re hunkered in awaiting the onslaught.
Trying to stay ahead of the writing assignments I bring on myself.
Edit daughter Kat’s paper on Constitutional law.
Comment on new blog of a dear friend.
Write daily posts for the blog.
Write about my life, one story a week with ideas from Storyworth.
Several pieces a week for the Sacco and Vanzetti project.
And now, looking for a significant rewrite of an unpublished manuscript of mine. Hoping to get a handle on a different approach to the same story.
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3.1 Sacco and Vanzetti
This morning we had our second Board of Directors’ meeting.
It was fun and constructive, fleshing out our organizational chart, agreeing on the agenda for the All-in meeting to occur late February, accepting an Italian sister-organization composed of Italian university teachers and published authors.
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4.0 Chuckles/Thoughts
If 4 out of 5 people SUFFER from diarrhea…does that mean that 1 enjoys it?
~George Carlin
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5.0 Mail
We love getting mail.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
This from our friend, Howard D,
Your account of your first job is a masterpiece.
It demonstrates what I know you to be capable of, for sure.
h
Blog Meister responds: Thank you, my friend. With that encouragement I will relook at my unpublished manuscript and see if the last three years of writing daily have improved my skills.
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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Thursday night cousin Lauren and I shared a duck.
We ate a lot of it.
Delicious.
It was slow-roasted according to the recipe found in the Recipe Pages in this Blog.
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7. “Conflicted” podcast
Conflicted, by Dom Capossela, is a spiritual/fantasy 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.
https://soundcloud.com/user-449713331/sets/conflicted-dom-capossela
The podcasts are also available on Sound Cloud, iTunes, Stitcher, Pinterest, Pocket Cast, and Facebook.
Search: dom capossela or conflicted or both
_____________________
11.0 Thumbnails
A Ride for Liberty – The Fugitive Slaves (1862) is a painting by the American artist Eastman Johnson that depicts a family of African-Americans fleeing enslavement in the Southern United States during the American Civil War.
It is based on an event that Johnson claimed to have witnessed near Manassas, Virginia, on March 2, 1862.
Johnson painted three versions of the work: two are now in public collections; the location of the third not known.
According to the Brooklyn Museum, the work is considered "virtually unique in art of the period" in portraying the former slaves as "agents of their own freedom."
By the late 1850s, Johnson had earned a reputation as a rising American artist, particularly with respect to genre paintings. Notably, Johnson was one of only a handful of American artists creating works depicting the lives of African-Americans, having earned considerable attention with his 1859 exhibition of Negro Life at the South.
During the American Civil War, Johnson attached himself to the Union Army and, over the course of the war, would produce numerous paintings and sketches of the people and events he witnessed.[3][4] In the months prior to the Second Battle of Bull Run Johnson was with the Army of the Potomac outside of Manassas, Virginia.
Early in the morning on March 2, 1862, Johnson claimed to have seen a family of African-Americans fleeing towards the Union Army lines in the hopes of acquiring contraband status.
Johnson began working on his paintings shortly after the incident, and completed three versions at some point during 1862. The locations of only two are known today: one is owned by the Brooklyn Museum and the second by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.[3] Both are in oil on board, and neither appears to have been exhibited during Johnson's lifetime.[3]
The version in the Brooklyn Museum measures 55.8 cm × 66.4 cm (22.0 in × 26.1 in) and is signed "E.J." to the lower right. The reverse side of the board bears Johnson's oil sketch of a scythe sharpening scene, also c.1862.
The work was acquired by the gallery after it held an Eastman Johnson exhibition in 1940, along with Johnson's Not at Home, as gifts from the artist's granddaughter Olga Louise Gwendolyn Conkling: her father Alfred R. Conkling had married Eastman Johnson's daughter Ethel.
The version in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is in its Paul Mellon Collection. It is a similar size, measuring 54.61 cm × 66.04 cm (21.50 in × 26.00 in), and is signed " E. Johnson".
A manuscript label on the back of the painting signed by the artist recounts: "A veritable incident/in the Civil War seen by/myself at Centerville/on this morning of/McClellan's advance towards Manassas March 2, 1862/Eastman Johnson."
The paintings depict a family of four African-American slaves on horseback in the murky early morning light. In front, a child sits in the lap of his father, with his mother riding on the back of the horse holding an infant.
The horse appears in motion, galloping away from the source of their enslavement and towards Union Army lines.
The man is looking ahead, the child down at the horse, and the woman back in case they are being pursued.
In the Brooklyn version, some vertical glints ahead of the horse indicate the bayonets and sabers of soldiers about to fight in the distance, but this detail becomes horizontal streaks of morning light in the Virginia version.
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