Daily Entries for the week of
Sunday, February 28, 2021
through
Saturday, March 6, 2021
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It’s Saturday, March 6, 2021
Welcome to the 1043rd consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
Columbia and Biosock
A view of a small section of Columbia focused on a statue of the city’s leader Father Comstock
Bioshock Infinite’s two protagonists, Booker DeWitt and Elizabeth
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2.0 Commentary
My back issue seems to have abated.
Friday I’ll restart my gym work.
I’ve started a TV series new to me.
-Unorthodox.-
A respectful dramatization of issues of particular importance to Orthodox Jews.
Recommended.
And for early teens, Anne with an E.
Be sure to check out our 11.0 Thumbnail with Tucker’s wonderful review of two games.
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3.2 Conflicted: 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.
I worked on rewrite of the first 30 pages,
the rewrite based on astute comments by several beta readers who have volunteered to help.
I checked it once through for tenses.
Another time for point of view.
Yet more work on the rewrite tomorrow.
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4.0 Chuckles and Thoughts
I’ve been thinking about taking up meditation.
I figure it’s better than sitting around doing nothing.
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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 dear friend, extremely careful during the pandemic, wrote me, castigating my decision to visit the Encore Casino for my birthday. Why would I play Russian Roulette with my health?
He asks me to explain why I would take such a risk.
Blog meister responds: Waking up every morning enters us into a Russian Roulette (my dear friend’s phrase.) Taking the elevator to the street, walking downtown, enjoying a café, everything a spin of the wheel. But I go through my day carefully, sticking to my routine, feeling perfectly safe.
As for a visit to the casino, I am double-vaccinated. I am intelligent and will avoid situations that bring me to mingling in groups.
I will follow protocols, not eating indoors in restaurants that do not follow state protocols; sanitizing my hands frequently.
But mostly, depending on my common sense and a good grounding of dangers to avoid.
I repeat, most of all, I have my common sense and a good grounding of dangers to avoid.
To the discussion I submit this letter from my friend Ann H:
You should be fine at the casino. I've been twice in the past month and it is fine. Not too crowded and good safety precautions.
Make sure they are open at Nick's restaurant as I went last Thursday for the new cheese place and they are only open Friday - Sunday - I was not happy but went to Mystique instead which is expensive
See you soon!
Xoxo
Blog meister responds: Thank you, Ann
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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Wednesday night, after a long day, I sat done to a leftover dinner
of roast chicken.
I enjoyed it thoroughly.
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11.0 Thumbnail
Columbia is an American city you’ve never been to or heard of. The reason for this is because it isn’t a real city. It exists purely within the fictional world of BioShock Infinite a video game from 2013. However, if Columbia were a real American city, you’d most likely never have visited or known of it either because it floats miles above the United States. Why? Because America was going to pieces and the city’s founders saw a chance to secede from the union in a way few could imagine. This all occurs in the game’s alternative 1912.
Fast forward to today. 2021. Depending on where in the country you live, you might have the nagging feeling that portions of the United States have broken clean off maybe not literally like Columbia but perhaps mentally. Just up and decided to veer into their own orbits, consequences be damned. The idea that these States aren't as United as we wish to believe is an uncomfortable one and out of that discomfort comes the almost instinctual reaction by many to demonize their opposing factions. They say that the other side has selfishly detached themselves from the reality that we Americans are all supposed to share.
BioShock Infinite takes that nagging feeling of disunion and makes players wade through its century-ago antecedent, in a way that lays bare the agonizing personal costs paid to the grinding cycle of history. Columbia is a city made up of people who manifested not only their own destiny, but their own reality as well and the result is horrifying. But beautiful too.
You haven't been to a place like this before. The fictional floating city where Infinite is set is all clockwork platforms and brass gears, its many sections populated with hucksters, strivers, lovers and schoolchildren. One minute, you're walking past a sheer drop, the next a park swings down into the open space. Sure, they seceded from the Union but it's such a paradise that you almost can't blame them.
Then you come along in the form of Booker DeWitt—the former soldier and Pinkerton agent that players control. Debt weighs heavy on his soul and the only way he can come clear of it is to fetch a supernaturally powered young woman named Elizabeth. If he gets her to the people who want her, then he might be able to get on with the rest of his life.
As might be expected it becomes clear early on that turning Elizabeth over won’t be easy. She isn’t a poorly programmed cipher or annoying video came companion. She's a fully scripted persona who aids you in combat and in scavenging, by finding and supplying health, money and ammo. Most impressively, she can manipulate tears, which are space-time hiccups that let her pull things from alternate realities through into this world.
From an emotional perspective, things change immediately when you meet Elizabeth. She's naïve, but with strong streaks of curiosity and desperation running through her. A skybound city doesn't feel like paradise when it's all you've ever known, and she yearns to experience the world below. Elizabeth alternately wants to impress Booker and run away from him. They need each other. When she throws you a health pack in a firefight, her need for you to survive is palpable. She's haunted by a lack of a past while Booker is chased by a history too full of blood. Together, their shared journey moves from wariness to warmth to resolution with real poignancy.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Columbia’s founder, Father Comstock, is a religious zealot, one who commands a city of totally obedient martyrs. When he tells them not to fight, it's far creepier than when you're battling them. He means to use Elizabeth's abilities to deliver an apocalyptic judgment to the America he left and doesn’t approve of. Comstock’s true mission is to rewrite American history erasing the sins of its past and push forward into a reality that completely ignores those the nation on the whole has mistreated. Comstock looks upon the founding of America as a big bang of sorts. The birth of the perfect nation before history could turn its eye on America’s transgressions. Columbia's already well down that road as its spiritual revisionism has made demigods of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin.
You might think that a rejection of American self-aggrandizement is all there is to BioShock Infinite. The uppity sky-dwellers in Columbia need to be taken down a peg, right? But what's more surprising than the rude awakenings is the degree to which Infinite is a celebration of Americana. It's a game squeezed out of Normal Rockwell paintings, set to ragtime music and filled to the brim with jaunty bygone slang. It zips and zings, even with it's beating you down with steampunk robot enemies.
This game really presents a duality akin to that of America’s history and dream. While the visuals are rooted in early to midcentury Americana, the storyline and in game environment is rife with a lot of “isms”. Racism, sexism, anti-intellectualism, 18th century revivalism and the gospel of industrialism as a cradle-to-grave caretaker of the worker. The tribalism that's inextricably part of America's spiritual DNA is a big part of the game's factions and battlefields, too. The Vox Populi—made of common-man laborers—think they have too little while the well-to-do Founders essentially believe that Comstock's vision of America is a better one than the one lived on solid ground. He made America great again. Opponents from different classes and backgrounds slander each other. Each side acts with the ironclad belief that if God be for them who could be against them? All of these concepts aren’t new to anyone who has studied history, particularly the building blocks of revolutions around the world. The difference is that Infinite places players in the fires of tumult and shows them the result of bloody revolts up close. Most of the people you overhear in Infinite are racist, classist, snooty and surly. Yet you feel bad for them as some of the illusions keeping Columbia aloft begin to crumble. It's a hell of a thing to believe in a dream with all your being, especially when truth begins to erode that dream and to stop believing in it comes with more than a blow to pride.
BioShock Infinite may not be the first game to try to say something about the very nature of the country it was made in—and the people who make it up—but it's certainly amongst the best. Some scenes reminded me of how people who are marginalized racially, economically, or both have an unbelievable array of prejudicial forces from public and private institutions set against them. Yet, even as I played through those moments, I was reminded that America is a big experiment. That experiment in letting people chart their own destinies has sometimes made it so brother fights against brother.
It's easy to dismiss those people floating in their fractured self-made Americas that we disagree with. They're wrong; we're right. Who cares why they are the way they are? But BioShock Infinite asks us to consider that very question and gives an answer that mixes hope with bitterness, wonder with despair and allegory with history. The game doesn't offer any advice about how to make everyone get along better but it makes a powerful argument for owning— and owning up to—all of our collective past.
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It’s Friday, March 5, 2021
Welcome to the 1042nd consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Portrait of Dostevsky
by Vasili Perov, 1872
Vasily Perov - kgHBFHS7SpcayQ at Google Cultural Institute, zoom level maximum
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2.0 Commentary
Another sleepless night.
Two hours.
Tough it through a busy day today.
A meeting with my architect friend Jack re: the Sacco and Vanzetti installation I’m working on.
A haircut.
A trip to Staples to scan my driver’s license on our way to gaining Italian citizenship. Why? I have no idea.
My cleaning help works on Wednesday.
My class on Modernism and Existentialism starts at 3pm. Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground is often considered the first existential novel.
Still can’t lift.
Strain in lower back and left buttocks still hampering me.
I love the daily news that’s full of the strides we’re making against the pandemic.
It’s easy to forget that 33% of our population will always be on the other side of any issue.
So we see Mississippi and Texas flaunting their resistance to the science of the CDC, encouraging their citizens to unmask and return to overcrowding.
Yippee kai-yay!
Merck and J&J.
A tag team.
A match made in heaven.
Salt and pepper.
The cavalry.
Yippee kai-yay!
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3.2 Conflicted
I sent out a set of 30 pages of my manuscript, Conflicted.
The beta readers reported back.
Perfect.
Not the manuscript – the ideas.
They understood and praised the work and then
offered amazingly fine ideas for improvement.
Probably the most effective beta readers I’ve ever worked with.
Have been working on the rewrite of those pages.
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4.0 Chuckles and Thoughts
“A good motto to live by:
‘Always try not to get killed.'”
~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 friend reports the loss of a dear friend.
Blog meister responds: Our condolences, friend.
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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Tuesday night I enjoyed a dry-aged rib eye steak.
Easy, delicious, expensive.
But the dry-aged not always available so
I always get one when I see it in the butcher’s case.
Actually, I call to find out when the next batch is available.
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11.0 Thumbnail
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (11 November 1821 – 9 February 1881) was a Russian novelist, philosopher, short story writer, essayist, and journalist. Dostoevsky's literary works explore human psychology in the troubled political, social, and spiritual atmospheres of 19th-century Russia, and engage with a variety of philosophical and religious themes. His most acclaimed works include Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), Demons (1872), and The Brothers Karamazov (1880). Dostoevsky's body of works consists of 12 novels, four novellas, 16 short stories, and numerous other works. Many literary critics rate him as one of the greatest psychological novelists in world literature. His 1864 novel Notes from Underground is considered to be one of the first works of existentialist literature.
Born in Moscow in 1821, Dostoevsky was introduced to literature at an early age through fairy tales and legends, and through books by Russian and foreign authors. His mother died in 1837 when he was 15, and around the same time, he left school to enter the Nikolayev Military Engineering Institute. After graduating, he worked as an engineer and briefly enjoyed a lavish lifestyle, translating books to earn extra money. In the mid-1840s he wrote his first novel, Poor Folk, which gained him entry into Saint Petersburg's literary circles. Arrested in 1849 for belonging to a literary group that discussed banned books critical of Tsarist Russia, he was sentenced to death but the sentence was commuted at the last moment. He spent four years in a Siberian prison camp, followed by six years of compulsory military service in exile. In the following years, Dostoevsky worked as a journalist, publishing and editing several magazines of his own and later A Writer's Diary, a collection of his writings. He began to travel around western Europe and developed a gambling addiction, which led to financial hardship. For a time, he had to beg for money, but he eventually became one of the most widely read and highly regarded Russian writers.
Dostoevsky was influenced by a wide variety of philosophers and authors including Pushkin, Gogol, Augustine, Shakespeare, Dickens, Balzac, Lermontov, Hugo, Poe, Plato, Cervantes, Herzen, Kant, Belinsky, Hegel, Schiller, Solovyov, Bakunin, Sand, Hoffmann, and Mickiewicz.
His writings were widely read both within and beyond his native Russia and influenced an equally great number of later writers including Russians such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Anton Chekhov, philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Jean-Paul Sartre and the emergence of Existentialism and Freudianism. His books have been translated into more than 170 languages, and served as the basis for many films.
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It’s Thursday, March 4, 2021
Welcome to the 1041st consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
Woolf in 1902
George Charles Beresford - Filippo Venturi Photography Blog
Portrait of Virginia Woolf (January 25, 1882 – March 28, 1941), a British author and feminist, with her chignon.
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2.0 Commentary
We often get involved in so many projects we occasionally get swamped.
But each is so much fun or so important we can’t give it up.
What do you make of that?
A health report.
Two nights in a row I’ve enjoyed excellent sleep, six hours each.
Does that mean that ten days after my second shot
I am out of the range of vaccination symptoms?
I hope so.
Meanwhile, my aching back,
caused by not lifting my feet high enough as I walked
leading to a fall,
still is aching.
I bought a back brace and put it on today.
Like the knee brace I wore for a while,
it’s a big help in easing strains.
I have my second shingles shot coming up soon.
And I must admit to feeling very easy about the pandemic.
Too comfortable, perhaps.
Not afraid of doing anything egregious
but
Tuesday is my birthday and Lauren is taking me to Fraelli’s in Everett.
It’s the Italian restaurant inside the casino.
The -but- is that we plan to walk around.
My first time in near a year that I’m in a crowd environment.
If the protocol is maskless, I’m disposed to go maskless
unless
it’s an obviously overcrowded sector and then
I shall whisk out my N95, a salvo to defend myself.
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4.0 Chuckles and Thoughts
One can never know for sure what a deserted area can look like.
~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, the page of Newport Life Magazine with Kali’s poem.
Kali’s abandon autumn.
Add image
Blog meister responds: Lovely.
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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Monday night Lauren joined me for a slow-roasted chicken.
The dinner was delicious and we had a great catch-up.
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11.0 Thumbnail
Adeline Virginia Woolf (née Stephen; 25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th century authors and also a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.
Woolf was born into an affluent household in South Kensington, London, the seventh child in a blended family of eight which included the modernist painter Vanessa Bell. Her mother was Julia Prinsep Jackson and her father Leslie Stephen. While the boys in the family received college educations, the girls were home-schooled in English classics and Victorian literature. An important influence in Virginia Woolf's early life was the summer home the family used in St Ives, Cornwall, where, in the late 1890s, she first saw the Godrevy Lighthouse, which was to become central to her novel To the Lighthouse (1927).
Woolf's childhood came to an abrupt end in 1895 with the death of her mother and her first mental breakdown, followed two years later by the death of her half-sister and a mother figure to her, Stella Duckworth. From 1897 to 1901, she attended the Ladies' Department of King's College London, where she studied classics and history and came into contact with early reformers of women's higher education and the women's rights movement. Other important influences were her Cambridge-educated brothers and unfettered access to her father's vast library.
Encouraged by her father, Woolf began writing professionally in 1900. Her father's death in 1904 caused Woolf to have another mental breakdown. Following his death, the Stephen family moved from Kensington to the more bohemian Bloomsbury, where they adopted a free-spirited lifestyle. It was in Bloomsbury where, in conjunction with the brothers' intellectual friends, they formed the artistic and literary Bloomsbury Group.
In 1912, she married Leonard Woolf, and in 1917 the couple founded the Hogarth Press, which published much of her work. They rented a home in Sussex and moved there permanently in 1940. Throughout her life, Woolf was troubled by her mental illness. She was institutionalised several times and attempted suicide at least twice. Her illness may have been bipolar disorder, for which there was no effective intervention during her lifetime. In 1941, at age 59, Woolf died by drowning herself in the River Ouse at Lewes.
During the interwar period, Woolf was an important part of London's literary and artistic society. In 1915 she published her first novel, The Voyage Out, through her half-brother's publishing house, Gerald Duckworth and Company. Her best-known works include the novels Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and Orlando (1928). She is also known for her essays, including A Room of One's Own (1929), in which she wrote the much-quoted dictum, "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."
Woolf became one of the central subjects of the 1970s movement of feminist criticism and her works have since garnered much attention and widespread commentary for "inspiring feminism". Her works have been translated into more than 50 languages. A large body of literature is dedicated to her life and work, and she has been the subject of plays, novels, and films. Woolf is commemorated today by statues, societies dedicated to her work and a building at the University of London.
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It’s Wednesday, March 3, 2021
Welcome to the 1040th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
Interstate 70 in Colorado
ErgoSum88 - Own work
Interstate 70 through Colorado
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2.0 Commentary
Hoping to see America undertake a huge program to rebuild our infrastructure.
Remember Dwight D. Eisenhower
1.7
What a nice number.
Here in Massachusetts, our positivity rate.
Music.
And J&J?
More music.
In the covid-19 war have we turned the tide?
We have and that makes us happy.
And our governor is easing restrictions on business openings.
Another step towards normalization
for our full back to school in September,
for our full normalization by the 2021 hliday season.
Which gets us to this:
What of the measures we have taken to win the war against covid
shall we incorporate into our new normal?
Masks?
Distanced greetings?
Continual hand sanitizing?
Other?
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3.1 Sacco and Vanzetti
Worked on Agenda for Friday’s Board of Directors meeting.
Possibly adding someone new to the engaged circle.
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4.0 Chuckles and Thoughts
What if there were no hypothetical questions?
~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
From our dear friend, Kali.
Good Afternoon Dom,
I just wanted to reach out and share some joy with you!
An old poem of mine (12 years old) was published in Newport Life Magazine!
I figured I'd share it with you because well...joy in a pandemic is something that is lovely to find :)
Hope you're doing well!
Kali
Blog meister responds: So great to hear for our dear friend. And with such great news. Am remembering the lovely poems you shared with us in the past. God bless, my dear. And thank you.
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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Sunday night I enjoyed another meal of the Boiled dinner I prepared a couple of nights ago.
My goodness it was good.
To freshen up the meal I bought a single lamb shank and another waxy potato,
I boiled them in extra chicken stock and then added the entire pot to the main event.
Wish you were here.
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11.0 Thumbnail
Interstate 70 (I-70) is a transcontinental Interstate Highway in the United States, stretching from Cove Fort, Utah, to Baltimore, Maryland.
In Colorado, the highway traverses an east–west route across the center of the state.
In western Colorado, the highway connects the metropolitan areas of Grand Junction and Denver via a route through the Rocky Mountains.
In eastern Colorado, the highway crosses the Great Plains, connecting Denver with metropolitan areas in Kansas and Missouri.
Bicycles and other non-motorized vehicles, normally prohibited on Interstate Highways, are allowed on those stretches of I-70 in the Rockies where no other through route exists.
The United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) lists the construction of I-70 among the engineering marvels undertaken in the Interstate Highway system, and cites four major accomplishments: the section through the Dakota Hogback, Eisenhower Tunnel, Vail Pass and Glenwood Canyon.
The Eisenhower Tunnel, with a maximum elevation of 11,158 feet (3,401 m) and length of 1.7 miles (2.7 km), is the longest mountain tunnel and highest point along the Interstate Highway System.
The portion through Glenwood Canyon was completed on October 14, 1992.
This was one of the final pieces of the Interstate Highway System to open to traffic, and
is one of the most expensive rural highways per mile built in the United States.
The Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) earned the 1993 Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement Award from the American Society of Civil Engineers for the completion of I-70 through the canyon.
When the Interstate Highway system was in the planning stages, the western terminus of I-70 was proposed to be at Denver.
The portion west of Denver was included into the plans after lobbying by Governor Edwin C. Johnson, for whom one of the tunnels along I-70 is named.
East of Idaho Springs, I-70 was built along the corridor of U.S. Highway 40, one of the original transcontinental U.S. Highways. West of Idaho Springs, I-70 was built along the route of U.S. Highway 6, which was extended into Colorado during the 1930s.
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It’s Tuesday, March 2, 2021
Welcome to the 1039th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
Bill Cassidy, as in ABT
official photo, 114th Congress
United States Congress -
http://www.cassidy.senate.gov/content/about-bill
ABT
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2.0 Commentary
Sleep continues off-center.
I did return to 10mg of melatonin on Saturday night.
Can’t tell if it had any effect.
I did get three hours sleep.
Got up and had breakfast, including 12oz of half-decaf coffee,
did some work on a manuscript, and got another two hours sleep.
Returned to my work, ready to nap at an eyelid’s droop.
Several days ago, walking out, my legs heavier than usual from lack of sleep,
I trip over a sewer cover raised above sidewalk level.
Bruised my knee.
Otherwise I was fine.
I thought.
Until I woke up next morning with a sore lover back.
Three days later my back remains sore.
I ordered a back brace that will arrive Monday evening.
Haven’t been to the club these last days.
Bill Cassidy, ABT
anyone but trump
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3.1 Sacco and Vanzetti
Several of us had conversations relative to our next steps.
I think we’re on the right road.
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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
I received an email from a dear friend whose symptoms are running parallel with mine: sleeplessness, fatigue, headaches.
But she slogs on through her busy routine nonetheless.
Blog meister responds: We’re soulmates.
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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Saturday night I made a Shrimp Cacciatore using the large 8-12/lb shrimp.
It was delicious.
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11.0 Thumbnail
William Morgan Cassidy (born September 28, 1957) is an American physician and politician serving as the senior United States Senator from Louisiana, a seat he was elected to in 2014.
A member of the Republican Party, he served in the Louisiana State Senate from 2006 to 2009 and in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2009 to 2015.
Born in Highland Park, Illinois, Cassidy is a graduate of Louisiana State University (LSU) and LSU School of Medicine.
A gastroenterologist, he was elected to the Louisiana State Senate from the 16th district which included parts of Baton Rouge, in 2006.
In 2008, he was elected as the U.S. Representative for Louisiana's 6th congressional district, defeating Democratic incumbent Don Cazayoux.
In 2014, Cassidy defeated Democratic incumbent Mary Landrieu to represent Louisiana in the U.S. Senate, becoming the first Republican to hold the seat since Reconstruction.
He was reelected in 2020.
Cassidy was one of seven Republican senators to vote to convict Donald Trump of incitement of insurrection in his second impeachment trial.
As a result, the Republican Party of Louisiana censured him.
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It’s Monday, March 1, 2021
Welcome to the 1038th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
Richard Platt
an English brewer of the City of London
Sheriff of London
founded Aldenham School and almshouses in his home village in Hertfordshire.
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2.0 Commentary
Friday, at 9.00am,
for the seventh day in a row up after only two or three hours sleep,
having just concluded an exciting 8.00am All-in meeting of the Sacco and Vanzetti group,
walking around apartment, zombie-like, non-productive.
If today I was fated to be non-productive, I decided to do it in style.
Don’t mind the time of day: enjoy my daily alcohol intake and my main meal.
Since at 3.00am after a 2.30am breakfast I was ready for my day’s work,
I cooked tonight’s dinner, (see 6.0 Dinner/Recipes below), so I just had to heat and serve.
I started making my one drink of the day.
The phone rang: cousin Lauren.
When I told her what I was doing, she living in Revere, Mass, she yelled, “Wait for me,”
and arrived 15 minutes later.
Now accept as gospel that drinking at 9.30am is not normal for me or Lauren.
But adaptability is.
For both.
Why we’re such good friends.
Unusual circumstances, unusual actions.
In the event, our drinks were delicious and heady.
Dinner was great.
And we were laughing it off.
But fulI and happy, I was ready for a nap.
Which I took, only 20 minutes, but delicious minutes each.
When I got up, Lauren had cleaned the dinner.
Perfectly.
Then we went to the Thinking Cup in the North End for coffee and work.
The café was filled with friends, among them two people in attendance at the morning Sacco and Vanzetti Zoom meeting we had just three hours ago.
What a hoot.
So runs one of the stories born of my second vaccination.
I’ll live with it for as long as it takes.
Because frankly, I am very happy being protected against preventable serious illness or death.
Friday night, after five nights in succession of very poor (3 hours) of sleep, I slept very well.
And without any melatonin.
I’m not averse to the supplement but the vaccination, having as profound an effect as it has, has thrown my melatonin dosage off.
I’ll wait until my body adjusts and then reintroduce melatonin as I see it’s needed.
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3.1 Sacco and Vanzetti
Today a quiet one for me, most welcomed.
I developed the strategy for our organization moving ahead from here.
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4.0 Chuckles and Thoughts
“I was a loner as a child.
I had an imaginary friend.
I didn’t bother with him.”
~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
Yesterday’s Sacco and Vanzetti meeting created an animated buzz.
Happy and excited sums it all up.
Blog meister responds: I’m with you, my friends.
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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Friday dinner was a little earlier than my usual 5.00pm hour.
At 9.30am I sat down to the best iteration of New England boiled dinner that I ever had.
NEW ENGLAND BOILED DINNER a la Dom
Ribs were on sale so I made the dish with 2.5lbs of St. Louis Ribs and 3/4lbs of Italian spicy pork sausages.
To caramelize the meats and make the exterior chewier, use a bakers’ tray with rack to broil both sides of the meats until an attractive golden brown.
Place the meat into a large Dutch Oven and scrape the fat and pan drippings into the pot.
For vegetables, add to the pot 2lbs of waxy potatoes, and 1lb each of carrots, turnips, onions, and cabbage, cut in sizes right for 1 piece per plate.
For liquids, use 3.5 cups of water and 3.5 cups of your own chicken stock. Made-at-home stock a game changer.
To the liquids add 1 ounce of white vinegar, 1t of spicy brown and 1t of Dijon mustards, 8 cloves and 2 bay leaves.
Bring pot to a boil and simmer covered for 90 minutes, turning the pot every 15 minutes or so.
Serve in large soup bowls. The broth is fabulous.
Serve condiments: mustards and horseradish are traditional.
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11.0 Thumbnail
Little is known of Platt’s early life, except that he was the son of Hugh Platt, of Aldenham, and was apprenticed to a London brewer.
His date of birth can be inferred from his portrait, which says he was in his 76th year in 1600.
He became a master brewer of the Worshipful Company of Brewers and the owner of the Old Swan brewery in James Street, London.
In 1576 and 1581 he served as Master of the Worshipful Company of Brewers.
He also became an Alderman of London.
Tudor Hall, little changed since the time of Platt
In 1591, Platt was appointed as a governor of Queen Elizabeth's School, Barnet, at Tudor Hall, and was then a citizen of London who had served as Sheriff of London.
In 1596, Queen Elizabeth I gave Platt letters patent to build at Aldenham a "Free Grammar School and Almshouses", and a foundation stone was laid in 1597, at Boyden’s Hill, Aldenham.
By a deed dated 18 January 1599, Platt endowed two charities, the grammar school and six almshouses, with land at Aldenham and some twenty acres of pasture at St Pancras, and woodland there, placing the endowments in the care of the Worshipful Company of Brewers.
Platt’s son Hugh Platt had been educated at St John's College, Cambridge, and Platt gave instructions that when there was a vacancy for a Master of the grammar school, the college was to nominate three Masters of Arts, from whom the Brewers' Company would appoint one.
He also provided a house, with a garden and orchard, and a salary to go with the position of £20 a year, equivalent to £4,492 in 2019.
Platt died on 28 November 1600[1] and was buried on 4 December at St James Garlickhythe, London.
In his will, Platt provided for the Brewers’ Company to pay the boys of his new grammar school beer money, as the water was not safe to drink.
Pupils at Aldenham School continue to visit Brewers' Hall once a year to receive £5.
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It’s Sunday, February 28, 2021
Welcome to the 1037th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
Foods
Unknown author - This image was released by the National Cancer Institute, an agency part of the National Institutes of Health, with the ID 2397 (image)
This image shows a display of healthy foods on a table. Foods include beans, grains, cauliflour, cantelope, pasta, bread, orange, turkey, salmon, carrots, turnips, zucchini, snowpeas, string beans, radishes, asparagus, summer squash, lean beef, tomatoes, and potatoes. AV Number: AV-8812-3430 Reuse Restrictions: None - This image is in the public domain and can be freely reused. Please credit the source and/or author listed above.
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2.0 Commentary
I’ve been bragging that I’ve shown no symptoms of reaction from my second shot.
Meanwhile, I’ve had the worst bout of sleeplessness that I’ve had in years.
I jumped my intake of melatonin from 15mg to 20.
Didn’t help.
Been unable to go to the club: so tired I would be susceptible to making a mistake and causing injury.
I’m typing today, Friday, having been up since 2.30am this morning.
Three times I’ve laid down and only once got a little bit drowsy, but didn’t sleep.
Yesterday, Thursday, I heard it on the news: many people reporting sleep issues after their vaccinations.
I am constrained to add my voice to that list.
Tonight I will not take any melatonin and accept the consequences.
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3.1 Sacco and Vanzetti
We staged a very successful first ‘all in’ Sacco and Vanzetti meeting today.
The tone happy; the enthusiasm high.
Now comes the setting of the next agenda.
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4.0 Chuckles/Thoughts
“I bet you anything that 10 times out of 10,
Nicky, Vinny and Tony will beat the s**t out of Todd, Kyle and Tucker.”
~George Carlin
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5.0 Mail
We love getting mail.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
This, another in a long line of brilliant letters from our dear friend of longstanding, Howard D.
One of the things, a remnant – lasting and conclusive as testament to the particular cast of Toni-Lee’s scholarship leading to perfecting of the menus she adapted from classic dishes you guys encountered in your years-long food education – I remember, because at the time the reference and allusion, never mind treating the material as a serious and substantive source of how the process was informed as she experimented and learned, was so relatively esoteric and largely unknown was her “discovery” of Richard Olney. Olney is still little enough sung as a significant voice in the Americanization of Escoffier-driven French haute cuisine. No doubt overshadowed by the very tall silhouette and influence of Julia Child – who obviously had a different set of ego needs than Olney.
What I remember, and it may be a screen memory or colored in the interim of over 50 years by god knows what prejudicial biases, is that Toni-Lee put a great more stock in what she gleaned from Olney than in any significant level of regular reference to Julia Child.
I’m also pretty sure it was from Toni-Lee that I first heard reference to Elizabeth David, the British equivalent of Richard Olney, and saddled with the further burden of the contingencies of trying to encourage the Brits still in the throes – even after seven or eight years leading well into the 50s of severe shortage that prolonged the rationing that was part of the burden of life in war-torn Britain – of limited food stocks, never mind access to unobtainable delicacies (delicate only for their inaccessibility), being the ordinary pantry items in France and Italy and features of their so much more characterful cuisines. It was David’s mission both to enrich the diets and the palates of her Brit followers, even as she tried to blunt the general impression, and consequent hostility, of the general populace for what they branded as the posh indulgences of the rich, who could afford trips to the continent for good food, and the very very rich, who could afford the best ingredients and their own cooks.
It hardly necessitates mentioning these details of the extent and breadth and limitless catholicity of Toni’s scholar-trained forays into source material she could ponder and fold into the recipe adaptations she worked on it seemed constantly, for the sake not only of making your home lives that much richer, but to help distinguish the choices and the quality of the fare you offered at Dom’s.
Blog Meister responds: I see this as an ode to Toni-Lee.
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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Thursday night I had a lovely dinner with a lovely friend.
Main course was a boned chicken leg that I stuffed with spinach, parsley, and basil.
With garlic oil, Romano cheese, and mozzarella cheese.
And panko breadcrumbs, salt and freshly-ground pepper.
With a mushroom gravy.
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11.0 Thumbnails
Every week I answer a question about my past posted by my daughter Kat.
This question I opted to answer in three parts.
6 What fascinated you as a child?
Part One: Food
Ever since I remember I answered this question the same way: Food, Art, and Tennis
And because I pursued these interests throughout my life I’m thinking to take them as separate stories from childhood to the present.
…And my mother
“What’s he doing now?”
Our upstairs neighbor was visiting, talking to my mother,
the pair sitting at the kitchen table.
Our only table.
We being four children and our two parents.
The table the only flat surface in the apartment.
Our food prep area.
Study area.
Board games area.
Everything got done on that table.
Continuous squabbling over the rights to that table.
I was a hungry nine-year-old but my mother couldn’t
host Yolanda-from-upstairs and make lunch at the same time.
She decided I’d have to wait.
I nagged.
She just couldn’t do two things.
I whined.
Neither of them took heed.
So I escalated.
Opened the cabinet door and took out a can of tuna fish.
Always Italian. Usually Pastene but sometimes Genoa brand.
I muscled it on the table.
Surely Yolanda would catch on.
But the conversation went on unabated.
Using the hand-cranked can opener
I opened the tuna and
dumped the contents into a bowl.
“Use the big bowl,” my mother suggested.
Not what I wanted to hear.
But I did.
I got out the red onion and celery and chopped them very fine
adding the bits into the bowl.
“What’s he doing now?” she asked.
I was reaching for a paper bag for one of my grandfather’s fresh-from-the-farm tomatoes.
I sliced it and chopped the slices.
Added them.
I got out a can of black olives.
Opened it and chopped a handful of the olives.
Salt and pepper.
Added a tablespoon of mayonnaise.
Then I used a fork to break up the tuna and mix the ingredients.
Didn’t notice right away that the conversation had stopped and they were watching me.
Didn’t notice that I was no longer making this in a huff.
That the process caught me up.
And when I realized I was the center of attention, I swelled with pride.
I pulled out two slices of American bread,
what we called packaged bread sold in markets and not bakeries,
forget if it was Bond or Wonder,
and useful for sandwiches or toast – it kept in the refrigerator.
I heaped the tuna on one side, put mayonnaise on the top slice and paused.
“Where’s the lettuce?”
“We’re out. I’ll get some later.”
The lunch was delicious.
They tasted it and announced it “Delicious.”
“Better than mine,” my mother said.
She got no objection from me.
My mother had a repertoire of dishes that she made
as well as anybody on God’s good earth has ever made.
Soft-boiled eggs were not, never, in her repertoire
although she made soft boiled eggs for us for near two decades.
From this flaw I learned to use always
the same size egg and
the same small pot into which I put
the same amount of water and turned the gas on to the same setting,
setting a timer to
the same eight minutes.
I developed this method to reduce the amount of care I had to expend on the eggs.
The eight minutes allows me to start with the egg directly from the refrigerator and
into the cold water,
turn on the gas and
wait for the timer.
Alternative methods suggest that one should start the egg with boiling water.
Which necessitates turning on the gas and then
returning to the kitchen to see when the water has reached a boiling point.
An entire extra stress point.
When I was in high school, I asked my mother to stop frying our meatballs before
cooking then in our Gravy.
To my surprise, my mother acceded to my request.
Since her Gravy was among the world’s best,
her taking directions from me and altering her great recipe I took as a highest honor.
In the event, no one complained.
…and the Harvard Club
I was a sophomore at Boston University when I landed a job
as a waiter at the Harvard Club.
Except for a single time on a visit to a friend’s house in Brooklyn four years prior,
I had never been to a restaurant.
They hired me without experience, work or life.
Changed my life.
Coming from an Italian ghetto,
I now found myself serving strange foods to much paler people.
People comfortable with bread knives and steak knives, soupspoons and teaspoons,
set-up plates, salad plates, dinner plates, dessert plates, and coffee saucers.
People talking politely to each other.
People laughing together over dinner.
Wines or drinks with dinner.
Being served dinner.
Educating.
We didn’t eat steaks at home.
Not once in my twenty-one years with them.
Too expensive.
after serving so many of them at the Harvard Club,
enjoying the enthusiasms of our guests who ate and paid for them,
so expensive,
enjoying the aromas and the charcoal color of the meat,
listening to the other waiters each wishing he could have one,
I decided to taste one.
We wrote our orders for steaks
on dedicated slips which the cooks tucked away in a small recipe box
for later proofing them against the guest checks: one steak, one charge.
These are days before computers.
Easy enough, then, to reuse an order slip that I surreptitiously pulled out from the small recipe box,
never well-guarded since,
as I came to find out from the Italian chef during one of our many conversations,
“Checking never happens.”
We had a safe place where we could eat the steaks.
We, since I had to get a steak for the Headwaiter as the price for his collusion.
I remember the linen closet which we arranged a setting for two.
I remember the first bite of my first steak: a heady revelation that no other of my culinary experiences has ever exceeded.
From that night on, I made up for seventeen years of doing without.
For the two years that I worked at the Harvard Club, I asked the chef a battery of questions about pepper pot soup, welsh rabbit, chowders, and stocks.
When it was over, I felt I had minored in the culinary arts.
…at Polcari’s in the North End and Casa Barbi in Allston
After two years at the Harvard Club, I went to work full-time in an Italian restaurant in the North End, making scads of money. Enough for Toni and I to get married.
I worked at Polcari’s in the North End for two years.
When we married we moved to Allston to be close to both of our schools and I found a job at Casa Barbi, just a few doors down from our apartment.
In both restaurants I learned more about food.
And I wrote poetry to Toni-Lee.
She came in for dinner one night and I left this at her place setting:
More than escarole and polpettini,
More than broth and tortellini,
More than spaghetti and anchov,
That’s how much you I love.
…with Toni-Lee while students
Toni’s mother was a decent cook and Toni learned a lot from her.
My mother was a great cook and I learned a lot from her.
My restaurant experiences,
two years at the Harvard Club,
two years at Polcari’s restaurant at North Station, and,
when we were married, working full-time at Casa Barbi,
added to my culinary knowledge and stood a young couple in good stead.
We were both in school, Toni getting her doctorate, me my JD, (law school degree) and cooking was an effort.
We distinctly did not split duties.
We were closer than that; more in love than that.
We each did everything we could.
We didn’t weigh.
Count.
Track who did what or
who cooked yesterday.
Sometimes I cooked.
Sometimes she.
Today.
Tomorrow.
What did it matter who or what or when?
We loved.
We were committed to each other.
We worked together.
Separately.
But we never counted. Not ever.
We worked from each according to her ability…
…by Toni Lee, solo; me as fortunate recipient
Toni had given birth to Chris and I was picking them up to take them home.
But not immediately.
To deflect any postnatal depression, I took Toni and the baby to Design Research,
a lifestyle concept store where people could buy everything they needed for contemporary living, particularly of Scandinavian design.
The store was stylish and a treat to visit.
We walked very slowly, mom and I.
Not the child, he one day old.
First purchase, Julia Child’s Mastering.
I picked out two recipes, bought all the kitchen equipment needed to execute,
and took Chris and Toni home to sleep.
When she woke, dinner was ready: Coq au Vin and Chocolate Mousse.
Our first French meal.
With a bottle of Burgundy, we had a great evening.
Did I mention that Toni was competitive?
Summa cum laude; a doctor’s degree at age 25, having given birth to three children in her free time?
Can’t slouch or someone will learn more than you about French culinary art.
The next day, after making coffee and enjoying our daily coffee hour alone together,
I got breakfast for the older boys, Chris was our third, I went out for a good chunk of the day.
I returned home ate in the afternoon and stopped just outside our open kitchen.
It was a mess.
Pots and pans scattered throughout.
Standing in the center of the kitchen of chaos,
head bent down,
eyes fixed on the cookbook held open by a yesterday-purchased hard-plastic cookbook holder,
a copper bowl on her left hip and
a whisk in her right hand,
thirty-six hours from giving birth,
Toni was beating egg whites.
Our daily meals became world class dining.
I never cooked a meal at home again.
In time, Toni chose to work around our restaurant and food and surrendered her career as a college teacher.
She cooked our family’s daily meals, each a work of art the equal of any cook I’ve ever met or read about.
She created a Food magazine.
She taught cooking classes.
She developed the recipes for Dom’s.
She opened an extraordinary eponymous restaurant on Cape Cod (only to lose it to a fire after just a few months.)
Although her food thrilled the world’s most famous people, and
someone of world-stature was at the restaurant almost every night,
she never wanted to meet any of them.
She never did.
…at Dom’s
Boston, at the time we opened Dom’s, was not a great foodcity.
But our opening was an auspicious omen for the dining out crowd:
Legal Seafood, Casa Mexico, L’Espalier, Dodin-Bouffant also opened within months of each other.
Fred Ek entered the wine scene with Classic Wines.
Julia Child hit first the cookbook market and then television.
And Boston never looked back.
After operating a year or two, using Boston Italian restaurants to judge ourselves, we thought we were pretty good.
So Toni and I took a trip to NYC to visit their NY Times best Italian restaurant selections and compare.
Nando’s and San Marco were one and two back then.
Whatever hot air we had filled ourselves with, we rushed home deflated.
They were that much better than we were.
The major league.
A watershed for Dom’s.
When we stopped gliding and began to seriously redo ourselves, using cookbooks and Toni’s scholarly habits to emulate Italy’s most beloved classics.
Out of it came an antipasto of lobster tomalley croustades, fried Jerusalem artichoke, roasted peppers, stuffed eggplant, clam casino, and frutta di mare salad served with a basket of hot Italian bread toasted with butter and cheese and served with a slow-roasted, caramelized garlic puree for spreading, creating the best garlic bread you ever tasted.
Out of it we became the first Italian restaurant to make our own pasta on premises. And under Toni’s direction this pasta was silk.
We served meals of Osso Bucco, Roast Duck, Agnello in Crosta (Lamb in pastry shell), Dry-aged Bistecca alla Fiorentina, Bouillabaisse, and many, many other classics, often using four Design Research Food Carts for our at-table service.
Every fall we waited for the last shipment of Crenshaw melons, about mid-November, and bought 25 cases, ripening them as needed, offering them to our customers all winter long.
Nightly, we bought locally foraged wild mushrooms, we flew Orange Roughy in from Australia, Dover sole in from England.
We loved food.
And we had Toni.
…And France
One year we took an eleven week culinary and wine tour of France.
From Classic Wines, we bore letters of introduction to many famous wineries representing most of the most important wine regions of France from Alsace to Provence, to Bordeaux.
We took winemaker-guided, detailed tours of those wineries studying
the agriculture and the vinification methods, as well as
tasting the wines, listening, tasting, spitting, learning.
Months in advance Toni had made reservations for us at the most famous of France’s restaurants, all starred.
For the restaurants we carried letters of introduction to the chef-owners, the letters sometimes from another chef, sometimes from the nearby important winery.
We used the letters to get next-day kitchen tours and explanations of how the restaurant prepared this or that item, usually of items we had enjoyed the night before.
Food fascinated me for as long as I can remember.
And it still does.
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