Daily Entries for the week of
Sunday, February 6, 2022
through
Saturday, February 12, 2022
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It’s Saturday, February 12th, 2022
Welcome to the 1,353rd consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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Lead Picture*
Rabbi Akiva ben Joseph
Akiva ben Joseph
Unknown author - Mantua Haggadah
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Commentary
My cousin Lauren will be taking her old room in my apartment for a while.
She starts her new job at St. Elizabeth’s on Feb.28 and will move in on March 1.
The year she stayed here when she finished her degree was productive and smooth.
This time around will help her establish a rhythm of a full-time job, setting up apartment living, and regular yoga classes.
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Reading and Writing
Am down to the last few pages (maybe two days) of line editing.
What’ll be left is a close reading of a dozen emails from my friend Howard probing,
suggesting, objecting, liking, and incorporating some of his ideas into the text. One week’s work, I think.
Then comes the agent search.
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Chuckles and Thoughts
The liberals can understand everything but
people who don't understand them.
~Lenny Bruce
Understanding Ageing
How are you feeling today? A more tailored question might be: What’s hurting today?
Because every day brings a pain.
This morning I woke up to light-sensitive eyes. Not new to me. The extreme sensitivity has typically lasted two or three hours and then departs. I’m sure that will prove true today, as it has in the past.
How am I feeling?
Really?
You want to hear what Italians call a canzone? A song?
Every day something hurts.
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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 my niece Lisa M:
Hi all:
Just an update on Lincoln Highway. I visited the library and it was not available at my branch, but I could get it sent over in a few days from a not so near neighboring branch. I set the wheels in motion, but coincidentally happened to be near the neighboring branch the next day! So of course, I thought to myself "why don't you just pick it up instead of waiting for it to be sent?". Well, given we live in a follow the rules world, even when they don't make sense, I apparently could not disrupt the normal flow of operations by removing the book from its appointed place, as it was marked for shipment to me, and dammit, it was going to be shipped!!! I had to literally watch my book go by me in a bin carried by the UPS guy, who took it to his truck for further delivery. I thought about jumping him and when the books spilled out of the bin, grabbing the Lincoln Highway and hightailing it to Monroe county, where the Presidential inferences may offer me protection from arrest!! Oy veh!!
I should be on board in a day or two (unless the UPS box with the book ends up in Podunkville)!!
A question..... When I do get the book, are we supposed to read a chapter at a time, or read the entire book, and then discuss?
Ciao
Lisa
Blog meister responds: A great story.
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Dinner/Food/Recipes
A had a tunafish salad sandwich using canned tuna. I added all the ingredients and then put the tuna and all into a food chopper.
It produced the tuna paste that I was after. I topped it with thick slices of tomato, lettuce, and sprouts.
I enjoyed it.
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Pictures with Captions from our community**
Kat at age 20
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Short Essay*
Akiva ben Yosef (c. 50 – 28 September 135 CE), also known as Rabbi Akiva), was a leading Jewish scholar and sage, a tanna of the latter part of the first century and the beginning of the second century. Rabbi Akiva was a leading contributor to the Mishnah and to Midrash halakha. He is referred to in the Talmud as Rosh la-Hakhamim "Chief of the Sages". He was executed by the Romans in the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt.
The death of Akiva is usually rendered as some redacted form of three separate versions of the circumstances. Each version share the same basic plot-points: Akiva defies the Roman prohibition on teaching Torah, the consul Turnus Rufus orders his execution, Akiva is flayed alive, and his final words are the Shema prayer.
The most common version of Akiva's death is that the Roman government ordered him to stop teaching Torah, on pain of death, and that he refused. When Turnus Rufus, as he is called in Jewish sources, ordered Akiva's execution, Akiva is said to have recited his prayers calmly, though suffering agonies; and when Rufus asked him whether he was a sorcerer, since he felt no pain, Akiva replied, "I am no sorcerer; but I rejoice at the opportunity now given to me to love my God 'with all my life,' seeing that I have hitherto been able to love Him only 'with all my means' and 'with all my might,'" and began reciting the Shema, with the word Echad, "[G-d is] One!", he expired.
* The Blog Meister selects the topics for the Lead Picture and the Short Essay and then leans heavily or exclusively on Wikipedia to provide the content. The Blog Meister usually edits the entries.
**Pictures with Captions from our community are photos sent in by our blog followers. Feel free to send in yours to domcapossela@hotmail.com
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It’s Friday, February 11th, 2022
Welcome to the 1,352nd consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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Lead Picture*
Fetus in womb
Views of a Foetus in the Womb, detail from a drawing by Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci - http://www.drawingsofleonardo.org
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Commentary
Five nights w/o melatonin or ibuprofen.
The last two nights sleep has been respectively excellent and very good.
I’m hoping to discover a rhythm in my sleeping that I can learn to dance to.
I’ve searched decades to discover that rhythm to no avail with the exception that the last three years have been terrific thanks to a reliance on melatonin.
My usage started at 3mg per night and gradually increased to 20mg for the last 3 months.
That’s now proving not to be enough but I’m no longer comfortable with taking the amount it seems I would need to sleep well.
BTW: I have never taken any sort of ‘sleeping pills’, always fearful that these dramatic solutions will produce unwanted effects on my body. I’ve never been a pill guy of any sort.
I’m told it will take several weeks for my body to adjust to the absence of the chemical and start to produce its own melatonin. I’ve got to tough it through to that stage and then see how my sleep is evolving.
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Chuckles and Thoughts
Every day people are straying away from the church and
going back to God.
~Lenny Bruce
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Mail and other Conversation
We love getting mail, email, or texts.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
or text to 617.852.7192
Some comments on the TV series Reacher. Mostly favorable.
Blog meister responds: I’m enjoying it in an off-hand kind of way.
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Dinner/Food/Recipes
I did so much cooking in the last several days, I will be doing very little in the days to come.
On sale @ W Foods are baby back ribs (one of my favorites), 8-12 shrimp (one of my favorites) and cheese pizza (one of my favorites). Very easy to prepare. For my plant part of the meal I have a greens/beans soup I made in my cooking frenzy. I’ll just heat a large portion of that and serve it as my accompaniment in all three meals. Then I’ll buy a sausage (?bratwurst) and have the soup as a main course.
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Pictures with Captions from our community**
Winter scene in Public Garden Feb 2022
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Short Essay*
Ageing or aging (USA spelling) is the process of becoming older. The term refers mainly to humans, many other animals, and fungi, whereas for example, bacteria, perennial plants and some simple animals are potentially biologically immortal. Furthermore, ageing connotes a biological and social construct. It is usually associated with dynamic changes in the biological, psychological, physiological, environmental, behavioral and social processes. In the broader sense, ageing can refer to single cells within an organism which have ceased dividing or to the population of a species.
In humans, ageing represents the accumulation of changes in a human being over time and can encompass physical, psychological, and social changes. Reaction time, for example, may slow with age, while memories and general knowledge typically increase. Ageing increases the risk of human diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer's disease, diabetes, Cardiovascular disease, stroke and many more. Of the roughly 150,000 people who die each day across the globe, about two-thirds die from age-related causes.
Current ageing theories are assigned to the damage concept, whereby the accumulation of damage (such as DNA oxidation) may cause biological systems to fail, or to the programmed ageing concept, whereby problems with the internal processes (epigenetic maintenance such as DNA methylation) may cause ageing. Programmed ageing should not be confused with programmed cell death (apoptosis). Additionally, there can be other reasons, which can speed up the rate of ageing in organisms including human beings like obesity and compromised immune system.
Scientists have long known that dietary calorie restriction in non-primate animals slows ageing while maintaining good health and body functions. Rats and mice fed 30 to 50% fewer calories than they would freely eat beginning in early life shows various physiological health benefits, lower incidence of chronic diseases, and up to 50% increase in length of life .
Though life-extending effects remain uncertain in primates (including humans), the diverse health benefits of limiting calorie intake are now well-established. They seem to result from a physiological response to food scarcity that evolved to enhance the body's capacity to survive adversity.
Nevertheless, few people would be willing to maintain a substantially reduced diet for most of their lifespan. As a result, scientists have begun to explore calorie-restriction mimetics-natural and synthetic drug compounds that might yield the same health effects as calorie restriction, without dieting. These investigations are still in their early stages.
Biologically, ageing results from the impact of the accumulation of a wide range of molecular and cellular damage over time. Thus, this leads to a gradual decline in physical and mental capacity, a growing risk of diseases, and ultimately, death. These changes are usually consistent, and they are associated with a person's age in years. While some people aged 70 years may be strong and enjoy good health, others who are 70 years may be weak and require others to help them.
* The Blog Meister selects the topics for the Lead Picture and the Short Essay and then leans heavily or exclusively on Wikipedia to provide the content. The Blog Meister usually edits the entries.
**Pictures with Captions from our community are photos sent in by our blog followers. Feel free to send in yours to domcapossela@hotmail.com
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It’s Thursday, February 10th, 2022
Welcome to the 1,351st consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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Lead Picture*
Hill Street Blues
Title screen from Hill Street Blues (TV series from the United States)
http://homedir-c.libsyn.com/podcasts/4969405acef8f671617190a7445b6cb6/46b2301d/ayeshalan/images/hill18-t.jpg
Fair use
File:Hill Street Blues.jpg
Uploaded: 2 August 2007
About this interface | Discussion | H
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Commentary
I’ve had the excuse of not sleeping for two of the last four days.
Yet I did lift once in this set and the lifting went very well.
So why am I feeling that my knees and quads are not doing their jobs well?
Because they are simply not.
My eightieth birthday is in March and am thinking: there is the culprit.
Especially frustrating that I am happier with myself as a person and
happier with the rhythm of my day, productive without being stressful,
than I have ever been.
Up until the last couple of days.
I have been welcoming to my eightieth.
Even rolling out a carpet welcoming it with several small birthday parties.
But if I have to roll up that red carpet, withdraw my welcome,
that will be a bummer.
I’m hoping that the muscle failures are temporary and in a couple of days.
I’ll be fine.
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Reading and Writing
I am four days from finishing my penultimate set of editing thoughts.
Then several days to read the final set and Done!
This has been a glorious winter for me: finishing the manuscript.
Working on it was warming and cozy.
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Chuckles and Thoughts
Everything you've ever wanted is on the other side of fear.
~George Addair
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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 my favorite raconteur of life in New England past, Sally C:
Ah, Dom! Washington crossing the Delaware!
Gary Larson produced a cartoon (as was his wont) back in the day, depicting Washington Crossing The Street. (I think they were all in the painted crosswalk.)
I participated in the Bicentennial reenactment event in 1976, held at Washington’s Crossing. We ragged troops slept out in our small canvas wedge tents the night before, then marched the nine miles from there to Trenton on the morning of the 26th, through nine inches of snow that had fallen in the night. That certainly added to the authenticity of the event. The cannon crews hauled their artillery pieces on foot as well, and were sorely disgusted that they weren’t allowed to fire them when we got to our destination.
The snow had come down so gently in the night that it piled up five or six inches on the power lines and tree branches along our route of travel. A small fife and drum corps marched in front of my unit, playing the same tune over and over and over … Evidently it was the only one they knew. They played it well enough, but after a mile or so, it became quite grating. One of the fellows in our unit came up with a clever idea – he ran off the road and kicked the nearest tree. That imperceptible jolt was all it took to dislodge the precarious snow from the branches, and it fell onto the fifers and drummers. They stopped playing long enough to wipe the cold snow from their necks and ears. The fellow kept doing this, and the musicians never caught on. We all had a pretty good laugh about that.
My reenacting days aren’t nearly as active now as they were then, partly because the Bicentennial came and went and the “anniversary calendars” aren’t as full as they once were. Besides that, domestic obligations take more time now than they used to. But I still get out into the field when I can, mostly with the (American Civil War) Northeast Topographical Engineers – a great bunch of folks who like to build field fortifications and stomp around the countryside surveying and measuring stuff. We also double as a small artillery unit, which is great fun. I hope we have more events in the field this year – the last two years have been pretty lean …
Cheers!
Sally
Blog meister responds: They are all great stories. This one is particularly grand for the revelations left unspoken. Great writing, Sally.
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Dinner/Food/Recipes
Lauren was over on Tuesday and we shared a braised chuck roast loaded with butternut squash, pearl onions, turnips, peas, and corn.
Dinner was great. So was the company.
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Pictures with Captions from our community**
Winter on Public Garden
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Short Essay*
Hill Street Blues is an American serial police procedural television series that aired on NBC in prime-time from January 15, 1981, to May 12, 1987, for 146 episodes. The show chronicles the lives of the staff of a single police station located on Hill Street in an unnamed large city. The "blues" are the police officers in their blue uniforms. The show received critical acclaim and its production innovations influenced many subsequent dramatic television series produced in the United States and Canada. In its debut season, the series won eight Emmy Awards, a debut season record later surpassed only by The West Wing. The show won a total of 26 Emmy Awards (out of 98 Emmy Award nominations) during its run, including four consecutive wins for Outstanding Drama Series.
* The Blog Meister selects the topics for the Lead Picture and the Short Essay and then leans heavily or exclusively on Wikipedia to provide the content. The Blog Meister usually edits the entries.
**Pictures with Captions from our community are photos sent in by our blog followers. Feel free to send in yours to domcapossela@hotmail.com
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It’s Wednesday, February 9th, 2022
Welcome to the 1,350th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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Lead Picture*
Licorice Pizza
This is a poster for Licorice Pizza. The poster art copyright is believed to belong to the distributor of the film, United Artists Releasing, the publisher of the film or the graphic artist.
http://www.impawards.com/2021/licorice_pizza_ver3.html
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Commentary
Friday night no sleep. No notably substantial rest art nighttime.
Slog through Saturday. But stay productive. Bed at 10.00pm.
Saturday night: record long sleep.
Great workday on Sunday, including lifting weights.
Sunday night no sleep. A comfortable ninety minute rest at night.
Slog through Monday. But stay productive. Bed at 10.45pm.
Monday night good sleep.
Tuesday, a good day.
But I’ve slept only two of the last four days.
What is going on with me?
One real bad thing. On the two slog days, my knees and quads lack the necessary strength to hold me up.
Now and again I find myself wobbly.
But I intend to continue on without ibuprofen and especially without melatonin.
I want to examine where my natural sleep rhythm is at age 80..
I’ve been taking melatonin for so long I don’t know what my natural sleep rhythm these days.
What will happen to me by a cold turkey withdrawal from the substance.
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Reading and Writing
I am writing up a storm. Certain to finish the manuscript by the end of February.
Meanwhile, my granddaughter’s online book club is gearing up for regular meetings
and my reading will get more rhythmic.
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Chuckles and Thoughts
An unexamined life is not worth living.
~Socrates
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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 Tucker J who regularly reviews movies that we’re honored to publish:
Hi Dom,
I saw this film a while ago now but really loved it and since it is still playing theaters I thought writing something about it would still make sense.
I hope you’re well!
Blog meister responds: Wonderful writing.
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Dinner/Food/Recipes
The last four days that I’ve been preoccupied with my sleep or lack thereof,
not only have I been productive in my writing, I’ve been productive in the kitchen.
I bought pig’s and chicken feet, boiled them, and browned them in garlic oil.
I used half of both types to make a lima bean and garbanzo bean soup with Chinese cauliflower and Chinese greens, (I bought these when I bought the barnyard feet,) using chicken stock and white wine and water for the liquids.
Unrelated except that I was already in the neighborhood, I also stopped at the Wing’s live poultry house and bought on of their same-day butchered chickens.
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Pictures with Captions from our community**
Chicken from chicken house: wing’s in Chinatown
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Short Essay*
Right from the title card, written in letters whose tails extend and loop to suggest folding fabric, 2017’s Phantom Thread announces itself as an exquisite artisanal object. Director Paul Thomas Anderson’s supreme formal control—his carefully lit and framed images, the wealth of precisely presented period detail—mirrors the obsessive care of his main character. Coming on the heels of such a refined, meticulous masterpiece, Licorice Pizza looks like the shaggiest and most rambling movie of Anderson’s career. This isn’t a bad thing. Anderson’s work has been esteemed since he first appeared on the festival circuit and the fact that he is ever evolving is no small part of that acclaim. His latest film Licorice Pizza is a woozy time-warp shuffle of a film: a California daydream of infatuation, aspiration, and protracted adolescence that seems to propel its writer-director, forward and backward at once. The film is set in the San Fernando Valley of the early 1970s, returning its maker to the time and place that made him. We’ve seen Anderson’s take on this time and place before. He chose it as the setting for his sprawling ensemble period pieces Boogie Nights and Inherent Vice. Yet if Licorice Pizza can be called a homecoming, it also paves new ground for the great American artist who plucked it from his memories and dreams.
There’s an episodic quality here, almost a sense that the movie is making itself up as it goes along, across what feels like a single eventful summer of cameoing stars and breaking news pushed to the margins of fictional and fictionalized lives. At the center of its narrative, at once sprawling and incidental, is a love story—though, in the Andersonian tradition of romances punch-drunk and perverse, it’s an unconventional one.
The spark is lit in the opening scene, as 15-year-old child actor Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman, son of Anderson’s late muse, Philip Seymour Hoffman) first lays eyes on 25-year-old Alana Kane (Alana Haim, one of the three sisters of the rock band Haim) outside a photo studio. He’s a teenager and she’s not—a fact she remarks on repeatedly, if only to remind herself—but there’s an undeniable chemistry detectable in the spaces between her jabs and amused rebukes. “I met the girl I’m going to marry one day,” waxes the teen to his kid brother later that night. We wonder if he’s right.
This initial setup may lead some to think of another Anderson. Wes Anderson’s 1998 film Rushmore features a central relationship with a similar age gap. The similarities between these two films don’t end there. There is, after all, a touch of Max Fischer, Rushmore’s protagonist in Gary, who’s pantomiming a life of adult sophistication and privilege—ordering Coca-Colas in his white suit at nightclubs, flanked by an entourage of comically pubescent friends. Gary, we learn, is rapidly aging out of whatever modest child celebrity he’s achieved; his career is over before it’s begun. Yet he has the swagger of a young Hollywood somebody. And though Alana, who works at the photo studio, talks to him like the kid brother she never had (she actually has two sisters, played by Haim’s real sisters and bandmates), she’s plainly attracted, at the very least, to his proximity to fame. And so, she’s pulled into the orbit of his teenage hustles, and even ends up working for him, an arrangement that echoes the plotline of Phantom Thread.
The story here is a crazy-quilt time capsule, pulling in the waterbed craze, the oil embargo of ’73, the pinball ban, a tight L.A. political race, and the amorous insanity of New Hollywood. Anderson’s structure is borderline associative, his screenplay daisy-chaining the ephemera that may well have colored his own childhood in the Valley. Early on, the director—who shot the movie himself, with an assist from Michael Bauman—tracks his camera across the floor of a teen business expo, soaking in every gleaming shag detail of his early-’70s production design. In its loving mirage of a bygone Los Angeles, Licorice Pizza is like a gemini twin to Once Upon A Time... In Hollywood, the last movie from fellow ’90s hotshot turned film royalty, Quentin Tarantino.
The cast is stacked with familiar faces and scions, the fathers of famous men and the daughters of famous directors, brought in for walk-ons or to steal a single scene. We get Sean Penn, skin rough like leather, as an aging man’s man who’s William Holden in all but name. Elsewhere, Anderson doesn’t even bother to slightly rename his supporting players from history, casting Uncut Gems director Benny Safdie as the closeted L.A. politician Joel Wachs. And the film’s extended comic highlight involves the famed producer Jon Peters, pricelessly played by Bradley Cooper as a rich spoiling for a fight lothario teetering, in his unfiltered asides, on the edge of danger; a waterbed installation at his swanky house in the hills becomes a gauntlet of close calls and mishaps, culminating with a van rolling perilously through traffic.
It’s a great scene. And there are plenty more, especially in the freewheeling first hour of the movie, animated by the electric currents of Gary’s and Alana’s dovetailing experiences. Anderson, high on his own nostalgic supply (and on the FM reverie of his all-star soundtrack of Doors, Donovan, and more), stumbles through an endless series of oddball peripheral characters and comic situations. The director has made a blissed-out flashback portrait of his hometown that’s all incident, with very little shape. He’s just riffing here, but it works to satisfying effect.
The movie truly clicks when it’s zeroing in on the screwball relationship at its center—a romance perched, rather indefinitely, on the edge of transgression. Anderson knows as well as Alana does that any real relationship between the two is impossible. And so he keeps the two locked in a suspended animation of fighting and flirting, pushing them in and out of each other’s lives, inching them closer and then tearing them apart, drowning them in jealous competition and then sending them racing—quite literally at times—back into each other’s arms.
Both leads are outstanding in their feature debuts. As a knucklehead Casanova straining for the fantasy of adult glory, Hoffman has a perfect embryonic blend of confidence and awkwardness; every once in a while, you’ll catch a flash of his father in his mannerisms, and the effect is always poignant. But the true star-making turn here is from Alana Haim, deepening the magnetic enthusiasm she’s teased in the Haim music videos Anderson directed. Her Alana is by turns fierce, vulnerable, petulant, sweet, and seductive. When Penn’s lecherous Tinseltown legend says she reminds him of Grace Kelly, it’s at once a transparent pickup line (she looks nothing like Kelly) and a perhaps accidental acknowledgment of her instant movie-star radiance. Earlier on, a Hollywood agent describes her as a pit-bull. That’s accurate, too.
And Licorice Pizza is really, in the end, her film. Anderson’s savviest move is to frame the early scenes through the iris of Gary’s puppy-love attraction, only to gradually cede more and more of the spotlight to Alana. What we come to see is that, on an emotional level, she’s something of a kid, too—someone reaching for an idea of adult life that remains as out of reach for her as it does for her adolescent admirer. Lots of American comedies are about resisting growing up. This one is about really wanting to and failing, perhaps triumphantly. Funny how it arrives in a movie that feels like its own form of willful, carefree regression: a master director, resisting his own creative maturity, one digressive Los Angeles detour at a time.
* The Blog Meister selects the topics for the Lead Picture and the Short Essay and then leans heavily or exclusively on Wikipedia to provide the content. The Blog Meister usually edits the entries.
**Pictures with Captions from our community are photos sent in by our blog followers. Feel free to send in yours to domcapossela@hotmail.com
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It’s Tuesday, February 8th, 2022
Welcome to the 1,349th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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Lead Picture*
Washington Crossing the Delaware
Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze, MMA-NYC, 1851
Emanuel Leutze - The Metropolitan Museum of Art
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Commentary
I didn’t sleep a wink on Friday night. I functioned on Saturday although I felt that my knees were close to not being able to support me.
I slept nine hours on Saturday night, perhaps the longest night’s sleep I’ve ever had.
I didn’t sleep a wink on Sunday night. While I rested perhaps a total of 3 hours, I didn’t sleep.
But I stayed productive throughout the night and early morning. Again with wobbly knees that caused me to stumble twice.
My plan for Monday is to follow Saturday where I functioned reasonably for the entire day following the sleepless night.
We’ll see.
I’ll start my morning jaunt at 8.30am taking the T most of the way to Thinking Cup on Newbury St.
When I get too tired to work further I’m planning a 2.0 mile walk from Newbury St to Ming Supermarket in the South End to buy pig’s feet, chicken feet, and greens to make a bean soup. I can’t use cabbage (which I love) because I’m finding out it gives me gas.
From Ming I’ll head home passing Wing’s Live Poultry. If there’s no line I’ll buy a live chicken which they will butcher and clean while I wait.
Then I’ll return home if I’m too tired to walk to the cafe.
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Reading and Writing
I am writing profusely. My new projected ending for my first book is the end of February although it may come sooner. Like a week sooner.
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Chuckles and Thoughts
How wonderful it is that
nobody need wait a single moment before
starting to improve the world.
~Anne Frank
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Dinner/Food/Recipes
For dinner on Monday I will have a braised chuck rib roast that I bought on sale from W foods for $4.00/lb, ordinarily $7.50/lb.
I braised the piece yesterday. It was a wonderful evening of cooking and working on my manuscript.
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Pictures with Captions from our community**
Kat on hydrow
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Short Essay*
Washington Crossing the Delaware are three 1851 oil-on-canvas paintings by the German-American artist Emanuel Leutze.
The paintings commemorate General George Washington's crossing of the Delaware River with the Continental Army on the night of December 25–26, 1776, during the American Revolutionary War. That action was the first move in a surprise attack and victory against Hessian forces at the Battle of Trenton in New Jersey on the morning of December 26.
The original was part of the collection at the Kunsthalle in Bremen, Germany, and was destroyed in a bombing raid in 1942, during World War II. Leutze painted two more versions, one of which is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The other was in the West Wing reception area of the White House in Washington, D.C., but in March 2015, was purchased and put on display at the Minnesota Marine Art Museum in Winona, Minnesota.
The Battle of Trenton was a small but pivotal American Revolutionary War battle that took place on the morning of December 26, 1776, in Trenton, New Jersey. After General George Washington's crossing of the Delaware River north of Trenton the previous night, Washington led the main body of the Continental Army against Hessian auxiliaries garrisoned at Trenton. After a brief battle, almost two-thirds of the Hessian force was captured, with negligible losses to the Americans. The battle significantly boosted the Continental Army's waning morale, and inspired re-enlistments.
* The Blog Meister selects the topics for the Lead Picture and the Short Essay and then leans heavily or exclusively on Wikipedia to provide the content. The Blog Meister usually edits the entries.
**Pictures with Captions from our community are photos sent in by our blog followers. Feel free to send in yours to domcapossela@hotmail.com
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It’s Monday, February 7th, 2022
Welcome to the 1,348th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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Lead Picture*
Hajji ‘Abdallah
Image of Hajji ‘Abdallah (Amir Muhammad Sa’id Abdal-Rahman al-Mawla taken) from U.S. State Dept. poster headed "Wanted Information that brings to justice..." and subheaded after ‘Abdallah's name "Up to $5 Million Reward"
Unknown author - https://rewardsforjustice.net/english/amir_al_malwa.html
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Commentary
Friday night I didn’t sleep a wink.
I did take time off to sit in the sauna and then in my Mistral chair.
I may have watched a bit if screen.
Surprisingly, I was very productive on Saturday.
I followed my regular routine, taking it very easy when I went on my daily 4-5 hour jaunt, figuring I would be a little more prone to make a mistake; to slip and fall.
By cutting time from café I did cut my outdoor jaunt to three hours.
But my productivity continued until 10.00pm when I went to bed without any chemicals.
I slept longer than I’ve ever slept in my life, not getting out of bed until 7.00am. Nine hours.
I can count on one hand the number of nights I’ve slept more than 6 hours.
On Sunday, I felt amazing. Superman. I went lifting to start the day and then remained productive the entire time.
Now its Sunday night and I should be asleep. But I’m not. Working on this.
Should I take my 20 mg of melatonin?
I’m not getting back in bed until I get really sleepy. And I don’t take the melatonin until later in my sleep routine, after I fall asleep and then, an hour plus later, get up, use the toilet and take the melatonin.
That has worked for years. Thinking I should take 25mg when I wake to keep me asleep.
I’m a mess.
It’s now 2.08am and I just got out of bed. I didn’t sleep but I rested an hour. I got up when I started to feel frustrated. I took my laptop and went into the sauna.
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Reading and Writing
Creative writing is coming easier and easier for me. I feel competent. I’m reading and editing the manuscript and am flying through it. It’s exciting. The sentences and paragraphs are coming together like never before.
I will easily finish by the end of February, and likely sooner than that.
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Chuckles and Thoughts
The most difficult thing is the decision to act,
the rest is merely tenacity.
~Amelia Earhart
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Dinner/Food/Recipes
Saturday night I bought some chicken drumsticks on sale at W Foods. I had a bit of Chicken Pot Pie leftover and combined the two.
Sunday night I had a Tuna Salad Sandwich.
Both meals were delicious.
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Pictures with Captions from our community**
George Washington in Public Garden in Feb 2022
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Short Essay*
Abū Ibrāhīm al-Hāshimi al-Qurashi born Amir Mohammed Abdul Rahman al-Mawli al-Salbi; 5 October 1976 – 3 February 2022) was an Iraqi Islamic terrorist and the second caliph of the Islamic State. His appointment by a shura council was announced by the Islamic State media on 31 October 2019, less than a week after the death of previous leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
The U.S. Rewards for Justice Program was offering up to $10 million in exchange for information leading to al-Qurashi's apprehension. On 3 February 2022, U.S. authorities said that al-Qurashi killed himself and members of his family, including men, women and children, by triggering an explosive device during a raid by the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command.
* The Blog Meister selects the topics for the Lead Picture and the Short Essay and then leans heavily or exclusively on Wikipedia to provide the content. The Blog Meister usually edits the entries.
**Pictures with Captions from our community are photos sent in by our blog followers. Feel free to send in yours to domcapossela@hotmail.com
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It’s Sunday, February 6th, 2022
Welcome to the 1,347th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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Lead Picture*
Amy Sherman-Palladino
Amy Sherman Palladino at the ATX TV Festival 2015 for the TV show Bunheads
iDominick - https://www.flickr.com/photos/82924988@N05/19990919702/
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Commentary
I’ve had many, many poor sleeping nights but tonight was the worst: not a minute’s nap.
Have no idea why.
Took my melatonin.
It’s been a long night.
I got into bed at 11.15pm and got up at 11.45pm.
Until 1.30am I wrote. Then I made my coffee that I normally have at 5.00am.
And I watched TV.
Then, 15 minutes each, I tried the sauna.
The bed.
My Mistral chair.
Comfortable all but no sleep.
Then I edited.
Productive. But frankly a little worried about going out.
But I had to food shop.
So I left at 8.00am and food shopped.
By 9.15am I was writing at the Thinking Cup.
By 11.45am I returned home.
I ate and slept for 35 minutes.
And have worked and cleaned up since.
Am planning to go to bed at 10.00pm.
Will not take any ibuprofen or melatonin.
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Reading and Writing
So I’m thinking that I may be done with my final pre-agent search by Valentine’s Day, strangely, a day I randomly set my sights on four months ago.
But if something unforeseen shows itself, then my birthday in March will be my fallback.
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Chuckles and Thoughts
You become what you believe.
~Oprah Winfrey
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Mail and other Conversation
We love getting mail, email, or texts.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
or text to 617.852.7192
I got several emails and phone calls urging me to be cautious during the recent icy conditions.
I was.
Blog meister responds: Thank you, my friends.
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Dinner/Food/Recipes
I made an absolutely delicious chicken pot pie.
I simmered a game hen for 40 minutes in chicken stock.
While that was happening I softened carrots, celery and onions in duck fat, sprinkling flour, salt, and freshly ground pepper and thyme over the veggies.
Then I added peas and corn.
Then a half-cup each of the chicken broth from the chicken simmer, white wine, and milk.
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Community Photos**
Sacco and Vanzetti Funeral Procession
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Short Essay*
Amy Sherman-Palladino (born January 17, 1966) is an American television writer, director, and producer. She is the creator of the comedy-drama series Gilmore Girls, Bunheads, and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
Sherman-Palladino has received six Primetime Emmy Awards for her work, including Outstanding Comedy Series, Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series, Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series, and Outstanding Music Supervision, all for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. She was the first woman to win in the comedy writing and directing categories at the Primetime Emmy Awards. In 2019, she received the Norman Lear Achievement Award in Television from the Producers Guild of America.
Sherman-Palladino is the founder of Dorothy Parker Drank Here Productions. She is known for her trademark rapid-fire dialogue, which is often full of pop culture references, and as well for her preferred master shot filming style.
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
In June 2016, Amazon ordered an hour-long pilot from Sherman-Palladino entitled The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, about a 1950s housewife who decides to become one of the first female stand-up comics.
On August 5, 2016, it was reported that Rachel Brosnahan had been cast in the lead role as Miriam "Midge" Maisel. Tony Shalhoub and Marin Hinkle were later cast as the parents of Brosnahan's character, Abe and Rose Weissman, with Michael Zegen joining as her husband, Joel Maisel. On March 2, 2017, Entertainment Weekly reported that Alex Borstein would be playing Susie Myerson. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel was made available to watch on Amazon on March 17, 2017, as a part of Amazon Studios' spring pilot season, with viewers having the option to vote for it to be ordered to series. On April 10, 2017, it was announced that The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel had received an "unprecedented" 2-season order from Amazon.
The series was critically acclaimed; it won a Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy at the 75th Golden Globe Awards, and a Peabody Award in "Entertainment" at the 77th Annual Peabody Awards. Sherman-Palladino won Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series, Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series and Outstanding Comedy Series at the 70th Primetime Emmy Awards for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. The success led an overall deal at Amazon Studios.
Personal life
Sherman-Palladino is married to Daniel Palladino, who has served as co-executive producer, writer, and director on all of her shows.
Amy wears a top hat everywhere.
Dialogue and style
Dialogue in Sherman-Palladino's work involves heavy use of pop culture references, delivered in a fast repartee, screwball-comedy style. Palladino is also very particular with her selection and use of music in her work. In an interview with OutSmart magazine, she explained how lazy and instructional its use is on most television shows:
*The Blog Meister selects the topics for the Lead Picture and the Short Essay and then leans heavily or exclusively on Wikipedia to provide the content. The Blog Meister usually edits the entries.
**Community Pictures with Captions are sent in by our followers. Feel free to send in yours to domcapossela@hotmail.com
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