Daily Entries for the week of
Sunday, March 21, 2021
through
Saturday, March 27, 2021
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It’s Saturday, March 27, 2021
Welcome to the 1058th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
Suez Canal,
taken by the MISR instrument on the Terra satellite on January 30, 2001. Cropped.
NASA - NASA
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2.0 Commentary
President Joe Biden is Transformative.
And I think he’s sticking to it.
Voting rights protected and expanded.
Pandemic defeated.
Public education greatly expanded from pre-K through Community College. (My favorite)
A trillion dollar repair of infrastructure, including the creation of green energy jobs in the millions.
$15.00
Earning less than $400,000, no new taxes.
Whatever it takes to pass Congress, including the end of the filibuster, I’m for it.
In five years America could be advanced, shiny, and new again.
Inflation v Full employment?
Easier to deal with inflation than to tell a willing worker, No job for you today.
March is not normally as lovely as it’s been and promises to be.
We’ll take it. We deserve it.
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3.0 Reading and Writing Events
3.1 Sacco and Vanzetti
We are working on a definition of our proposed installation because
we’re thinking to expand the installation to include the two victims
who were killed during the robbery.
3.2 Conflicted
Work on my manuscript continues.
I reset the opening chronology and now am inputting the editorial changes.
3.3 Storyworth
Am gathering notes for the next question: How did the seminary change you?
3.4 Blog
No wriggle room here.
Every day requires its own effort.
3.5 Modernism and Existentialism
We are now reading HG Wells, The Invisible Man, another modernist novel.
Thursday I read Ch One; our assignment for the week is the first three chapters.
3.7 Book Review
I am reading Dom DiLeo’s Once a Northender, Recollections from Boston 1930-2020
I’ll report on the book soon.
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4.0 Chuckles and Thoughts
I went into the business for the money, and
the art grew out of it.
If people are disillusioned by that remark,
I can't help it.
It's the truth.
~Charlie Chaplin
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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Wednesday night Lauren and I had a slow-roasted turkey dinner.
It was not a pedigreed, special turkey, not a free-range or organic bird.
But it was very inexpensive.
And in the event, the turkey was not bad at all.
It lacked the firm texture of the more expensive birds but it wasn’t bad at all.
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11.0 Thumbnail
The Suez Canal is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea through the Isthmus of Suez; and dividing Africa and Asia. Constructed by the Suez Canal Company between 1859 and 1869, it officially opened on 17 November 1869. The canal offers watercraft a more direct route between the North Atlantic and northern Indian oceans via the Mediterranean and Red seas, thus avoiding the South Atlantic and southern Indian oceans and reducing the journey distance from the Arabian Sea to London, for example, by approximately 8,900 kilometres (5,500 mi).[1] It extends from the northern terminus of Port Said to the southern terminus of Port Tewfik at the city of Suez. Its length is 193.30 km (120.11 mi) including its northern and southern access-channels. In 2012, 17,225 vessels traversed the canal (an average of 47 per day).[2]
The original canal featured a single-lane waterway with passing locations in the Ballah Bypass and the Great Bitter Lake.[3] It contained, according to Alois Negrelli's plans, no lock systems, with seawater flowing freely through it. In general, the water in the canal north of the Bitter Lakes flows north in winter and south in summer. South of the lakes, the current changes with the tide at Suez.[4]
While the canal as such was the property of the Egyptian government, European shareholders, mostly French and British, owned the concessionary company which operated it until July 1956, when President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized it—an event which led to the Suez Crisis of October–November 1956.[5] The canal is operated and maintained by the state-owned Suez Canal Authority[6] (SCA) of Egypt. Under the Convention of Constantinople, it may be used "in time of war as in time of peace, by every vessel of commerce or of war, without distinction of flag."[7] Nevertheless, the canal has played an important military strategic role as a naval short-cut and choke-point. Navies with coastlines and bases on both the Mediterranean and Red Seas (Egypt and Israel) have a particular interest in the Suez Canal.
In August 2014, the Egyptian government launched construction to expand and widen the Ballah Bypass for 35 km (22 mi) to speed the canal's transit-time. The expansion intended to nearly double the capacity of the Suez Canal, from 49 to 97 ships per day.[8] At a cost of 59.4 billion Egyptian pounds (US$9bn), this project was funded with interest-bearing investment certificates issued exclusively to Egyptian entities and individuals. The "New Suez Canal," as the expansion was dubbed, was opened with great fanfare in a ceremony on 6 August 2015.[9]
On 24 February 2016, the Suez Canal Authority officially opened the new side channel. This side channel, located at the northern side of the east extension of the Suez Canal, serves the East Terminal for berthing and unberthing vessels from the terminal. As the East Container Terminal is located on the Canal itself, before the construction of the new side channel it was not possible to berth or unberth vessels at the terminal while a convoy was running.[10]
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It’s Friday, March 26, 2021
Welcome to the 1057th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
Rhamnousia
Alfred Rethel 002
Alfred Rethel - 1. The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000
Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM),
distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH.
ISBN: 3936122202.
2. The Hermitage, St. Petersburg
In ancient Greek religion, Nemesis, also called Rhamnousia or Rhamnusia
is the goddess who enacts retribution against those who succumb to hubris,
arrogance before the gods.
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2.0 Commentary
After looking at the weather forecast through April 2,
temperatures in the fifties,
even we can say, Put away the winter coat.
We survived.
Friday I'll be spending much of the day with my daughter
who is home to get her wisdom teeth removed.
I’ll take her there.
Wait for her.
And then provide a modicum of care while she recovers.
Not many people deny a citizen’s right to bear arms.
But the right to own a weapon of mass destruction?
Come on!
What about a weapon powerful enough to kill three or four dozen people in two minutes?
I don’t think so.
The right to bear arms is not the right to bear an arsenal.
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3.0 Reading and Writing Events
3.1 Sacco and Vanzetti Installation
We are in the middle of a debate on the theme of the installation.
3.2 Conflicted
Brilliant edits of my manuscript in hand,
I will begin to make corrections to the manuscript.
3.3 Storyworth
I am answering the question:
What did you learn in the seminary?
3.4 Blog
No wriggle room here.
Every day requires its own effort.
3.5 Modernism and Existentialism
Wednesday is class day.
I’m ready for it.
3.7 Book Review
I have just received a review copy of Dom Di Leo’s Once a Northender, (Recollections from Boston, 1930-2020).
I’ll be reading it and reporting.
I must admit to having known Dom, and a finer man never graced the sidewalks of the North End.
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4.0 Chuckles and Thoughts
Simplicity is not a simple thing.
~Charlie Chaplin
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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Tuesday night Lauren and I had a restaurant week dinner at Grill 23.
Despite a quiet night for the restaurant, a delightful experience.
For $38.00 each we had Caesar salads, (one of us had the seafood chowder), steaks, and coffee ice cream sundaes.
The steaks and desserts were excellent.
Service and martinis were excellent.
The only fly-in-the-ointment was the chowder, a pretty poor rendition: floury rather than creamy, and lacking in seafood flavor.
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11.0 Thumbnail
The name Nemesis is related to the Greek word νέμειν némein, meaning "to give what is due",
from Proto-Indo-European nem- "distribute".
Divine retribution is a major theme in the Hellenic world view, providing the unifying theme of the tragedies of Sophocles and many other literary works.
Hesiod states: "Also deadly Nyx bore Nemesis an affliction to mortals subject to death" (Theogony, 223, though perhaps an interpolated line).
Nemesis appears in a still more concrete form in a fragment of the epic Cypria.
She is implacable justice: that of Zeus in the Olympian scheme of things, although it is clear she existed prior to him, as her images look similar to several other goddesses, such as Cybele, Rhea, Demeter, and Artemis.
As the "Goddess of Rhamnous", Nemesis was honored and placated in an archaic sanctuary in the isolated district of Rhamnous, in northeastern Attica. There she was a daughter of Oceanus, the primeval river
ocean that encircles the world. Pausanias noted her iconic statue there. It included a crown of stags and little Nikes and was made by Pheidias after the Battle of Marathon (490 BC), crafted from a block of Parian marble brought by the overconfident Persians, who had intended to make a memorial stele after their expected victory. Her cult may have originated at Smyrna.
She is portrayed as a winged goddess wielding a whip or a dagger.
The poet Mesomedes wrote a hymn to Nemesis in the early second century AD, where he addressed her:
Nemesis, winged balancer of life, dark-faced goddess, daughter of Justice
and mentioned her "adamantine bridles" that restrain "the frivolous insolences of mortals".
In early times the representations of Nemesis resembled Aphrodite, who sometimes bears the epithet Nemesis.
Later, as the maiden goddess of proportion and the avenger of crime, she has as attributes a measuring rod (tally stick), a bridle, scales, a sword, and a scourge, and she rides in a chariot drawn by griffins.
The word nemesis originally meant the distributor of fortune, neither good nor bad, simply in due proportion to each according to what was deserved.
Later, Nemesis came to suggest the resentment caused by any disturbance of this right proportion, the sense of justice that could not allow it to pass unpunished.
O. Gruppe (1906) and others connect the name with "to feel just resentment". From the fourth century onward, Nemesis, as the just balancer of Fortune's chance, could be associated with Tyche.
In the Greek tragedies Nemesis appears chiefly as the avenger of crime and the punisher of hubris, and as such is akin to Atë and the Erinyes. She was sometimes called "Adrasteia", probably meaning "one from whom there is no escape"; her epithet Erinys ("implacable") is specially applied to Demeter and the Phrygian mother goddess, Cybele.
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It’s Thursday, March 25, 2021
Welcome to the 1056th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
Beatles All You Need is Love
This is the front cover for
the 45 "All You Need Is Love" by
the artist The Beatles.
The cover art copyright is believed to belong to Apple Corps, Ltd.
Source
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2.0 Commentary
We are talking about merging our memorial of Sacco and Vanzetti with
a memorial to the two men who were murdered in the course of the robbery
for which Sacco and Vanzetti were accused.
I submit my comments on the subject.
I thank my dear friend Howard for his thoughts that add greatly to our discussion.
He is leading us with his analysis.
Howard gives us this:
What’s shared: in the end, the victims are all dead.
What’s shared: the sense, by partisans at least, that all are dead unjustly, that is, without justification…
He’s leading us well.
He leads me here: it’s not death that the victims have in common,
it’s that they were victims.
This is the commonality.
Four men, victims all.
Remembering you can have victims without death.
And why were they victims?
Because of hate.
Hate put them in the ground.
Hatred of Italians.
Hatred of extremism.
Hatred of one’s condition, that hatred seeking to change the perpetrators’ fate by robbery and all that attends violent crime.
Hate.
But we’re creating a memorial opposite to hate.
I believe the key word emerging in this project is not reconciliation but, as Howard suggests, a different word.
An obvious word.
Love.
Our memorial is crying out: here are four victims of hate: let us extol love.
Love is all you need.
There's nothing you can do that can't be done
Nothing you can sing that can't be sung
Nothing you can say
But you can learn how to play the game
It's easy
Nothing you can make that can't be made
No one you can save that can't be saved
Nothing you can do
But you can learn how to be you in time
It's easy
All you need is love
Nothing you can know that isn't known
Nothing you can see that isn't shown
There's nowhere you can be
That isn't where you're meant to be
It's easy
Love is all you need
Whether we use the word love is not important.
Take it from me, no one will come up with better words than Howard.
No one.
Love this idea from Howard:
they were simply basically honest men trying to make a living.
And love this:
The thinking I am trying to capture here has to inform whatever the much more digestible “message” is going to be of the Sacco & Vanzetti/Victims of Crime memorial. The facts are entwined, and before sense can be made, they have to be untangled, and understood (to be effective in motivating people to conduct themselves responsibly, tolerantly, and civilly) in terms as fundamental as can be conveyed.
And love this:
First we must remember the victims, we must understand the several ways in which justice was abrogated, and we must forgive the perpetrators, real and alleged (having determined or having made as good an effort with available evidence to do so).
In this paragraph we can find LOVE.
Forgive he says.
Love.
Of course, LOVE in the first instant would have respected Sacco and Vanzetti’s rights.
Love would have prevented the armed robbery.
For me, as we think this through,
as we pass it back and forth,
getting it shinier and shinier,
we are talking about a memorial of love.
love all of you,
dom
3.4 Blog
No wriggle room here.
Every day requires its own effort.
On Sunday, I got an early start and was mostly done before I went off to the café.
3.5 Modernism and Existentialism
Online literature and writing classes for middle schoolers through adults.
Find community in a fun, dynamic learning environment and become a better reader.
Did some good work, today.
Also learning a technique that seems to suit my own manuscript.
Will talk more about it.
3.7 Book Review
I have been asked to review a book written by a North Ender about life when he grew up in the North End.
I have agreed and will share my readings with you.
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4.0 Chuckles and Thoughts
Nothing is permanent in this wicked world -
not even our troubles.
~Charlie Chaplin
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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
Many emails o the philosophy of the Sacco and Vanzetti installation.
Blog meister responds: Will distill these for a day in the near future.
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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Cousin Lauren and I had dinner at Dona Habana on Monday night.
It was our first visit and a pleasant surprise.
Mojitos by the hundreds.
Or tens, anyway.
Mine was traditional, and very good.
Lauren’s a spicy, and very good.
Their mixed appetizer platter was enough food for us for dinner.
It was fun.
Delicious.
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11.0 Thumbnail
"All You Need Is Love" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles that was released as a non-album single in July 1967. It was written by John Lennon and credited to the Lennon–McCartney partnership. The song was Britain's contribution to Our World, the first live global television link, for which the band were filmed performing it at EMI Studios in London on 25 June. The programme was broadcast via satellite and seen by an audience of over 400 million in 25 countries. Lennon's lyrics were deliberately simplistic, to allow for the show's international audience, and captured the utopian ideals associated with the Summer of Love. The single topped sales charts in Britain, the United States and many other countries, and became an anthem for the counterculture's embrace of flower power philosophy.
Our World coincided with the height of the Beatles' popularity and influence, following the release of their album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Rather than perform the song entirely live, the group played to a pre-recorded backing track. With an orchestral arrangement by George Martin, the song begins with a portion of the French national anthem and ends with musical quotations from works such as Glenn Miller's "In the Mood", "Greensleeves", Bach's Invention No. 8 in F major, and the Beatles' 1963 hit "She Loves You". Adding to the broadcast's festive atmosphere, the studio was adorned with signs and streamers, and filled with guests dressed in psychedelic attire, including members of the Rolling Stones, the Who and the Small Faces. Brian Epstein, the Beatles' manager, described the performance as the band's "finest" moment.
"All You Need Is Love" was later included on the US Magical Mystery Tour album and served as the moral for the Beatles' 1968 animated film Yellow Submarine. Originally broadcast in black-and-white, the Our World performance was colourised for inclusion in the Beatles' 1995 Anthology documentary series. While the song remains synonymous with the 1967 Summer of Love ethos and provided the foundation for Lennon's legacy as a humanitarian, numerous critics found the message naive in retrospect, particularly during the 1980s. Since 2009, Global Beatles Day, an international celebration of the Beatles' music and social message, takes place on 25 June each year in tribute to their Our World performance.
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It’s Wednesday, March 24, 2021
Welcome to the 1055th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
Howard’s Radishes
Anyway, enjoy... And, oh yeah, that's goat cheese smeared on the slices of bread in the upper right, from a fromagerie right on the farm about a 12 minute drive from our house. Can't do that for the time being either.
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2.0 Commentary
My daughter’s app requires I answer one question a week.
This week’s question is:
“What were you like when you were 50?”
Looking back at who I was fills me with such pain that I cannot answer that question.
I’ll choose another question.
And the question is: What did you learn in the Seminary?
What comes in like a lion?
It’s March.
And the last week of March is projected as truly lamb-like.
We must have done something right.
I composed a recipe for Minestrone Soup.
It worked.
That’s three for three these past ten days, the other two being Bolognese Sauce and Mushroom Sauce.
I’ll post them soon.
3.2 Conflicted
With my editor and story editor I shared some structural changes to the manuscript.
They agreed.
3.3 Storyworth
This is an application that my daughter bought me as a Christmas present.
Every week I am sent a question about my life.
This week’s question is:
“What were you like when you were 50?”
Looking back at who I was then fills me with such pain that
I cannot answer that question.
I’ll choose another question.
And the question is: What did you learn in the Seminary?
I’ll jot some notes on it.
3.4 Blog
No wriggle room here.
Every day requires its own effort.
On Sunday, I got an early start and was mostly done before I went off to the café.
3.5 Modernism and Existentialism
Online literature and writing classes for middle schoolers through adults.
Find community in a fun, dynamic learning environment and become a better reader.
It’s my granddaughter’s class. I’ve enrolled in the class on Modernism and Existentialism.
I must shine.
I did some reading on Wednesday’s class.
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4.0 Chuckles and Thoughts
Your naked body should only belong to those
who fall in love with your naked soul.
~Charlie Chaplin
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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 comment by a reader notes that Yes, life is full of twists and pulls.
It is amazing how one decision - one choice - can change everything.
Blog meister responds: Unfortunate that too young people have to make such important decisions.
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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Sunday night I had a plate of leftover roast chicken.
It was okay.
I made a stock with the remainder of the chicken and worked after dinner composing a recipe for Minestrone Soup.
I plan on making the soup on Monday,
in anticipation of my daughter’s spring break from school.
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11.0 Thumbnail
This is an email I received from a friend poking gentle fun at me.
And left-handed praise.
THE EMAIL:
I have a friend who posts daily to a blog. In today's post, he opined he had a small amount of weight loss to manage. It's avoirdupois, he alleges, that is attributable, as a collateral effect, to the pandemic (regardless of which he is still able, more or less daily, to take what I'm guessing is a three to four mile walk through the streets of the fair city in which he lives). He claims (and I'm paraphrasing) he snacks to alleviate the "boredom" – his word – of sequestration.
One motivation for how I spend my time, regardless of plague conditions (I don't need no stinkin' pandemic to find myself dealing with ennui...), indeed sometimes is to give myself something productive to do. I don't snack, for sure. Though I do snack occasionally, and under self-restraint that is, if I may say, almost monk-like in its abstinent and, umm, cheeseparing, qualities. In fact, in the past year I've lost weight, and I don't walk quite as far as my friend as part of my quotidian.
What I do, as many of you note from time to time, is pore through my photography portfolio and work on images – mainly trying to optimize them by my lights for a state worthy of being captured as a large exhibition print.
Sometimes the subject of my photos is food (often enough in fact – though not meant to be contemplated as expressive or artistic, I do for the sake of documentation take a photo quickly of what is our dinner that day; more rarely it's lunch). Those are usually iPhone snaps. Most of my portfolio, though, consists of images that are taken with cameras technologically serious enough to produce images that stand up to the rigors of production grade tools that I use (starting with the camera, and continuing through the hardware and software).
I'd rather see the effort of combating whatever it is I'm fighting (whether it's ennui, and rarely boredom, not to suggest the conditions are interchangeable, or sheer obsessive need to record a photographic image) end up being an artifact, rather than end up being excess adipose tissue on my personal body.
Here's a photo I took while making lunch in my kitchen in France in June of 2009, when you could still go to an open air market, and mingle with crowds whose constituents would have been hard put to keep their distance from one another, never mind two meters apart. And not to mention that you could commonly buy what you see in this serendipitous composition, an instant still life (what the French call, amusingly, "nature morte" – I still remember those radishes and that saucisson; they were natural for sure, and they may no longer have been living in their normative state, but they certainly weren't dead).
Anyway, enjoy... And, oh yeah, that's goat cheese smeared on the slices of bread in the upper right, from a fromagerie right on the farm about a 12 minute drive from our house. Can't do that for the time being either.
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It’s Tuesday, March 23, 2021
Welcome to the 1054th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA)
discussed two legislative proposals that aim to address hate crimes on Sunday,
amid an ongoing increase in discrimination and violence
targeting Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the photograph above, Chu speaks to the media after
touring the Clint, TX Border Patrol Facility
housing children on July 1, 2019 in Clint, Texas.
© Christ Chavez/Getty Images
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2.0 Commentary
Glorious weather.
Do people who live in San Diego,
who enjoy great weather every day,
enjoy the exultation that
we in the Northeast feel when we are blessed with such a day?
Progress on my lifting is painfully slow.
Literally.
I increased the weights on my leg machines, and today I’m paying the price:
muscle aches causing me to skip a session.
I am a couple of weeks away from achieving 67% of my pre-pandemic levels.
Progress on my weight is painfully slow, marked by depressing slippages.
But lately I’m gaining a bit more optimism as I begin to lose the five-pound pandemic chunk.
Being confined, makes weight control that much more difficult as
we use snacking to relieve the boredom.
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3.0 Reading and Writing Events
3.1 Sacco and Vanzetti
This week, we discussed opening up the Sacco and Vanzetti project to include a memorial of the victims of crimes.
As Sacco and Vanzetti were victims of social injustice, Fred Parmenter, the paymaster, and Alessandro Berardelli, the security guard, were innocent victims whose lives were taken during the commission of the crime.
Thinking a second installation in the same location.
We’ll see.
3.2 Conflicted
I did some good work on my Conflicted manuscript today.
I finished editing the second section today.
Will start on next pages later today or tomorrow,
3.4 Blog
No wriggle room here.
Every day requires its own effort.
On Sunday, I got an early start and was mostly done before I went off to the café.
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4.0 Chuckles and Thoughts
The way of life can be free and beautiful, but
we have lost the way.
Greed has poisoned men's souls,
has barricaded the world with hate,
has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.
We have developed speed, but
we have shut ourselves in.
Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want.
Our knowledge has made us cynical;
our cleverness, hard and unkind.
We think too much and feel too little.
More than machinery, we need humanity.
More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness.
Without these qualities, life will be violent and
all will be lost.
~Charlie Chaplin
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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Dinner on Saturday night was with my cousin and
her boyfriend, Rob at their abode.
We had freshly made fettucine with Bolognese sauce and
baked salmon with intact carrots.
The food was delicious.
The company energizing.
And the thirty-minute walk home through downtown Boston was a treat.
A prefect evening.
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11.0 Thumbnail
On March 16, 2021, a week ago, a series of mass shootings occurred at three spas or massage parlors in the metropolitan area of Atlanta, Georgia, United States.
Eight people were killed, six of whom were Asian women, and one other person was wounded.
A suspect, 21-year-old Robert Aaron Long, was taken into custody later that day.
According to police, Long said he was motivated by a sexual addiction that was at odds with his religious beliefs.
He had previously spent time in an evangelical treatment clinic for sex addiction.
After the shootings, Long was charged with four counts of murder by the Atlanta Police Department (APD), and four counts of murder and one count of aggravated assault by the Cherokee County Sheriff's Office.
Although Long has not been charged with a hate crime, many commentators have characterized the shootings as a hate crime, noting the backdrop of rising anti-Asian sentiment in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Rep. Judy Chu Says Trump's 'China Virus' Rhetoric Undermined Anti-Asian Hate Crimes Legislation
As congressional leaders work to pass legislation that would establish systems for tracking and better addressing hate crimes in the U.S., California Congresswoman
Judy Chu discussed the influence of Donald Trump's rhetoric on discrimination and violence targeting Asian American people.
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It’s Monday, March 22, 2021
Welcome to the 1053rd consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
Daca Students
Daca Students
Caught in nightmarish dilemma not of their making
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2.0 Commentary
We’ve been patiently waiting since Valentine’s Day and here it all is:
First day of Spring.
Spring weather for the next week.
The economy showing signs of life and predictions of an exhilarating rush.
Covid stopped; not defeated, but stopped. And reinforcements coming for our side.
Our national enemies highlighted.
A policy developing re: our southern borders. Hopefully, it will recognize that needy people exist the world over. Why we’ve established an immigration policy. Let’s hope that in any revamping of that policy, cheaters don’t win.
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3.0 Reading and Writing Events
3.1 Sacco and Vanzetti
I spend a good deal of time writing,
like Agendas, Mission Statements, Endorsements, emails.
Working on a couple of specific assignments: a biography and a letter.
Hope to do both today, Saturday.
3.2 Conflicted
I spend a lot of time these days rewriting the manuscript.
Beta readers are enthusiastic.
I’m preparing the next batch of the manuscript for my editor and waiting for mid-next week when I expect to receive her first batch of edited pages.
3.3 Storyworth
This is an application that my daughter bought me as a Christmas present.
Every week I am sent a question about my life.
I have a couple of days reprieve before I get the next question.
3.4 Blog
No wriggle room here.
Every day requires its own effort.
3.5 Modernism and Existentialism
Online literature and writing classes for middle schoolers through adults.
Find community in a fun, dynamic learning environment and become a better reader.
It’s my granddaughter’s class. I’ve enrolled in the class on Modernism and Existentialism.
I must shine.
We’re reading the final 50 pages of V Woolf’s To the Lighthouse.
This is only time of the week that I think critically.
Love it.
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4.0 Chuckles and Thoughts
Life laughs at you when you are unhappy;
Life smiles at you when you are happy;
But life salutes you when you make other happy.
~Charlie Chaplin
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5.0 Mail and other Conversation
We love getting mail, email, or texts.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
or text to 617.852.7192
This from Colleen G:
Hey Dom,
Thank YOU too for being a good friend:)
You'd love to know that my 13 year old daughter made homemade gnocchi last night for dinner for us. She is enrolled in a 6-week cooking class for kids that encourages them to eat healthy, to try things (often veggies) that they don't usually eat and to learn to cook. My best friend (speaking of friends) is the owner of this business which was hit very hard by the pandemic since the programming is usually an in-person cooking class that takes place at schools after the bell rings. All ingredients are usually brought to the kids and then they are sent home with the "star" ingredient to cook again for their family. She has had to stop and pivot and get creative (and she is VERY creative) and so she developed an online zoom cooking class where the parents get the ingredients when they do their weekly shopping and kids set up their computers in the kitchen and an instructor takes them through the recipe, helping them as needed and as possible (remotely:).
I was so scared for my friend when all schools were closed. Revenue ended abruptly, but she is amazing and now as a parent of a 13 year old who makes dinner every thursday evening, I am grateful. If you know of any parents who would like to encourage their kids to cook--and not just french fries and ramen noodles, but real food--feel free to send them here to Kids' Test Kitchen. Usually kids would only have access if the program was running at their school or rec department, but now that she's had to get creative, a child could take this class from any location remotely. Here's the link: https://kidstestkitchen.com/
Here's to hoping our kids all cook better than we do someday, so we can sit back, sip a glass of wine and wait for our reward to emerge from the kitchen:)
Here's to good friends and their creative minds!
Cheers,
Colleen:)
Blog meister responds: An excellent illustration of terrific parents creating a terrific home. God bless.
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6.0 Dinner/Food/Recipes
Dinner on Friday was with my friend Tucker @ Abe and Louie’s.
They do a terrific job with food.
and they make a fine martini, particularly the service of it,
half the portion kept in a glass ice bowl.
Sweet.
But what I like most is the professionalism of the service.
And the predictability of the event.
So comforting and comfortable.
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11.0 Thumbnail
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) is a United States immigration policy that allows some individuals with unlawful presence in the United States after being brought to the country as children to receive a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation and become eligible for a work permit in the U.S. To be eligible for the program, recipients cannot have felonies or serious misdemeanors on their records.
Unlike the proposed DREAM Act, DACA does not provide a path to citizenship for recipients.[1][2] The policy, an executive branch memorandum, was announced by President Barack Obama on June 15, 2012. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) began accepting applications for the program on August 15, 2012.
In November 2014, President Obama announced his intention to expand DACA to cover additional undocumented immigrants. Multiple states immediately sued to prevent the expansion, which was ultimately blocked by an evenly divided Supreme Court. Under President Trump, the Department of Homeland Security rescinded the expansion in June 2017, while it continued to review the existence of DACA as a whole. In September 2017, the Trump Administration announced a plan to phase out DACA, triggering multiple lawsuits challenging this action. The government deferred implementation of this plan for six months to allow Congress time to pass the DREAM Act or some other legislative protection for undocumented immigrants. Congress failed to act and the time extension expired on March 5, 2018, but three separate district courts ordered an injunction preventing the phase-out of the DACA by this date, on the likelihood that the rescinding was arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). Separately, district court judge Andrew Hanen of the Southern District of Texas ruled that DACA is likely unconstitutional, but he let the program remain in place as litigation proceeds.[3][4]
In the June 2020 case Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California, the Supreme Court, ruling on the three injunctions blocking the rescission of the DACA, affirmed that the reasoning given for the rescission was arbitrary and capricious under the APA, but did not rule on the merits of the DACA itself nor prevented the government from issuing a new rescission with better rationale.[5] NAACP President Derrick Johnson responded to the Supreme Court ruling in statement, saying "For far too long, the voices of the undocumented DACA recipients from the African Diaspora were silenced. There is no democratic dream for anyone if we don't allow our DREAMers to fully participate. This is a tremendous victory for America. Today's Supreme Court ruling in our favor is an incredible victory for justice, in the spirit of the NAACP's groundbreaking Supreme Court victory in Brown v Board of Education."[6] GQ magazine later reported that under NAACP President/CEO Derrick Johnson's leadership, "the nation's foremost and oldest civil rights organization landed a huge win in its Supreme Court case — Trump v. NAACP — that prevents Donald Trump's administration from rescinding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program for young immigrants." Johnson added, "It's a huge victory for us."[7]
On January 20, 2021, President Joe Biden issued an executive order reinstating DACA.[8]
Research has shown that DACA increased the wages and employment status of DACA-eligible immigrants,[9][10][11] and improved the mental health outcomes for DACA participants and their children.[12][13][14] Research also suggests it reduced the number of undocumented immigrant households living in poverty.[15] There is no evidence to indicate that DACA recipients have higher crime rates than native-born Americans; most research shows that immigrants have lower crime rates than native-born Americans.[16] Economists reject that DACA has adverse effects on the U.S. economy or that it adversely affects the labor market outcomes of native-born Americans.[17][18] In August 2018, USCIS estimated there were 699,350 active DACA recipients residing in the United States.[19] Immigration researchers estimate the population to be between 690,000 and 800,000 people.[20][21]
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It’s Sunday, March 21, 2021
Welcome to the 1052nd consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com
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1.0 Lead Picture
Enrollment of Students to University of Bologna.
Transferred from de.wikipedia to Commons by Stefan Bernd.
The enrollment of some students in the University of Bologna.
Students enter the „Natio Germanica Bononiae“,
the german nation at the university of Bologna, image from the 15th century
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2.0 Commentary
We had an eye-opener of a meeting of the Sacco and Vanzetti Board of Directors.
In the meeting, we decided to expand our goals from a single piece memorializing the pair to a double-piece, the second, a memorial to the victims of crime.
Combined, we would install a Reconciliation Square.
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3.0 Reading and Writing Events
3.1 Sacco and Vanzetti
Sacco and Vanzetti were Italian immigrants and anarchists and who, in 1921, accused of double murder, were found guilty and eventually executed. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the city of Boston, and most scholars agree that they did not get a fair trial.
We have founded the Memorial to Sacco and Vanzetti, Inc. to install a memorial in recognition of the contributions of Italian immigration to American society and of our justice system that can make a mistake, apologize, and move forward.
I spend a good deal of time writing,
like Agendas, Mission Statements, Endorsements, emails.
Today we expanded our Board of Directors for the first time, from four of us to five.
Our new member fits right into what we’ve been achieving.
We also had an extended conversation with two artists who may be involved in the final bronzing of our art.
3.3 Storyworth
This is an application that my daughter bought me as a Christmas present.
Every week I am sent a question about my life.
The answers are mailed out to a list of people that Kat has provided.
At the end of the year I get a hard copy of the book.
This week’s question asks me why I pursued a graduate degree.
See 11.0 Thumbnail for my response.
4.0 Chuckles/Thoughts
My pain may be the reason for somebody's laugh.
But my laugh must never be the reason for somebody's pain.
~Charlie Chaplin
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5.0 Mail
We love getting mail.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
This from our dear friend, Tommie T from South Carolina.
Stanley Tucci looks a lot like my father, Thomas Newton Carr, except
my father had black hair with a receding hairline.
An interesting observation on mine was that his hair seemed to thicken and
become curly with radiation and chemotherapy for
a rare form of lymphocytic leukemia.
He died at 69 after having suffered terribly for three years.
He was a courageous man in many ways -
a US Navy aviator flying on and off aircraft carriers for 31 years,
loving Harley-Davidson motorcycles and surviving several mishaps,
diving from the highest diving boards, and
dealing with a daughter that was often at odds with him.
His greatest courage came in dealing with such a horrible illness and
facing death head on.
March is not my favorite month.
Blog Meister responds: that makes me cry. so beautiful mentioning his daughter often at odds.
your love for each other is palpable.
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11.0 Thumbnails
Grew up in a patriarchal culture.
Everyone accepted I would go on to college.
Although excellent students, my three sisters, equally smart, better adjusted, than I,
never even discussed their going to college.
None of them went.
I was an underachieving student.
Poor discipline, ignorance, arrogance did me in.
For my first two years at Boston University.
In my third year, I was spending scads of time with Toni-Lee,
she a student with impeccable academic credentials.
Her secret, discipline, love of knowledge, and respect made her a standout.
A 4.0, summa cum laude, phi beta kappa, all the while completing her four-year schooling in three years.
Of course we talked a lot about what college kids talk about.
But we never talked when Toni was studying.
And she studied all the time.
She studied with a dedication wonderful to behold.
Making me ashamed of myself.
She turned me into a decent student, from a C+ to a B+.
Beyond that not available to me.
My past pulled me down.
We were married while Toni still had her third and last year to complete.
For a while, Toni had her heart and mind set on journalism.
She got a juicy part-time job on a local newspaper and thrived.
In her element.
Get her degree and get to work, her idea.
One day I returned home to find her sitting on the bed, crying.
The newspaper was bought out and she was out of a job.
Toni-Lee did not take failure well.
No experience.
I couldn’t stand her crying.
Sat beside her and held her hands.
The tears wet me.
Then, out of the blue, I said,
Get your doctorate.
She froze.
What?-
Get your doctorate.
You love to learn.
She offered several objections that all amounted to the same thing:
Talk me into it, please.
Next day, it seemed, the graduate school applications went out.
Next day, it seemed, Brandeis offered her a full scholarship and a lucrative part-time job which they assured her wouldn’t amount to ore than an hour a week.
Next day, it seems, she was Doctor Capossela.
Really, it took her a mere three years to get her Master’s and Doctorate.
She could have done it in two
(programs were established to slow down people like Toni) but
her advisor met with her,
told her he was getting pushback from other professors who
resented that it took them ten years to get their degree).
She slowed down.
Not that she had nothing to do.
She had three children before she was twenty-five years old.
Perhaps the only woman I know who
packed her dissertation to take to the hospital to
read in between contractions.
I was a freshman at the Boston University College of Business Administration.
My teacher of writing was a dedicated left-wing radical.
His diatribes had a profound impact on me.
Suddenly I was involved in politics (remember Eyes on the Prize?)
I switched from the business school to the College of Liberal Arts and
spent a lot more time cultivating the company of college radicals.
At that point, law called me.
I went.
But before law school started, Toni and I were married.
The three years together as students were splendid.
(All of our married lives were splendid.)
We were both pursuing advanced degrees, life as young marrieds, and
new parents.
Toni used her new doctor’s degree to get a terrific job teaching English at Boston University.
I used my new admission to the Mass Bar to open a restaurant.
Within a few years, Toni found restaurant life and the study of food more appealing than teaching.
She quit BU and came to work in the restaurant, developing recipes, teaching cooking, editing a new agazine, Food,
I was the host and the creative director.
I never returned to the law.
Toni did return to teaching after more than a 20-year absence.
Life is full of twists and pulls.
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