Daily Entries for the week of
Sunday, May 29, 2022
through
Saturday, June 4, 2022
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It’s Saturday, June 4, 2022
Welcome to the 1,461st consecutive post to the blog
existentialautotrip.com
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Lead Picture*
Shogun hearing a lawsuit at Fukiage
Shogun hearing a lawsuit at Fukiage
(of Edo Castle) by Toyohara Chikanobu
Toyohara Chikanobu (1838-1912) - Ukiyo-e.org [1]
Title: "Onko Azuma no hana" Flowers of Edo in Old Times "Shogun-ke Fukiage ni oite Kuji jocho no zu" Shogun hearing a lawsuit at Fukiage (of Edo Castle). Size: 75,0 x 37,0 cm Format: 3 oban triptych. Signature: Yoshu Chikanobu.
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Commentary
A rash of fun social engagements have entered my calendar. I haven’t absorbed them all yet. This month, June, has its usual complement of individual meetups but, additionally, it includes a long weekend in Washington DC with my family and a larger dinner meetup at the end of the month.
Followed by a two day visit with my daughter and Will visiting.
Then an overnight in NH with my niece and David. And hopefully their lovely twin daughters.
Several months later is a two-week trip to Asia, Japan.
And the spout isn’t turned off.
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Reading, Writing, and Word of the Day
I ordered Shogun on my Kindle.
Prep for my Japan trip.
My nephew David suggests some type of class on Japanese etiquette.
Word of the day: furlough
For definition, see below, immediately after the Short Essay
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Screen time
Tonight is the Celtics championship series. Youth against experience. A late starts and for the next days hours and hours daily of sports. Except for games the Celtics may lose. Then I duck all sports shows. I’ll watch Scorsese’s ‘Silence’.
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Wellness
All my aches and pains have gone away. Why? Because today I have a doctor’s appointment. My gastroenterologist. To answer the question: Do I need a last colonoscopy?
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Understanding aging
Happily my good health trumped my age and I kept up with Wednesday’s event in Providence with my lovely niece and gang.
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Social Life
Wednesday with my niece Lisa and her husband David and their twin daughters, Tessa and Savannah, roved to be brilliant. The young people were the guides and they were perfect: intelligent, witty, involved, and interesting. We walked the neighborhood of Brown University and RISD, we visited RISD’s Fleet Library, followed by an art show of RISD students that was a lot of fun. Then we had a great lunch and conversation. So much fun to be in the company of a special family.
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Chuckles and Thoughts
The Statue of Liberty is no longer saying,
'Give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses.'
She's got a baseball bat and yelling,
'You want a piece of me?'
~Robin Williams
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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 Jim P on hearing that I booked a tour to Japan:
Don’t forget Shogun: Shogun : A Novel Of Japan: Clavell, James: 8601422411737: Books: Amazon.com
It was really popular when it came out in ’75. Everyone was reading. Back then when everyone read. Might be worth rereading it before you go…
Jim
Blog meister responds: Shogun is a great idea.
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Dinner/Food/Recipes
For dinner on Wednesday we ate three courses at Bellini’s. The food was very good, as was the service. The wines were pricey and definitely not top shelf. Should have ordered liquor.
How to Peel Tomatoes
When you have to peel a tomato, remove stickers and wash.
Cut away the stem an inch deep into the tomato and cut a shallow X on the bottom of the tomato.
Fill a large bowl with ice water and set it aside.
Place a pot of plain water on the stove and bring it to a boil.
Lower the tomatoes into boiling water. Leave for 30 seconds.
Place them into the bowl of ice water.
Let the tomatoes sit in the ice bath for 5 minutes .
Once the tomatoes have chilled, remove them from the ice water.
Peel the skins off with your hands.
Cut the tomato in half horizontally.
Slice and dice.
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Pictures with Captions from our community**
Greenway’s great wet attraction
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Short Essay*
Shogun, “Commander-in-Chief of the Expeditionary Force Against the Barbarians"), was the title of the military dictators of Japan during most of the period spanning from 1185 to 1868.
Nominally appointed by the Emperor, shoguns were usually the de facto rulers of the country, though during part of the Kamakura period, shoguns were themselves figureheads.
The office of shogun was in practice hereditary, though over the course of the history of Japan several different clans held the position.
The title was originally held by military commanders during Heian period in the 8th and 9th centuries.
When Minamoto no Yoritomo gained political ascendency over Japan in 1185, the title was revived to regularize his position, making him the first shogun in the usually understood sense.
The shogun's officials were collectively referred to as the bakufu ("tent government"); they were the ones who carried out the actual duties of administration, while the Imperial court retained only nominal authority. The tent symbolized the shogun's role as the military's field commander but also denoted that such an office was meant to be temporary. Nevertheless, the institution, known in English as the shogunate persisted for nearly 700 years, ending when Tokugawa Yoshinobu relinquished the office to Emperor Meiji in 1867 as part of the Meiji Restoration.
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Definition of word of the day
furlough: A furlough is a temporary leave from work, while a layoff is a separation from employment.
* 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, June 3, 2022
Welcome to the 1,460th consecutive post to the blog
existentialautotrip.com
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Lead Picture*
Top Gun Maverick
This is a poster for Top Gun: Maverick. The poster art copyright is believed to belong to the distributor of the film, Paramount Pictures, the publisher of the film or the graphic artist.
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Commentary
This was one of my busiest days ever with a dozen conversations from the social to the planning.
did not make many mistakes.
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Reading, Writing, and Word of the Day
Word of the day: metatextual
For definition, see below, immediately after the Short Essay
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Chuckles and Thoughts
Reality is just a crutch for people who can't cope with drugs.
~Robin Williams
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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 is part three of our Tucker J’s and Scout’s terrific analysis of the films of the Ridleys.
Hi Dom,
We released episode 3 today.
The End of History - Chapter 3 on Vimeo
In this episode we take a look at Ridley and Tony’s style as filmmakers. How they manage to create big budget films that still look absolutely gorgeous and how all of their films really do contain very specific styles.
Thank you as always for sharing this link!
· Tucker
Blog meister responds: I feel so lucky to view these.
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Dinner/Food/Recipes
On Tuesday I tweaked my roasted chicken by covering it with duck fat and salting it before putting it in the oven. Then I made a pan sauce with the fatty drippings, white wine, and a TB of my chicken gravy. The sauce gets reduced to a syrupy quality. I loved it.
The recipe from “Bistro Cooking,” Patricia Wells.
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Pictures with Captions from our community*
Guston if this be not i
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Short Essay*
“Your kind is headed for extinction,” Rear Admiral. Chester “Hammer” Cain (Ed Harris) tells the one and only Pete “Maverick” Mitchell. The admiral is talking about the obsolescence of fighter pilots in an age when bombs are dropped remotely from a strip mall outside Las Vegas. But he’s also speaking, in a metatextual manner, about the legend playing this legend: Hollywood’s aging but ageless golden boy Tom Cruise, pushing 60 but still climbing into cockpits at a time when his “kind” — the movie star who’s a draw no matter the movie — has indeed been added to the endangered species list.
Those kind of winks are common in so-called legacy sequels, a very self-conscious strain of modern franchise continuation. Yet there’s scarcely a hint of irony in Top Gun: Maverick, a decades-later follow-up to one of the most unexpected hits of the 1980s. Early in the film, Cruise whips a tarp off an old motorcycle, the one he rode around back in ’86, and the moment is so glowingly awestruck, you half expect it to be accompanied by a 21-gun salute. This is a movie deeply in love with its title character, and with the movie star reprising that role, and maybe even with the fantasy of America it’s reviving.
It’s a tad amusing, seeing such hushed reverence applied to Top Gun, of all box-office sensations. Made with the cooperation and final script approval of the U.S. Navy, that movie was a glorified (and quite successful) recruitment ad propped up by the slick craft of its director, the late Tony Scott, and by the sweat-slicked faces and bodies of its cast. It was popcorn propaganda with all the depth and soul of a Pepsi commercial. Top Gun has endured mostly as a kitsch object, an antique of superficial patriotism and ’80s excess. But Maverick takes it seriously, which is one key to its twinkly romantic charm.
Director Joseph Kosinski, who worked with Cruise on 2013’s Oblivion, but more relevantly directed Tron: Legacy (another expensive, affectionate upgrade of a one-off ’80s movie), fills Scott’s big jackboots by committing fully to his magic-hour aesthetic. The first few minutes come within striking distance of shot-for-shot remake territory, as that same opening epigraph fills the screen in that same font while that same synth score from Harold Faltermeyer rises majestically on the soundtrack. A beat later, it’s replaced by the familiar sounds of Kenny Loggins’ Danger Zone and the familiar sight of massive metal birds taxiing around a runway, passing through clouds of music-video smoke. The film is ritualistic in its replications.
Maverick faithfully adopts a Top Gun plot, too. Which is to say, it barely has one. Having dodged promotions for decades, as any incorrigible rebel must, Cruise’s veteran airman is reassigned to his old stomping grounds outside San Diego, where he’ll take some young pilots under his wing. One is reminded that the actor starred in a legacy sequel the same year Top Gun came out, playing the hotshot protégé in Martin Scorsese’s The Color of Money. Nearly four decades later, he’s now in the Paul Newman role. His gaggle of egotistical millennial hot shots with colorful call signs includes the socially awkward Bob (Lewis Pullman), steely boys-club crasher Phoenix (Monica Barbaro), and the cowboy antagonist of the team, Hangman (Glen Powell).
There’s also Rooster (Miles Teller), whose shades and haircut betray his secret identity as the son of Goose, the Anthony Edwards character tragically killed in the original. Rooster simmers with resentment toward Maverick, who’s long tried to keep the kid, offspring of his dead wingman, out of the sky. It’s the film’s savviest dramatic choice, building the entire emotional conflict of the story around our hero’s lingering guilt and the shock waves Goose’s freak accident sent across generations.
Kosinski’s aerial action is breathtaking and absolutely the film’s centerpiece. Like Tony Scott, he knows how to convey altitude and speed, and to coherently crosscut between cockpits to turn every training exercise into a group show of dovetailing dilemmas and volleying wisecracks. The script, coauthored by frequent Cruise collaborator Christopher McQuarrie, devises an urgent graduation rite for the new class: An attack on a uranium plant that’s like the Death Star operation crossed with the daunting odds of a Mission: Impossible set piece. Of course, the actual enemy remains nervously, strategically undisclosed, just as it was in the first film — a faceless international “rogue state.” As always, Top Gun exists in a geopolitical Bermuda Triangle, abstracting war into a kind of “big game” at the end of a sports movie, free of any larger global stakes.
Maverick is maybe too devoted to the blueprint of an old blockbuster to ever fully emerge as its own movie. But scene for scene, it’s a better time than Top Gun — more nimble, more exciting, more soulful. It ditches Scott’s self-parodic habit of queuing up the same two songs ad nauseam. And the film seems to grasp that male friendship and brotherhood was always more crucial to Top Gun’s popularity than romance. Conspicuously absent is Kelly McGillis’s Charlie, the civilian love interest of the first movie. Maverick fills the void via a more sidelined courtship with fellow ’80s kid Jennifer Connelly, who plays a bartender we’re told Maverick wooed a lifetime ago. (Her character is mentioned briefly in the first film.) The two stars have an easygoing chemistry as old loves rekindling the flame, though none of their scenes are as affecting as the one Cruise shares with Val Kilmer, dropping in for a cameo that works the latter’s real-life battle with throat cancer into the story.
The true love story here is between the camera and Cruise. He’s somehow intense and relaxed, bringing some of that signature charismatic determination, while also easing into the minor melancholy of Maverick’s trip down memory lane, taking stock of how he’s changed since those halcyon days in Reagan’s America. (That’s really him in the jet, of course — as with Mission: Impossible‘s Ethan Hunt, it can be tough to tell where the fictional daredevil ends and the real one begins.) Kosinski basks in the contradictions of Cruise’s star power as an elder statesman of multiplex cool: What we’re seeing is a summer-movie Adonis acknowledge his advancing years, enduring old-timer cracks, even as he leaps into each stunt with a vain defiance of the aging process.
Maverick grants, as legacy sequels so often do, that its characters are analog relics in a digital world — that to place Top Gun in modern times is an act of anachronistic wish-fulfillment. But truthfully, the original was plenty anachronistic, too: Opening at a time when dogfights were rapidly becoming a thing of the past, it applied a kind of Greatest Generation romanticism to the shifty goalposts of the Cold War; its pitch to prospective recruits was a vision of military life (and glory) that had little to do with contemporary reality. That makes Maverick a mirage of a mirage, nostalgic for a world that never really existed. Which is why it’s such a perfect vehicle for Cruise, a Tinseltown Dorian Gray whose impossibly preserved physique is its own organic de-aging technology. He’s a movie star out of time, shining brightly in a strictly dreamt America.
Tucker
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Definition of word of the day
metatextual: constituting self-referential text (text about the text); for example, as mentioned earlier herein.
* 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, June 2, 2022
Welcome to the 1,459th consecutive post to the blog
existentialautotrip.com
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Lead Picture*
Phillip Guston
Guston sketching a mural for the WPA Federal Art Project in 1939.
David Robbins - [Philip Guston], 1939 Feb. 15 / David Robbins, photographer. Photographic print : 1 item : b&w ; 20 x 26 cm. Federal Art Project, Photographic Division collection, circa 1920-1965, bulk 1935-1942. Archives of American Art.
Guston sketching a mural for the WPA Federal Art Project. Identification on verso (handwritten and stamped): Federal Art Project W.P.A.; Photographic Division; 110 King Street; New York City Negative No.: 3563-G; Date: 2-15-39; Photographer: Robbins; Artist: Philip Guston; Process of sketching a Mural; Location: 531 Grand Ave, Bklyn; World's Fair.
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Commentary
Gun legislation is very important.
But more important is McConnell’s okay to cooperate in the crafting of bipartisan legislation to impose some limits on the free-for-all nutso laws that we currently have around the country.
To me, any, ANY sign of moderation is a powerful blow against the revolutionaries who would destroy our America the Beautiful for their personal aggrandizement.
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Reading, Writing, and Word of the Day
Word of the day: juggernaut
For definition, see below, immediately after the Short Essay
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Screen time
The Celtics return to the screen on Thursday: the Championship finals vs. the Golden State Warriors, long-standing basketball juggernaut. Meanwhile, listening to all the commentators. The ones who don’t agree with me are idiots.
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Wellness
My legs have improved but not fully.
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Understanding aging
Avoid injury. It takes an older person so much time to repair.
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Social Life
Tomorrow, Wednesday as I write this, I will be going down to RISD to hand with my niece Lisa, David, and their twin girls. Fun.
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Chuckles and Thoughts
I'm sorry, if you were right, I'd agree with you.
~Robin Williams
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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
Lots of today’s mail commented on my trip to Japan. Quote of the day had to due with the timing.
“Summers are hot and sticky.”
Blog meister responds: I won’t go in the summer.
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Dinner/Food/Recipes
I pulled out a Patricia Wells French cookbook called “Bistro Cooking”. I chose the simple roast chicken which I translated into the slow-roasting technique that I’ve grown so fond of. The essential difference: brush duck fat over the bird and salt it. Then roast it. The pan gravy is reduced to a syrup then poured over the chicken. I’m making it now, Will report tomorrow.
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Pictures with Captions from our community**
broom as art
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Pictures with Captions from our community**
broom as art defined
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Short Essay*
Philip Guston (born Phillip Goldstein, June 27, 1913 – June 7, 1980), was a Canadian American painter, printmaker, muralist and draftsman. Early in his five decade career, muralist David Siquieros described him as one of "the most promising painters in either the US or Mexico,"in reference to his antifascist fresco The Struggle Against Terror, which "includes the hooded figures that became a lifelong symbol of bigotry for the artist." "Guston worked in a number of artistic modes, from Renaissance-inspired figuration to formally accomplished abstraction," and is now regarded one of the "most important, powerful, and influential American painters of the last 100 years." He also frequently depicted racism, antisemitism, fascism and American identity, as well as, especially in his later most cartoonish and mocking work, the banality of evil. In 2013, Guston's painting To Fellini set an auction record at Christie's when it sold for $25.8 million.
A founding figure in the mid-century New York School movement, which established New York as the new center of the global art world, Guston's work appeared in the famed Ninth Street Show and in the avant-garde art journal It is. A Magazine for Abstract Art. By the 1960s, Guston had renounced abstract expressionism, and helped pioneer a modified form of representational art known as neo-expressionism. "Calling American abstract art 'a lie' and 'a sham,' he pivoted to making paintings in a dark, figurative style, including satirical drawings of Richard Nixon" during the Vietnam War as well as several paintings of hooded Klansmen,[6] which Guston explained this way: “They are self-portraits … I perceive myself as being behind the hood … The idea of evil fascinated me … I almost tried to imagine that I was living with the Klan.” The paintings of Klan figures were set to be part of an international retrospective sponsored by the National Gallery of Art; the Tate Modern; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 2020, but in late September, the museums jointly postponed the exhibition until 2024 "until a time at which we think that the powerful message of social and racial justice that is at the center of Philip Guston's work can be more clearly interpreted."
The announcement spurred an open letter, published online by The Brooklyn Rail, and signed by more than 2,000 artists. It criticizes the postponement, and the museums' lack of courage to display or attempt to interpret Guston's work, as well as the museums' own "history of prejudice." It calls Guston's KKK themes a timely catalyst for a "reckoning" with cultural and institutional white supremacy, and argues that's why the exhibition must proceed without delay. On October 28, 2020, the museums announced earlier exhibition dates starting in 2022.
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Definition of word of the day
A juggernaut in current English usage, is a literal or metaphorical force regarded as merciless, destructive, and unstoppable.
* 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, June 1, 2022
Welcome to the 1,458th consecutive post to the blog
existentialautotrip.com
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Lead Picture*
Ritsurin Garden
One of the most famous strolling gardens in Japan
663highland
Ritsurin Garden in Takamatsu, Kagawa prefecture, Japan.
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Commentary
I have always admired Japan, its food, art, and shrines.
Compliments of my sons, I will visit the islands this year.
First thing to do: Create a calendar to lay out the two weeks I’ll be away.
I am very excited.
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Reading, Writing, and Word of the Day
Word of the day: sushi
For definition, see below, immediately after the Short Essay
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Understanding aging
After two full days my legs are still hurt from the charley horse I suffered in my calf muscle at that time. Too long to recover. It’s my age.
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Social Life
All in all the Memorial Day weekend felt a bit lonely for this single individual.
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Chuckles and Thoughts
Canada is like a loft apartment over a really great party.
~Robin Williams
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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 sons,
Dad,
We need a break from you.
We’ve decided to send you away for two weeks.
To Japan.
Get planning.
love
BlogMeister responds, A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.
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Dinner/Food/Recipes
On Labor Day I enjoyed Osso Bucco, bought from Amazon. It was expensive but pretty good. The two bones were perfect, loaded with marrow.
The meat was well cooked and tasty.
I steamed some asparagus and in 15 minutes had a bed of noodles covered with the Osso Bucco and sauce and fresh asparagus with butter, salt, and pepper.
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Pictures with Captions from our community**
Rodin Eternal Springtime
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Pictures with Captions from our community**
Rodin Eternal Springtime placard
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Short Essay*
Japan is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north toward the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south. Japan is a part of the Ring of Fire, and spans an archipelago of 6852 islands covering 377,975 square kilometers (145,937 sq mi); the five main islands are Hokkaido, Honshu (the "mainland"), Shikoku, Kyushu, and Okinawa. Tokyo is the nation's capital and largest city; other major cities include Yokohama, Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo, Fukuoka, Kobe, and Kyoto.
Japan is the eleventh most populous country in the world, as well as one of the most densely populated and urbanized. About three-fourths of the country's terrain is mountainous, concentrating its population of 125.5 million on narrow coastal plains. Japan is divided into 47 administrative prefectures and eight traditional regions. The Greater Tokyo Area is the most populous metropolitan area in the world, with more than 37.4 million residents.
Japan has been inhabited since the Upper Paleolithic period (30,000 BC), though the first written mention of the archipelago appears in a Chinese chronicle (the Book of Han) finished in the 2nd century AD. Between the 4th and 9th centuries, the kingdoms of Japan became unified under an emperor and the imperial court based in Heian-kyō. Beginning in the 12th century, political power was held by a series of military dictators (shōgun) and feudal lords (daimyō) and enforced by a class of warrior nobility (samurai). After a century-long period of civil war, the country was reunified in 1603 under the Tokugawa shogunate, which enacted an isolationist foreign policy. In 1854, a United States fleet forced Japan to open trade to the West, which led to the end of the shogunate and the restoration of imperial power in 1868. In the Meiji period, the Empire of Japan adopted a Western-modeled constitution and pursued a program of industrialization and modernization. Amidst a rise in militarism and overseas colonization, Japan invaded China in 1937 and entered World War II as an Axis power in 1941. After suffering defeat in the Pacific War and two atomic bombings, Japan surrendered in 1945 and came under a seven-year Allied occupation, during which it adopted a new constitution and began a military alliance with the United States. Under the 1947 constitution, Japan has maintained a unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy with a bicameral legislature, the National Diet.
Japan is a great power and a member of numerous international organizations, including the United Nations (since 1956), OECD, G20 and Group of Seven. Although it has renounced its right to declare war, the country maintains Self-Defense Forces that rank as one of the world's strongest militaries. After World War II, Japan experienced record growth in an economic miracle, becoming the second-largest economy in the world by 1972 but has stagnated since 1995 in what is referred to as the Lost Decades. As of 2021, the country's economy is the third-largest by nominal GDP and the fourth-largest by PPP. Ranked "very high" on the Human Development Index, Japan has one of the world's highest life expectancies, though it is experiencing a decline in population. A global leader in the automotive, robotics and electronics industries, Japan has made significant contributions to science and technology. The culture of Japan is well known around the world, including its art, cuisine, music, and popular culture, which encompasses prominent comic, animation and video game industries.
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Definition of word of the day
Sushi is a Japanese dish of prepared vinegared rice, usually with some sugar and salt, accompanied by a variety of ingredients, such as seafood, often raw, and vegetables. Styles of sushi and its presentation vary widely, but the one key ingredient is "sushi rice", also referred to as shari or sumeshi, "vinegared rice").
* 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, May 31, 2022
Welcome to the 1,457th consecutive post to the blog
existentialautotrip.com
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Lead Picture*
Robb Elementary School shooting
VOA - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qognaIAO468
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Commentary
We should begin to look closely at the Republican Party non-Trumpian options for the Presidential nomination. Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie, and Mike Pence among them.
I hear groans from the Democratic left. I remind you: On January 6 we watched a Trump-instigated disturbance that threatened our way of life like no other event in American history. Mike Pence stood up to a maniacal sitting President and protected us all while putting his own career and, indeed, his life in jeopardy.
The core Republican Party must be supported against the Trumpian extremists seeking to abduct the party for the far-right. Far right loony tunes. We are talking a small step removed from the Nazi Party. A very small step.
For example, Georgia has done its share to repair our torn fabric. It has defeated Trump. After the Republican primary victories of Brian Kemp and Brad Raffensperger whether they defeat their Democratic rivals in the general election pales in significance to their defeat of Trump allies.
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Word of the Day
Word of the day: Salade Nicoise
For definition, see below, immediately after the Short Essay
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Screen time
Am watching Tokyo Vice and enjoying it.
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Wellness
This was a difficult walking day for me. I got a Charlie horse in my left calf muscle that left the muscle weak and limp. On top of that, my right foot pained me all day. So between a limping left leg and a painful right foot, walking was not the joy it’s been for me all of my life. Hoping that when I wake tomorrow both injuries will be healed.
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Chuckles and Thoughts
Why do they call it rush hour when nothing moves?
~Robin Williams
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Dinner/Food/Recipes
On Sunday I made chicken cutlets and served them with a crisp salad.
They were cooked perfectly and were delicious.
Memorial day on Boston Common
Memorial day on Boston Common Placard
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Pictures with Captions from our community**
Memorial day on Boston Common
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Short Essay*
On May 24, 2022, 18-year-old Salvador Rolando Ramos fatally shot nineteen students and two teachers, and wounded seventeen other people at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, United States. This came after he shot his grandmother in the forehead at home, severely wounding her. He proceeded to the school and fired shots outside for approximately five minutes, then entered with an AR-15 style rifle through an open side entrance door, without encountering armed resistance. He then locked himself inside a classroom, killing nineteen students and two teachers remaining there for around one hour before being killed by a United States Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC). It is the third-deadliest American school shooting, after the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007 and the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012, and the deadliest in Texas.
Law enforcement officials were criticized for their actions in response to the shooting, and their conduct is being reviewed in separate investigations by the Texas Ranger Division and the United States Department of Justice. After initially praising first responders to the shooting, Texas Governor Greg Abbott called for an investigation of the lack of action by incident commanders. Police officers waited 78 minutes on-site before breaching the classroom to engage the shooter. Police also cordoned off the school grounds, resulting in violent conflicts between police and civilians who were attempting to enter the school to rescue children. Afterwards, local and state officials gave inaccurate reports of the timeline of police actions and overstated police actions. The Texas Department of Public Safety acknowledged that it was an error for law enforcement to delay an assault on Ramos's position in the student-filled classroom, attributing this to the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District's police chief's assessment of the situation as one with a "barricaded subject" instead of an "active shooter".
Following the shooting, which took place only ten days after the 2022 Buffalo shooting at a supermarket, wider discussions ensued about American gun culture and violence, gridlock in politics, and law enforcement's failure to halt the attack. Some have advocated for a renewal of an assault weapons federal ban. Others criticized politicians for their perceived role in continuing to enable mass shootings. Republicans have responded by resisting the implementation of gun control measures, and called for increasing security measures in schools, such as arming teachers; they have also accused their opponents of politicizing the shooting. Some Republican senators have expressed an openness for a bipartisan agreement on gun reform, such as incentivizing states to pass red flag laws and expanding background checks for gun purchasers.
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Definition of word of the day
Salade Nicoise is traditionally made of tomatoes, hard-boiled eggs, Niçoise olives and anchovies or tuna, dressed with olive oil, or in some historical versions, a vinaigrette.
* 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, May 30, 2022
Welcome to the 1,456th consecutive post to the blog
existentialautotrip.com
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Lead Picture*
The Lost Cause Theory of the Civil War
A St. Louis Globe-Democrat article concerning dedication of a Jackson, Mississippi, monument to Confederate soldiers in June 1891 mentions the "Lost Cause" in its headline.
St. Louis Globe-Democrat - St. Louis Globe-Democrat, June 4, 1891
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Commentary
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has directed Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) to work with Democratic lawmakers on a "bipartisan solution" to gun violence.
Driving the news: McConnell told CNN he "encouraged" Cornyn to work with Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) "and others who are interested in trying to get an outcome that's directly related to the problem."
Funny how we seize on any bit of good news and ride it until it collapses under the weight of our hopes.
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Reading, Writing, and Word of the Day
I’m developing an excellent writing regimen, working part of every day on the blog, my submissions, and the editing of my second manuscript.
Word of the day: Country music. What is it?
For definition, see below, immediately after the Short Essay
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Screen time
Am watching 1883.
We all like American history movies even if they are overly long.
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Wellness
Feeling well.
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Understanding aging
I am now lifting weights at the reduced level I stated several days ago. The reduced weights is my new norm. Wondering how long I will be able to maintain this new level.
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Social Life
Living alone has a lot of advantages. But long weekends, when young families are off on adventures together, enjoying each other’s company, makes one envious.
It can get lonely.
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Chuckles and Thoughts
You're only given a little spark of madness.
You mustn't lose it.
~Robin Williams
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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 Colleen G:
Hey Dom,
I am wrapping up a very hectic May and have some catching up to do on your blog:) I've never been so behind on so many things.
But, I was reading through today's and saw your quote from Stephen Colbert. I am a big fan of his and thought you might enjoy a fun, seven minute break from the world to watch some "bonus content" from my latest video in the Journey of a Story series. I had my very first guest come back (from back in 2017) for a sort of "where is she now" interview. That one is longer, but I enjoy the Colbert Questionaire so much that I borrowed from that concept for a shorter video that I will make a part of my interviews going forward.
Here it is if you'd like to watch: https://youtu.be/zImfWgQmFao
It's the first one we did and it was fun.
Hope to catch up to you in June when my world has stopped spinning quite so fast. This has been the craziest May in memory.
Enjoy this lovely long weekend!
Cheers,
Colleen:)
Blog meister responds: You’re building a great family, my dear. They will appreciate you forever.
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Dinner/Food/Recipes
Friday night I made chicken cacciatore.
delicious it was.
And the leftovers will provide another full meal for another day.
Yayy!
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Pictures with Captions from our community**
Monet La Japonaise art
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Pictures with Captions from our community**
Monet La Japonaise placard
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Short Essay*
The Lost Cause of the Confederacy (or simply Lost Cause) is an American pseudohistorical negationist mythology that claims the cause of the Confederate States during the American Civil War was just, heroic, and not centered on slavery. First enunciated in 1866, it has continued to influence racism, gender roles and religious attitudes in the South to the present day.
Lost Cause proponents typically praise the traditional culture of honor and chivalry of the antebellum South. They argue that enslaved people were treated well and deny that their condition was a central cause of the war, contrary to statements made by Confederate leaders, such as in the Cornerstone Speech. Instead, they view the war as a defense of states' rights, and to protect their agrarian economy against Northern aggression. The Union victory is thus explained as the result of its greater size and industrial wealth, while the Confederate side is portrayed as having greater morality and military skill. Modern historians overwhelmingly disagree with these characterizations, noting that the central cause of the war was slavery.
Two intense periods of Lost Cause activity were around the turn of the 20th century, when efforts were made to preserve the memories of dying Confederate veterans; and during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, in reaction to growing public support for racial equality. Through actions such as building prominent Confederate monuments and writing history textbooks, Lost Cause organizations (including the United Daughters of the Confederacy and Sons of Confederate Veterans) sought to ensure Southern whites would know what they called the "true" narrative of the Civil War, and therefore continue to support white supremacist policies such as Jim Crow laws. In that regard, white supremacy is a central feature of the Lost Cause narrative.
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Definition of word of the day
Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated with blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, old-time, and American folk music forms including Appalachian, Cajun, Creole, and the cowboy Western music styles of New Mexico, Red Dirt, Tejano, and Texas country. Its popularized roots originate in the Southern and Southwestern United States of the early 1920s.
* 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, May 29, 2022
Welcome to the 1,456th consecutive post to the blog
existentialautotrip.com
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Lead Picture*
Ray Liotta
Ray Liotta at the Deauville Film Festival
Georges Biard
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Commentary
Do you remember Goodfellas? The “Why am I funny? Moment?
For great movie-making, it rivals De Niro’s “You talking to me?” Well, it’s my understanding that that scene was importantly a spontaneous reaction to the script by the two actors, Joe Pesci and Ray Liotta.
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Reading, Writing, and Word of the Day
Word of the day: Rhythm and blues
For definition, see below, immediately after the Short Essay
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Chuckles and Thoughts
I used to think that the worst thing in life was to end up alone.
It's not.
The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel alone.
~Robin Williams
Screen time
The Celtics dominate my viewing. Friday night they play the Heat for the Eastern Conference Championship.
Go Celts!
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Social Life
My social calendar for the next week includes a trip to Rhode Island with my niece Lisa and her husband David.
And I’ll be seeing coffee mates every day I visit my cafes.
I’ll receive a lot of emails.
Otherwise, it’s a quiet week.
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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 dear friend Dr. Mike A:
Dom,
This was written by Danna Mauch:
MAMH STATEMENT: The Tragedy at Uvalde
Like all of you, we watched Tuesday’s news with horror. Like all of you, we mourn this preventable loss of life. Nineteen elementary school children, too young to be anything but innocent, and two teachers killed senselessly and brutally in their classroom. We do not know the circumstances resulting in the tragic decision by an 18-year-old young man to perpetrate this crime, but we do know that those who pass laws allowing him to purchase two AR-15s and 375 rounds of ammunition shortly after his 18th birthday abet the action and must share in that responsibility. Horror is not enough. Mourning is not enough. Action is demanded of all of us.
We first extend our sympathy to all the families directly harmed by this violence, although we can scarcely grasp the weight of such a tragedy on the small community of Uvalde.
Our mission at MAMH is to promote mental health and wellness – but how can we reassure anxious children, families, and communities when, as a nation, we have more guns than people and when guns are now according to the CDC the leading cause of death in children aged one and older? Uvalde’s tragedy is only a week after 10 people were killed in a hate-filled rampage at a Buffalo supermarket, which was just one more of a long history of mass shootings in our nation. To separate gun policies from advocacy for healthy bodies and minds is folly. To state that mental illness and a lack of clinicians in a rural area are to blame is a dangerous lie. The prevalence of mental health conditions and under resourced rural areas are conditions the United States shares with every developed country, yet only we have an epidemic of mass murder of innocents in our schools, our supermarkets, and our spiritual sanctuaries.
We need without reservation to be accountable to gaps in our mental health system and more importantly to woefully inadequate mental health promotion and prevention efforts. We are sadly lacking in these investments that are proven to protect the well being of children and adolescents. All of us at MAMH pledge to persist in our advocacy for universal mental health education in schools to provide students with information to better understand their mental health and resources to turn to when they need help. We will continue to fight for expanded access to culturally relevant services and treatment, collaborations between schools and community mental health providers, and insurance parity to ensure everyone can get timely help that they want and need. And we will continue to promote social policies to address poverty, trauma, and racism at their roots.
We know that children and families across the nation are grieving and afraid. If you are a parent, you may be wondering whether or how to talk about these events with your children. While you know your child best, initiating a conversation, validating their concerns, and sharing information about all the ways that adults keep them safe can help to address their fears. For more information, here are links to some resources that we have found helpful:
Child Traumatic Stress Network
https://www.nctsn.org/resources/talking-children-about-shooting
Blog meister responds: There is no response to this except for the French, D’accord!
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Dinner/Food/Recipes
Thursday my friend LouLou and I went to Legal in Assembly Square.
It was very good.
I had fried clams and a salad.
Lou had fried cauliflower which was excellent,
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Community Photos**
Gauguin Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?
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Community Photos**
Gauguin Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?
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Community Photos**
Gauguin where do we come from art and placard
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Short Essay*
Raymond Allen Liotta (December 18, 1954 – May 26, 2022) was an American actor and producer. He was known for playing Shoeless Joe Jackson in Field of Dreams (1989), Henry Hill in Goodfellas (1990), and Tommy Vercetti in the video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2002).
Liotta's other roles included Ray Sinclair in Something Wild (1986), for which he received a Golden Globe nomination, as well as starring in Unlawful Entry (1992), Cop Land (1997), Hannibal (2001), Blow (2001), John Q (2002), Identity (2003), Observe and Report (2009), Killing Them Softly (2012), The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), Marriage Story (2019) and The Many Saints of Newark (2021), as well as the drama series Shades of Blue (2016–2018).
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Definition of word of the day
Rhythm and blues, frequently abbreviated as R&B or R'n'B,[1] is a genre of popular music that originated in African-American communities in the 1940s.[2] The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music ... [with a] heavy, insistent beat" was becoming more popular.[3] In the commercial rhythm and blues music typical of the 1950s through the 1970s, the bands usually consisted of piano, one or two guitars, bass, drums, one or more saxophones, and sometimes background vocalists. R&B lyrical themes often encapsulate the African-American experience of pain and the quest for freedom and joy,[4] as well as triumphs and failures in terms of relationships, economics, and aspirations.
*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