May 26, 2024
# 1659
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Cover Story
After the Civil War, after a thunderous loss of life throughout every state created a national need to express our love of and respect for our soldiers, our heroes. So was born Memorial Day, a universally celebrated day of solemn pride in tribute to the millions of individual heroes who have protected and are still protecting our country for us civilians. It’s observed on the last Monday of May, an informal start of summer.
Across America citizens decorate countless graves with flowers and prayers, hold family gatherings, and observe and/or participate in parades. At 3:00 p.m. local time, a national moment of remembrance takes place. The red poppy is the symbol of respect for the fallen.
Klatschmohn. A unterer Teil der Pflanze. B blühender Zweig. 1 Staubblatt vergrössert; 2 unreife Kapsel vergrössert; 3 dieselbe im Querschnitt vergrössert; 4 reife Kapsel natürlicher Grösse; 5 Samen sehr stark vergrössert; 6 derselbe im Längsschnitt.
Franz Eugen Köhler, Köhler's Medizinal-Pflanzen - List of Koehler Images. Website is of the University of Greifswald.
Permission details
The author died in 1879, so this work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 100 years or fewer.
You must also include a United States public domain tag to indicate why this work is in the public domain in the United States.
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Commentary
I drink a cup of genmaicha tea every day. It tastes so good to me I wondered about its health effects so I went on Wikipedia and learned this:
Genmaicha (玄米茶, "brown rice tea") is a Japanese brown rice green tea consisting of green tea mixed with roasted popped brown rice. It is sometimes referred to colloquially as "popcorn tea" because a few grains of the rice pop during the roasting process and resemble popcorn, or as "people's tea", as the rice served as a filler and reduced the price of the tea, making it historically more available for poorer Japanese. Today all segments of society drink genmaicha.[2] It was also used by people fasting for religious purposes or who found themselves to be between meals for long periods of time.
The sugar and starch from the rice cause the tea to have a warm, full, nutty flavor. It is considered easy to drink and makes the stomach feel better. Tea steeped from genmaicha has a light-yellow hue. Its flavor is mild and combines the fresh grassy flavor of green tea with the aroma of the roasted rice.
Then I posed this question to AI: Does drinking genmaicha tea have health benefits? AI’s response:
Certainly! Genmaicha tea, also known as brown rice tea, offers a delightful and healthful experience. Here are its benefits:
Rich in Antioxidants:
Essential Minerals:
Lower Caffeine Content:
Unlike regular green tea, Genmaicha has reduced caffeine levels, making it suitable for those sensitive to caffeine.
Nutty and Slightly Sweet Flavor:
Genmaicha’s unique combination of green tea leaves and toasted brown rice offers a comforting taste, reminiscent of warm cereal, caramel, and popcorn.
Digestive Benefits:
Genmaicha may aid digestion and promote gut health.
Stress Reduction:
Enjoying a cup of Genmaicha can be soothing and calming.
Dental Health Support:
The tea’s polyphenols may contribute to oral health.
Skin and Brain Health:
Antioxidants in Genmaicha may benefit skin and cognitive function.
Detoxifying Effects:
Some studies suggest that Genmaicha aids in detoxification.
Bone Health:
The minerals in Genmaicha contribute to bone strength.
Whether you prefer it hot or cold, Genmaicha provides a gentle and approachable tea experience. Sip and savor its nutty goodness!
Loose Genmaicha Tea
Wikipedia
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Kat’s Gen Z Corner
This week in Pictures
My family, my Will, my sheet pan dinner
Picnic in Central Park with the Capossela family. They stopped by the city just to say hello to us — super sweet.
Will soaking up the sun in the middle of “Summer Streets,” a citywide program that shuts down large avenues to cars, allowing pedestrians to take over.
Highlight meal of the week: sheet pan chicken sausage, broccoli, tomatoes, mushrooms, with vegan parmesan; homemade garlic bread; gnocchi with peas, sausage, and vegan cream sauce.
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Tucker’s Corner
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
“As the world falls around us, how must we bear its cruelties?”
These are the first words uttered in George Miller’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. We hear them over footage of nuclear fallout and societal collapse. You know, a post apocalypse prologue. We’re used to them by now. But where most films about what comes after the apocalypse tend to focus on humanity rising from the ashes of the old to create some semblance of a new society, Miller’s action epic never lets us forget that initial question. It haunts every frame like a ghost. Furiosa stands as a prequel to 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road, arguably the greatest action film ever made. It’s so successful at what it does that it’s easy to forget of the fact that it too takes place after the collapse of mankind and people only really survive through savagery. Furiosa is a reminder that no matter how popular movies, tv, and video games about the post apocalypse get, the setting and subject matter is far from cool. This is a film about people living at the end of the line where death is the only future.
The film begins with young Furiosa (played as a child by Alyla Browne) kidnapped by a group of Dementus’s (a perfectly hammy Chris Hemsworth) motorcycle marauders, who are then chased by her mother (Charlee Fraser), a member of a matriarchal tribe. Intending not just to save her daughter but also to make sure no outsiders learn of the Green Place, the tribe’s verdant little oasis, Mom takes the riders out one by one. What makes this early chase so striking is the way Miller presents it as a relay race of dwindling resources: Everyone constantly scrambles to conserve what they have, transferring fuel tanks from one bike to another as soon as one rider goes down. Everything in this movie is always on the verge of running out and dying out.
This was a key idea behind the earlier Mad Max pictures, particularly 1981’s The Road Warrior, which unfolded as a terse thriller about people fighting over their last drops of gas and water. The first Mad Max film focuses on the very beginnings of societal breakdown. Even before things are at their absolute worst Max tragically loses his family. Miller uses the loss of close loved ones to signal the end times which widens the scope of Mad Max from personal tragedy to one about all of society losing a worthwhile future. Now, in relating the story of Furiosa’s coming-of-age — first as a prized captive of Dementus, next as a potential bride for Immortan Joe (the villain of Fury Road, here played by Lachy Hulme, in slightly younger, less pustule-filled form), then as an apprentice to Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke), one of the Immortan’s War Rig drivers — Miller finds another personal angle on his postapocalyptic saga. Until now, the characters in these films have arrived mostly fully formed, their minds and attitudes shaped by this dead world. In Furiosa, however, we watch a bright, young innocent lose everything that has ever meant anything to her, and her heart hardens. Watching this version of the character, we can understand why Miller recast her, beyond mere issues of age. Fury Road star Charlize Theron’s tough, quiet confidence has here been replaced by Taylor-Joy’s anxious watchfulness. We see Furiosa go from a scrappy fighter just trying to survive to a more calculating figure, hellbent on revenge. Theron’s performance will still be the yardstick, but it’s hard not to be moved by Taylor-Joy’s transformation.
Miller’s work (including his non-Max films) has often featured characters trying to find, or maintain, surrogate families. Dementus makes bizarre gestures toward the same, treating Furiosa with a bizarre mixture of paternalism and savagery. Hemsworth plays him as a peacocking incompetent, which in most movies would drain the character of danger. But in the Mad Max universe, such buffoonery is often a prelude to unspeakable evil. All this adds to the pall of hopelessness that hangs over the movie as we absorb the lessons of the wasteland along with our growing heroine.
That’s not to say that Furiosa isn’t thrilling in its own right. Action sequences charge forward and build and build, casually leaving all manner of bodies in their wake. Miller still tosses in his beloved bits of makeshift technology — attack gliders with propellers, parachutists on skates, chariots made of motorcycles, the works. The director also indulges his fondness for yarn-spinning, as he did in his previous film, the much-maligned but masterful Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022), which fused A.S. Byatt and the Thousand and One Nights into a nesting doll of interconnected myths. With its use of disguises, its fanciful depiction of the passage of time, and the fabulistic shorthand with which it portrays certain characters, the occasionally episodic Furiosa feels of a piece with that earlier movie.
So, what will people think? The look of the film has a storybook quality that might bother those viewers who like to complain about fake-looking visual effects. To be clear, Furiosa looks fantastic. It also looks fantastical: The endless stretches of desert, the forbidding fortresses rising out of dead expanses, the raging sandstorms that turn characters into hazy Turner-smudges — none of these seem particularly real because, surely, they were never supposed to. Who knows what this will mean for the movie’s box-office fortunes, the kind of conversation our own apocalyptic discourse demands nowadays. This wouldn’t be the first time Miller has taken a big franchise sequel and turned it into something strange, sublime, and potentially off-putting. He is, after all, the man who almost ended an entire Hollywood studio with Babe: Pig in the City. Still, whether the new movie is deemed a hit or not, it’s nice to know that, after all these years, George Miller seems determined to stay true to his mad self.
Creamy Salad Dressing, Caesar Style
Into a Food Chopper:
½ cup olive oil
1 garlic clove
1TB red wine vinegar
1TB wet mustard
1TB fresh lemon juice
4 anchovies
¼ cup mayonnaise
¼ cup heavy cream
¼ cup or ½ cup to taste: Romano cheese
1t salt
2TB freshly ground black pepper
Run the food chopper and serve
Kroger creamy French dressing at a Kroger salad bar in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Who will lead?
Women seeing the world in ways different from men. Women should lead.
Dom,
Jimmy asked me to write a story on language and The North End. This poem came out. Vinny Musto is a co-author. I will ask Vinny and mark for permission if you think it will work.
Vincent Musto said that one must let women lead because they connect to life in ways we can not imagine. Vinny is one of the toughest smartest most pragmatic men I know. When I looked at what he said I can see he is correct. You my Dear Dominic connect me to life as well.
Love
Raphael
"Sanity"
There is no Santa Clause
There is no Sanity Clause
Therefore there is no sanity
In order to have an is
You have to have an is not.
If there is not hot.
There is not cold.
There is no not.
Since we are all insane
Therefore, there is not sanity
Therefore there is no Santa Clause
Silly Goose Don’t you know
Tricks are for kids
In Conclusion :
Quick, someone insane
Give me a Nobody
Since no one is sane
Only a Nobody can
Be sane
A five year old will do.
By Santa Clause
Dedicated to Sparky Also Known as Ralph Casale
And
Vinny Musto Also Known as Vinny Musto
A Stephen DiMino Creative Moment
Nephew Stephen in a creative moment
Stephen left LAs Vegas after decades of living there. He bought property in South Carolina and is delving into farming and landscaping. He is totally immersed in his new life. Here are some random pictures and his comments.
He built the house from scratch.
This deck affords him a great place to sit and overlook his natural surroundings.
Including the start of his orchard.
Stephen: “This was the start of my orchard. You can see the woods just behind them. I cleared that land to plant these guys.”
Stephen: “This is Figaro! He is my pride and joy. 1 of 4 figs. He already grew a fig but a wily squirrel ran off with him. Did me a favor as I need him to concentrate on root growth!”
Stephen: “This photo of my pond with house is best I can manage.”
Ed: Looks good enough for me!
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Chuckles and Thoughts
Oh by the way. The state bird of south carolina Is the mosquito.
Knock knock: Who's there? Amos. Amos who? A mosquito bit me.
Knock knock:. Who's there? Andy. Andy who? And he bit me again!!
SDM
Female Ochlerotatus notoscriptus feeding on blood from a human arm.
JJ Harrison (https://www.jjharrison.com.au/) - Own work
Ochlerotatus notoscriptus, Tasmania, Australia
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Six Word Stories
“Faded photos. Forgotten memories. Empty room.”
Portrait of Angel Fernández de Soto by Pablo Picasso painting by Pablo Picasso (d. 1973), photo unknown - Christie's
aka The Absinthe Drinker
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Mail and other Conversation
We love getting mail, email, or texts, including links.
Email comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com or
text to 617.852.7192
This from my dearest old friend, Robbie P:
Thanks for tallulah paella...a mouthwatering mix of food and myth, leaving one asking for more. Yes, I too long to be lifted...this Ascensiontide as ever,singing again...I saw your face and I ascended...Twice I entered a monastery on Ascension day and twice left on Tricias birthday...seeking that face of the Beloved...Be it food or music, myth or magic, Play on,bro...this is no Stranger in Paradise...This is my Beloved...So,let us be lifted up...Amen,amen!...Love,Robbie
This from my nephew Stephen when I asked him about his landscaping.
Hey, Uncle Dom,
The power company has delivered a truck load of wood chips and I told them to keep dropping them off. I have another couple acres cleared but will need to amend the soil. Its hard packed clay.
So you cover the ground with about 6 inches of wood chips and in about a year to a yr and a half the soil is fertile from the chips.
That will work to my advantage because the 30 trees are on one side that I cleared. I should know by then which trees are worth planting.
Also if I can amend the soil, I can grow cover crops. Once the cover crops come in, peas and oats, I can think about some free-range chickens.
A cover crop of tillage radish in early November
Ethanstuckey - Own work
A cover crop of Tillage Radish in early November
This from dear friend, Tommie T:
Dom, I love reading your ezine. Since I am in my 83rd year of living, I have surmised finally that I have control over very little in this thing we call life, which is a fragile thing. At the same time we do have control regarding our behaviors and actions, and to some extent, our choices in life. After years of being driven not necessarily to earn money, but to be the best in my professions, I am now making my intention to slow down, focus on the moment, and live to the fullest with knowing that any moment things could change. I, like your wonderful daughter, am engrossed in yoga, and hopefully, mindful living. It takes a lot of energy and focus to be really mindful and to know the important things in life.
I love you, my friend, and hope you will visit South Carolina again.
Tommie
And this from our friend, Brayden Martino , a Gen Zeer who moved to NYC:
I hope all is well. Was just thinking about you and wanted to check in.
I started self-producing theater again here in New York (on top of working full-time in coffee), and these past few months just flew by in the blink of an eye. I think it's been busier than I've ever been before! I'm now in sort of a transitional month here where I've got some more free time, and I thought this would be a great time to get back into writing for Existential Autotrip (if you'll have me). It was a great outlet for me and I miss the structure of having weekly entries.
I'd love to hear what you've been up to lately!
Warmly,
Brayden
Our friend and contributor, Brayden Martino
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Last Comment
The world-wide rage at the wanton disregard and destruction of human life perpetrated by Hamas and Netanyahu is well-directed with the issuance of international arrest warrants directed at the principals. The killers would have us believe that that their outrageous criminality is justified by the criminality of the other. It is not.
Bring the miscreants to trial. Let’s have a World Court listen to the mindset of mass murderers. How rational will their arguments sound when the keys to life imprisonment are dangling as they speak.
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