October 17 to October 23 2021

Daily Entries for the week of
Sunday, October 17, 2021
through
Saturday, October 23, 2021

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It’s Saturday, October 23, 2021
Welcome to the 1,258th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com

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Lead Picture*
The Last Duel

This is a poster for The Last Duel. The poster art copyright is believed to belong to the distributor of the film, 20th Century Studios, the publisher of the film or the graphic artist.

 http://www.impawards.com/2021/last_duel_ver6.html

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Commentary
I’m on a roll.
Being without a social life for a week has made me a productive writer.

I was so focused and excited by adding fiber to my diet that I forgot to watch my calories and in the past several days have gained three pounds.
Whoa!

Be sure to read the Short Essay on the movie, The Last Duel, the movie brilliantly introspected, the writing, wonderful. The author our good friend, Tucker J.

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Reading and Writing
Part One is written and the edits are scheduled.
I’ll be starting Part II today.

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Chuckles and Thoughts
“Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair.”

― Edmund Burke

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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 Howard D:

Well, generally, and philosophically speaking, this is all good…

Toss your bread where the birds can find it. Not just in the trash.

Don’t at all understand the “switch” from peanut butter to cashew butter. Not sure of the nutritional advantages.

I’m sure each provides different nutritive value, especially as one is a tree nut and the other is botanically a legume.

I love peanuts, and peanut butter, and would hate to give either up, and I won’t. There’s a lot of fat, but the good kind, in peanuts, of course, as there is in most nuts, and certain other legumes. But we need fat. What we don’t need is any of the worst forms of fat. Eat as little saturated fat as possible, but don’t eliminate it (butter in very moderate amounts is likely more beneficial than detrimental — for unrelated reasons). The worst fats are trans-fats. Avoid any hydrogenated fats (Crisco being the prime example). Margarine is, essentially, poison. Keep it light on the coconut derived oils and fats (coconut oil, coconut milk, and coconut cream), as they’re worse for you than butter.

I’d switch to almond butter rather than cashew butter. For one, it’s easier to come by, and for two almonds are incredibly good for you.

Snack on nuts (peanuts, cashews, almonds, pistachio) and seeds (pumpkin and sunflower in particular). Try to avoid eating more than ¼ cup per day (otherwise you’re throwing off your fat allowance). Try to avoid salted nuts and seeds. You don’t need the extra salt, and nuts and seeds are delicious on their own.

Snack on dried fruits: prunes, figs, currants, raisins (though not the “golden” raisins), cranberries. Again, keep it down to ¼ cup.

One cookie a day won’t kill you. One donut a week won’t kill you. One or two croissant a week won’t kill you.

As for the bread, I’d recommend trying to find an artisanal loaf you like (I’d start at Iggy’s) that isn’t, strictly, whole wheat. I like multi-seed, multi-grain breads. Try to buy from bakeries that only use flour, water, and nuts and seeds, besides whatever leavening they use (and the tiny amount of salt, of course, that’s needed). Bread needs no other additives. A bakery is a better source of breads made artisanally than commercially packaged loaves — which always add other stuff, by way of stabilization and preservation, both necessary unfortunately for so-called shelf-stable goods that won’t go stale in a day.

If you don’t already have the habit of reading the dates on things, acquire it, at least for bread. Pay attention only to the date the loaf was baked. Today is best. Yesterday is OK, if you’re shopping in the morning. Sell by and “best by” dates are bullshit.

 Learn what conditions in your lifestyle do to the life span of the foods you eat. And all breads differ. Some will get stale in less than two days. Some will start growing mold in less than three days. Never store bread in the refrigerator. But do freeze bread you don’t intend to consume in the next three days. That’s also why I always buy whole loaves and slice it myself. Any bread you’re going to freeze, freeze as soon as you can after you bring it home from the bakery. To freeze, double wrap the bread in poly bags and squeeze out all excess air. To defrost, put the wrapped frozen loaf in your fridge overnight. Then remove it, remove one of the two poly bags, and allow to reach room temperature in three or four hours.

 xo

 h

Blog meister responds: Lots of good ideas here. Thanks.

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Dinner/Food/Recipes
Thursday night I had whole wheat penne. I loved the transition from white bread to whole wheat and multi-grain bread. Not so sure if I’m going to accept whole wheat pasta. Fortunately, bread is a daily event, pasta, weekly.

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Pictures with Captions from our community**
Cousin Lauren on right and daughter Katherine meet up in NYC

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Short Essay*
The images are muted blue. Smoke, snow and debris sail horizontally through the air. Men clad in hulking sets of armor deal horrid blows to one another and blood erupts from blade slashes and stabs. Plenty of filmmakers have tried their hand at bringing the crumbling castles and muddy battlefields of bygone Europe to the screen but few manage to do so with the believability of Ridley Scott. For Scott, director of Gladiator, Kingdom Of Heaven, and Robin Hood, creating movie versions of historic worlds is old hat yet The Last Duel, his latest lavish act of time travel, is archaic only in garb and speech. The setting may be the 14th century, but this is very much a historical drama of modern concerns. Damningly, it suggests that yesterday’s injustices remain very much today’s.

Working from Eric Jager’s novel of the same name, Scott tackles a matter of enduring international fascination: the last judicial duel sanctioned in France, circa 1386. That year, Norman knight Jean de Carrouges challenged his one-time friend, the squire Jacques Le Gris, to trial by combat. Carrouges’ wife, Marguerite, had accused Le Gris of rape the previous January. Le Gris flatly denied the allegations. The battle to the death between the men drew an enormous audience of Parisian aristocrats and commoners, and it continues to be recounted and reenacted centuries later. Part of what’s kept the incident alive in the public imagination is the question of guilt, still a subject of historical debate. Who was telling the truth, and who was lying?

For a while, The Last Duel seems to entertain such uncertainty. It also takes care to lay out how the conflict between the men extended beyond the accusations. Introduced fighting side by side, Carrouges (Matt Damon) and Le Gris (Adam Driver) are fast friends whose bond is tested and ultimately broken by a series of disputes involving contested property, an expected captaincy, and the favor of the count Pierre d’Alençon (Ben Affleck), cousin of the king. Is social standing the subtext of their falling-out? Carrouges is revealed to be a litigious hothead whose habit of suing fellow noblemen damages his leadership prospects. Meanwhile, the cocksure, womanizing Le Gris proves more adept and strategic in his public manner.

Damon and Affleck, whose script for Good Will Hunting won them an Oscar nearly 25 years ago, co-wrote The Last Duel with indie filmmaker Nicole Holofcener (Enough Said). The three divided writing duties by character, and their story into three competing, overlapping narratives: “The truth according to” Carrouges, Le Gris, and, finally, Marguerite. This is, of course, a variation on that most beloved, influential ode to subjectivity, Rashomon, in which the great Akira Kurosawa spun a samurai story of contradictory accounts. The Last Duel doesn’t so much shift the basic facts of its plot as subtly alter their context and meaning. Each of the three chapters depicts events only discussed in the others, and repeated scenes play much differently depending on whose perspective is dominant.

Performance is key to this approach, and the film offers its principal cast the chance to essentially trifurcate their characters—to play them based on how they see themselves and how others see them. That range is most obvious with Damon, who projects a kind of aggrieved nobility in the first chapter (told, naturally, from Carrouges’ point of view), only to become embarrassingly impotent and finally coldly distant as the lens of perspective changes. Driver’s charisma fluctuates throughout to reveal the way predatory behavior gets delusionally twisted into something more romantic through self-image, while Comer plays a mere object of attraction until the moment that she passes out of the male gaze and into the spotlight of the narrative. (Only Affleck creates a consistent persona—a haughty and perpetually amused rake that counts among the actor’s funniest performances in years.)

It takes a while to realize that The Last Duel is not using its, well, dueling perspectives to reinforce the neutrality of the historical record. Instead, it’s offering something like a critique of the way the history books have pushed a skeptical he-said, she-said framework on this story. Jager’s research cast doubt on the doubt historians have sown regarding the guilt or innocence of certain parties. The movie, in turn, refuses to revel in ambiguity, instead offering an eventual, clear-cut presentation of events—most notably, and disturbingly, through two dramatizations of the rape of Marguerite, different not in what happens but in how as remembered by the characters. Rashomon was about the essential unknowability of the truth. The Last Duel is about how treating the truth as always unknowable can be a trick to skirt accountability.

My only real conflict with The Last Duel stems from the events I just described. What is the purpose of an image? That question is the very subject of The Last Duel: most rapists leave no photographic evidence of their crime, which is why the very notion of whose claim gets credence is central to achieving moral and legal redress. The film depicts the events of the story literally—and even declares, with the title labelling Marguerite’s perspective “the truth,” that we, too, should believe her. Yet if the film had the courage of this belief, it could have chosen not to show the rape even once. The film could have put the cinematic onus on the viewer—and, more important, on its creators—to affirm that Le Gris raped Marguerite, to believe her not because we see the horrible event quite clearly to justify and prove her claim but because she said so. In the #metoo era we now thankfully find ourselves living in an almost equally popularized movement is #believewomen. Though The Last Duel certainly makes a graphic case for the validity of such a movement I think simply allowing the audience to know what Marguerite says happened, happened would be a more effective message to leave viewers with.

Still, there’s a power to this film’s blunt era-crossing outrage. The Last Duel resists reducing the immortal, historical events it restages to some vision of the primitive past, to be easily scoffed at like the barbaric practices of Gladiator’s colosseum. Watching Marguerite pushed through a gauntlet of skeptical questioning, her resistance waved off as the “customary protest” of a lady (the “no” means “yes” of the 1300s), it’s impossible not to think of Christine Blasey Ford and countless other women faced with the threat of immolation, literal or otherwise, for coming forward.

Scott, of course, eventually delivers the eponymous duel, and it’s as tense as it is grimly violent, with stakes far greater than which of these flawed men will emerge with his head and ego intact. But by that point, the possibility of a rousing climax, let alone a happy ending, has long since passed, like the people swallowed by history and its distorting ambiguities.

 * 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, October 22, 2021
Welcome to the 1,257th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com

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Lead Picture*
Tom Morello

Morello performing as The Nightwatchman in May 2006
Adriangregori - Own work
The Nightwatchman tocando su guitarra acustica "Whatever It Takes"

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Commentary
So I’m in the middle of a dietary revolution.
First, I started toying with the 16/8 diet. Certainly not a complete success but to a large degree
it’s working. Making me more regular in my meal rhythm. More thoughtful.
Now, thanks to a bit of constipation, I’ve become conscious of fiber. A couple of immediate important changes: whole wheat bread for white bread. A huge improvement and I love the bread. Moreso than the white I had been using.
The second, I redone my first meal of the day, to a high fiber plate. Right now, I am working on a batch of broccoli rabe on one day, and a lentil soup on the other. Hoping to slip through the current issue and then cut done on my soft gel tablets. Wish me well.

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Reading and Writing
I spent today checking out the time, days and dates in my manuscript.

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Chuckles and Thoughts
“Cut my pie into four pieces, I don’t think I could eat eight.”
― Yogi Berra

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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

The Gentleman from Moscow elicited a dozen responses, all of them, all in.

Blog meister responds: Wow! This is the biggest response to a book ever. And well justified. The writing is splendid. You can see what a good time he had writing the paragraphs.

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Dinner/Food/Recipes
I met my cousin for  bourbon old fashioned and left her at her job there
and went to Tasty Burger for dinner.
I’ve been looking for this splurge for a long time, never reaching the suspension
of dietary common sense to pull the trigger.
This was that moment.
It was 4.15pm so there were few customers.
Excess the theme of the day, I ordered a double burger with cheese and bacon,
French fries, and a chocolate shake.
The burger had more bacon than I eat in a year and was as juicy and fatty as possible.
Exactly as I wanted it.
The food was delicious.
The moment perfect.

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Pictures with Captions from our community**
LouLou

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Short Essay*
Thomas Baptist Morello (born May 30, 1964) is an American musician, singer, rapper, songwriter, actor, and political activist. He is best known for his tenure with the rock band Rage Against the Machine and then with Audioslave. Between 2016 and 2019, Morello was a member of the supergroup Prophets of Rage. Morello was also a touring musician with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. He is also known for his acoustic solo act, the Nightwatchman, and Street Sweeper Social Club. Morello co-founded Axis of Justice, which airs a monthly program on Pacifica Radio station KPFK (90.7 FM) in Los Angeles.

Born in Harlem, New York, and raised in Libertyville, Illinois, Morello became interested in music and politics while in high school. He attended Harvard University and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the Committee on Degrees in Social Studies. After his previous band Lock Up disbanded, Morello met Zack de la Rocha. The two founded Rage Against the Machine together, going on to become one of the more popular and influential rock acts of the 1990s.

He is best known for his unique and creative guitar playing style, which incorporates feedback noise, unconventional picking, and tapping, as well as heavy use of guitar effects. Morello is also known for his socialist political views and activism; creating the Nightwatchman offered an outlet for his views while playing apolitical music with Audioslave. He was ranked number 40 in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".

* The Blog Meister selects the topics for the Lead Picture and the Short Essay and then leans heavily or exclusively on Wikipedia to provide the content. The Blog Meister usually edits the entries.
**Pictures with Captions from our community are photos sent in by our blog followers. Feel free to send in yours to domcapossela@hotmail.com

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It’s Thursday, October 21, 2021
Welcome to the 1,256th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com

Public affairs; political consulting

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Lead Picture*
SKDK

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Commentary
Having a bit of a constipation issue. I’m buying whole grain sliced bread,
broccoli rabe, and beans, among other dietary changes.

Best news department. Daughter Katherine, an intern at SKDK, has just been hired as a full associate.
Her transition from Intern to Associate was the fastest in the company’s history.
It was the company she wanted to work at when she was still in school. She’s ecstatic.
She loves New York.

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Reading and Writing
I selected Gentleman in Moscow for my reading book. I’ve read a few pages and am really enjoying it. Thanks, Colleen.

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Chuckles and Thoughts
“The future ain't what it used to be.”
― Yogi Berra

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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 Sally C with whom I exchanged several; emails regarded cooking pork chops.

Dom:

In the interest of juicy pork products, I’ve reduced my purchases these past several years to country-style pork spare ribs, pork butt, and fresh and smoked pork shoulder.  I just boiled a smoked shoulder yesterday – mmmm!  I boil is in water for an hour, then pour that off and replace with fresh water, adding two cups of apple cider vinegar to the second boiling, for another hour.  The boiling pulls a lot of the salts and nitrates from the meat, and the vinegar tenderizes the meat, but doesn’t give the meat a vinegar flavor (it actually seems to sweeten the meat flavor, in a savory sense).

Downright succulent!

Sally

Blog meister responds: Happy for you, Sally.

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Pictures with Captions from our community**
Gary and Lindsay
Lunch Guests

Echobatix. Echobatix is developing accessibility products and indoor-navigation systems for the blind, the DeafBlind, and those with low vision. Our technology complements the use of a cane or guide dog and your existing Orientation and Mobility (O&M) skills. Lindsay Yazzolino Blind cognitive scientist and Echobatix advisor, and Gary Bartos, founder

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Dinner/Food/Recipes
As an assault on my new arisen issue with constipation, I made an anti- constipation Lentil Soup. Outstanding.
In a stockpot, carrots, celery, onions, and chili chopped up and softened in sesame oil.
Seasoned with cumin, curry, and salt.
Add 2 cups of stock, 1 cup white wine, and 1 cup of water.
Simmer 1 cup of lentils in water and puree them, adding them to the pot.
Add 1 cup dry lentils and simmer pot for 30 minutes to cook lentils.
Then add 1 can each of peas and garbanzo beans, and a small can (14oz) of Italian tomatoes smooshed with a fork.
Finally, add chopped parsley and chopped greens to the broth.
I like soup pasta in my lentil soup and chose small sa fregala Sarda, because it’s made with wheat bran so packs a wallop of fiber.
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Short Essay*
SKDK (formerly SKDKnickerbocker) is a public affairs and political consulting firm that specializes in working for Democratic Party politicians. It has offices in Washington, DC, New York City, Los Angeles, CA, and Albany, New York. The firm employs notable figures like former Obama White House Communications Director Anita Dunn, and Hilary Rosen.

The firm was formed in 2004 through the merger of Squier Knapp Dunn Communications and Knickerbocker Consulting. They formalized the merger in 2010, taking the name SKDKnickerbocker.

SKDK's political clients have included Barack Obama and Joe Biden, as well as the campaigns of Michael Bloomberg, Debbie Dingell, Joe Donnelly, Gary Peters, Michael Bennet, Josh Gottheimer, Seth Moulton, Joseph Morelle, Sara Jacobs, and Christine Quinn. The firm has also worked for several women's rights advocates including Planned Parenthood, lawyer and activist Sandra Fluke, the Center for Reproductive Rights, and the Time's Up Legal Defense Fund.

In 2011 SKDK was hired by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to lead the public campaign to build support for the state's legalization of gay marriage. In 2014 SKDK lead the communications war room for the Human Rights Council during two landmark Supreme Court decisions affirming the right to marriage for gay couples.

In 2014 SKDK Partner Jill Zuckman led the pro-bono public relations campaign that led to the Cuban government releasing American political prisoner Alan Gross. The release led to an improvement in U.S.-Cuba relations.

In October 2015 the firm was acquired by The Stagwell Group, of which Mark Penn is the principal, for an estimated $75 million.

In 2018 SKDK Partner Hilary Rosen co-founded the Time's Up Legal Defense Fund. The firm also represented Christine Blasey Ford during the Senate confirmation hearings for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

In February 2020 the firm acquired Sloane & Co. from MDC Partners. Sloane & Co. operates as an independent unit of SKDK that offers services including mergers and acquisitions support, shareholder activism and governance, regulatory issues, investor relations, restructuring and media campaigns.

The firm's current and former public affairs clients include American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Under Armour, The Walt Disney Company, NAACP,[20] General Electric, AT&T, Time Warner, Pratt & Whitney, Kaplan University, TransCanada Corporation (which developed the Keystone XL pipeline), Oracle Corporation, Google, PepsiCo, Microsoft, Association of American Railroads, the Rockefeller Foundation, Girls Who Code, NoVo Foundation, the Human Rights Campaign, New American Leaders, the Obama Presidential Library, Paul Weiss Rifkind, General Mills, Nestle, Kellogg, Viacom, Students First, Families for Excellent Schools, Kaplan University, Amazon, and Pfizer.

Political consulting and communications

SKDK provides political consulting services to political candidates, campaigns, and issue advocacy groups. SKDK describes itself as a full-service public affairs practice that offers crisis communications, branding, marketing, media training, digital/social media advice, speech writing, and message development.

Ben White of Politico wrote in an April 2014 email blast that an unnamed senior Democrat said that "It's an open secret in the Dem consultant community that SKD has been signing up clients based on 'perceived White House access' tied to prior relationships and employment." Conservative website National Review Online noted that Rosen's name appears frequently on the White House visitor log. However, the firm does not meet the standard, legal definition of lobbying and is not registered to lobby the federal government. SKDK was embroiled in controversy when it received a $35 million no-bid contract for voter turnout-out work in California.

* 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, October 20, 2021
Welcome to the 1,255th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com

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Lead Picture*
Lazarus

Cover to second issue of comic "Lazarus", art by Michael Lark

Michael Lark - observationdeck.kinja.com

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Commentary
I hate to see anyone cry.
Even bad guys.
Although, like most people, I can lose my temper, I feel terribly if I am the cause of a person’s tears.

Which leads me to this phenomenon: bathroom products. Ever notice how quickly we use up toothpaste? Shaving cream? Eye drops? Mascara? Gloss? Shampoo? Body lotion? Conditioner? Floss? Blades? We’re always at CVS or on Amazon buying something. Always.
Not that we run out of toothpaste weekly, but we use so many different products, even using a little bit at a time, our use is of each. Put all of the tiny amounts we do of each product on a scale and we’d find we’re using 1 pound of crap each day.

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Reading and Writing
After just a few days of isolation, I feel like my reading and writing schedules are coming under control. Starting to feel comfortable again.

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Chuckles and Thoughts
"If you don't know where you are going,
you might wind up someplace else."
~Yogi Berra

____________________________________
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 was thinking this already as I read about your reading . . . haha . . . and then I read "I have to choose a reading book--"

I implore you to pick "A Gentleman in Moscow" by Amor Towles. Perhaps I am way off base. Maybe you'll have the same reaction to it that my entire book club had (much to my complete astonishment) and think it's too slow and not even finish it.

But, I don't think so.

I might go so far as to think of you as "A Gentleman in Boston" and feel like you would fall into this book and want to wrap it around you for as long as possible when the weather gets cold. Am I talking it up too much? I don't think so. I so loved this book I bought it--the hardcover--even after I read a borrowed copy from the library. I had to own it after I read it. And now I own his first book (Rules of Civility) which was fine, but not nearly as good and I only remember the title because of the book to follow it. Now, I am reading The Lincoln HIghway, which is his most recent book. I even named a main character in my current work in progress after the author (Amor) because I was so smitten with A Gentleman in Moscow.

I think it is a masterpiece--one of my favorites of all time.

Have a puffed it up too much?

No.

If you love literature. If you love words and really deeply drawn, rich characters that leave you wishing you actually met them and are convinced they did indeed exist despite that it was fiction--well, then you might like the book.

Picture the best made cappuccino you've ever had complete with frothing flourishes and a hand-crafted mug and a barista who waxes on about the origin of the beans and some interesting history behind the art of coffee . . . and that is this book.

Please pick this book.

And, if you don't like it--I will be shocked. Honestly, I was shocked when I found out not every person who read this book loved it, but I carried on recommending it. I convinced my husband to read it, not deterred by my book club's reaction to it, and guess what--he LOVED it too. In fact, he tried not to read it too fast because he wanted it to last longer.

Have I convinced you yet? If for no other reason than to not have to endure an email like this in your future, because the pleading will return again someday.

I will "remind" you at length periodically that you are missing out on a really delightful read.

Cheerio,

Colleen:)

Blog meister responds: I hope every one of our subscribers understands what a special person Colleen is. Her unbridled enthusiasm is contagious, whether or not you’ve been fully-vaccinated. Yes, of course, I bought the book. And after a few pages I totally agree with her. In her debt, once again.

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Dinner/Food/Recipes
Tuesday night I enjoyed dinner from Douzo in Boston.
I bought their lunch special Chirashi Lunch and supplemented it with Kushi Yaki Eggplant.
I added an orange to my dinner and I was fully satisfied. A fine break from my routine.

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Pictures with Captions from our community**
Lest we forget
Looking back at a past exhibition on the Boston Common. Holocaust survivors.
Brilliant exhibition. So horribly sad.

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Short Essay*
Lazarus is a dystopian science fiction comic book series created by writer Greg Rucka and artist Michael Lark. The two began developing the idea in 2012 and partnered with colorist Santi Arcas to finish the art. Image Comics has been publishing the book since the first issue was released on June 23, 2013. Other creators were brought in later to assist with lettering and inking. A six-issue spin-off limited series, Lazarus: X+66, was released monthly in 2017 between issues 26 and 27 of the regular series. Rucka initially said the series could run for up to 150 issues, but later reduced the estimate by half. Lazarus is being collected into paperback and hardcover editions, which sell better than the monthly issues.

In the series, the world has been divided among sixteen rival families, who run their territories in a feudal system. The main character is Forever Carlyle, the military leader of the Carlyle family. The major themes of Lazarus are the meaning of "family" and nature versus nurture. Critics have given it mostly positive reviews and have praised its worldbuilding, although it is sometimes criticized for slow pace. It has received particular attention for its political themes.

Lazarus is being adapted into other media. Green Ronin Publishing is using the plot as a campaign setting for their Modern AGE role-playing game in 2018. A television adaptation is in development with Legendary Television and Amazon Studios.

* 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, October 19, 2021
Welcome to the 1,254th consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com

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Lead Picture*
Al Capone

AlCapone mugshotCPD.jpg: en:United States Department of Justice derivative work: Bonnifac (talkimage from [http://www.scienceandsociety.co.uk/results.asp?image=10249836&wwwflag=3&imagepos=3 Science and Society Picture Gallery]: ') - AlCaponemugshotCPD.jpg

Mugshot of Al Capone. (1899-1947) This picture shows a Bertillon photograph of Capone made by the US Dept of Justice (rogue's gallery n°.; C 28169'")

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Commentary
The Red Sox gained home field advantage in their League Championship series against the Houston Astros. Two grand slam home runs for our local heroes. Exciting for fans.

And Mac Jones, the Patriots’ rookie quarterback, continues to play exceptionally well, with a pass completion ratio close to the top of the league.

I bought my tickets for a two-day Thanksgiving trip to NYC. One big difference.  Bought the last tickets for $98.00 round trip. For these, I paid $278.00. I’m not going to bemoan the fact.

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Reading and Writing
I have to choose a reading book. Something light.

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Chuckles and Thoughts
"It's tough to make predictions,
especially about the future."
~Yogi Berra

_____________________________________
Mail and other Conversation
We love getting mail, email, or texts.

Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
or text to 617.852.7192

My daughter urged me to get the Amtrak tickets for my Thanksgiving visit to NYC.

Blog meister responds: On my last visit, I left Boston on Wednesday morning at 8.00am, arriving NYC at noon. On my return, I left NYC on Friday @ 10.00am, arriving in Boston @ 2.00pm. That gave me two days and nights in the city. Plenty for a visit. I did it again.

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Dinner/Food/Recipes
Monday night was double leftovers: bouillabaisse and clam sauce. To add a little variety I used squid ink spaghetti. Happy to have a meal with little work.

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Pictures with Captions from our community**
Sunrise at Harbor Towers

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Short Essay*
Alphonse Gabriel Capone (January 17, 1899 – January 25, 1947), sometimes known by the nickname "Scarface", was an American gangster and businessman who attained notoriety during the Prohibition era as the co-founder and boss of the Chicago Outfit. His seven-year reign as a crime boss ended when he went to prison at the age of 33.

Capone was born in New York City in 1899 to Italian immigrant parents. He joined the Five Points Gang as a teenager and became a bouncer in organized crime premises such as brothels. In his early twenties, he moved to Chicago and became a bodyguard and trusted factotum for Johnny Torrio, head of a criminal syndicate that illegally supplied alcohol—the forerunner of the Outfit—and was politically protected through the Unione Siciliana. A conflict with the North Side Gang was instrumental in Capone's rise and fall. Torrio went into retirement after North Side gunmen almost killed him, handing control to Capone. Capone expanded the bootlegging business through increasingly violent means, but his mutually profitable relationships with mayor William Hale Thompson and the city's police meant he seemed safe from law enforcement.

Capone apparently reveled in attention, such as the cheers from spectators when he appeared at ball games. He made donations to various charities and was viewed by many as a "modern-day Robin Hood". However, the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre, in which seven gang rivals were murdered in broad daylight, damaged the public image of Chicago and Capone, leading influential citizens to demand government action and newspapers to dub Capone "Public Enemy No.1".

The federal authorities became intent on jailing Capone and charged him with 22 counts of tax evasion. He was convicted of five counts in 1931. During a highly publicized case, the judge admitted as evidence Capone's admissions of his income and unpaid taxes, made during prior (and ultimately abortive) negotiations to pay the government taxes he owed. He was convicted and sentenced to 11 years in federal prison. After conviction, he replaced his defense team with experts in tax law, and his grounds for appeal were strengthened by a Supreme Court ruling, but his appeal ultimately failed. Capone showed signs of neurosyphilis early in his sentence and became increasingly debilitated before being released after almost eight years of incarceration.

On October 24, 1931, Capone was sentenced to a total of 11 years—10 years in federal prison (for income-tax evasion), and one year for contempt of court (he failed to show up to a grand jury investigation). The contempt of court charge was to be served in Chicago.

Had Capone served those 11 years, he would have been released in 1942. However, because of his good behavior in prison, he accumulated "good time," shortening his sentence. He was never "paroled," since the parole system was not in effect at the time of his sentencing. Less than a year before his release, on February 5, 1938, the syphilis he’d been fighting for many years finally attacked his brain. He was released from prison on November 16, 1939. Al’s family took him home, knowing that the prognosis was not good.

On January 25, 1947, he died of cardiac arrest after suffering a stroke.

* 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, October 18, 2021
Welcome to the 1,253rd consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com

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Lead Picture*
Yogi Berra

1953 Bowman Color Yogi Berra #121

Bowman Gum - Heritage Auctions

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Commentary
The last two weeks have been so social I fell way behind.
I think that today, after three days of focusing on my writing, I may be catching up.
Still, I’m hoping to stay the course and keep my schedule free for the next week while I prepare Part One for my outside editor.

I don’t recommend eating chicken feet except with the most intimate of couples and families. Chicken feet are, however, a nosher’s dream. You eat the fully-sauced foot by picking it up with your fingers and sucking the fat and cartilage (and the sauce) from the bones. Then you crunch the bones to release the lovely chicken flavor trapped in those soft bones. The bones you spit out.   
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Reading and Writing
I am reading a friend’s manuscript. Enjoying it.

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Chuckles and Thoughts
“Always go to other people's funerals,
otherwise they won't come to yours.”
~Yogi Berra

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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

My niece sent me information on an auction of wines from Anthony’s Pier Four.

Blog meister responds: A lovely selection but out of my price and use range.

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Dinner/Food/Recipes
In a stockpot, I simmered a dozen chicken feet for nine hours. I pulled three of them out after three hours for use in my Gravy. The others would produce a stock rich in gelatin (useful for my gravies) and rich in collagen. I’m investigating how to use the gelatinous stock.

For dinner on Sunday I had a North End Gravy with three chicken feet. Served on Ravioli from Eataly.

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Pictures with Captions from our community**
Bouillabaisse anyone

Bouillabaisse is as expensive as meals go. But so fine.

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Short Essay*
Lawrence Peter "Yogi" Berra (May 12, 1925 – September 22, 2015) was an American professional baseball catcher who later took on the roles of manager and coach. He played 19 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) (1946–1963, 1965), all but the last for the New York Yankees. He was an 18-time All-Star and won 10 World Series championships as a player—more than any other player in MLB history. Berra had a career batting average of .285, while hitting 358 home runs and 1,430 runs batted in. He is one of only six players to win the American League Most Valuable Player Award three times. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest catchers in baseball history and was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1972.

Berra was a native of St. Louis and signed with the Yankees in 1943 before serving in the United States Navy as a gunner's mate in the Normandy landings during World War II, where he earned a Purple Heart. He made his major-league debut at age 21 in 1946 and was a mainstay in the Yankees' lineup during the team's championship years beginning in 1949 and continuing through 1962. Despite his short stature (he was 5 feet 7 inches [1.70 m] tall), Berra was a power hitter and strong defensive catcher. Berra played 18 seasons with the Yankees before retiring after the 1963 season. He spent the next year as their manager, then joined the New York Mets in 1965 as coach (and briefly a player again). Berra remained with the Mets for the next decade, serving the last four years as their manager. He returned to the Yankees in 1976, coaching them for eight seasons and managing for two, before coaching the Houston Astros. He was one of seven managers to lead both American and National League teams to the World Series. Berra appeared as a player, coach or manager in every one of the 13 World Series that New York baseball teams won from 1947 through 1981. Overall, he played or coached in 21 World Series, 13 on the winning side. Berra caught Don Larsen's perfect game in Game 5 of the 1956 World Series. He also holds the all-time record for shutouts caught with 173.

The Yankees retired his uniform number 8 in 1972; Bill Dickey had previously worn number 8, and both catchers had that number retired by the Yankees. The club honored him with a plaque in Monument Park in 1988. Berra was named to the MLB All-Century Team in a vote by fans in 1999. For the remainder of his life, he was closely involved with the Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center, which he opened on the campus of Montclair State University in 1998.

Berra quit school after the eighth grade.[5] He was known for his malapropisms as well as pithy and paradoxical statements, such as "It ain't over 'til it's over", while speaking to reporters. He once simultaneously denied and confirmed his reputation by stating, "I really didn't say everything I said."

* 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, October 17, 2021
Welcome to the 1,252nd consecutive post to the blog,
existentialautotrip.com

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Lead Picture*
Jim Croce, In Concert

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Commentary
My focus is on my manuscript. The push: finish first draft of Part One, ready for an outside editor to look at it.

Transience. Just got familiar with a barista at the Blue Bottle and she tells me she’s leaving for the Harvard Sq. Blue Bottle. I’ll miss saying hello to her.

ABC Television - eBay front back

Photo of Jim Croce from the second anniversary of the In Concert music program. The program aired footage of a performance Croce had given previously.

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Reading and Writing
Have finished the Goldfinch and started my friend’s manuscript. Given the competition for my time, I’ve decided I will send in comments as I go along or he will be waiting too long for a timely response. Sent first comments out on Sunday.

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Chuckles and Thoughts
"It gets late early out there."
~Yogi Berra

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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

Typically, mothers and daughters struggle during the daughter’s teenaged years. Typically, their love blossoms shortly thereafter.

Blog meister responds: Teenagers go through such internal turmoil, 'reasoning' is not part of their vocabulary.

Patience, acceptance, and absorbing abuse without retaliation are the keywords for parents.

Yes, it will be better. Much better, but only eventually.

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Dinner/Food/Recipes
After several days of carbo-overloads I bought a bone-in rib eye steak, slow-roasted it and finished it with a broil/sear.
Delicious.

But I have a drink recipe to share using an amaro, Cynar, 70*:

2 parts Cynar, 1 part white vermouth, Angostura bitters to taste, ½ part fresh lemon juice, lemon slice, top-off w sparkling water

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Community Photos**
Dinner party with friends before pandemic 

Friends in a communal effort to prepare a nice dinner

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Short Essay*
James Joseph Croce (January 10, 1943 – September 20, 1973) was an American folk and rock singer-songwriter. Between 1966 and 1973, he released five studio albums and numerous singles. During this period, Croce took a series of odd jobs to pay bills while he continued to write, record, and perform concerts. After he formed a partnership with songwriter and guitarist Maury Muehleisen his fortunes turned in the early 1970s. His breakthrough came in 1972; his third album, You Don't Mess Around with Jim, produced three charting singles, including "Time in a Bottle", which reached No. 1 after his death. The follow-up album, Life and Times, contained the song "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown", which was the only No. 1 hit he had during his lifetime.

On September 20, 1973, at the height of his popularity and the day before the lead single to his fifth album, I Got a Name, was released, Croce and five others died in a plane crash. His music continued to chart throughout the 1970s following his death. Croce's wife, Ingrid Croce, was his early songwriting partner. She continued to write and record after his death and their son A. J. Croce became a singer-songwriter in the 1990s.

*The Blog Meister selects the topics for the Lead Picture and the Short Essay and then leans heavily or exclusively on Wikipedia to provide the content. The Blog Meister usually edits the entries.

**Community Pictures with Captions are sent in by our followers. Feel free to send in yours to domcapossela@hotmail.com

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