It’s Monday and I’m driving into North Carolina.
Is it safe to drive?
The weather, I mean.
A disaster here recently.

And as I worry about myself I stop.

Look at me.
I me mine.

All I can hear I me mine, I me mine, I me mine,
Even those tears I me mine, I me mine, I me mine.
No one's frightened of playing it,
Everyone's saying it,

Flowing more freely than wine.
All through' your life I me mine. I me mine. I me mine.

The Beatles tried to teach us; warned us.
And yet, here I am selfishly focusing on myself.

Will that terrible weather, that misery, affect me?
Will is slow me down?
Will the roads I am taking be safe? Open to traffic?
Will I be able to zoom through?

I.
Me. Me. Me.
Mine.

Sad.
Time to look at That Man in the Mirror.

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Today is Monday, September 24, 2018
This is my 167th consecutive daily posting.
Time is 5.18am and the weather in Charlston, South Carolina is 85* and sunny.
Last night I had a hot pot for supper.
It was good.


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Saturday night I had dinner in Savannah at Elizabeth’s on 37th street where the food is simply delicious and the staff simply friendly and inviting.

Here are some pix.

So let’s take a look here.
Top left we we have Abigail and Caleb whose warm greetings got me immediately comfortable.
And I took a pic of one of the larger dining rooms. Lovely, n’est-ce Pas?
I ordered the chef’s menu and they started me with the three piece amuse bouche you see above: tomato mozzarella with a tasty vinaigrette dressing, a delicious mussel chipotle, and a salmon piece glazed with mustard.
The mushroom soup was light and lovely.
I don’t have a picture of the salad course: delicate and fresh, and refreshing.
Delicious river clams that didn’t taste much different from our little necks and were every bit as great, served with a truffle oil sauce.
And one of the finest pasta dishes I’ve ever had in a restaurant, with perfectly cooked vegetables and a light tomato sauce made with a touch of vinegar.
The red snapper with a coating of panko bread crumbs, cheese, and parsley was delicious, as was the corn pudding which accompanied it.
Then came that unctuous chocolate cake that you see.
And the wine pairings by Gary made the meal perfect.

What a terrific experience.

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Don’t forget to stay in touch with me.
domcapossela@hotmail.com

Anne McEvoy Kilzer did, to share a couple of growing up stories apropos of my visiting the west.

Another crazy detail is that my grandfather had gone to Stanford for a bachelors degree and Masters degree in chemistry and had served in the Pacific in WW1.
After the war, he was running the ranch and also serving in the Secret Service which involved travel to the pacific.

When he got sick the doctors thought he might have picked up a disease in his travels. 
My grandmother said that after his trip east, he came back to home very depressed and felt strongly that  the US would have to fight Japan in ww2.

Shortly after that he got very ill.
So, believe it or not when my mother was born, my grandparents received a letter from Stanford promising her admission to Stanford!!!
Boy, has College Admissions changed!!!

Of course, after the depression and everything that happened, my mother was very happy to be able to go to Arizona State. 
My first choice was Stanford and I was so disappointed I got rejected!
It gets harder and harder!!

Another interesting memory that my mother had was during WW2.  
After church every Sunday, my grandmother would take my mother and her sister to the Concentration camps, where my grandmother had Japanese friends. 
My mother remembered passing vegetables and plants to their friends through the fence.
Their Japanese friends would use the plants for their gardens. 

My Grandmother's parents had left Germany on 1905 because the men were required to join the German army.
My Grandmother was raised in Missouri but moved in her twenties with her sister, who had a lot of health problems, to Pheonix. 
My mother would tell us that our Grandmother always said that the only reason the Japanese were put into concentration camps and not the German's  was because of the color of their skin.
It was a great lesson!

Ironically, I remember being shocked by the terrible things that my Grandmother would say about people from Mexico stealing!! 
I guess she had some bad experiences.

Anne

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And I got several comments vis a vis the pix and non-pix in Dallas, esp. regarding the Confederate War Memorial posted a couple of days ago.
This, from Tucker Johnson, representative of them.

You nailed the photo gallery in this one!
Nice work!

Web-Meister asked Tucker if we could print his comments?
Tucker’s response:

Absolutely!

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Love you, guys.
Here comes Howard.

Dom

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I have frankly dithered long enough with what has become an unwieldy (for length and length alone) sequel to my last post here, several days ago. I’ll continue working on it, but in the meantime, there are other things to be said. Especially in response to prompts in Dom’s daily posts as he has worked his way across the great southwest, and now into the south.

To be honest, there wasn’t much I wanted to subject others to in my personal response to some heady and moving experiences he had regarding the Confederate War Memorial in Dallas and to his visit to Meridian. He said it all, and quite quite well, and there’s not much I could add except by way of getting emotional and going negative as they say in politics. And I’ve made it my mission here, in my temporary capacity of second banana, to be positive.

So, given some other themes that have been a current, if not a stream, in Dom’s flow of posts, I’ve decided to throw in some shorter pieces – as others have been, drawn from my voluminous journals that are a reliable source of material on virtually any subject, which I think Dom was counting on when he asked me to supplement his efforts here, in lieu of his having the same access to his own usual sources…

This one is about time. So to speak. A subject I daresay that’s on everyone’s mind probably every day. I know it has been on mine for my entire life. And, for obvious reasons, it’s been on Dom’s. He’s had occasion to mention it.

I wrote this precisely 13 years and 3 months ago, and it was germane then and it’s germane now, but has no specific reference to Dom and is not meant to. So don’t go be making me a troublemaker. —Howard

On Time

There’s no greater gift involving time than creating a certain kind of life. I mean the kind that allows you not to predicate how you use your time solely on its impact on your ability to make the money you require for living your life as you see fit. In short, the more time you can give yourself, the better you are going to feel. That is, as long as there are other people in your life important enough to you to give them some of your time as well. If you can give yourself more time than the amount you need to make a living in order to meet the cost of necessities, you are on the road to heaven on earth. The problem, of course, is how to “make” such time. (side thought: what do you make time out of?)

Many pretend that philosophy is the solution, often the same people who really don’t need to worry about these things, because they have the money to do, more or less, as they please. More often than not the common wisdom is the only philosophy that works universally is “make your life simpler.” Dispense with possessions, except the precious few. Reduce your obligations, in number, if not in magnitude. Eat less. Drink less. Consume less electricity, water, natural gas. Eschew the use of vehicles that are fueled by carbon-based fluids, solids or gases.

This is obviously horse shit, except for the lives of those who have embraced a monastic life within the confines of their chosen religion, and they happen to have a vast garden of food they maintain year round in a temperate climate.

Outside of criminal behavior, there is no custom, there is no set of tasks, that, in the aggregate can be termed simple, however basic and uncomplicated any one of them may be in the particular. Those I know who espouse, if not embrace (a smaller number), the “simple” life in the sense I am attempting to define it, spend most of their time engaged in tasks in pursuit of such a regime. Aside from the observation that one should embrace his or her spouse once in awhile, especially if you actually mean it, I would say, there is no simplicity to their lives at all. Not from the outside. Rather, given the theme of this essay, the more important consideration is the extent to which they devote time to themselves in a way they see not only fit, but they experience as pleasurable also. The fairy tale they tell themselves, and the majority of their friends, about simplicity is not only besides the point, but harmless. It’s not worth the time – aside from observing it and commenting upon it in public – to consider its obvious and pertinent internal inconsistency. If it is not a fairy tale, but told, nevertheless, in hypocrisy or perversity, well, you have some interesting friends, and you should spend more time with them observing their behavior. Unless, as I say, it’s criminal, in which case, be prepared, in sticking around, to accept the consequences of association.—Howard Dinin, © 2018.