December 10 2023 — Existential Autotrip

December 10, 2023
# 1634

Fr. Mike
St Leonard’s Church
North End
Missionary-Resident- Leader

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COVER: Father Mike, devout, popular parish priest, plays a vital role in the spiritual and pastoral care of his religious community. Attend one of Fr. Mike’s services at St. Leonard’s Church and you will observe someone with a deep and unwavering faith. Watch and listen to him talk with his parishioners, minister to their needs, and you will see his compassionate and empathetic nature. Listen to his sermons and you will clearly understand the religious teachings of the Church taught by someone well-grounded in theology.

Everyone who has a community project, runs it past Fr. Mike for input and advice. And he welcomes involvement in worthwhile projects. Always available, he is one of the most approachable priests you will ever meet and he never seeks headlines.

In his interview, Fr. Mike references his experience at Medjugorje. For those unaware, the "Miracle at Medjugorje" refers to a series of reported supernatural events that began in 1981 in the town of Medjugorje, Bosnia and Herzegovina. It involves six children who claim to have regular apparitions of the Virgin Mary. These apparitions are said to convey messages of peace, prayer, and conversion to the world. The reported miracles include healings, unexplained phenomena, and prophecies. Medjugorje is a place of deep religious significance and spiritual devotion for many.

We asked Fr. Mike how he discovered his vocation. This is his story.

Father Mike
Remembering, my senior year of college was a confusing time for me. My girlfriend and I had recently broken up and while I wanted desperately to get back out with her, I was at the same time living in two worlds. I knew what I had experienced in Medjugorje was real. The deep peace I had felt in Medjugorje and the miraculous events I experienced there had changed me; they had opened my eyes to the truth of God, Mary, the Church, Eucharist, etc. I was having trouble, however walking away from my former college party lifestyle. One day I wanted to give myself entirely to God and the next day I wanted to party.

After graduation I spent the summer working for the Church and attending daily mass. I became a Eucharistic minister at the invitation of Dottie Somboli and began visiting shut-in patients at the Spalding Rehab.

I asked Fr Ron Gliatti to be my spiritual director. He advised me to take the month of December to discern whether I should enter the Franciscans. I remember him saying you are never going to know unless you try.

During that month, I will never forget one visit. I walked into the room and saw an old, skinny tall, man lying in bed who was dying. We spoke for some time as he recounted his whole life and one by one, I identified with everything he said. He had one regret however; he had felt called to the priesthood and never answered the call. In reflecting on this in prayer I felt God was inviting me to become a priest. I imagined the boat was leaving the dock and all I could think of was to jump on it. I remember thinking logically that since God had gifted me with this life, and revealed himself to me, I wanted to return the favor and give my life back to Him. This did not seem so generous since giving him the next 70 or eighty years would be nothing in comparison to his promise of spending the rest of eternity with Him. I also had a powerful experience which confirmed that God wasn't the only one after my soul. This left me with a strong conviction to join the battle and fight the good fight.

Commentary
A year ago I predicted that we would witness the public unravelling of Donald Trump. The last hundred public photographs of him that I have seen are of a man beset with issues. He may dance around the issues, but he cannot dance around that he is dancing around. We’ve recently heard him use the wrong names of countries and leaders. Is this the beginning of his unravelling? Are the other Republican candidates for their party’s nomination salivating for the opportunity to tear into him as he falls apart?

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Kat’s Gen Z Corner

When We Were Young

Leonardo DiCaprio has famously never dated a woman over the age of 25. This was also the age my mom had me with my then 55-year old dad. In low intellect circles, 25 is hailed as women's peak age. I turned 25 in November.

Since passing into the second half of my twenties, I’ve been acutely aware of how my perceived youth impacts my every day. Moms glancing at my pre-pregnancy stomach in the yoga studio locker room. Mistakes at work being waved away as “lack of experience.” The comfort in having so. much. time.

Youth has, unavoidably so, been a huge part of my identity for 25 years. But who am I, who will I be, when I am no longer young? I have too many girl friends who are already discussing botox and starving their bodies to fit a certain stereotype. Adele wrote “When We Were Young” when she was 25. Am I already shedding this part of myself? How does society value a woman over 25?

I’ve noticed the lack of attention older women in my life receive from the world. How many female members of my family take great lengths to keep the male gaze, now that it doesn’t come as effortlessly. How the older generations of vulnerable men still lust for women a small fraction of their age.

I know this is a failed reality. And I know my hyper-awareness of this issue stems from the sadness of the people I grew up around. The too-skinny moms of Buckingham Browne and Nichols, the Ozempic and Botox’d world of social media, my own parents.

The other day, I found a forehead wrinkle in the mirror that I never noticed before. I stared at it intently, willing it to go away. After a few minutes, I realized the thought that it shouldn't be there was not mine. If no beauty ad or offhand comment from an older male relative suggested that wrinkles were ugly, would I believe it?

Unlikely. And I wish I could unbelieve it. Worth rests in something so much deeper than wrinkles or body size or hyper-sexualization. My highest self knows this to be the truth, but feeling the world shift according to my age is inescapably disorienting.

Part of my work now will be to enjoy this fleeting and superficial attention awarded to young, unmarried women — and to be grateful when I trade in smoother skin for a smoother way of being. I’ve longed to be graceful, elegant, and calm. No 25-year-old embodies any of those things, but some 45-year-olds do. And that’s something to work towards and look forward to.

Kat, 25 and goofy, with her Ashtanga yoga idol, Kino MacGregor, 45 and glowing.

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Tucker’s Corner
Despite King Kong being made first, Godzilla is the grandfather of all monster movies. The 30+ sequels with his name attached have worked pretty hard to paint the legacy of this character as action packed, often silly films with little substance. It’s important to point out though that the original film is a remarkably humane and melancholy drama, made in Japan at a time when the country was reeling from nuclear attack and H-bomb testing in the Pacific. Its rampaging radioactive beast, the poignant embodiment of an entire population’s fears, became a beloved international icon of destruction and soon steered away from its important origins. Maybe for the first time since the original film’s release has an entry been added to the Godzilla canon that tries (and succeeds) to revisit those weighty themes. The result is a truly remarkable film that I recommend to all. This is Godzilla Minus One.

Godzilla Minus One - Directed by Takashi Yamazaki

Back in 1954, just nine years out from the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japanese filmmaker Ishirō Honda and special effects designer Eiji Tsuburaya dreamed up a giant dinosaur-like creature that came from the depths of the ocean, mutated by nuclear radiation, a “kaiju” named Godzilla. The monster was a metaphor for Japanese atomic trauma, and the film, produced and distributed by Toho, was a hit, spawning the longest-running film franchise of all time.

Some 70 years later, the 33rd Toho Godzilla film (the 37th in the franchise), “Godzilla Minus One,” written and directed by Takashi Yamazaki, brings Godzilla back to its Japanese roots, as well as its World War II setting. Taking place in the immediate post-war period in 1945, the film reckons with more than just the metaphorically monstrous nuclear fallout of the war, but also the devastatingly human emotional effects. When this monster surfaces, glowing neon blue from the nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll, it unearths all of the repressed shame and trauma of Japanese veterans, specifically a failed kamikaze pilot, Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki).

Shikishima has already encountered Godzilla by the time the monster stomps its way into Tokyo. During his failed kamikaze flight, he stopped on Odo Island for assistance, where the mythical creature came ashore to wreak havoc. Having already fled his mission, Shikishima freezes in the face of this monster, failing to shoot it and unable to assist his new friends, the airplane mechanics, who perish in the attack.

Two years later, Godzilla rears its head again from the ocean depths off Japan. Shikishima has now formed an unlikely family unit with Noriko (Minami Hamabe), and a young child, Akiko (Saki Nagatani) who was orphaned in the bombing of Tokyo. He’s been working with a crew to clear mines from the ocean floor, and they are conscripted into tangling with Godzilla, who has been chomping through heavy cruisers and blasting them with atomic heat rays, before heading to shore to wreck its way through a Tokyo still struggling to get back on its feet.

The scrappy crew aboard this wooden boat will remind audiences of “Jaws,” as will the Japanese government’s unwillingness to warn citizens about the impending threat, much like the mayor of Amity Island in Steven Spielberg’s shark movie. There are also other references to “Jaws,” like the dead deep sea fish that bubble to the surface as a harbinger of Godzilla’s arrival, and Yamazaki has said that he was inspired by that film.

Yamazaki’s script does reckon with the lasting effects of World War II in Japan, and while the nuclear mutation of Godzilla is part of the plot, the themes of Godzilla Minus One are focused more on the Japanese government, including their failure to protect its citizens from this threat, as well as the oppressive imperial regime that pressured young men into suicide missions during the war.

It’s a group of private naval vets who end up taking on Godzilla — not the government — while Shikishima struggles with his own shame around failing as a kamikaze pilot, and failing to stop the monster back on Odo. It’s not until he can fulfill his mission that he can be free of this shame, and it takes Godzilla’s destructive arrival to bring that into focus for him.

Yamazaki’s take on Godzilla is classical, utilizing the giant kaiju as a metaphor for social commentary, and his aesthetic take is classical as well, combining a 1940s style with cutting-edge visual effects for one of the most striking Godzilla monsters we’ve seen in years. The way its craggy fins break the surface of the ocean is almost photo-realistic, and when Godzilla’s atomic-powered glowing spine bursts with power, it’s breathtakingly beautiful. The way Yamazaki grapples with some of the wider nuances of wartime trauma feels fresh and innovative, if not radical, proving that even after seven decades of wreckage, this iconic kaiju still has plenty of gas in the tank.

“ Tick Tack Toe”
‘The Rules of the Games’
Part One of Four
Raphael Indrisano

This story is dedicated to my Uncle Jimmy

“ Yea, though I walk through shadow of the valley of the dead. I will fear no evil for thou art with me: Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou prepares a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointed my head with oil my cup rune the over” Psalm 23-4 and 5

My Uncle Jimmy emanated between a perfect asshole and a shaman in a heart beat. I only called him an asshole once. He was dying and I visited him every day. He had me on a life long merry go round of ball breaking arguments which went like this. My Uncle Jimmy made a ridiculous statement and I agreed. He immediately took on the opposite point of view of what he just said disagreeing with me. I would try to escape this insanity by agreeing with him again. This only escalated his ball breaking until I was totally exasperated . Uncle Jimmy would show a modicum of mercy or maybe he was concerned that if his ball busting might killed me he could not torture me again. You could never tell with Uncle Jimmy.

On His lost few weeks, my Uncle Jimmy was in a hospice for veterans. Everyone veterans did not have more than two months to live. I visited him every day. When we could, I would take him on a wheel chair ride outside so he could get out. He started again busting my balls on our wheel of fire merry go round. I figured Uncle Jimmy will be dead in six weeks I better get my chance at calling him an asshole before he craps out. I shouted,” You fucking asshole! My whole life I agreed with you and you disagree with me agreeing with you. You are driving me nuts!” Uncle Jimmy smiled as if everything was perfectly and said ,“I know” Then, acknowledging his ability to be a unique asshole “I never agree with anyone including me.” Relieved and enchanted, I wheeled Uncle Jimmy back to his death bed. One time when I visited him at the hospice there was a tribe of children shouting for joy over nothing. My Uncle Jimmy had this smile to die for. I kicked the wheel chair and said, “ What the fuck, you are so happy about you are dying.” Uncle Jimmy smiled and said , “There is nothing like a happy kid.” I never forgot that moment their were
“ Tick Tack Toe”

Magic

If you live long enough, the world you know, and love will die before you do. Such is the theme of Do You Believe in Magic? An Anthology of Stories from The North End, edited by Dom Capossela and published by him with Victor Passacantilli. Both gentlemen have deep roots in the neighborhood and owned successful restaurants there for decades. Mr. Capossela brings together an ensemble of writers from Boston’s historic North End who came of age there between 1950 to 1970. Together they create a love letter from now to then and to that place in collection of stories, vignettes, character profiles, poems, and photos all of which give us a feel for their experiences with such affection made all the more poignant as the North End as they knew it disappears. This is not a scholarly work, but it is rendered with such innocence and sincerity that it is startling in its authenticity. Perhaps without Mr. Capossela intending it to be so, “Do you Believe in Magic” may prove to be an important piece of public history as it not only gives personal accounts of life in the North End, but also places that life in the context of a generation struggling to assimilate to an America that neither understands them nor welcomes them. While this book speaks directly to Boston and the North End it also speaks to the same generation of Italian- Americans from that generation, myself included, who grew up in shadow of our Italian ancestry, and who were slowing being Americanized as if roasted over a low flame. It may be an idealized account and it may have benefitted from more female voices, these are venial sins of omission that are in no way mortal. The book may also speak to immigrants from elsewhere who live in tight knit communities, from large families in small quarters who love food, their faith and their new country and are striving to succeed while faced with oppression and bigotry. This book is like new wine. It will only improve with age.

Joseph Bocchicchio
Revolutionary Spaces
Supervisor: Visitor Experience
Old South Meeting House, Museum and Historic Site
Old State House
jbocchicchio@revolutionaryspaces.org
jbocchic@kent.edu

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EGGPLANT PARMIGIANO
Antique Table Restaurants
At a birthday party several days ago, the hosts served Eggplant Parmigiana among many other offerings. It was an excellent rendition of the recipe.

Table Mercato
Table restaurant’s Mercato also serves an excellent Eggplant, their photograph notwithstanding. Both times that I had the dish it was well presented. This photograph shows it drowning in sauce and overwhelmed with cheese. The product they sell is properly sauced. The eggplant is firm and the cheese is well-proportioned.

The photograph does not do justice to the plate that Table Mercato sells.

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FOOD

Bucatini Carbonara
1lb bucatini or other strand pasta

Tracking the pasta

Cook the pasta al dente. Just before draining, reserve a cup of the starchy water. Toss the pasta in the pork fat and pieces.

Tracking the pork
6oz guanciale or other similar smoky fatty pork product rendered in fry pan large enough to hold the just drained pasta so you may toss it with the rendered pork and liquefaction. Catch every bit of the pork flavor.

Tracking the egg mixture
Break 2 whole eggs and 2 egg yolks into a bowl and whisk them together. Stir in the cup of reserved starchy water, the 1/2t freshly ground black pepper, and a cup of Parmigiano-Reggiano freshly grated.

Last Step
Pour the egg mixture over the pasta now coated with the pork fat and stir the pasta and sauce vigorously for 30 plus seconds or until the mixture has turned creamy. An effective stirrer is the handle end of a wooden spoon.

A more elaborate recipe: Carbonara Aragosta

(For Carbonara Aragosta, one minute before pasta reaches al dente, scoop out a cup of starchy water and set it aside. Drain the pasta, add one cup of boiling lobster stock to the pot, return the pasta to the pot of boiling lobster stock and finish the cook. This will create a wonderful Lobster-Flavored pasta.
Spoon in a topping of chunks of lobster and whatever else your imagination will allow.)

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Chuckles and Thoughts
There is still a lot to learn and there is always great stuff out there. Even mistakes can be wonderful.
Robin Williams

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Six Word Stories
"Moonlit nights, secret smiles, stolen glances."

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

Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
text to 617.852.7192

This from our dearest contributor, Raphael:

Dear Dom Capossela,

Once when Peter Catizone and I went to the North End for coffee, we sat by a beautiful woman and if there wasn’t a beautiful woman sitting next to us one would sit next to us. Once we were talking and joking with this woman and she turned to Peter as if I was not there and said Is your friend crazy. Peter said, Ralph is totally insane that is what makes him so precious. That is verbatim. I said I am surprised they let me out and Peter said we have to get him home before they lock the doors.

One of the things that I found immensely valuable with Chat AI is that it is totally logical and rational and gives me a further appreciation for being totally insane. I could see that this is one of my many qualities that gives quality to my writing. I can also see the possibility where being sane will forward my writing.

Back to work. I am on a mission for Dom Capossela

Raphael

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Last Thought
So happy to welcome three new voices with this issue: Raphael, Mike, and Joseph. Totally delighted.

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Dec 6 December 10 2023