December 17 2023

 existentialautotrip

December 17, 2023
# 1635 

KAT CAPOSSELA is on one knee taking Brad’s picture.
She has the New Yorker bag on her shoulder.
She’s the cute one.
PRESS SECRETARY
BRAD HOLYMAN, NY STATE SENATOR
UPPER WEST SIDE

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COVER STORY
What is your job as Press Secretary?

I serve on the Legislation Team with Brad and the Legislative Director

We track bills.

When is it up for a vote?

When does it take effect?

Tracking through committees.

Explain the bill.

What is your typical day like?

7.00am Wake UP

Read NY Politico Playbook (a daily newsletter published by Politico that covers New York politics and government at the local, state, and federal levels.

It includes three sections: Playbook AM, Playbook PM, and Huddle.

Playbook AM is a morning briefing that provides a summary of the day’s top political news in New York.
I read these online on my cell or ipad.

7.45am Rental bike to yoga for class from 8 to 9am

Then office.

Looking for Brad’s name in the news.

Scan news mags and newspapers,

New York Post, perhaps the most important source

NY Times

New Yorker

New York Magazine

Briefings with Brad

to review his position on topics du jour, and interview requests

Constant juggling of the calendar of a very busy politician.

Emails and phone calls from reporters, even on Thanksgiving Day. Some of the questions are dumb.

Reporters asking dumb questions:

Will Governor sign the bill?

Nagging Brad to remember what he should be doing; how he should be preparing.

Attending his press conferences, taking photos to be used in press releases.

Run his social media. This is a big one: time consuming but far-reaching.

Write quotes to be used in conferences or position papers.

Write a 15-page weekly email that goes out to 25,000 people.

Press planning.

Should a piece go out as a general release or be targeted to a specific reporter or news outlet?

Which reporter? Which outlet?

It’s exciting and suits me.

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Commentary
I’m maxed out.
Balancing four projects.
The sale of Do You Believe in Magic. This is ongoing.
Completing Conflicted, my Christian horror novel. Two more weeks.
Getting existentialautotrip out on time every week.
And fourth, launching the alpha testing of a new website which I am editing, Questo North End!
This North End!
Go online and type the address in. Take a peek. Please comment on it. It needs editing.

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Kat’s Gen Z Corner  

My Favorite Person

My favorite person in the world is a 40-something man named Nirav. We met in Ashtanga class two years ago where I found him distorted into a pretzel and standing on his hands.

Since then, we’ve become close friends, along with our respective partners, Will and Rahkee. From Nirav and Rahkee, Will and I have learned so much about what it means to live a beautiful and conscious life.

Every end of December, for instance, they rent a remote Airbnb in upstate New York to conduct a weeklong silent meditation retreat together in the woods and welcome the New Year with a clean emotional and spiritual slate. After these self-guided retreats, they report returning together closer than ever before and with a newfound loving awareness for the people in their life.

Without children, they travel all over the world to visit the places with the most diverse and unique ecosystems. They shared with me pictures of harpy eagles and canoe boats down gorgeous far away rivers. They are less interested in the flashy cities of Europe and instead want to intimately understand the world’s land itself.

At home on the Upper West Side, Nirav and Rahkee begin each morning at 5 a.m. with meditation, pranayama (breathing technique), and — since having achieved incredible asanas (yoga postures) — now more humble practices that simply serve to maintain the body’s functionality. They also love New York for all the reasons you should and regularly go to indie film festivals, the best off-Broadway shows, and the healthiest vegan spots around.

Most importantly, perhaps, they are incredibly loving and devoted to one another. They are acutely aware of each other's needs and desires and are fiercely committed to dedicating their life to becoming a better partner for the other. Monday through Friday, they rarely make plans with anyone but each other. They share the cooking and cleaning duties and seem to relish their weekday routine, viewing time together as precious and never routine.

Will and I leave their company always feeling renewed, hopeful, and inspired. They are everything Will and I hope to be: kinder, softer, loving, and living with deep awareness and love. It’s pretty amazing that such beautiful people exist and fell into our life — and would welcome us back into theirs.

Nirav, Kat, and a mutual friend 1.5 years ago after his first Corepower class (which was a warm-up for him!)

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Tucker’s Corner

Miyazaki’s films hold a very special place in my heart. I grew up watching them but more importantly my kids did. My eldest daughter was obsessed (as many are) with Totorro and Howl’s Moving Castle and in the early days of being a step parent these films and characters were lifelines for spending time together and growing our bond. We’d spend whole days journeying into the city to look for stores that sold Miyazaki related goods. Now that she’s become a young adult and moved out I cherish those memories more and more. Miyazaki’s latest isn’t as cute or packageable as some of his other work but I found it absolutely lovely all the same. This is The Boy and the Heron.

The Boy and The Heron - Directed by Hayao Miyazaki

One of the most important artists of all time has a new film this week, an unexpected fantasy from a man that most people thought was done a decade ago. 2013’s “The Wind Rises” undeniably felt like a final act, but Hayao Miyazaki had something else to say, working some of his own life, art, and interests into the masterful The Boy and the Heron, a mesmerizing fable that feels even more like a summary of an artist’s career. It’s a film that somehow plays as both a child’s heroic journey and an old man’s wistful goodbye at the same time, a dream-like vision that reasserts Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli’s voice and international relevance. It’s gorgeous, ruminative, and mesmerizing, one of the best of 2023.

The Boy and the Heron is the story of a 12-year-old named Mahito Maki, whose mother dies in a hospital fire in Tokyo, sending him to the countryside with a distant father named Shoichi and a new, pregnant mother named Natsuko, the sister of Mahito’s late mother. Mahito understandably operates from a place of grief and anger. He dreams of the mother he couldn’t save from the flames, and even wounds himself with a rock in a moment of startling self-harm. It has been said that The Boy and the Heron is about a young man who learns to not operate from a place of selfishness, but I also see it as a product of another template—learning that the beauty of the world also comes with pain.

This lesson starts with a heron, a bird that starts to tease Mahito about his mother, telling him that his “presence is requested.” When his stepmother goes missing, Mahito follows the heron to a nearby tower, the last place that anyone saw Mahito’s great-granduncle before he disappeared. Just before the hour mark of The Boy and the Heron, a film that has often played like a standard coming-of-age drama dives headfirst into fantasy as Mahito enters his own Wonderland, an alternate reality with swarms of pelicans, violent parakeets, and adorable little creatures called warawara. Here’s where The Boy and the Heron splits from traditional plotting to something that works in a different register. More than likely you’ll find yourself confused by what is happening but I would ask you to focus on the emotion of what is unfolding. You will and that is what matters.

The Japanese title of The Boy and the Heron translates as “How Do You Live?,” which is also the name of a 1937 novel by Genzaburo Yoshino that greatly influenced the real Miyazaki. This film is not based on that book, and yet it makes a cameo appearance, exemplifying how this movie is built on a foundation of memory. Miyazaki’s father helped build fighter planes during the war, his family evacuated to the countryside during the war, and his influential mother was ill until a death when Miyazaki was only a young teenager. All of these elements are in The Boy and the Heron, only slightly altered. Mahito isn’t Hayao, but it’s almost like Dorothy going to Oz and finding fantastical versions of people in her real life. This entire film is Miyazaki’s Oz.

Of course, everyone expects a Ghibli film to look stunning, but Miyazaki finds some of his most striking compositions here. The immediate standouts are the creative landscapes of the fantasy world—the ships on a horizon lit by sunset, the bright colors of the parakeets chasing the heron, the flames of Mahito’s ally Himi—but there’s stunning artistry in the first half of the film too, capturing a young man who looks small against a country landscape in which he just doesn’t seem to fit. All of the visions here are enhanced greatly by a gorgeous score by Joe Hisaishi that’s maybe my favorite of the year.

The Boy and the Heron takes some patience. The first hour is arguably a bit too long, repeating some plot points more than it needs to before thrusting Mahito into his true journey. And there are times even in the second half when it feels like Miyazaki the writer spins his wheels, but the patience here is rewarded by final scenes that really land emotionally. Without spoiling, Mahito is given a chance to rule a fantasy world, but he chooses the pain of the real one. That’s the lesson of adulthood, the awareness that we can’t live in lands of made-up characters and fantasy versions of those we’ve lost. We are strong enough to make it in the real one. After gifting us with so many visions, Hayao Miyazaki isn’t telling us to live in those animated worlds—he’s telling us to live in our own. And we can still visit his whenever we need a reminder of how to live.

The North End

There’s something about the old neighborhood

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Fr. Mike’s Thoughts

There’s something about the old neighborhood.

What is it about this little part of Boston (less than a square mile) that draws 10’s of millions of visitors annually? What makes the North End so special and unique and so charming worldwide? Why is the North End the very first attraction Mayor Wu mentions when welcoming new arrivals on her recorded greeting at Logan Airport?

Is it merely its historical significance? Is it the fact that it is the oldest residential community, which has been inhabited since it was colonized in the 1630s? Is it all the revolutionary sites found on the Freedom trail like the Old North Church, Copps Hill Cemetary and Paul Revere’s House? Is it the fame of some of our most prominent former residents: Increase Mather, the Hutchinson family, or Tony Demarco, Welterweight champion of the World?

The reasons are manifold. Some certainly come for our authentic Italian restaurants, the best in the country, or our exquisite pastry shops or just to smell and taste the bread and pizza. While others may just come because of our proximity to the Boston Garden, there does seem to be a deeper draw at work, a certain feel that our neighborhood leaves you with long after you visit.

It’s not the place, its the people. It’s the warm, vibrant tight knit neighborhood that has been marinated over decades – all in a small pot. Our very geography of narrow streets and our past seclusion from other parts of Boston by an overpass and the MBTA, have converged to create a warm family feel to all who visit.

All of this comes together and culminates in one of the most distinguishing characteristics of the North End - our revered feast traditions. These amazing processions during the summer were brought over by the faith of our grandparents who came from Italy and Sicily over a hundred years ago. These sacred traditions of venerating saints such as St Anthony, Madonna Della Cava and St Lucy, continue to shape the morals and the values of our neighborhood. Hoisting our cherished local super hero- saints on our shoulders and proudly parading them around our streets while the marching band plays, is not only a moment of honoring our ancestors and perpetuating their devotions, but a sincere gesture of personal and public thanksgiving to God from the heart for all the prayers answered through their intercession This usually comes in the form of placing money and jewelry over them at various stops along the route. The North End boldly and unapologetically proclaims our deepest held values and beliefs during these celebrations: Faith and Family – joyously celebrated with an abbondanza of great Food.

The Fight of the Century

Frankie Berdalino was a tough kid with the strength of a teenage Hercules. While the rest of us struggled to gain a pound and where lifting weights got us nowhere, Frankie walked the streets of the old neighborhood like a colossus. So we found it funny when Sean Dames called Berdalino out. Dames was a stick figure of a kid with more freckles than stars, a blast of red hair and a cowlick that would not die.

Who knows now what it was about. We were kids a long time ago before guns were everywhere and knives were carried but rarely used. It was a summer night. We were playing the dozens, ranking each other out. Fluorescent lights from the pizza place windows were a new thing and they cast us in shadows that were sharper and darker than before. Somebody said this and somebody said that. We stopped laughing. Frankie didn’t want to fight below his weight but Sean kept ranking. Finally Frankie said “fuck it, lets go.”

We crossed the street to the school yard, some 15 of us. Not a gang but we looked the part. The school yard kept the cops out. No way to drive into it and fenced in so it had to be by foot with running and climbing to boot.

Berdalino and Dames squared off in the dark side of the schoolyard while we formed a circle around them. Thinking back, I am surprised at how quiet we were. Nobody rooted for nobody. It was between Frankie and Sean, no jumping in. Berdalino tried once more to call it off but Dames wasn’t having it. He said “if you’re so sure you can take me, then fight by my rules.”

Frankie said “ok.” Dames said ”ok then we box, we only box, nothing else.” Frankie said “ok.”

Some nights last forever. They grow in memory and meaning. At the time it was just another night, just another fight. They went at it but it was a different fight. Dames had form. His footwork was studied. He knew how to hit, he knew when and where. Berdalino lumbered. He thought he was fighting but he was clueless. He was wide open and flatfooted. When he punched it was late and lost in the air. When he blocked, that was late, too. He got hit… a lot. He took body punches that surprised him and left his head open. Dames set him up. He hit Frankie in the mid-section,crumpled him and as Frankie’s head lowered, Sean followed up and met his jaw with an uppercut. It was over. Frankie went down. Dames backed off. We were silent. Frankie got up. “Fair fight”, he said, “fair fight”, as he walked away.

Joseph Bocchicchio
jbocchic@kent.edu

Mac and Cheese

MAC AND CHEESE w Turkey

Serves 3

EQUIPMENT:

Butter a 2-quart casserole

Heat the oven to 375*

PREP:

Boil 6oz of penne. Stop the boil short of al dente and coat the pasta with a bit of butter.

Grate 3 cups of melty cheeses.

Combine ½ cup parmigiana and ½ cup panko bread crumbs, salt and pepper.

Cube 1lb of roasted boneless turkey and saute with a large red bell pepper, and 3oz trumpet mushrooms in 2oz of rendered guanciale.

Combine liquids: 3 cups of milk, ½ cup light cream, 2oz sweet wine and 1 cup chicken stock

Make a roux using 6TB of butter. When the butter is melted and bubbling, add 1/2 cup flour and cook for 1 minute or a bit more.

Pour the liquids into the roux while whisking. Season the pot with ½ t salt, dash nutmeg, 1t freshly ground pepper, dash cayenne, ½ t mustard powder, 1t tarragon, Cook and whisk constantly, until the mixture bubbles and thickens a bit. Remove the pan from the heat.

ASSEMBLE:

Add into the buttered baking pan the 6oz cooked pasta.

Add in the sauteed turkey and mix.
Stir in the seasoned, thickened liquids

Bake for 30 minutes.

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Chuckles and Thoughts
There’s no shame in failing. The only shame is not giving things your best shot.
Robin Williams

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Six Word Stories
”Dancing in rain, laughter soaked streets."

Tick Tock

Part Two: Tick Tock

Us North Enders all lived in paradoxes of extremes in boxed apartments,

The extremes of possible imminent violence and love and support was like living on thin ice. The support was the ice that protected you from the possible death of drowning in icy waters of physical and verbal.

Depending on how much love and support you was available to you the thicker the ice. Physical violence, verbal abuse, even the threat of death or even death itself was a daily probability. It was easy to fall through the cracks. Many of us did. On the other had we had people who would take a bullet for us or who gave their lives to people they loved so that they may have lives they never had a chance to have. We had people who loved us no matter what we did or what we said. North Enders are all characters of such extremes even Shakespeare couldn’t invent us. Maybe, because we had experiences that somebody’s life depended on us not just physical but also psychological life that gave us this capacity to love? Some of us were so traumatized they were psychological dead before they really dead which was worse than being dead.

Un-acknowledged heroics manifested themself daily in our North End.

Our father died and my mother became an alcoholic. My whole family fell through the thin ice. Our father was the substratum of keeping us out of the icy waters of despair and self hatred that flowed under the thin ice we are all under. This was an invisible kind of drowning. It took me a long time to figure out I was drowning before I was able to save myself. I had to. Have a why much bigger than me before I could save myself. Some North Enders did no know they were drowning and some happy to
know that their drowning was going to end their pain.

Every one of my family members had an addiction. I took my first zip of wine when I was fifteen years old and drank for eight years. I became a black out drunk desiring the death like experience of being a black out drunk. “To die and cease upon the midnight without pain.” “ I am one half in love with easy death.” My apartment with my Mom and brother Angelo lost all of its nurturance ceased to be the ice that kept us from drowning. Addiction came and took away our mother as well. Whoever was there when my Mom was an abusive alcoholic was not our other. When the disease of alcoholism infected our whole family our apartment cease to be a home. It ceased to be womb for the birth of love.

Me, the artisan

I loved to work as a carpenter as well as anything else

I loved to work as a carpenter as well as anything else but I was so fucked up I could not be kind enough to myself to look for work. I faced my empty days with a early morning caffeine addiction. I would get up and make a pot of coffee and drink the whole pot. Unable to sit any more I would find my way out the door to the streets of the North End and them to the streets of Boston , where I would walk and walk never getting where I was going. Until my coffee hit from my apartment started to wear off and I go to a coffee place and sit alone all by myself. I would repeat this “tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow” until I was starving and would consume a pepper and steak sub. My diet consisted of cream sugar coffee and junk food. After my long walk to nowhere, I sunk into my dark bed alone and feel into a sleep which was not “natures balm” but a cold darkness to awake again into darkness.

A joyful celebration of the season, with virtuoso voices and instruments performing magnificent Italian works of the Renaissance and early Baroque.
Music ranging from intimate simplicity to sumptuous splendor including sacred songs of devotion, instrumental fantasias, and resplendent choral masterpieces of Venice's Golden Age.
Music of Monteverdi, Gabrieli, Cipriano, Marenzio and many more performed by voices, cornetto, viola da gamba, harp, brass and organ. 
Vicki Bocchicchio, Manager, BostonCamerata.Org

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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 dear friend, Tommie,

Dom,

Love Kat's essay on being 25. I remember having those same thoughts (minus the botox- which was non-existent in my world). Now, at almost 82, my observations of how people view me are mixed. I still get "hit on" but not by the likes of a young and muscular Brad Pitt! Haha! Usually, I am discounted by those at the Verizon store because I don't know how to use my damn phone. At other stores. I am treated with gentleness (usually) because my hair is gray and I play up to being "old" as I need "help." I miss the energy to dance on the top of bars, but I am happy in my own skin with the knowledge that I have accomplished most of my life's goals and have lived a life filled with adventure and the love of a good man.

And this, from another dear friend, and another Tommy,

Very nice article on father Mike. No more partying for him!

Editor: For sure.

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Last Thought
After listing the four projects that occupy my time, I am obliged to note that today I was chosen to be a TEDx speaker at Babson College. Of course, I must accept that appointment. But that’s the last.

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