Early in his multi-volume History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon summarizes the contribution of Caesar Augustus:
The principal conquests of the Romans were achieved under the republic; and the emperors, for the most part, were satisfied with preserving those dominions which had been acquired by the policy of the senate, the active emulations of the consuls, and the martial enthusiasm of the people. The seven first centuries were filled with a rapid succession of triumphs; but it was reserved for Augustus to relinquish the ambitious design of subduing the whole earth, and to introduce a spirit of moderation into the public councils. Inclined to peace by his temper and situation, it was easy for him to discover that Rome, in her present exalted situation, had much less to hope than to fear from the chance of arms; and that, in the prosecution of remote wars, the undertaking became every day more difficult, the event more doubtful, and the possession more precarious, and less beneficial. The experience of Augustus added weight to these salutary reflections, and effectually convinced him that, by the prudent vigor of his counsels, it would be easy to secure every concession which the safety or the dignity of Rome might require from the most formidable barbarians. Instead of exposing his person and his legions to the arrows of the Parthians, he obtained, by an honorable treaty, the restitution of the standards and prisoners which had been taken in the defeat of Crassus.
In present-day Rome, there exists a fitting symbol of Augustus’s peaceable intentions. I am referring to the Ara Pacis, or Altar of Peace, which presents Augustus and his family in a religious procession. Here are no swords or helmets or military cloaks. According to Adrian Goldsworthy in his biography of Augustus, the image symbolizes “the harmony of the family and the assurance … offered for the future.”
Yesterday, I took the E-Line train to downtown Los Angeles, encountering on the way a whole slew of tech gremlins that threatened to put the kibosh on the trip.
To begin with, I parked my car at the Expo Bundy station lot. Payment was by credit card at a parking machine which featured an LCD screen. Since Los Angeles summers are extremely bright, and the sun was shining onto the screen, I had to guess what the machine was trying to tell me. Eventually, I made it through the process—even though, for some reason, the system did not remember the car license plate number associated with my TAP card.
Then I had to go through the turnstile. Whoops! The system didn’t recognize my TAP card, so I had to sneak a free ride on MetroRail. After spending time at the Central Library, I took a DASH bus to Union Station, close by the headquarters of the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA). They checked my card, told me I still had $2.00 in stored value on my card, and added an additional $20.00 at my request.
I had tried to re-charge my TAP card the day before in Santa Monica, but “the system is down,” so I was directed to a machine at the Santa Monica MetroRail station. Of course, it was down.
Whatever happened to those days when high tech held such promise? Now doing simple everyday things lead to unwelcome interactions with badly designed machines programmed by people who have no idea how to interact with a human being. Did no one ever think of checking that LCD screens are illegible in direct sunlight? Did no one think at all?
I did not use Swasthi’s Recipes for my own keema recipe, but I chose the picture because it kind of looks like my own recipe. Generally speaking, Martine does not like the dishes I cook to please myself, probably because hot chiles are involved; and her digestion is too delicate to admit any hot peppers to the mix.
So, from time to time, I cook what looks and sort of tastes like an Indian curry, but without any of the hot stuff. This is one such recipe, and it’s actually good enough for me to like it. On my personal serving, however, I add red pepper flakes to give it some heat.
Turn the flame on your range to high. I begin with about a quarter cup of sunflower seed oil into which I have dropped some black mustard seeds and some coriander seeds (jeera) when the oil is hot enough to sizzle.
I slice one large or two small onions and add them to the oil.
For meat, I use one pound of Kroger’s ground turkey, preferably 80% fat free. (If it’s 90%+ fat free, it doesn’t taste as good.) Break up the ground turkey.
Salt to taste. At this point, I add a couple of large dollops of combined Indian garlic and ginger paste. Also: several tablespoons of turmeric, ground cumin, ground coriander, and Hungarian Szeged paprika.
While that mix is cooking, I wash a cup of Thai Jasmine long-grained rice from Trader Joe and drain, repeating the process until the water is clear. Dump the rice into the meat and onion mixture and add 2 to 2½ cups of water. Stir well.
Cut up a few ripe tomatoes and chop them coarsely.
The rest of the ingredients are frozen: I like to add several handfuls of frozen mixed vegetables, frozen peas, frozen lima beans, and frozen Potatoes O’Brien.
Cover, lower the flame, and stir every few minutes to keep the mix from sticking to the bottom of the pan.
George Mackay Brown (1921-1996) spent most of his life in Stromness, Orkney, which he always called by its original Norse name of Hamnavoe. If you want to go to the Orkneys, either you fly to the small airport at Kirkwall from Aberdeen or Wick; or you take the ferry from Scrabster (just west of Thurso) to Stromness.
I have been to Orkney twice. The first time, I stayed in Stromness at the house of an old couple named the Linklaters. Dinner consisted of potatoes prepared two or three different ways. At that time, I met George Mackay Brown after I stepped outside from the local Stromness bookstore bearing several books by him.
Here is a poem about seven men who, years ago, went to the market in Hamnavoe and what happened to them.
Hamnavoe Market
They drove to the market with ringing pockets.
Folster found a girl Who put wounds on his face and throat. Small and diagonal, like red doves.
Johnston stood beside the barrel. All day he stood there. He awoke in a ditch, his mouth full of ashes.
Grieve bought a balloon and a goldfish. He swung through the air. He fired shotguns, tolled pennies, ate sweet fog from a stick.
Heddle was at the market also. I know nothing of his activities. He is and always was a quiet man.
Garson went three rounds with a negro boxer, And received thirty shillings, Much applause, and an eye loaded with thunder.
Where did they find Flett? They found him in a blazing circle, All flame and blood, a new Salvationist.
A gypsy saw in the hand of Halcro Great strolling herds, harvests, a proud woman. He wintered in the poorhouse.
They drove home from the Market under the stars Except for Johnston, Who lay in a ditch, his mouth full of dying fires.
It is strange to be suddenly confronted by truth in places that one had not thought to look for it. Such was the case this evening when I encountered it in a little-known mystery novel set in Bangkok. The Sonchai Jitgpleecheep novels of John Burdett have been a recent preoccupation of mine during this hot and seemingly endless summer in Southern California. Then, like a Buddhist burst of contemplation, there it was a fifth of the way through Bangkok Asset, the sixth novel in the series:
Man has made astonishing strides recently in all things inessential. The price we’ve paid is enormous. Stuck with an infantile description of reality that cannot come to terms with death or even lesser challenges, the eternal infant must torture himself for lifetime after lifetime, probably without end.
This is what happens when one is a serious bookworm. The truth is out there, even in seemingly unusual places, like genre series novels.
Sometime this month, I’m going to tackle the Collected Stories of William Faulkner. For some reason, I’ve always liked to read Faulkner during the hottest month of the year. I might suddenly find some pearl of wisdom that stands out, or I might not. On the other hand, I might read some arrant piece of trash an find myself at the edge of a cliff that stretches to the horizon.
For the entire month of July, Southern California has been enduring not only a heat wave, but a humid heat wave. Granted that the temperature farther inland has been much worse than what I have had to endure living a scant two miles from the beach as I do. When it’s 80° Fahrenheit here (27° Celsius), it’s well over 100° Fahrenheit (38° Celsius) in the valleys and deserts.
My brother Dan lives in the Coachella Valley, where the mercury has topped 117° Fahrenheit (47° Celsius) at times. No wonder that he is considering a move to Northern California.
In the sixty years I have lived in Southern California, I have never experienced anything like this. It is quite evident that the entire world is in the grip of some strange weather conditions. The fires in France and Spain are like nothing I have ever seen in Europe. And the constant humidity from tropical storms wending westward from Mexico have sent waves of humid air circulating over the Southwest.
Every day, the weather forecast is virtually the same, even looking forward for the next seven days.
I don’t know where all this is heading over the next ten or twenty years. Certainly no place good. We seem to have left the Little Ice Age that began in the 14th century in the rearview mirror. Maybe the earth has decided to give us up as a bad lot and condemned the human race to become crispy critters. No doubt we had it coming to us.
One of my favorite French poems is Arthur Rimbaud’s “Le Bateau Ivre,” translated as “The Drunken Boat.” The reader gets a feeling of strangeness floating down the various waters of this world. My favorite line in the original French is:
Et ravie, un noyé pensif parfois descend
My translation:
And, rapt, a pensive drowned body at times floats by
Here is “The Drunken Boat” in its entirety:
The Drunken Boat
As I was going down impassive Rivers, I no longer felt myself guided by haulers: Yelping redskins had taken them as targets And had nailed them naked to colored stakes.
I was indifferent to all crews, The bearer of Flemish wheat or English cottons When with my haulers this uproar stopped The Rivers let me go where I wanted.
Into the furious lashing of the tides More heedless than children’s brains the other winter I ran! And loosened Peninsulas Have not undergone a more triumphant hubbub
The storm blessed my sea vigils Lighter than a cork I danced on the waves That are called eternal rollers of victims, Ten nights, without missing the stupid eye of the lighthouses!
Sweeter than the flesh of hard apples is to children The green water penetrated my hull of fir And washed me of spots of blue wine And vomit, scattering rudder and grappling-hook
And from then on I bathed in the Poem Of the Sea, infused with stars and lactescent, Devouring the azure verses; where, like a pale elated Piece of flotsam, a pensive drowned figure sometimes sinks;
Where, suddenly dyeing the blueness, delirium And slow rhythms under the streaking of daylight, Stronger than alcohol, vaster than our lyres, The bitter redness of love ferments!
I know the skies bursting with lightning, and the waterspouts And the surf and the currents; I know the evening, And dawn as exalted as a flock of doves And at times I have seen what man thought he saw!
I have seen the low sun spotted with mystic horrors, Lighting up, with long violet clots, Resembling actors of very ancient dramas, The waves rolling far off their quivering of shutters!
I have dreamed of the green night with dazzled snows A kiss slowly rising to the eyes of the sea, The circulation of unknown saps, And the yellow and blue awakening of singing phosphorous!
I followed during pregnant months the swell, Like hysterical cows, in its assault on the reefs, Without dreaming that the luminous feet of the Marys Could constrain the snout of the wheezing Oceans!
I struck against, you know, unbelievable Floridas Mingling with flowers panthers’ eyes and human Skin! Rainbows stretched like bridal reins Under the horizon of the seas to greenish herds!
I have seen enormous swamps ferment, fish-traps Where a whole Leviathan rots in the rushes! Avalanches of water in the midst of a calm, And the distances cataracting toward the abyss!
Glaciers, suns of silver, nacreous waves, skies of embers! Hideous strands at the end of brown gulfs Where giant serpents devoured by bedbugs Fall down from gnarled trees with black scent!
I should have liked to show children those sunfish Of the blue wave, the fish of gold, the singing fish. —Foam of flowers rocked my drifting And ineffable winds winged me at times.
At times a martyr weary of poles and zones, The sea, whose sob created my gentle roll, Brought up to me her dark flowers with yellow suckers And I remained, like a woman on her knees…
Resembling an island tossing on my sides the quarrels And droppings of noisy birds with yellow eyes And I sailed on, when through my fragile ropes Drowned men sank backward to sleep!
Now I, a boat lost in the foliage of caves, Thrown by the storm into the birdless air I whose water-drunk carcass would not have been rescued By the Monitors and the Hanseatic sailboats;
Free, smoking, topped with violet fog, I who pierced the reddening sky like a wall, Bearing, delicious jam for good poets Lichens of sunlight and mucus of azure,
Who ran, spotted with small electric moons, A wild plank, escorted by black seahorses, When Julys beat down with blows of cudgels The ultramarine skies with burning funnels;
I, who trembled, hearing at fifty leagues off The moaning of the Behemoths in heat and the thick Maelstroms, Eternal spinner of the blue immobility I miss Europe with its ancient parapets!
I have seen sidereal archipelagos! and islands Whose delirious skies are open to the sea-wanderer: —Is it in these bottomless nights that you sleep and exile yourself, Million golden birds, o future Vigor? –
But, in truth, I have wept too much! Dawns are heartbreaking. Every moon is atrocious and every sun bitter. Acrid love has swollen me with intoxicating torpor O let my keel burst! O let me go into the sea!
If I want a water of Europe, it is the black Cold puddle where in the sweet-smelling twilight A squatting child full of sadness releases A boat as fragile as a May butterfly.
No longer can I, bathed in your languor, o waves, Follow in the wake of the cotton boats, Nor cross through the pride of flags and flames, Nor swim under the terrible eyes of prison ships.
The last few years have been tough on independent restaurants. It seems there are fewer every year. In a way, I can understand it. To work at running a full-service restaurant means surrendering to a life of drudgery. Managing a staff of cooks, waiters, busboys, cashiers, and maintenance personnel requires the skills of a military leader plus that of a chief executive officer, or CEO.
This last week, I have been studying a Lonely Planet guide to Singapore, which gave me some ideas. There are, of course, full service restaurants on the island; but they are mostly for the well-to-do who are likely to order a variety of dishes accompanied by wine or liquor. A certain number of these will continue to exist.
But for most people in Singapore, all the excitement is in the various “hawker centers” scattered throughout the city-state. These are largish dining halls with booths specializing in one or more dishes. An effort is made to have a variety of dishes represented. It wouldn’t work if everyone were selling pizza or hamburgers. To see how this might work, check out this influencer video on YouTube:
In it, you will visit a number of hawker centers to find the best purveyors of typical Singaporean dishes. The video is about an hour long, but you’ll get the idea in the first fifteen minutes.
Imagine an American hawker centers where you might have the following food stalls: hamburgers, pizza, tacos, desserts, sub sandwiches, soups, salads, pasta, chicken, hot dogs, barbecue, deli sandwiches, omelets, pancakes, souvlaki, Indian curries, hummus and moutabal, Greek mezze, gyro sandwiches, vegetarian and vegan foods, Korean foods, teriyaki, and so on ad infinitum.
In a space the size of a shopping mall food court, you could have a larger variety of foods. No longer would friends and families dining out have to sacrifice their tastes because the the loudest, most insistent member of the party insisted on having his/her way.
One of the greatest villains of the Old West was not a robber or a cutthroat. He was the author of a book entitled The Emigrant’s Guide to Oregon and California, published in 1845. In it, the author. one Lansford Hastings, recommended an improved route for wagon trains headed to California:
The most direct route, for the California emigrants, would be to leave the Oregon route, about two hundred miles east from Fort Hall; thence bearing West Southwest, to the Salt Lake; and thence continuing down to the bay of St. Francisco, by the route just described.
The only problem was that the author did not know what he was talking about. According to Wikipedia,
The cutoff left the Oregon Trail at Fort Bridger in Wyoming, passed through the Wasatch Range, across the Great Salt Lake Desert, an 80-mile nearly water-less drive, looped around the Ruby Mountains, and rejoined the California Trail about seven miles west of modern Elko (also Emigrant Pass).
Unfortunately, the Donner Party followed Hastings’s advice as published, although he himself never took that route through the Great Salt Lake Desert. What is more, he passed on to emigrants the fake news that Mexican authorities would stop them if they took the safer route through what is now Southern Idaho.
The result: The Donner party did not reach the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California until winter had set in. They were snowbound near Truckee Lake (now Donner Lake) at an altitude of 7,088 feet (2,160 meters). A number of the party died in the savage winter of 1846, and there was some cannibalism before rescue parties reached the survivors.
Below is a picture of Lansford Hastings around the time his guide was published:
Tarnmoor 
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