Thanks

It is easy to be thankful when everything is going well and life is moving along smoothly.  The past eighteen months have been anything but smooth around these parts. I have always found that it is in times of trouble when all of the things to be thankful for become more clear.

To that end, and especially on this American day of Thanksgiving, I would like to say how thankful I am.  For the happy conclusion to the the past year or so of difficulty in my family.  For the people around me.  Irish Redheads.  Future Rock Stars. Co-workers.  Business partners.  Friends near and far.  Neighbors.  Bartenders.  All of the highest calibre. 

And for all of you.  The Epics who still come by regularly even though I have not been publishing as much as I would have liked. The others in the blogosphere who create fascinating things every day for the diversion of the rest of us.

Thankfulness in the midst of difficulties.  So many people are feeling the same way today.  I encourage one and all to look around.  Whether the ground is smooth or rough.  And focus in on the good.  The positive. The lovely. The stimulating.  The grand.  All these things are out there. If we only look for them.  Paying attention in this fashion is truly what Epic living is all about.  Whether or not you are having a holiday today, please take a moment and indulge in thankfulness.  It is the best celebrational feast you can ever have.

Virginia Heat

Mr. Earnest was, as Anthony Bourdain would say, a cook--not a "Chef".  Specializing in the outdoor preparation of various meals such as roasted meats cooked slow over hickory and apple wood.  A master of his craft.  I first met him about two weeks into a three year idyll in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.  As hard as it may now seem to believe, I was not a drinker until then.  A top flight legal education cured me of abstinance.

At one point that first evening, emboldened by the curliques of smoke rising into the Virginia stars, I engaged Mr. Earnest in conversation about his cooking techniques and how he loved the area where he grew up.  Late, when the fire was burning low, he offered me a taste of bourbon.  I loved the southern elixir at first taste.  I found out that although a lot of bourbon was made within a few square miles in the state of Kentucky, Virginia had its own brand.  Appropriately, Virginia Gentleman. 

Over my three year residence, I came to taste a lot more bourbon of various sorts.  Ate a lot more great food.  Inevitably, the time came to leave.  Mr. Earnest gave me a bottle of VG.  I gave him a big chefs hat and few other items.  Including my far away telephone number.  Just in case he ever needed the services of a new lawyer that didn't know anything about anything.  He never did.

Time flies.  Tastes change.  Improve or not.  I had not thought of those cookouts nor of that bourbon for quite some time.  Due to the intervention of numerous other details some would describe as "growing up".  Last week, I was grocery shopping and I passed down the aisle where they display various sauces.  The beautiful bottle shown above jumped out at me.  Rather expensive but I had to have it.  Virginia Gentleman.  Bourbon.  Chipotle.  Hot Sauce.  How could I go wrong?

I admit, I had a lot of reservations about it.  Lets face it, the history of sauces branded with unassociated manufacturer names is not a happy one.  In fact, the odds bet was it would be awful.  But the artwork on the label and the memories the name evoked removed any hesitation.  The question remained, would it be worth eating?

I am very happy to report that this is the best sauce of its type I have ever tried.  It is hot.  But smoky hot.  With a bite after the bite.  A deep flavor.  Redolent of crisp Autumn skies, wood smoke, roasted meats.  After my first taste, I have enthusiastically applied this sauce to all sorts of foods, always with superb results.  I am laying in a case for my personal use. 

The best thing about this sauce for me, though, is that it brings back wonderful memories of old friends.  Mr. Earnest would certainly approve.

Armistice 2011

This is one of the American cemeteries at the Marne area battlefields in France.  Hundreds of thousands of men died here, on all sides, in 1916.  The novelist Paul Dutourd noted that before 1918 there were no war cemeteries in France.  Afterward they were everywhere.  It was all supposed to end today, at eleven in the morning.  Forever. 

In America we began with a remembrance of The Armistice.  After some years, there was of course more evil.  More battles.  More cemeteries.  We finally changed it to a day to remember the valor and sacrifice of all Veterans.  Which, even for people with a particular interest in World War I, is probably a good thing.  It keeps us reminded that the sacrifices of World War I, World War II, and all the rest, are part of a continuum.  A line which we can all at least pray will one day reach its end.

I am rather proud of my previous Armistice/Veterans Day posts.  You can find last year's here. 

Royalty

I was on the road for the first time in a good while last week.  While wandering through a major airport en route to an easy connection, I saw a young woman doing the same thing. In a much less easy manner.  Obviously short on time.  A rather small lady.  Almost a girl.  With a VERY small baby in a papoose carrier in front of her.  Car seat in one hand. Pulling a roller suitcase with the other.  The baby peeked out at me from the papoose carrier wide eyed as his mom strode past, no doubt thinking "THIS is the way it is going to be"? 

She did not have the air of someone used to today's air travel.  Rather of someone thrown into the hurly-burly of a huge airport out of absolute necessity.  For the first time.  On a tight schedule.

I mentioned that she strode past me.  Her small frame totally burdened with the demands of the campaign in which she found herself.  But the look on her face.  One of undiluted determination.  Motherly ferocity in its purist form.

Any father knows this look.  Any man who has had the opportunity to observe a woman in action while displaying it, especially for the first time, feels a DNA coded flush of respect that verges upon the martial.  That mother and son WERE going to make the connecting flight, with NO loss of necessary materiel and the child WOULD be fine as well.  The battle would be won.  God help any force obstructing her path.

The focus.  The determination.  The endless attention to detail.  Such is what makes a certain sort of great mother.  Of the warrior-princess class.  Because there was no mistake about it.  This young, disheveled, harried woman had royal blood.  Of the most important kind. 

In my mind I gave her a courtly bow.  A salute, really.  From a safe distance.  And then I went on my way.

C.D. At 67

Today she is sixty-seven.  Still practicing her craft with passion.  Drinking the occasional bourbon on the rocks or a whisky sour.  Never examining her work once it is complete--she doesn't watch her own films.  Living for the story but never, in the words of her most recent director Francois Ozon, being superior to the part.  The 2011 Deneuve film La Potiche [The Trophy Wife] is a particularly lovely performance of a coddled and subjugated 1970s business wife who comes out of her shell in a marvelous way. She admires Marilyn Monroe and Carole Lombard and it shows in her ability to [again quoting Ozon] be "very elegant in ridiculous situations".  That ability sounds like an Epic triumph.  For, at the end of the day, what better description could any Epic hope for?

I hope all will join me today in a tot of bourbon on the rocks to celebrate a truly original and marvelous lady.

Attribution Note:  The quotes and photo used above come from thewashingtonpost.com dated today.

A Tale Of Two Hats

I have only tried to wear two real hats in my adult life.  By "real" hats, I mean non-caps.  I also exclude a very sharp wool cap that I wear in deepest winter.  You cannot count a life extending necessity as a sartorial luxury.

My first real hat was purchased in my late twenties.  I was living in the deep American South, had a good job, was dressing well for the first time in my life.  One day I went all in.  I purchased a Brooks Brothers straw boater with a red and navy ribbon band.  Not on sale, either.  I broke it out on Easter Sunday with my double breasted Cable Car Clothiers seersucker suit.  Every woman I met that was over sixty melted for this outfit.  My wife, not so much.  Needless to say I felt rather self-conscious being the only male wearing a hat, a boater nonetheless, and I got more than a little tired of the dagger looks I was getting from the men with the over-sixty crowd of women admirers I had gathered like some form of 1890s Pied Piper.  I wore it the next few years but with dwindling enthusiasm.  My boater now resides in a safe spot in my closet.  On a high shelf.

My second real hat was purchased two weeks ago and is shown above.  A very sharp grey number.  Sort of Frank inspired if I do say so.  I tried it on in the store and loved it right away.  My wife was deeply silent.  Undeterred, I made the purchase, right in front of her, and carried my new treasure home.  I wore it for the first time today.  To work.  With a black turtleneck sweater, charcoal gray gaberdine Paul Stuart trousers, and a wool blazer in even darker gray.  I have to say, I felt fantastic.  I got many compliments.  From those outside my family anyhow.  And I wore it everywhere without a single feeling of uncertainty.

Then it hit me.  This is one of the great Epic gifts of being over fifty.  The freedom to don any headwear you want without any other thought than "I am fifty two years old.  If I want to wear a sharp hat out in public, I will damn well wear it.".  I feel entire habidashorial vistas opening before me.  Ascots.  Akubras. Balmorals. Berets. Bowlers. Chupallas. Cowboys. Fez'. Fedoras. Hombergs and all the rest.  And, on the distant horizon, next summer a reintroduction of the boater!!!!!!

Sartorial Save

I am a person who likes to dress.  The typical business day, I am starched and pressed.  Primarily to raise my enjoyment level but also to also give people I meet the right impression. That I may be, for example, a 52 year old professional that knows what he is doing.  Funny how easy it is to fool people.

In any event, some of these days for this Epic have not been amenable to clothing preparation.  Other family issues have been intervening and have pushed my clothes down the priority list.  As a result, on a day like today, when I have ironed nothing and it shows, I go to my sartorial lifesaver rule.  I put on the most expensive blazer I have.  This gorgeous Brioni single breasted number is the one. Perfect fabric.  Buttoning and unbuttoning "surgeon's" cuffs.  A soft, buttery color.  Got it for a couple hundred on Ebay.  It fits me like it was tailored for my "physique".  

This way, when I wrinkle my way into a shop on an errand for my wife on the way home from work, they will at least look at me and think that I knew what I was doing at some point in the not too distant past.  And that I carried a reminder of that time along for the ride.