Monday this and that...

This is a low resolution shot of the MLK Memorial that I took in the fall after the grand opening. I don't have a vote but personally feel that the hubbub about the paraphrased quote is misplaced and don't have a problem with it.

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I have the Del Mar Antique show this week. My booth is right next to the door and I get great visibility, all the cold air and barbeque smoke wafting in all day. Today I am coming down with a cold. Should make for an interesting week. Watch for my bitchiness quotient to go through the roof. If there is no business you may want to keep me away from tall buildings and sharp instruments.

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I have been pondering the notion of friendship of late. Being an itinerant drone missile brat in my youth, moving from one test base to another ( Edwards to White Sands and in a convoluted way to Pt. Magu) I went to a lot of different schools. This had advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that people didn't have a long time to build a dossier of infamy on you as often happens in a small town. If you found that a particular part of your character drove people nuts, you could tinker with the presentation and re tailor yourself at the next stop.

The disadvantage or the principal one is that you got used to cutting contacts with your friends. Serious abandonment issues.  Perhaps because of this, you witness a near pathological desire to maintain connection with the important people in my life, including several thousand of you close friends out there.

Last week I had made several overtures to a rather standoffish but very talented photographer to join my Fallbrook Shutters group. She made an interesting comment. She had a handfull of friends and you didn't get to join up easily. She said that she didn't pick names out of a phone book. I respect that. I am not so picky and can always use a new friend.

The reason I bring the whole issue up is that I have a friend, or let me rephrase that, I have an acquaintance that I like very much whom I have always considered a friend in the three or four years that I have known him. A college professor of greek and latin, last year he let me know that I was a typical follower of Plato and that he was from the other side, an Aristotelian. We made an agreement to not let this philosophic divide get in the way.

Yesterday he let me know that Aristotle believed in three types of friendship; friendships of utility, i.e. you are my "friend" because of that which you can provide for me, friendships of pleasure and virtuous friendships, the most exalted variety. These are all laid out in his book, Nicomachean Ethics.  A friendship of utility is the most shallow type of friendship, a friendship of pleasure might be what you could ascribe your relationship with the boys at the pub and a friendship of virtue the rare friendship that wishes the best for another person even though you gain nothing from it personally. Some psychologists are of the mind that even our most altruistic acts are performed because of some selfish motive, wanting to feed our ego's in some way or have the world look at us in a certain way. Almost impossible to do anything nice these days without looking like a liar or a marxist. Ayn Rand would be so happy.

I don't want to dive too much into old Aristotle but I was a bit startled when this good person that I call a friend said that our relationship was maybe moving out of a friendship of utility into one of the more exalted stratas. Because I sure would hate to think that any of the people that I honestly call my friends can accuse me of doing so for pure personal convenience.

Anyway, I am happy I am moving up on the list. That's cool.

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The Grand Tradition in Fallbrook had its first Foodie Night on Saturday. I wasn't going to go at first but I did. Faro Trupiano from Trupianos did an italian food cooking demonstration. Fallbrook Winery's Ira Gourvitz paired some of his award winning wines with the four course meal.

I have some small standing in our quaint little town as a person who knows his way around a knife and fork and thought that I should go. The event sold out and was even oversold at $65 per head. I sat at a table with a bunch of my best friends of both pleasure and virtue.

Food was mixed, event was great. Nice that everyone could get together and support a feast. Surprised at how many people I didn't know. Everyone learned something. Faro's great restaurant bread can't stand being out of his restaurant and got soft and mushy. Needs crust. I learned that cabernet sauvignon can be served with dessert. Who knew? Although I admittedly wasn't crazy about the placement. Wines were pretty good throughout the night.

Meal started with Pasta Fagioli infused with an herb sachet. I was at the wrong seat and had to crane the neck around to watch the cooking show. People that have grown up around these parts need their food spicy from too many hot chiles eaten in their lifetime. The soup lacked any punch. Might have been an easy save with some cracked red pepper. That segued to a really nice dish, Arroncini, deep fried risotto balls stuffed with ground beef and pancetta. Very tasty. We had torre filet mignon with a marinated vegetable sauce that was less successful, mine a bit cold. It is pretty hard to serve 80 plus plates at the same time and nail the timing. Dessert was a panne cota.

It was a nice night and will only get better. Neat social gathering, looking forward to the next attempt.

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We have been swamped with a plague of rabbits for the last two years. The whole area. We don't have a dog anymore, might fix that next week, so my front yard is pretty much a warren. As I opened my gate this morning, a huge coyote trotted by with a coney in his mouth.

The huge rabbit population has seemed to give rise to an equally big predator population. The coyotes are around in large numbers and the bobcats sightings are off the charts. Haven't seen a mountain lion in a couple of months. But I am seeing the bobcats almost daily. Saw a fawn colored bobcat kitten the other day. Leslie saw it a bit later than I did and tried to coax it to her car. I watched the dark parent scale a six foot fence like it was nothing, touching the top and swaying for a brief second before vanishing on the other side.

These guys are as savage as a bunch of souped up private equity venture capitalists. But the difference is they only kill when they are hungry, not merely for pleasure and they don't usually eat their victims alive.

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I was going to do a little politics but will spare you. I am sure that you are grateful.