More than my share of mash

Oh, the days of Hippo Burger on Van Ness! Poor Van Ness that tuxedoed millionaire turned gamin (one of my favorite words from a Ramones song). Hippo was where a hippie friend ordered Welsh rarebit. Of course, I have had more than my share of bangers and mash lately, something I thought I would never eat. It is proper to purchase good bangers, use real potatoes for your mash (topped with green onions) and add Guinness and yellow onions to the gravy. Cook the heck out of the bangers, they should be blackened with the skin almost falling off. A friend of mine who says he does not like "encased meats" has never had bangers.

The Hippo? She was drawn by Wolo. Van Ness still has the grand auto showrooms designed by Pfleuger , Maybeck, Rem Koolhaus, and Julia Morgan. Most of them are now multiplexes.

Devoir

April 11, 1865.--I have been measuring and making a trial of the new gray plaid which is to take the place of my old mountain shawl. The old servant which has been my companion for ten years, and which recalls to me so many poetical and delightful memories...The shawl, besides, is the only chivalrous article of dress which is still left to the modern traveler...and by means of which he may still do his devoir to fair women! How many times mine has served them for a cushion, a cloak, a shelter, on the damp grass of the Alps, on seats of hard rock, or in the sudden cool of the pinewood, during the walks, the rests, the readings, and the chats of mountain life! How many kindly smiles it has won for me! Even its blemishes are dear to me, for each darn and tear has its story, each scar is an armorial bearing. This tear was made by a hazel tree under Jaman--that by the buckle of a strap on the Frohnalp--that, again, by a bramble at Charnex; and each time fairy needles have repaired the injury. -- Frederik Amiel Journal

The poet and the emperor

Junk Thief just posted a story called Spice Interrupted where a character named cousin Cedric has a beard longer on one side than the other. I immediately thought, of course, of Ras Makonnen the governor of Harrar. Posing in full uniform (note his realm in the background) Ras holds a gun purchased from French symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud who ran a sort of a 7-Eleven store in Harrar. They were on friendly terms. Ras Makonnen is the father of Emperor Haile Selassie I.