HAPPY SUNDAY!!

Timepiece

Lately I've noticed men following a trend of big, bulky, and bedazzled watches. I don't understand it.  Doesn't look good with a suit, doesn't look good dressed down.  Here are a few examples of what not to do, or rather, what to do if you want to come across as boorish and uncouth.

Myself, I like the clean lines of the more classic look.  This is my daily wear for brown.  A great Baume & Mercier that can be had for under $2k.



When sailing I sport this blue-faced Seiko.  Simple and classic, but inexpensive enough that I won't cry too much when it gets smashed against a winch.

Someday (most likely never), when I can justify spending $150k+ on adorning my wrist, I'll be donning this stunning beauty, an Italian 1969 Patek Philippe. 

Still on the fence for a black daily. 

Can We PLEASE Bring Back the Tophat...

Your preference?



I have one jacket with no vents... Still don't know how I feel about it.  Though, to be fair, it is a dark navy wool with a large rust check.  It pairs remarkably well with a striped tie and muted gingham.  

HAPPY SUNDAY!!!

It is slowly warming up around these parts.  Today saw the first appearance this year of my ghost-white ankles avec sperrys, sans socks.  Got me thinkin...  Ten more degrees and I can look forward to one of these

from thekitchn.com

By far my most enjoyed libation come late spring is the dark and stormy.  Now I know there are those that proclaim authenticity in only concoctions made with Gosling's, or Barritt's, or both.  Me, I'm ambivalent.  So long as it's cold and alcoholic, I've got a smile on my face.

So here's to hoping it warms up soon, and stocking up on rum and ginger beer!

CHEERS TO THE PEOPLE OF EGYPT!

Freedom (debatable at this point) is always sweeter when won with non-violence.  Let's hope this goes well.

Greatest. Aria. Ever.

I don't know about you, but every time I hear this song I think...  Too many drugs, old loves and dead friends.  Cheers to melancholy nostalgia.

HAPPY SUNDAY!!!

From Allie Baker's http://www.thehemingwayproject.com/.  A wonderful, wonderful blog.

Please Check Out...

http://www.windtraveler.blogspot.com/  They do a fantastic blog.

From their blog.

God Bless the English

Aside from her being a conservative's wife, I'm not quite sure what all the fuss is about...

If you're like me...

Then you like to cook.  Most times I tend to tie myself to French cuisine, as its my favorite to cook.  I occasionally veer off to Basque and some northern Italian.  Then I heard this:

http://www.npr.org/2011/02/04/133430214/chef-jeff-collects-soul-food-through-the-generations

Great bit on NPR about a gentleman who, after a brief prison stint, became an award-winning author and cooking-show star.  Half history, half cookbook, his most recent work documents traditional soulfood and the stories it comes with.

Thus, I will most certainly be venturing forth.  African-American cuisine, a first for me.

This Week's Books

I read a lot of books.  I tend to focus primarily in the area of my undergraduate study, and that is 19th Century English and French fiction.  My favorite being Thomas Hardy and his pastorals, Dickens and his characters, Flaubert and his social criticism.  I am also quite partial to Hemingway and his nostalgic melancholy.  That said, I do venture off the beaten path every now and again.  Currently I am wading through a bit of medieval history.  I just finished this wonderful work:

One-third of Western Europe's population died between 1348 and 1350, victims of the Black Death. Noted medievalist Norman Cantor tells the story of the pandemic and its widespread effects in In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World it Made. 

Good read.  A bit sporadic but very informative.  Then these two just came in the mail today:

In A Distant Mirror, historian Barbara Tuchman reveals in harrowing detail a "tortured century" with parallels to our own. People in the fourteenth century were subjected to natural and man-made disasters, including the Hundred Years' War, the Crusades, insurrection, lawlessness, the Schism of the Church, massacres of Jewish people, and the Black Death, which claimed the lives of nearly half the population living between India and Iceland. Barbara Tuchman introduces a nobleman, Enguerrand de Coucy (1340-1397), a "whole man in a fractured time," who takes the reader through the century and gives a personalized context through which to understand the events and attitudes of the day.

And the most anticipated...

In the near-glut of historical family studies, this is the first clearly focused on evidence about families medieval, English, and peasant. Hanawalt uses 3118 coroners' inquests into accidental deaths (mostly 14th century) and manorial court records (13th to early 16th century) to explore families' material environments, wealth, economic activities, life cycles, and surrogates. Nuclear groups created without good evidence of the so-called "Western European" or "Malthusian" marriage pattern lived in conjugal households where spouses were partners. Despite sociocultural changes, human biological needs made the family a tough and flexible institution. Hanawalt's sharp empirical corrective to much theoretical scholarship is informed with a humane understanding of medieval peasant life and belongs in college and public libraries.

Here's to a good weekend!

Sporting my new plaid bowtie with a rough tweed tomorrow.  Still need to find some tortoise-shell frames to top it off.