Interlude I. The Barbarian Kings

Intro & Preface & contents

Previous: Autumn XXV. Autumn to winter + cable car

We are being taunted with forecasts of rain, but so far we keep having our usual Indian Summer weather. It is warmer and sunnier now than in the summer. At an event I worked recently, the fog came in but the fresh smell of fog was accented by a whiff of ozone, as the winds continue to occasionally blow from the land rather than from the sea. As I have strangely pleasant childhood associations with ozone, I enjoyed the phenomenon. (I say strangely pleasant because those years were very difficult at home and I would have predicted that my associations would be negative.)

It’s around Noon and I’m seeking respite -- at The Other Cafe -- from the noise of surface preparation for painting the outside of my apartment walls (I’m usually here later in the day) and the very pleasant smells of meal preparation rise to my mezzanine table on their way out the windows. Instead of the coffee roasting smells I’m familiar with here, these are herb and panini grilling smells. Excellent advertising.

Reading about Foucault means also reading about Sartre which of course includes references to Café de Flore. (The most famous cafe in The Castro since the late 1970s has been the Café Flore. It would be interesting to know if Foucault frequented it while here, or if he completely avoided it. Either way...) I wonder if anyone has written linking food to intellectual thought? Can you tell anything about someone from their preference for rich Viennese pastry vs light Parisian pâtisserie? Would Hong Kong dim sum have pointed European intellectuals in a slightly different direction?  What were the favorite treats or dishes of famous thinkers? That last would be so interesting to know.

The Barbarian Kings.

While looking for something else, I rediscovered my notes from long ago for two books I wanted to write (or wanted to read, really).

Reading the history of the transition between the late Roman Empire and Medieval Europe, I was fascinated by how the Teutonic tribes had over-run and come to rule vast areas of Europe that had been more or less “civilized” for centuries. And of how the descendants of these outsiders continued to rule into the 20th, and now the 21st, century. In some ways, Britain is actually the best example of this phenomenon (though France is probably the most obvious) as even the Germanic Angles, Saxons, Danes and Jutes had been subjugated by the Normans in 1066, and more recently everyone, Celts and Anglo-Saxons alike, had come under the rule of the Houses of Hanover and then Saxe-Coburg and Gotha -- or Windsor, if you prefer.

Now that genetic research is so much easier, it would be interesting to know to what extent the surviving aristocratic families actually differ from the common man they rule over, and also how similar they are to their Barbarian ancestors. One would imagine that even the most exclusive gene pool would get diluted after over a millennium of breeding.

Next: Interlude II. Admirals.