We drove off to Knoxville, to my cousin Margaret’s house, and had time to sneak in a nice walk in a quarried area just outside town.  We walked downtown to Kaizen, a little izakaya with dumplings and noodle bowls for dinner, all delicious.  There was a pig diagram on the wall, and I noticed another one on a bicep peeking out from a shirtsleeve.  As we left, I got the guy to pose so I could get both in one shot.

Margaret (who is from Kansas) has her PhD in philosophy, and specializes in aesthetics. She is also an accomplished violinist and flutist.  She teaches logic and other classes at the University of Tennessee, and we had some great conversations, including one about belief.  Is a belief something that you actually regard as true, or is it something which you know deep down is false, but that you have chosen to pretend is true?

Wednesday we had a great Southern breakfast at OliBea, which had a very friendly waiter.  The day was somewhat lazy, though we did walk downtown to see the art museum; the history museum was closed.  We ate at a nice Southern place downtown, and then visited Margaret’s boyfriend Andrew’s law office.  He is interested in Russian history, and has been quite an eBay collector of old military uniforms and other memorabilia.  He has some of them displayed there, which ought to surprise his clients, but they don’t notice, for the most part.  Their minds are on their own problems, not Czar Nicholas’s.