Sublime sophistication
With the overlapping religious holidays of Passover and Easter, it’s time to explore kosher wine produced in adherence to Jewish dietary laws. Some rabbinical scholars contend that the fruit Eve gave Adam was in fact the grape from which wine was made. We all know that drunkenness causes one’s inhibitions to fall away. A translated […]
The nature of my game
Pleased to meet you Hope you guessed my name But what’s puzzling you Is the nature of my game From Sympathy for the Devil by The Rolling Stones So, I guess it’s time someone came clean about all this. You wanted to watch cat videos to your heart’s content, hiding anonymously behind a computer screen, […]
Close to my heart
There are so many causes. There are so many reasons to help. Recently, I made a donation to Mike Foley’s Ride to Conquer Cancer. Maybe he’s a cancer survivor. Maybe he knows someone who succumbed to, or survived, cancer. I don’t know, but I do know at least a dozen people who are battling cancer—in […]
Closing out the season in Florida
As we enter the final week of regular season hockey in the National Hockey League, there are a few playoff spots yet to be determined. Such is not the case for the Florida Panthers, as they saw their hopes slip away some time ago. Rather than languish in agony, the powers-that-be took to the phones […]
Crafted with pride
Think of Japan and alcohol and you are likely to think of sake. And, while we call sake a rice wine, its fermentation process is actually closer to beer than wine. Why don’t we ever hear of Japanese wine? Climate may be one of the reasons. Even though the main island shares a common latitude […]
The power of sappy movies
Did you catch the news about movies and relationships? The New York Times reported recently on a study conducted at the University of Rochester and published in The Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. Some 174 couples were involved. One set of couples formed a control group, and it turns out their separation rate in […]
Spring cleaning
So, in my everyday life, I write. I have always written. I can’t think of a time when I wasn’t filling a notebook with writing. Writing isn’t who I am. Writing is what I do. Today, Sunday, while looking out my kitchen window, I’m not thinking about writing, I’m thinking about cleaning. You know, springcleaning. […]
Sam conclusions
It was the morning I heard the shrill cry of the red-winged blackbird that I found the note stuck to my front door. “We’re back” it simply read. Back? That time already? I mumbled to no one. It was signed ‘Liz and Chris’, which sorta meant that my assignment to care for Sam, the Embden […]
Great voices from the past
I had an instant last week when all of the great voices of baseball echoed in my brain. One at a time, naturally, as there just isn’t room for all of them: Vin Scully, Harry Caray, Tom Cheek, Red Barber, Ernie Harwell, Jon Miller, Jack Buck, Tony Kubek, Early Wynn, Phil Rizutto, Bill White, Mel […]
Fine weather makes fine wine
After varietal selection and site location, the most important factor for a vineyard is the yearly impact of weather on the harvest. Temperature, rainfall, humidity, wind and sunlight combine to determine the quality of any given vintage. If the temperature drops below minus 15 for a prolonged period in winter, dormant vines will die. This […]