The mood on Election Night was as tense as a cold vintage Condrieu inside the dank, red velvet-lined interiors of Bern’s steakhouse in Tampa, Florida. Home of the largest private wine collection in the world…
Posts published in November 2012
I met Fred at his Philo Ridge Vineyards tasting room in downtown Boonville. With manager Jill Derwinski holding the fort we sat down and, with a bottle of delicious pinot gris at hand, began our…
ARE YOUR HATCHES BATTENED? Storms beginning now will drench us so thoroughly for the next five or six days we're assuming Highway 128 will be closed at Navarro by week's end. Even the cops are…
Greetings one and all. If you are sitting comfortably then I shall begin. Hopefully you have recovered from America’s Finest Holiday that took place last Thursday and have by now finally finished off the last…
During World War I, my maternal grandmother grew up on a ranch in the sand hills above the North Platte River of Nebraska. My great-grandparents, Dennis and Mary Emily Ward, raised my mother’s mother as…
Immortality is a bummer for a genius. It lasts too long and it's very noisy. It's hard to rest in peace when millions praise you day and night, on full volume. Not shabby, Herr Mozart!…
“I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright.” — Henry David Thoreau I am writing the first draft of this essay with…