Health Care Reform (or, Two Angry Jews with Stethoscopes)

I have only one hard and fast rule in life; never ever do anything that you think is a good idea while driving. I don't know why this rule works or how but it has served me well over the years. So, when I thought of the idea for this post while driving back from the America's Grape Country Wine Festival in Dunkirk this past weekend I was immediately disinclined to write it down (yes despite the fact that these are called 'blogs' we still have to write them). Undoubtedly I will pay for this decision to ignore that rule. Anyway here it is;

It had suddenly occurred to me that at the last few festivals I have been to I have encountered very angry female customers. They weren't angry at me, (at least I don't think so). I suspected somehow it had something to do with anxiety over the ongoing health care reform debate. At the Catskill summer fest there was a redhead who came up to the booth. She seemed nice enough despite several intimidating tattoos. She offered to trade a massage for a bottle of wine. Now, not that I mind getting massages from strange women with tattoos in the middle of the Greene County Building parking lot you understand but nevertheless, I declined her generous offer but as she seemed harmless enough and it seemed like a good deal I suggested my daughter, who was helping me at the show, take her up on it instead which promptly she did. When the local tatteuse came to collect her bottle from me she handed me her card from which I deduced from that she was Jewish,--and that was when I noticed she was angry,- very angry.
Probably partly encouraged by the wine, she had launched into a rather lengthy tirade about how she had been mistreated and misdiagnosed for her medical condition. Her frustration was immediately understandable to me. We who share a Jewish heritage but have not followed the societal stereotype to become doctors, lawyers or accountants, needless to say, still have need of those services. We feel we are entitled to a little better care and attention from our fellow jews particularly in the medical profession, it's only natural. This doesn't ever happen but still we feel entitled to rage at the democratic lackadaisalness demonstrated by overworked doctors who seem only anxious to find the next pill to prescribe. I nodded in somewhat abstract agreement as she railed on (in my defense I was distracted, worried about whether my credit card imprinting machine was imprinting correctly). I saw her point. Despite the continuing perceived indifference we persist in expecting a little more personal interest. You know, after 5,000 years you could offer me at least a plate of 'kishkas' with my electrocardiogram. Of course, as I said, it doesn't ever work that way and speaking for all the jews not identified with professional corporation after their name, just so you know, it makes us angry,--and we're packing.

So, when another middle aged woman came up to me this last weekend at the Chautauqua County Fairgrounds asking me somewhat angrily, 'Where is your winery' I proudly and abstractedly pointed on my laminated map from Staples smack at the Hudson Valley region.
"All our money you know goes down there you know." she asserted unequivocably, pointing at the region just south of where I was pointing.
"You know what I think?" She persisted emphatically perhaps sensing my indifference.
"What?" already intuiting the answer.
"They should cut this whole thing off, (indicating the metropolitan area) and let it drop into the ocean, or give it to New Jersey."
Now, I had lived in the Finger Lakes for ten years and I was very familiar with this sentiment that occurs with some frequency among some upstaters regarding the city that has the hubris to call itself the same name as the state and always looked at it as a kind of veiled racial and anti-immigrant prejudice.
But,
I really was in no mood to deal with this anti-downstate sentiment and so I immediately pointed out that to New Yorkers we were also considered upstaters, trying vainly to deflect her anger by creating some spurious bond that I did not feel. I had been on my feet for six hours amidst the flies heat and hubbub, selling at most six bottles the whole time. My patience and my internal censor were both laying in a noxious puddle on the concrete floor, then for some reason, just as with this blog, full knowing that I was heading for disaster but unable to control it I launched into the following tirade of my own;
"You know what I would like to cut off?"
"What?"
"I'd like to cut off my dog's balls."
I was treated to a look of shocked incredulity. I plowed ahead.
"Yeah, he is always peeing on my bed. He's a chihuahua and thinks my
mattress is one big pee pad."
The conjunctive use of the word 'pee' and 'balls' obviously had offended her more than the sentiment.
She didn't say anything else but just walked away probably thinking I was a little nuts.
Well, equating New York City with a pair of Chihuahua balls may have been a little bit crazy but I was one angry jew and I really felt much healthier after I
said this, as if I had had a mental massage. So, this is my response to the health care reform debate; Whatever they do it's fine with me so long as they don't cut off my balls or send an unlicensed massage therapist to kill my grandma and thanks yes, I do feel better already. Would you like a plate of 'kishkas' with that?
or, perhaps some rocky mountain oysters...?

Pitchman's Paradise (Death of a Salesman)

In the recent swirl of news coverage and subsequent furor over Michael Jackson's death the contemporaneous event of the passing of famous pitch-man Billy Mays was largely eclipsed. Mays was, even to the most casual observer, a true American original, a huckster, part con-man part show-man part self made entrepreneur in the mold of P.T. Barnum. He was a marketer extraordinaire.

Marketing, though widely despised among college graduates (and particularly feared by English majors), is in fact the grease with which the wheels of progress of the American dream proceed, it is also, when one comes down to it, largely a social interaction which is at root heartless and hollow, one which puts the practitioner in the role of observer, removed somewhere above the fray, calculating, making minute adjustments to his 'patter', the fuel for the engine of sales. What made Mays so distinctive and unique was that by sheer energy he lifted himself above that paradigm, he transcended the transcendence, he would have none of that, he was not just an inflated ego looking with a jaundiced eye for the next mark in the crowd, he was what most marketing experts will confess they dread and despise most; a sincere salesman. It is difficult to dissociate one's own ego from the process of sales. We are all marketing ourselves along with the product at least part of the time, Mays on the other hand wasn't selling anything but the product. That is what made him unique.

As you may have guessed, I have been thinking about wine marketing a lot in this season of farmer's markets, festivals and wine shows. There is in fact a certain skill one acquires wherein one can accentuate certain features of the wine and de-accentuate others depending on the buyer. However, when it comes down to it, the wine is either good or bad, it is either sick or healthy, only after that is it a wine you either like or don't like. You can, I have found, sell someone a bottle of wine that fundamentally they do not like. The question is, --why bother

I could write more here about the Bounty of the Hudson festival (my first real exposure to my fellow HV winemakers en-masse), my stint at Union Square Market, (the culmination of a lifelong dream), the Cold Spring farmer's market (stranger in paradise) or the upcoming Catskill event however, my feeling would be that I was merely telling tales out of school. The various and sundry shenanigans that go on to cast these different venues as mini green Peyton Places are the stuff of good story but in the end, unless they are transmuted into art by some means, it remains basically forgettable gossip which interests the participants more than anyone else. Thus I don't find them a suitable topic for a venue such as this, blogs, which are by definition a rather rawer form of communication.

Instead, let me talk about a subject that was close to the heart of pitchman Billy Mays, in his case as found in that (I have since determined somewhat overrated) product called Oxiclean and in wine in a process known and dreaded by all wine makers; oxidation. The fact is, unlike Oxiclean, the results of oxidation in wine are difficult to predict or quantify. The reasons for this are several;

1. there is always going to be a certain amount of oxidation occurring in wine
(unless it is pressed and bottled in outer space)
2. the oxidative processes have different outcomes depending on the compounds
in the wine which are oxidated (like the expression of genes in offspring some
characteristics become evident and some remain hidden) and,
3. the perception of oxidation is to a large degree related not to the mere presence
of oxidated compounds but to their volatility ('Seniors on Hondas' and 'Hells
Angels' are both motorcycle clubs).

Consequently, the term oxidized may refer to a variety of phenomena that occur in the wine and therefore the term is generally thrown around rather loosely to characterize almost any fault in the wine. The two most easily identifiable undesirable characteristics of oxidation are known to wine drinkers as either browning or production of acetylaldehyde. Browning is always evident to the eye, though moreso in white wines (but it can be seen in red wines with some effort) and acetylaldehide production is immediately always apparent as an overpowering nail polish smell. Both these are produced by oxidation but the former is generally a result of the oxidation of metallic compounds in the wine, while the second is a result of the oxidation of ethanols. It is to prevent the oxidation of ethanol from proceeding to volatilized acetylaldehyde that winemakers introduce SO2 which interrupts, but does not entirely prevent this process from occurring. The link in the chain just before the production of acetylaldehyde is the creation of Hydrogen Peroxide. The blondes in the reading audience may know that this compound tends to bleach out color and also reduce fruitiness. Just to complicate matters there are a whole 'nother set of compounds in wine which may oxidize. These are called phenolics and when these oxidize they produce something called quinones. (Armando Quinones also happens to be my neighbor. He works for UPS and plays in the college orchestra with me and the other bass players.)

So, (to sum up--I was told by someone very knowledgeable to keep these things short), as you can see, the effects of oxidation in wine can be varied and pernicious and can lead to anything from a loss of fruitiness in blondes to the presence of bass players in the finished wine. All I can tell you is that I am as confused as you at this point. Perhaps we need someone like Billy Mays to clear all this up! Perhaps we can come out with a product called OxiCab, or OxiMerlot, something which both stains and cleans your clothes at the same time. Just send in $19.95 and we'll add this second set of handy lint reducing wine glasses.

P.S. After an autopsy, the coroner announced that there had been cocaine in Billy Mays' blood. Another hero with clay feet.

Giving Wine (away in) the Finger ---(Lakes)

A tribal roar deep in the bowels of the tent swept up from the crowd cohering like a balloon ascending lazily above the eerily vacant grandstand of Watkins Glen speedway. It was the Finger Lakes Wine Festival,-at last.
"What is that?" the woman with the Bacchus wreath on her head quizzed me mutely.
I shrugged.
"Probably someone getting naked or, -(pause), arrested, -or both"
She smiled, probably recalling the customary toga party of the evening before.
'Did I really say that out loud?' I wondered. I turned,--hoping sheepishly my daughter Julia had not heard me. (Luckily she hadn't, or pretended not to.)
"If one more person asks me 'Do you have a sweet wine' I am going to have to smack them in the face." Sonia, her friend from Indiana intoned, serious as a kidney stone.
"But I thought you were from the Mid West. Aren't you all supposed to be, you know,- nice?"
"Well I'm pissed off now.--"
"East Coast style." Julia winked knowingly.
It was getting to me too. I had to take a walk. Get away from the table for a moment where my wine sat regimented and morose, soldiers returning from an unwanted war, objects of uninformed self congratulatory derision, get away from the hordes of skeptics busily consuming it, blissfully unconscious of the sacrifice involved. I watched my emotional and physical inventory both shrinking before my eyes from a veritable inland sea to a mere dust hemmed puddle , post-war optimism washed away down the newly flushed arroyos of mutual suspicion and distrust. Glasses crashing around me like mortars, below, the ever-present helicopter hum of the crowd. Vietnam at 750 ml a pop.
"What tent is this?" I had spotted a bottle of Carlo's Hudson-Chatham Winery Brulle on the table set obliquely in the middle of the courtyard, (actually the apron of the nearby race track that loomed unoccupied like a monument to futility in the background).
"Humane society."
"Wait a minute!" I scooted back to the table and grabbed a bottle of my 'Franky Say Relax' Cab Franc with the bulldog on label inspired by the brilliant aptness to
pour napalm on the already raging flames of involuntary philanthropy. 'Even amidst the ambient futility can't let Carlo get the jump on me when it came to generosity. War is hell!' I thought. 'Especially Humane Society War!' I looked enviously at his elegant professional bottle and mine next to it now on the table with the hand-made label from my eBay Xerox printer. I began to reconsider my patently self-serving generosity.
"Ohh that's soooh cute! Oohh! There's a doggie on the label!" (Salvation!)
"Yeah--"
"That your dog?"
"No."
"What'zis name?" Ignoring the motto on the bottle "Franky Say Relax", the natural assumption following that it was Franky himself depicted, studiously ignored.
"Chewy Lewis." I replied flatly.
It wasn't till hours later I found out what it was, actually.
realizing how apt the combat metaphor was, that the periodic eruptions of the crowd were actually occasioned by someone shattering their wine glass on the asphalt floor of the tent; a difficult feat since they had been prudently tethered to their necks by the event organizers with varying degrees of rococo ornamentation added afterward by their new owners. It was, it turned out, a commendable service giving apt warning those attendees sporting sandals and an advanced degree of inebriation of possible impalement. There it was; The entire cole slaw and white bread theme of the event in a nutshell. Old fashioned practicality wrapped in the protocol of Bacchanalian frenzy, camouflaged by the American mandatory and muscular good humor, like the 'Have a Nice Day' emblazoned in blinking LED characters on the brow of the oncoming bus, glimpsed the moment before it runs you over; just as my acquiescent, victimized smile was designed to conceal my irritation at the onrushing assumption that I actually enjoyed giving away my wine, the wine that I had labored so mightily over.

I had been working non-stop to get ready for the show all the previous week, bottling, printing, stacking, take it out of the rain, take it back outside, load the truck, unload the truck, make the labels, apply the labels, apply the capsules, check the bottles all so I could give it smilingly away to someone who was mostly already disappointed because I didn't have 'sweet wine' and the guy across the way was selling Chardonnay at $12 and I was charging $15.
I don't know why or if I really expected something different.

I went out to the food service area to mull things over. Grab a quick bite. The lines for the meatballonastick truck was twenty deep. It reminded me of the days at Cornell. Johnnie's Big Red Truck behind the freshman dorms. 'Poor man's pizza and meatball subs.'
"That's a big red! Didn't expect that from you guys." Surprised.
"Why" I wondered silently "Was I wearing a shirt with 'talentless moron' emblazoned across it in big pink letters?"
"Big reds don't really go over here" The guy in the booth next to me from 'Warm Springs Winery' cautioned as his partner spun up another batch of wine malteds made from Pinot Noir and some kind of chocolate mixture in a jug. I had given him a sample of 'Franky' to try. 'Warm Springs? Wasn't that where FDR went for polio therapy?' Then it hit me; Franky said 'relax'.

The nachopretzel truck was no better than the meatballonastick franchise run by Giovanni. It was indeed as if suddenly the depression we had all been fearing for the past year had finally arrived, people on breadlines waiting to get fed, only there was no bread, only nachos with pools of melted Velveeta and skewered meatballs.
The barbecue truck stood curiously bereft of customers. "Out of meat" The hand lettered sign read. I saw stacks of what looked like bar-b-que brisket on the cutting board.
"What's that?"
"Fat, all fat"
"No I mean that piece." Pointed to a four pound chunk of charred meat that stood still proudly erect on the cutting board. It was the butt end of what had been a large brisket.
"You want that?"
"Yeah, better'n standing on line for a half an hour for a stinkin' plate of Doritos."
"Know what you mean." The thin, bearded red haired man nodded sympathetically, forking the impressive piece of gristle onto a paper plate.
"A dollar."
There I sat in the food court tearing the charred shreds of meat that clung to the edges of the impressive hunk, clawing the vagrant strands of delectable protein off with my hands and stuffing them quickly in my mouth, congratulating myself for avoiding the lines and spending less than eight dollars on lunch.
People were looking at me aghast.
"What is that? Roast beef?" A woman finally, with enough courage to ask.
"Brisket fat." I replied smiling greasily. "Can't stand waiting on lines."
I looked back down at the impressively adipose section of cow anatomy spying another strand of sedimentary meat deposit amidst the unctuous geology of gristle and blubber. I was no longer homo-erectus. I was a caveman proud to be worrying the kill that had been transformed with his recent invention; fire, the Eskimo stripping his tribe's whale kill.

Forty years earlier I had been a shiny undergraduate not far from here; On the next lake over; A new shoot of hope planted in the verdant fields of intellect and now I had been reduced to this. "Og Hungry. Og Eat."
Another guttural primal roar rose in the distance from under the tent. Another wineglass bit the dust. Another kill.
Back at the table.
"If someone asks me if we have sweet wine, I'm going to have to kill them."
"Uggh" I nodded.
Fast forward forty thousand years and there she stands; Helen of Troy. The most beautiful wmaan I have ever seen. Undoubtedly the most beautiful woman anyone has seen. She was leaving. Oh well. Og Hungry.
"Reserve Chardonnay? Sure. Oops, just let me clean my fingers."
Leaving the festival, there she was again, pulled over by the cops this time at the gate standing at the side of the road being given a breatholizer test. I continued out the gate, steering my oar-swept ship across the wine-dark sea.

Proper Attire

I was doing the Park Slope in Brooklyn farmers market all summer. That was my plan anyway.
The first day I went down there I was operating on three hours sleep.
Fixing the tractor the day before, resetting vineyard posts all week, no time for a proper laundry, the entire house a disaster area, here I was launching my season,
all my hopes for 'southern exposure' (aka NYC presence) bundled up in boxes in back of a late model Dodge truck with front-end problems. It was Sunday. Laundry day had been Wednesday. I pulled a wrinkled shirt out of the dryer.
Fatal mistake.

I'm setting up the tent, it's slightly dirty, 'I can't do this, wait, I forgot the ice, where can I get ice
in Brooklyn? Do they have ice in Brooklyn? Don't be stupid. I grew up here. We had the Dodgers. We had ice. Of course they have ice.'

The redhead next to me has no tent at all. She his sitting there in a chair with an 'if you please' smile, a sun dress on and a Mexican hat, (not a sombrero, more like a Japanese style sugegasa). In front of her is a tray of what look bonsai gardens in square rock containers. They must weigh sixty pounds apiece. 'How is she going to sell these?' I wonder. 'Who wants to lug around a chunk of concrete all day?'
"Succulents?" I ask, perceptively.
She looks up smiling, as if I had just solved the Da Vinci code.
"Yes that's right, they're succulents."

The market manager is eying me. Not too friendly. More like an appraisal. Something about her is off. The feeling you get when you walk into a 'carny' tent and somehow you know you are just another 'mark'.

The park is a kids' park. Thirty-somethings with strollers. Mostly guys. Mostly white with a few old neighborhood Ricans sprinkled in who were probably there before the area was 'gentrified', whatever that means. All of them have five dollar coffees. Something about them screams, 'I can have everything', --and they do, for now. One hour. Haven't sold a thing. Two hours, still haven't sold a thing.

An attractive older brunette with a fashionable haircut sidles up to me. In a few minutes she's standing next to me, not in front of the table but next to me behind it. Maybe late fifties I'm thinking. The hands always tell, but nicely preserved. Good bones.
"You know, I don't mean to get personal but you know you're shirt is, well, I can't begin to tell you how many things are wrong with it, it's got a hole in it, fraying,
and stains on it."
"Yeah, I know, it's been a rough week. Laundry hasn't been one of my priorities."
"You are a good looking man, but that shirt. Really."
"I'm a what?" I hadn't heard the last part.
"Yeah, you are, you are a good looking man. I just had to say something. I'm a teacher at FIT. You know, it is just something that is in me. Had to say something"
"About me?"
"About the shirt."
"Do you want to maybe grab a coffee later."
"Well," she looks surprised, "Not today,--maybe next week."
"I get it, OK I'll buy a shirt by next week. Save you the embarrassment.
"I used to model you know."
I believe her,the bone structure again. OK, now, never in my life has a woman come up to me and told me I am good looking, and especially not one with good bone structure, (except of course my mother)
I'm driving route 17 back to Monroe.
"What the heck was that?" I wonder, shaking my head.

So the next day I send an email to the people running the market.
I'm not a happy camper. I'm selling the wine right by a kids park. Plus I'm shoved off on the side street, like week old bananas. Paying the same rent as the vendors on the avenue.
I offer to switch to another market. Two days later I get the reply.
"You have to develop a following. Maybe next year we will put you on the avenue. The market manager already told us you were poorly groomed."
Poorly groomed!? This is a farmer's market,-on the street, what do they want? A tuxedo!?
Then it clicks. The woman from FIT. She was a plant. A hundred ten pound bonsai. They had sent her over on the QT to work me. I was the mark.
Next email I send; "I won't be participating in any of your markets. Thanks for
everything."
My world view, restored.
Ahh, Brooklyn.

Poopy Pants Lane

"He ordered prank pizzas to 888 Poopy Pants Lane. Everyone knows Poopy Pants Lane ends in the 700 block." With this line Luigi condemns Bart Simpson most likely to
a life in prison or at the least a long spell in 'Juvie'.

Anyway, for some reason I couldn't get this line out of my head. Working in the vineyard, repetitive motions, tie, trim, repeat, move on, repetitive motions inspire repetitive thoughts, like mantras, perhaps it is meditative perhaps it is just stupid. Maybe in the sixties, if my Yoga mantra had been 'Poopy Pants Lane' rather than whatever it was (still not allowed to tell) I would be a much happier person today.


Maybe when we focus on the ridiculous operatic aspects of life we miss the real problems, maybe the real problem are much more mundane and logical. This is perhaps what Luigi is trying to tell us. What is it to be a winemaker? It is to be at once logical and conscious of the pranks of nature. It is mind numbing, humbling repetition, punctuated by the smile of someone who likes your wine, it is not living on the edge it is living beyond the edge, in a world of imaginary numbers on an imaginary street in Hilbert Space. 888 Poopy Pants Lane.

What is this ranting all about. I am trying to make some Peach Wine and I can tell you, it isn't going so well. The Pear Wine I made last year was excellent, (I can safely say that because it's all gone now) but, for some reason I can't get the Peach to behave, it is not cohering, something is not gelling. Was it ridiculous to believe that I could repeat that wonderful accident that produced the Pear Wine using another fruit entirely. I didn't believe so, but I was wrong. The fundamentals were not there; the wine is turning out acidic, sour like those straws of multi-colored powder we used to get in the candy store.
'How should I correct it. Add vanilla? No, that's a coward's way out, I need to work the wine, work the acid, not cover it with other flavors.' I tried adding Malolactic bacteria. This is the usual method used on grapes to flatten the acid profile. Then, the next day I read somewhere, Malolactic fermentation tends to mute the fruit flavors in fruit wines, sometimes you can even get a sauerkraut aroma profile, peaches and sauerkraut, I am shaking my head, I am going to end up with something more like a hot dog topping than a wine. Is this a prank? 55 gallons of Sauerkraut juice. Maybe I should have just waited, give the mantra of the wine time to work, time to sink in. Everybody knows Poopy Pants Lane ends in the 700 block. Maybe I should have just made the Pear Wine again, at the risk of repeating myself. Maybe repeating oneself isn't so bad. Maybe it is the slow death of creativity. Who knows. Maybe there is a reason. Maybe mindless repetition isn't so bad after all.
Maybe mindless repetition isn't so bad after all.
"Say, is this the bus that goes to Poopy Pants Lane?"

War, Memory and a Pack of Camels

Memorial Day is a unique holiday mostly perhaps because on it, we do something voluntarily that we most often either have to be forced to do or only engage in only when the ravages of physical debility and time have left us little other choice; remember.

Memory is both a funny thing and a powerful thing, jester and king in one. It not only honors the past and the sacrifices of the past but it can provide a powerful alternative perspective that shapes our future behavior. I first realized this when I tried to quit smoking. My theory was that the memory of the pleasurable association with cigarettes even more than the present physical need was what was making this task extraordinarily difficult. I am a very visually oriented person so it seemed evident to me that the continued presence of any visual association with cigarettes was inevitably going to send me into a tailspin of craving and cause me to eventually fail. I went through the house throwing out the empty cigarette packs thankfully bereft of their sweet cargo that had formerly summoned me to their altar, I scoured the ashtrays removing any trace of silky ash that I sift between my finger recalling the lost wonders of Shambala, I opened the windows, clearing the haze that had wafted through my living room like the morning mist on Dunis Moor, I threw out all my videotapes (yes videotapes) of pre-1975 movies, especially war movies depicting cigarettes as one of the few un-guilty (then) pleasures of the foxhole, and any movie with Molly Ringwold. I hid all my lighters and even made sure that all the plastic pull tabs on food items that were similar to the little golden seductive strip of promise at the top of the cigarette pack were pre-removed from any food items in the refrigerator. I knew this last was extreme and dangerous and might cause my Oscar Mayer bologna to go bad, but, I was determined! This was war!

Then I went out back to work on bottling my 2007 Merlot wine and take my mind off smoking. There was clearly something wrong; not perhaps with the wine but with my plan. Despite the fact that I had purged all visual cues to my unhealthy preoccupation I was still seized with an insatiable desire to run out and buy my next pack. Was my theory incorrect? Was the habit of smoking really more a physical than a psychological addiction? As I pondered this question my gaze fell onto the identifying label on the cartons of bottles I was using to bottle my Merlot. They were the dark burgundy style 750 ml. bottles of the sort that lend themselves to red wines. My mind traced over and over the line of numbering and lettering giving the capacity and color of the bottles, staring repetitively back at me from each stacked white carton on the skid, the black bold letters; "750 Smoke". "750 Smoke".

So on this Memorial Day I think it is important to remember a couple of things; first, that no matter how hard you try you cannot escape the past and second that memory can often be a tricky thing and that even pleasant memories are impossible to completely shut out, let alone unpleasant ones. So on this day when we consciously seek to remember the sacrifices made on our behalf by our brave soldiers, let the recollection of their selfless deeds be a spur and prompt us to seek a better future and not a reinforcement of habits causing us to repeat the mistakes of the past. Now where did I hide that lighter again?

Simple Gifts

Usually I have something funny to say. Today I don't. There's an Aaron Copland piece based on an old Shaker melody called 'Simple Gifts'. It and another piece calle 'Ashokan Farewell which was the title theme for Ken Burns mini-series called 'The Civil War' are two of my favorite pieces of music. There is something in the simplicity of these melodies that speaks to me, something beyond the notes or words, something quieter than laughter and louder than sorrow.

The bottom line is that we seem to have forgotten that complexity is somewhat over-rated. Things don't necessarily need to be complex to be good. When I was working as a computer programmer I had one motto 'KISS', 'Keep it simple stupid!" (Of course with apologies to Gene Simmons.) The idea was that if you kept the various parts of these highly convoluted and complicated programs simple, the whole would come out better, more functional and far more elegant.

So, when I finally got to taste some of Carlo DeVito's, from Hudson Chatham winery Paperbirch Raspberry I knew that whoever produced it also valued simplicity. Don't get me wrong, there was complexity if one cared to analyze it, but I realized almost immediately that I didn't really care, here was just something that was welcome and familiar, something that brought an instant sense of recognition and of ease, like a familiar simple melody that somehow has gotten in your bones and makes you smile, like a rocking chair that somehow has acquired the perfect shape for your ass, like an unexpected big wet kiss from your favorite cocker spaniel,
(OK, I could make a joke about Gene Simmons here but like I said, I'm just not in the mood.) That's about all I need to say about that.
Rock on Carlo!