Paradigms...where shift happens!

In vino veritas...

In Virginia any  new laws that have been thrashed out by the legislature go into effect on July 1st. There were two this year that caught my eye because when taken together, they just don't seem to make any sense.

In the first one, a special law was passed to allow Chuck Miller and Belmont Farms Distillery to brew AND sell "moonshine" right on site at his farm. Since as long ago as I can remember the sale of hard liquor has only been legal when it is sold in state ABC stores. Now we have a law introduced and approved for one individual and one particular commercial enterprise allowing Mr. Miller and his wife to bypass whatever controls are exercised by the ABC people.

In theory, I have no problem with this. Get the government the hell out of whatever areas we can. Yet in the same session of the legislature they pass yet another piece of legislation requiring Virginia wineries to sell their product through distributors rather than direct to the retailers. This came as a result of a Supreme Court decision which said in essence it was un-Constitutional for the state to require wineries outside Virginia to sell through beverage distributors and at the same time allow in-state wineries to sell direct to retailers.

Virginia's wine industry is growing and the state is fast becoming well known for the quality of the wine it produces. Government meddling at both the state and federal level has created so many "Catch 22s" that the viability of new enterprises is seriously threatened.

So as we discussed this at coffee one morning, the question of why this happened was answered with, "It's Virginia, that's why." The longer answer would probably have something to do with the fact that the distributors have the money to lobby politicians.

ESPN is not...

a Myers-Briggs personality type or is it? I used to say that in a joking way, sort of a reactionary, Larry the Cable Guy type line. When guys sit around in the morning over coffee and discuss, even argue about some pro golfer's club selection on the sudden death holes in last weekend's "You Gotta Wear Depends Under Your Knickers" Open at the  Ancient & Royal Golf Club in Bumsmash England I have to wonder if the world hasn't changed in some fundamental and tragic way.  How does this stuff get on TV to begin with?

If you can stand it, watch a few minutes of golf on TV. You'll quickly see that it doesn't even need a live TV camera to depict the drama. They could do it with still photographs. If I could stand it I would get a stop watch  and graph the action time of a golf tournament. I'll bet I would find that total to be almost nothing compared to the time the camera spends trying to show a nearly invisible egg size white sphere allegedly flying through the air.

If the fact that television covers it isn't sufficiently bizarre for you, consider the people who actually want to see this live and I use the word live cautiously. They pay pretty big bucks for a tournament ticket then shuffle along with rest of the golf herd out to the something-teenth fairway to take up their positions, maybe 100 yards from the tee. There they stand 10 people deep in an undulating mob, perhaps holding a cardboard periscope, to see over the anxious heads between them and the grass where Tiger Woods will walk by in hopes of getting a 15 second glimpse of His Tigerness on his way out to his ball which is probably another 100 yards down the fairway. Be still my heart, this is even better than watching Jello set up. Suddenly we have a context for understanding those people who find curling to be high drama.

The topic is rife with opportunities for more comments but I Tivo'd the World Series of  Darts last night and I want to go and watch it to see how the Guiness Stout team captain did in the last round. It's just his second year on the tour but the word is that he is a shoo in to be named to darts Hall of Fame.

Too much?

As I slogged through this past weekend, I began to wonder if I have bitten off more than I can chew. All of a sudden I find myself with not only three separate blogs to write for but a web site project, River Voices   I'm trying to get up and running.

Ideally, I would like to post daily on all three blogs but I know there is no way I am going to keep up with that, at least not with the kind of quality material I want to offer. It would of course be somewhat easier if anyone of the three blogs were throwaways, places where I felt as if I could just throw up some angst-laden piece or rant about something in the news to fill the space but that's not the case.

The regular list of folks I send this one to are friends for the most part and you all deserve the best I can put together. The one about Fredericksburg is for a different audience, sort of a home town, sitting around on the porch kind of thing. That one I hope to maybe go commercial one day after it builds a bit of a following. The one for the newspaper of course is out there for all kinds of people and other than a few of them I have no idea who they are but they deserve my best effort at quality content as well.

So that's my whining for tonight and no, I would not like any cheese with that whine...just a more productive brain. I guess it boils down to a matter of making myself work at it a lot harder and finding out just what I can accomplish.

So there may be a bit more time between new posts but I'm still alive and kicking and still determined to keep on with the best I can bring you. But I can't promise that I won't double post when I think I can get away with it such as with the link below.

For a piece that is a great deal less self indulgent and therefore perhaps more interesting to read check my posting got today at the Free Lance-Star site.

No, it's not...

...hot enough for me, I could take another 10 or 15 degrees. That's the answer I give when I get that stupid question, especially on a day like today here in Central Virginia where the 90 minutes ago the  temp was 97.1 with a heat index 0f 106 degrees.

That's the bad news, the good news is that since I always give the same answer so far I have avoided taking any of the askers of inane questions out with a flame thrower or RPG and the temperature and heat index have plummeted down to 95.6 and 103. God, does that ever feel better.

Opposites attract

This morning as I stood by the microwave, waiting for my leftover coffee to be nuked up to drinking temperature, my as yet unfocused gaze fell on the magnets on my refrigerator door. I have a couple that are just clips that hold art work from my grandchildren, one that is a small ceramic turtle and a flat one with the names and phone numbers for all the businesses at Park & Shop directory is in print so small as to be unreadable It is useful though as it does a nice job holding up the cash register generated coupons for products I never use and which always expire before I remember to check them. 

 

I wonder where the American family would be without refrigerator magnets. No way to hang your kids' first art work...you know, the first pages from the coloring books, the ones that turn yellow about ten minutes after they are torn out of the book and proudly handed to mommy or daddy. You have to display them. If you don't you might discourage Junior's creativity, even though the lines on the picture seem to have been seen by your nascent little Picasso as mere random suggestions as to where the purple Crayola should be applied to that picture of a bull frog. There would be no place for the grocery lists or the little appointment reminder cards from your dentist. Where would we put the magnetic business cards with the smiling faces of the dozen or so hopeful realtors who want your listing even though you told them you're not even thinking about selling your home?

 

Every sole proprietor of a business, every insurance agent, even churches see the front of your refrigerator as a marketing tool. Thank God for magnetism since without it we would miss out on yet another marketing effort. Oh, no!

OK, I'll admit it...

...I'm stoked. Yesterday, the folks at the on-line presence of the local newspaper, The Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star contacted me and invited me to become one of their bloggers. It took me all of 30 seconds to say yes and today I put up my first posting at fredericksburg.com. There's bad news and good news though. The bad news is that my shoulder hurts; I've nearly dislocated it, patting myself on the back. The good news is that my head should shrink back down to its normal size in a couple of days so I won't have to buy a new straw hat. That's especially good since it's not a paid gig. 

That's my story and I am by God stickin' to it....

Is it curling season yet?

Maybe it's just my twisted view of life but I found it more than passing strange to be standing among a bunch of Americans, while celebrating Independence Day, the day that marks our revolt against England, glued to the tube watching soccer...one hundred twenty minutes of sweat soaked anesthesia. The only way the irony could have been greater would have been if England had been playing France. (You can figure that one out on your own if you'll just assign anyone of the traditional English/French stereotypes to each country.)

I have been trying to think of an analogy for the boring part but the only things that have come to mind are speeches by Senator Lieberman or a Joe Biden interview on Meet the Press.

Now don't get me wrong, soccer has its moments. Both of my daughters played youth soccer for a couple of years and there was drama and excitement. "Will she actually kick the ball or miss it altogether?"  But this? 

And while we (OK, I) are at it, what's up with those guys who take a hit from another player, writhe on the ground in agony for a few minutes and then all of a sudden pop up and bounce back to their position? This is Oscar material folks. They would be nominated for sure if anyone could pronounce their names.

The good news is that after the championship game between Italy and France there will be four more years until another World Cup, during which time maybe the soccer guru's will do something about the stupid off sides rule and we can have some NFL size scores so as to make it  more like a real sport.

Oh, and as for the championship game...Viva Italia!!!!

That's my story and I'm stickin' to it....

Down by the riverside

The thermometer reached well over 90 degrees yesterday on

Portabago Bay, with enough humidity to make whatever the formula for heat index is yield a pretty uncomfortable looking number. We did a little work to pick up after the previous night’s city council victory celebration party but mainly we just worked on cleaning up the left over assortment of very cold bottled beer, listened to the birds and talked about stuff that older guys talk about when they are too worn out from the previous days or nights exertions to do anything but talk.

Ideally there would have been a baseball game on TV but the satellite wasn’t cooperating so that particular piece of summer background buzz was missing. The river was wide and very still, a seemingly immobile expanse of mocha colored water. Silt, imported by last weeks rain will eventually wash on down stream, settling out of the water as the river widens and slows. A peaceful and even a bit mysterious deep olive green will return as it always has for generation after generation of river life.

The Japanese beetle inside the screened gazebo kept climbing the screen, looking for a way out, which it never did find. Smaller summer bugs and spiders and such clung to the outside of the screen, silhouetted against the hazy summer sky, a bug world mirror of kids hangin’ out on a street corner maybe.

If there had been a dog there with us, he would have been laying, stretched out on his side, asleep under the downdraft of the ceiling fan on the shaded and cool brick of the floor, an occasional single thump of its tail signaling whatever dream he was having.

It felt slow. It was wonderfully slow, just the ticket for a southern summer Sunday.