Gratitude Journal

Gratitude is our most direct line to God and the angels. If we take the time, no matter how crazy and troubled we feel, we can find something to be thankful for. --Terry Lynn Taylor

Welcome to a new regular feature of Questioning my Intelligence: Gratitude Journal. Real Simple magazine ran an article a few months back about keeping a gratitude journal as a way of maintaining a healthy perspective in tough times. These are crazy and troubled times, and negativity seems to be infecting the world.

One antidote to negativity is gratitude, so I’m going to write a weekly dose of gratitude. These "attitude of gratitude" posts may take the form of a list of things I’m grateful for, a poem, a picture, a quotation, an image…whatever feels right to me in the moment. Gratitude Journal entries will go up each Monday simply because Mondays are so maligned. Let’s turn Manic Mondays into Marvelous Mondays.

Lord above, could I sound more Pollyanna-ish? Please don't answer that.

I cordially invite you to join me. Post your own weekly Gratitude Journal in the comments here, or if you prefer a more private approach, keep a journal on your nightstand...whatever feels right to you.


Gratitude Journal #1


I’m grateful that twenty-three years ago yesterday, George and I were married in St. Paul United Methodist Church. We were young and stupid and naïve. But we were also in love and stubborn and determined, and we made it work.

What are you grateful for today?

A Vinous Taliban? I Think Not.

Oh, my. I think I’m in love. Last week’s blog essay sparked a response from Mr. Lou Amdur, the owner of a wine bar in Los Angeles. I wrote that he carried the “wine lifestyle” to a pretentious extreme when he stated for Saveur magazine, “I only pour wines I enjoy. I might have a customer who would like a buttery chardonnay, but I would feel cynical pouring it for him.”

Mr. Amdur googled his wine bar and ended up on my blog. Before I posted last week, it did occur to me that the owner of a wine bar might feel the need to do vanity searches. He needs to know what people are saying about his bar in the vast network of cyberspace, after all, and googling makes this easy. But let’s face it; my blog has a modest readership (and I adore each and every one of you; you know that, don’t you?). I honestly did not think my post would show up on the first few pages of such a search. It did, and Mr. Amdur read it and commented.

While I’m flattered that he bothered to offer up any sort of reply to my bit of nonsense, I experienced spasms of rhetoric-induced bliss when I read what he wrote. Consider this absolutely delightful passage:

“Am I some sort of vinous Taliban, shoving my odious opinion down your throat, forcing you to come to Lou and drink a crisp, fresh, 12.5 percent alcohol JP Brun chardonnay? Am I protesting outside of BevMo, chanting, ‘Hey ho, oaked chardonnay has got to go’? Am I trying to convince vignerons or anyone else that my taste in wine is superior to theirs? Am I lobbying the California state legislature to ban oaky chardonnay? Do I think you’re a bad person because you like oaky chardonnay, an infidel who deserves derision, ridicule, and perhaps even censure? The answer to all of these rhetorical questions is ‘no.’”

This is WONDERFUL! Read it out loud to yourself. A very satisfying defense, don’t you think? Mr. Amdur could not possibly know I am a sucker for flights of rhetorical exaggeration and extended series of parallel grammatical units. If he did know this about me, I would swear he was flirting.

All I can say is I truly hope he had as much fun writing that passage as I had reading it. My favorite line, after the “vinous Taliban” reference, is “Am I protesting outside of BevMo, chanting ‘Hey ho, oaked chardonnay has got to go’?” I really, really want to see oenophiles carrying their protest of oak that far. It would be highly entertaining. But alas, Mr. Amdur appears to have some sense of perspective.

Sigh.

For the record, I did not accuse Mr. Amdur of any of these things. My essay poked fun at those who take “wine and the lifestyle that goes with it” too seriously. I quoted his comment from Saveur magazine and responded thus:

“As an infidel who adores buttery chardonnay, I would like to tell Mr. Amdur to stuff a corkscrew in his … cynicism. I bet he would have an aneurysm if he saw my friend Linda put ice cubes in her merlot. He may own a trendy wine bar and live the ‘lifestyle’ of wine, but he doesn’t have the right to tell me what sort of wine I should or should not be drinking. That job resides with my taste buds alone.”

I appreciate that Mr. Amdur’s comment on Questioning politely ignores both my method for selecting wine and the reference to Linda’s putting ice cubes in her merlot. The restraint he shows leads me to think he’s generally very tactful as these points should be easy targets for oenophilic scorn.

Though not as rhetorically flourished as the above passage, the following goes a long way toward explaining his Saveur comment:

“If a customer asks for a buttery chardonnay I will use my limited hermeneutic powers to interpret what they’re in the mood for, and I will pour them a taste of an alternative that I hope they will enjoy—and, mostly they do. To me, that’s the fun part of owning a wine bar. It’s gratifying for me when I’m able to turn people on to new wines; I like the spark in their eyes when they try a roter veltliner or fresia for the first time. There are plenty of venues in Los Angeles that offer oaky chardonnay but not too many offering a fumin from the Valle d’Aosta, or a poulsard from France’s Jura region.”

"Spark in their eyes," indeed. Thus speaks a man who loves wine and has made a career of it. As an added bonus, he used “hermeneutic” in a sentence. Correctly. I respect that, as only a literary critic can.

Mr. Amdur ends his comment by asking, “How does marching to a different drummer make me pretentious?” Well, marching to one’s own drum does not make one pretentious. In fact, I generally applaud individuals who are true to themselves rather than lemmings walking off the cliff with the rest of the rodents. This is why I drink oaky chardonnay even if it is so yesterday. People should drink what they enjoy, and Mr. Amdur appears to understand that.

He also has the right to serve whatever he would like in his wine bar, and he isn’t forcing that fumin from the Valle d’Aosta down anyone’s throat. In the statement to Saveur, however, he does imply that oaky chardonnay is undesireable. If it were okay to drink oaky wine, why would he feel “cynical” pouring it? Why not just say, as he does in his comment here, that he serves wine he likes?

No, it was Mr. Amdur’s unfortunate use of the word “cynical” that made him sound pretentious. I may not know much about wine, but as a highly educated literary critic with a fine sense of both the denotation and connotation of words, I stand by my judgment that his use of the word “cynical” makes him sound as though he looks down an extremely long and sophisticated nose at those of us who like a whiff and a sip of buttery chardonnay. His comment on my blog, however, shortens his nose quite a bit, don’t you think?

Besides, everyone is entitled to little pretension about something. The next time I find myself in Los Angeles, I think I’ll stop by Lou’s (if he’ll let me in the door) and try that poulsard from France’s Jura region. It sounds intriguing, and I’ll bet it has a really cool label.

Check it out!

My very talented spouse has started a blog titled George Raihala Photography. If you feel like checking out some impressive photos, please click on over.

Go, George!

Pretention and the Lifestyle that Goes with It

George and I recently spent a thoroughly lovely day with our friends the Clarks. They invited us to join them at the Kinkead Ridge Winery in Ripley, Ohio, for a tasting and lunch. Ripley seems an unlikely place for a quality winery, but we enjoyed the tasting very much. In addition to purchasing a selection of their wines, we picked up a free wine magazine with the following title: The Wine Buzz: A complimentary guide to wine and the lifestyle that goes with it.

Huh? You need a lifestyle to drink wine? I thought you just needed a corkscrew.

George and I like wine. In 1988, when we first started experimenting with wine, we toured wineries in Napa and learned some wine lingo. Did you know, for instance, that when you swirl the wine in your glass, you’re “volatilizing the esters,” which intensifies the bouquet of the wine? Feel free to use that little bit of trivia to impress people at a pretentious dinner party sometime.

Our tastes back then were really limited to sweeter, lighter wines like white zinfandel and pinot grigio. The bold reds and oak-matured chardonnays tasted icky to us. Over the years, our tastes broadened to include a wide variety of wines, just as they have broadened to include a wide variety of foods. But picking out a good wine remained a mystery to me. I just bought randomly, influenced by the occasional Wine Spectator score posted on the shelf at the grocery store. Some bottles were good, others not so much. With experience, however, I finally developed the sophisticated process by which I now select wines for our table.

First I start by scanning the shelves for prices in our range. No sense picking up a $30 bottle if you’re not going to buy it. Once I find our price point (usually $9-$15 a bottle), I focus on the labels. That’s right. I pull a wine off the shelf because I like the label. Depending on my mood, I’ll go for cute, cool, snarky, artsy, off-beat, colorful, or elegant. I then read the back of the bottle. If it describes the wine with certain key bits of information that strike my fancy, I’ll put it in my cart.

What key information do I look for? This also depends on my mood. If I’m fixing my famous oven-fried catfish that night, and a bottle with a fun label has the sentence “Enjoy with fish” on the back, I’ll likely buy it because I’m practical that way.

On the other hand, I have written lots of marketing copy over the years, so I’m a sucker for evocative word choice. I enjoy drinking complex red wines, so descriptive phrases like “richly textured notes of blackberry and cherry, with a peppery finish” grab my attention. I may not taste blackberry or cherry or pepper when I drink the wine, but from experience, I know I’ll probably like it.

I’m also a bit silly sometimes, so a bottle labeled 7 Deadly Zins or one that pokes fun at snooty wine drinkers will almost certainly jump into my cart. Just because.

This isn’t the process a pretentious sommelier with a degree from some wine institute will follow to select a wine. (Do wine institutes offer degrees?) My method is random, serendipitous, and fun, and anyone can do it. George and I are rarely disappointed in our random wine purchases these days, and friends who’ve adopted our method are also satisfied with the results.

You see, you can judge the wine by its label and have fun drinking it. Or you can pursue the wine lifestyle, which apparently involves spending hours of your life pouring over wine magazines and blogs, studying what to buy and not buy, taking classes, and so forth. If that pops your cork, I say go for it and have fun. Everyone needs a hobby.

Some people, however, pursue a wine lifestyle that is ridiculously pretentious. George came across an article in Saveur magazine which illustrates this perfectly. Oenophile Lou Amdur owns a trendy wine bar in Los Angeles and has his finger on the pulse of the wine lifestyle. He said, “I only pour wines I enjoy. I might have a customer who would like a buttery chardonnay, but I would feel cynical pouring it for him.”

As an infidel who adores buttery chardonnay, I would like to tell Mr. Amdur to stuff a corkscrew in his … cynicism. I bet he would have an aneurysm if he saw my friend Linda put ice cubes in her merlot. He may own a trendy wine bar and live the “lifestyle” of wine, but he doesn’t have the right to tell me what sort of wine I should or should not be drinking. That job resides with my taste buds alone.

Besides, researchers at Cornell and elsewhere have demonstrated that whether you like a wine or not depends largely on the power of suggestion. If you’re told a wine is from North Dakota, for instance, you’re more likely to think it tastes icky because North Dakota’s state tree is the telephone pole and its growing season is about eight days long. You simply don’t expect wine from North Dakota to be good. If, however, you are told the same wine is a lovely and expensive bottle from California, you’ll likely think it is quite tasty, even if it’s really just a $3 bottle of Charles Shaw wine from Trader Joe’s.

Science has proven me right. Wine really is all about the labels. No pretentious lifestyle necessary.

And now I’m going to have a glass of buttery chardonnay poured from a bottle with a totally adorable label. I expect I’ll enjoy it enormously. Care to join me?

I Scooped the New York Times!

Last Sunday's New York Times ran an article on Sid and Marty Krofft's old television programs and the new Land of the Lost movie--three days after I posted my essay Peace, Love, Hope, and Joy. Just thought you would like to know that reading my blog keeps you "in the know" because I'm on the cutting edge of pop culture.

Also, my essay is more entertaining than the Times article, which noticeably lacks sarcasm, laughs, and flute-blowing jokes.

I bet the author even got paid for writing that unfunny piece, which makes him a whore, don't you think?

Or am I being too harsh?

Peace, Hope, Love, and Joy

When I first started this blog, I expected to write brilliant essays about the intellectual conundrums of motherhood and womanhood and other “issues” in my life…and in the lives of thousands (if not millions) of other women across this glorious green and blue planet of ours.

Today, however, I’m forced to admit that most of my essays are more in the tradition of Erma Bombeck than Jacques Derrida. Let’s lift our lighters to the memory of Erma. You all know who she was, and you know how much she totally rocked. She’s my inspiration, and not just because she wrote that piece about moms of disabled children.

Do any of you, my kind and tolerant readers, even know who Derrida was? Unless you’re weird like me and have studied literary theory, probably not. You’re not missing anything. Truly. Derrida sounded smart, but like Picasso in his later years, he was really just pulling everyone’s leg. He was a pretentious intellectual snot, and not just because I disagree with his literary theory.

Today, however, intellectual conundrums hold no interest for me at all…I’m ready for summer break, just like my boys. So this week, we’re taking a little trip down memory lane, thanks to YouTube, and will visit some of my favorite television shows from childhood.

Television today is remarkably void of intellectual content. A few exceptions nobly fight the current, like Public Television for adults and a few random children’s shows like Pinky Dinky Doo (how I WISH my children would watch this show!). Unfortunately, the River of Television flows into the Ocean of Insipid. Therein dwell such sea monsters as Bakugan and Pokemon and Ben 10, banes of my existence. If I hear “Bakugan, brawl!” or “Pikachu, I choose you!” or “Go, Wildmutt!” one more time, I’ll “Go crazy!”

Way back in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, when I was a wee lass with long, long hair and a love of colorful embroidery, children’s programming was awesomely cool, without any of this Japanese anime weirdness. These were good, old-fashioned Anglo-Canadian-American shows that came out of hippy pot parties and colorful LSD trips full of peace, love, and long, long hair. Actually, Sid and Marty Krofft denied the involvement of LSD or other drugs in the birth of their shows. Sid once said, “We’re bizarre. That’s all.” No one really believed him.

Speaking of sea monsters, the first show that pops to mind is Sigmund the Sea Monster. I loved that friendly sea monster with the single pointy buck tooth, and I wanted to be Johnny so I could play with Sigmund all day long on the beach, hiding out in sea caves while wearing tight shorts.

Then there was the somewhat obscure Bugaloos. Flying high, indeed. Of all the main characters—I.Q., Joy, Harmony, and Courage, and Benita Bizarre—I most wanted to be Joy. Seeds sown in childhood bear fruit in middle age.

I’m not middle aged, am I?

The better-known H.R. Pufnstuf had those cool white go-go boots—a bit of gender-bending that prepared me for my first sighting of a cross-dresser when I worked in the Bridal Department at Belk’s years later. And Jimmy blowing the flute…let’s not go there. Sometimes a flute is just a flute. Or not.

Irrelevant aside: Doesn’t the opening scene of Jimmy in the mountains remind you of this fabulous flower child anthem? If that clip doesn’t give you hope for the future and make you want to go green, have a few drinks and watch it again. You’ll love the world. I promise.

I adored Land of the Lost. The adventures of Marshall, Will, and Holly were must-see TV. What incredible special effects! I mean, that T. Rex looks like real Play-Do, doesn’t it? The Sleestaks were scary, though, to a six-year-old.

I can’t wait to see Will Farrell’s new movie. Don’t tell Jacques Derrida this, but I loved Farrell in Blades of Glory (“As if figure skating wasn’t already gay enough.”) and Talladega Nights (“Thank you, Little Baby Jesus, for my smokin’ hot wife Carla.”). Land of the Lost spoofed by him has to be funny.

Or insipid.

Or maybe both.

There are so many more shows I could share, but if you’ve checked out these links, you should be ready to stop shaving your pits and legs; put on your peasant blouse and beaded headband and sandals; and join a bunch of international strangers on a mountainside to drink a Coke.

My job is done.

The Unknown Dead

Memorial Day is America’s day to honor the memory those who served their country, who fought for more than themselves, and gave all that they had so others could know freedom.



My grandfather, David Lee Willis, served in WWII as a pilot. He flew the Hump (the route over the Himalayas in the China-Burma-India Theater) in a B-24-D painted with nose art which read “Dippy Dave and his 8 Dippy Diddlers.” He and his crew were forced to bail out on a mission in China. A secret memo dated May 5, 1943, reported his missing status (published in the book Chennault’s Forgotten Warriors). It states:

Ship No. 24143, 1st Lt. D. L. Willis, pilot, lost from returning formation in heavy overcast. Last reported at 1530 at coordinates 22° 50’ N-104° 45’ E at about 19,000 feet headed on 310°, believed probably bailed out or landed at WENSHAN about 50 miles NE of reported position.

The fuel transfer system failed and Dippy Dave and his Diddlers were forced to bail out near Amichow. One man’s chute failed to open, and he died. The remaining crew, including my grandfather, survived and returned to base. I do not know the name of the man who died, or if the following picture is of that particular crew (the plane isn’t the same). But I honor this unknown man’s memory.





Papa always said that he didn’t want to jump out of a plane because he never wanted to practice something he could only do wrong once. His experience in China adds a layer of bitter irony to his joke that I never appreciated as a child.

Papa later flew in the Berlin Airlift, dropping supplies to people who needed them. He was dedicated to his country and risked all he had in its service. He came home. Many, many others did not, including George’s great uncle George Paloranta, after whom George was named.

This Memorial Day, America honors the memory of the fallen, and those who stood by them. I thank them all for their sacrifice, because even those who come home from war sacrifice more than any civilian can ever understand.

Blessed are those who mourn; for they shall be comforted. (Matthew 5:4)