Nothing will take you back to the nineteenth century faster than a refrigerator on the fritz. (One might argue it’s today’s Republican Party, but that would be the sixteenth.)    One night a week ago, I opened the freezer for our ice cream night. (non-wine nights are generally ice cream nights.) The Gelato was […]

   The bloodied and mud bedraggled soldier burst into President Abraham Lincoln’s office and blurted, “The Confederacy has just engaged in legitimate political discourse on Ft. Sumpter, sir!”     Annoyed by having his concentration disturbed, Lincoln cried out, “My God, man, I just had this wonderful synonym for the number 80 right on the tip […]

At the time Carol and I took off for our first European trip together, I had completed two solo journeys of my own during my year of widowhood. I had not traveled solo since my vagabonding days of the early 1970s, and I immediately experienced the true “freedom of the road” again that traveling alone […]