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To Whom Are You Drinking Right Now?


starfish

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I knew I liked you! I missed the show, but Rollins' spoken word shows are killer. I'll drink to that. (How was it?!)

Show was classic Rollins--ambulating amusements, observations, and scathingly astute insights.

Delivered masterfully with exceptional flow and recall. Whatever he's using to stay focused-yet-relaxed, remembering-yet-creating, I want some.

Twice.

Instead, I have Blueberry Essence.

;)

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The Champagne of Life

From Terry Theise's

2009 Champagne Catalog:

But I need to take a step back. Why should we care? Most Champagne’s an industrial product: so what?

I have a friend who was about to marry when, a week before the wedding, he and his fiance learned of her diagnosis with cancer, a bad cancer, a killer. They married nevertheless, and the eighteen months of their marriage were marked by the disease, its treatment, the endless round of doctors and specialists, and the pathos of her death. She was in her early thirties, and they were each the other’s Great Love.

His friends did what we could to rally around him. Within a week or two after the death, we gathered in one of our homes to cook supper and keep our friend company. He and I had spoken often, of course, and shed many a tear together, but this was my first time seeing him, and so I brought a special wine, a Magnum of Vilmart’s 1991 Coeur de Cuvée. And this is the first thing I want to tell you: what other wine can be at once appropriate for both celebration and consolation? The very sight of the tiny rising bubbles, dancing upward as if to snub their noses at gravity and exploding in a soft wash of foam, are heralds of an unquenchable hope. And so it was; the Champagne itself was enthralling, and I watched my friend be drawn into its suave complexity, and I knew very well that for these few moments he was engrossed in life, free of the ache of his dead. The Champagne almost literally brought him back to life. What other wine could have done this?

I could never have given him a Big Brand Champagne at that moment. These are merely things, products. The Vilmart came from a family whom I know and am fond of; it came from a particular piece of the earth and it came with a human story embedded in each rising comet of carbon dioxide, from our patient earth through those people through me to my grieving friend, nearly as though our hands were all joined; this Champagne had a right to presume to console, because it had been watched over in its own human vigil.

On the morning of Easter Sunday, Mr. Ranbir Brar passed away without warning. None of you know him, yet he remains amongst us all. This week, his grieving daughter had just returned from vacation with her children, where she had heard the terrible news, and had been desperately trying to get back to Washington, DC. On Friday night, she boarded a plane yet again, this time to fly to Quatar, then Delhi, and then take the seven-hour car ride to Mr. Brar’s farm, where the family will be getting together at 3 AM this morning, our time, for an open-air cremation ceremony. It turns out that Mr. Brar had chosen his daughter to be the one to initiate the antim-samskara by lighting the funeral pyre, thus burning the body and liberating Mr. Brar’s soul. His ashes will be collected and dispersed into the Ganges River.

Wednesday evening she came over, exhausted, distraught, and crumpling under more stress than a human being is designed to endure. I had gone to Haandi and gotten her some comfort food: samosas, Palaak Paneer, Gosht Masala, basmati rice, raita, coriander and tamarind chutneys, pickles, and an Onion Kulcha and Methi Paratha. But before we had dinner, I opened a Magnum of Vilmart’s 1993 Coeur de Cuvée, and we sat down for an hour or longer, talking and talking about her father, and toasting him repeatedly. “I never once saw him angry,” she told me, eager for me to learn more about him. For a period of time that evening, she had come back to life, and I knew very well that what Terry Theise had done for me over seven years ago, I had the honor and privilege of having done for another person.

Thank you, once again, my dear friend Terry.

Strength, Kavita.

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My nephew.

Likewise. I couldn't find sleep tonight, and had even less chance of doing so after reading your note. So I said "to hell with it," and opened a bottle of 2001 Christoffel Urziger Wurzgarten Auslese * in honor of Valentin. It's a magnificent wine, and it's being sipped slowly and thoughtfully, in tribute to your nephew.

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If it's the same Martin Gardner I'm thinking of, his annotated Alice is one of the most mind-stretching and illuminating insights into, and unlocking of, the creative mind, more revealing by his gentlemanly restraint in hinting at its underlying darkness and the madness to be found in logic. Best read in a kingdom by the sea.

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If it's the same Martin Gardner I'm thinking of, his annotated Alice is one of the most mind-stretching and illuminating insights into, and unlocking of, the creative mind, more revealing by his gentlemanly restraint in hinting at its underlying darkness and the madness to be found in logic. Best read in a kingdom by the sea.

You just sent me running for my Annotated Alice to check. A throwback to senior year of highschool, honors seminar on satire, and at the time the best analysis of the duality of brilliance and madness I had yet encountered. I defer to the cabbages and kings for more information, but I'll drink to Gardner ten times over regardless.

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If it's the same Martin Gardner I'm thinking of, his annotated Alice is one of the most mind-stretching and illuminating insights into, and unlocking of, the creative mind, more revealing by his gentlemanly restraint in hinting at its underlying darkness and the madness to be found in logic. Best read in a kingdom by the sea.

Same guy. Wrote a column for Scientific American for 25 years, and founded the Skeptical Inquirer with Sagan and Asimov.

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To quitting smoking. Please, please let it take.

The third day is the killer. Rent a decent video and contemplate taking the last leftover painkiller/sleeping aid/antidepressant leftover from the root canal or whatever in your medicine cabinet. The first day is always, "well that was easy" and the second takes a little willpower, but on the third day, do what it takes to push through the insomnia and teeth grinding. When you wake up on day four, the physical symptoms will be gone,

Not that I've done this (literally) 50 times or so or anything.

Don't drink, especially if you live walking distance from a smokes vendor who's open late (damn you Mt. Pleasant Street 7-11!).

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To quitting smoking. Please, please let it take.

You might want to contemplate the situation where someone who's been a neighbor for close to thirty years is currently in Georgetown hospital with advanced emphysema and can't breathe on her own and will likely never again return to her apartment to live. And, her only family lives across the Pond. The discussions around here this weekend mainly concern living wills and their limitations, rather than about Memorial Day. I'm just addicted to nicotine lozenges. At least they don't cause emphysema.

Do whatever it takes to stop. Cold Turkey, patches, gum, lozenges, whatever. These days, you won't run into as many people smoking as before, so that will help a lot.

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To quitting smoking. Please, please let it take.

If I can, you can, say hello to wellbutrin and whatever else it takes. patches, chewing gum etc.

Do it.

I smoked before, during and after my mom's death from lung cancer. I held her in my arms, reeking (me) of smoke on the day she died. Very, poor form.

One half day at at time might work, go for a walk, drink a pint of tea or horchata or other beverage of you choice.

You can do it. And I will drink to you when you do.

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A dram of Scotch to Dave Kackley. Sometimes you think that honor and character live on only in recruiting posters and the absurd caricatures of comic book heroes, and then you make a friend like Dave who made them his life's work. I've known plenty of people who would rush into harm's way when called, but few who knew the odds like Dave did. I don't know what else to say right now.

We last worked together on Friday, and now remembering him on Memorial Day comes a couple of decades too early.

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