Category: Society

Left-Handed Presidents and Wine Grapes

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Challenge Often Brings Strength – Beware the Easy Choice

Challenge.jpgChallenge.jpgWhile attending a wine dinner recently, the sommelier expounded about the conditions in which the grapes that produced the wine we were enjoying that evening.

One group was grown in dry, chalky soil and the other in soil with heavy clay properties. In other words, not very good conditions by standard agricultural standards.

It is a story I heard often while living in California and in France – the vine needs to be challenged a bit, to suffer and overcome some challenges to produce wine of great character.

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What Have We Learned – So Far – from the Zero Tolerance Policy?

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Some lessons clearly jump out – and some old ones are reinforced

Time Cover 2018-06-21 .pngTime Cover 2018-06-21 .pngThere is a key phrase in the title above – “so far.” This sorry saga is far from over; some hard lessons are surely to come for just about everyone. But some useful lessons have already arrived. Let’s look at a few of them.

  1. Grass Roots Resistance has Power:Let’s not kid ourselves. While the executive order is indeed a reversal, it creates new problems and uncertainties, and leaves some old ones in place. But there is little doubt that sustained and spreading repulsion stopped the advancement of a singularly ill-conceived approach.

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The Mountain Chat

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Lessons Learned in a New Home Town

About a year ago, we made the great and wise decision to move to Asheville, NC, in the heart of the Great Smoky Mountains. It’s a decision we have celebrated every day since moving – the mountains are a place apart, and people who live here know that.

Still, any relocation comes with surprises, challenges, and adaptations. We thought we knew this area pretty well, but upon becoming residents, we learned something new that would take on importance as we settled in.

I am referring to The Mountain Chat.

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Of Tribes, Truth, and Our Country

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We have some decisions to make about how we connect with our fellow Americans.

The 21st century has, so far, harshly demonstrated to us the fragility of democracy.

The train wreck that is the Republican Party of today and the Trump presidency, both built on fear, resentment, and a wholesale dismissal of facts as just one of many approaches to life, has been coming for a while; they did not start just last year.

And so, one of the big questions is:

How does this situation get corrected; or does it?

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