Ho, Ho, Ho. It's Christmas Card Time

     I have been updating my address book since it's time to send out Christmas Cards.  I know, I know; I still send out snail mail cards because I like getting a little Christmas spirit in the mail box.  I make the assumption everyone else does too.    I've been sending Christmas Cards since 1972 and  for the first 18 years, I wrote a personal letter in most of them.  I can still feel the hand cramps.  My card list kept growing, and I began to dread doing them.  

     However, in 2000 I smartened up and started sending out a printed Christmas Letter detailing our yearly news to friends.  My right hand was so grateful.    In 2008 I started writing this blog.  This year only the people who would (1) be disappointed not to get the letter, or (2) aren't wired up with email will be getting the snail mail Christmas letter in their cards.  You blog readers will get the same letter, just in pixels instead of ink.  If you are on my Christmas Card list (did you send me one?) will still get your snail mail card too.  If you want to send us a card use the address found below embedded in the following 2012 Smith Family Christmas Letter.

     Perhaps, sending Christmas Cards is going by the wayside as electronic communication erodes snail mail.  Even I use electronic cards for birthdays and other occasions.  This year I'm still a dinosaur hold out and am sending real paper Christmas cards.  I can't promise for next year since I've found an electronic greeting card site I think is dynamite.  I'd like an informal poll:  a)  How many of you will send more than five snail mail Christmas cards?  b)  Are electronic Christmas cards as good as paper?  c) What makes a really good electronic card?  If you're reading this blog - weigh in:  Snail Mail Christmas Cards:  Yes or No and Why.  Meanwhile, here's the pixelated form of the Smith Family 2012 Christmas Letter.   

December, 2012

     We've had another exciting year. We kicked off the year by deciding to buy a house. We never thought we'd own another property, but that just shows: “Never say never”. We bought a duplex in a condominium development in Sun City, Arizona. We were gratified to learn we made smart choices when we downsized, and the furniture we kept from our Hurst house fits perfectly into the new digs. Even better, the house is less than a mile from Drake's mother, and we have access to all the great Sun City recreation facilities. Our address in Arizona, which will generally be good from Christmas through April, is: 10309 West Corte Del Sol Este, Sun City, AZ 85351. (The five word street address made Drake gnash his teeth, but since the house was perfect for us, he decided to overlook the annoyance of the long address.)

     The second most exciting news of the year is that Sarah Lynn was accepted by Yale University for graduate work. She began a three year course of study in August which will result in dual Masters' Degrees (an MBA and a Master's in Environmental Studies). She and Jay packed up with cat in carrier and flew to Connecticut where they will be for the next three years. She loves the program and is taking advantage of the plethora of classes, activities, speakers and symposiums that Yale has to offer her. She will be going to Indonesia this spring for 'an international experience'.

     Our biggest news of 2012 is that Sarah Lynn is engaged to be married to Jay Alton Wilson. He's a UT grad, a software engineer, a pianist, and the love of her life. He's a really nice guy who loves her, and he comes from a lovely family with whom we are becoming fast friends. The entire extended family are busily planning the wedding which will be in Austin over Memorial Day Weekend, 2013. Sarah and Jay came to Phoenix at Thanksgiving, and we managed to eat too much, watch football, and buy a wedding dress. We'll all be together in Austin for two weeks at Christmas celebrating the season, enjoying our children, and planning the wedding.

     Our travels this year took us from Spring Training in Arizona, to Logan, Utah where we spent the summer, and I took Creative Writing: Non-Fiction at Utah State University. Hopefully, my blog writing has improved. Next, we spent some time touring. First, southern Idaho, then to the Grand Teton National Park, on to Yellowstone National Park, followed by Glacier National Park. Then we rode the Hiawatha Bike Trail, did a mini tour of Portland, Oregon and wound up spending two months at Seal Rock, Oregon watching the Pacific Ocean roll in while bird and seal watching and eating fresh seafood.

We hope you all have lovely holidays and a wonderful 2013.

Merry Christmas

Jan and Drake

The Wedding Dress Shopping Extravaganza!

Wedding dresses are confections made out of cloth.  Some are so light and airy they appear to be made of spun sugar, while others are more solidly elegant like an excellent chunk of white chocolate.  This past weekend I saw enough concoctions to satisfy the most ravenous sweet tooth.  Yes, we went wedding dress shopping over Thanksgiving.  This particular shopping experience was much harder than I anticipated, and I was exhausted at the end of each try-on day.  My responsibility was to document each dress photographically, link the price to the dress, and via email with attachments keep Amy, Matron of Honor, in the dress buying loop.  I also created a slide show for the MOG* and MOH* to weigh in on their favorites among the final selections.  

Sarah, in her dainty, delicate size, looked fantastic in practically EVERY dress she tried on.  And she tried on, oh, let's say 100 DRESSES spread over six shops.  She really did look like a bridal model because she garnered unsolicited admiring comments from other MOBs* and brides to be. It was also surprising that Drake wasn't the only Dad in attendance.  Sarah and I were so giddy and excited after the first day's experience, we could tell he wanted to be included in the process, so we invited him to accompany us on the second try-on day.

The process itself is the best type of clothes try-on there is.  First, the perspective  bride has a giant dressing room and her own individual dress handler to facilitate getting gowns on and off.  The handler even may have an assistant.   Some of the dresses were feather light while others seemed as heavy as a suit of armor.  Every dress Sarah liked included a flowing piece of material dragging the floor behind the dress:  the train.  The dress handler is supported by an owner who holds the hands of the MOB*, bridesmaids, MOH*, FOB*, GOB* between dress viewings plying them with flattery, refreshments, information about the bridal gown order process, and in one shop, a huge flat screen TV playing the wedding movie "Father of the Bride", the Steve Martin version.

In a two day try on marathon, we hit every type of bridal shop:  the Haute Couture shop; the Boutique shop; the Wedding Dress Consignment Shop; the Off the Rack shop, and the All Inclusive.  While trying to find places for dresses, I quickly learned that one key component of WD shopping is the appointment.  In every shop, except Off the Rack, you need an appointment to try on dresses.  This insures you will get the personal attention noted above which assuages the exorbitant prices charged for wedding dresses.  Every shop, even the most lowly, had the bridal dress raised dais, spot lights, and a minimum of a tri-fold full length set of mirrors to showcase each tried on dress.  Some shops had many additional mirrors, so the bride could catch her reflection from every angle.

Some shops sold more than just wedding dresses.  The All Inclusive was located in the Azteca Wedding Plaza.  The Plaza was a series of connected multi-storied buildings in which you could book your venue, your photographer, your florist, your caterer, rent the tuxedos, rent/buy the wedding ties, cummerbunds, buy the wedding dress, the bridesmaid dresses, hair ornaments, veils, tiaras, (they had 300 to choose from), the flower girl basket, the ring bearer pillow, the guest book with decorative pen, the special b/g toasting glasses, the wedding favors for both guests and the wedding party, the bridal flip flops, the rice/birdseed/bubble going away favors and a jillion other must have items apparently necessary to get married.  This shop had the least lux try-on with only one dais serving four dressing rooms which were just curtained off areas in a large room.  MOBs were the real dress handlers here.  One attendant services at least two clients concurrently at Azteca.  Their utilitarian approach did hold down the cost of the dresses, somewhat.  Azteca's all inclusive approach was just cheerfully happy, and it was fun to see the place and the hundreds of accouterments.        

By contrast, the Off the Rack shop was just sad.  It was filled with long racks of dresses jammed together in plastic bags.  There were no 'helpers' for try-on.  The wedding dresses were constructed from the cheapest possible man made materials such as acetate, low grade polyester, and rayon.  Silk has never crossed the Off the Rack doorway.  Each dress was variously accented with machine made silver and/or gold polyester thread designs, or artificial flowers dotting the bodice, hemline or waistline or the entire dress.  ALL of these dresses were priced in three or even four figures.  You could buy the somewhat grubby samples for around $300.  Still, Sarah found a few dresses to try on.

The Haute Couture shop was the other end of the wedding dress shopping spectrum.  Racked were only about 20 dresses by a single designer arranged as a trunk show.  You picked the shop's other possibilities from an iPad, and your attendant fetched them from a concealed portion of the shop.  This store had 'areas' for the bridal hanger-ons waiting to see the next try-on.  In the areas were cool curved leather sectionals, lots of fresh plants and flowers, the flat screen playing the wedding movie, and several full length mirrors.  For the most part, the dresses in this store were curiously unappealing.  (This place was the site of the $10,000 dress try-on - blush pink with bias cut dropped waist and gathered netting ruffles to the floor).  This was our first stop, and it taught me that price isn't necessarily an indication of how lovely a wedding dress will be.

The Consignment Wedding Dress shop was the most interesting.  There were about 300 previously used wedding dresses all carefully hung according to type (A-line, mermaid, trumpet, ball gown)  and then sized in each category.  The furnishings, try-on areas as well as the handler were the same quality of experience as the boutiques.  Sarah even found a dress possibility here, and we were amused to realize there were several dresses in this second hand store priced outside our budget.  We also got a feel for wedding dress depreciation.  Insanely, a dress that is worn for perhaps six hours loses at least 20% of its value by the day after the wedding, and 50% of its value within six months after the wedding.  If you are really tiny or really big, there's an even bigger amount of depreciation.    

By far the best experience were the Boutique shops with individual owners displaying their vision of 'wedding'.  One of these had an amazing array of beautiful accessories to accent your waistline, bust line or head.  To one dress Sarah added a $700 sash which consisted of a two inch wide cream colored ribbon decorated with beads, rhinestones and pearls.  There were dazzling rhinestone hair decorations, or silk flower fascinators accented with beads. There were special high heeled shoes covered with rhinestones.  The dresses in these shops reflected the personal taste of the owners.  Of the four finalist dresses, three were from one boutique shop.

Hopefully, I've whetted your appetite to see the final pick.  THE DRESS will be revealed at the wedding.  Jay accompanied Sarah to Arizona and graciously cooled his heels while we three enjoyed a once in a lifetime experience with our princess.  Wedding bells will ring Memorial Day Weekend, 2013 for Sarah and Jay.  They are having a garden wedding with a brunch reception at a mansion venue in Austin, Texas.  If the wedding is as much fun as the wedding dress shopping extravaganza, then it will be a blast. 

*MOH = Matron of Honor      *MOB = Mother of the Bride    *MOG = Mother of the Groom   
*FOG = Father of the Bride   *GOB = Grandmother of the Bride         

         

The Ghost Holiday

Where did Thanksgiving go?  It's being drowned in a sea of red and green.  There is nary a turkey or pilgrim hat to be found.   I was actually wished a "Happy Thanksgiving" today, and I almost fell over.  Inside my head I was thinking, "Don't you mean 'Have a Safe and Lucky Black Friday'?"

Thanksgiving was linked with 'super shopping for Christmas' less than 40 years ago.  The term 'Black Friday' originated in Philadelphia and denoted the extreme traffic snarls caused by an influx of shoppers to the city on the day after Thanksgiving.  Gradually, it evolved to refer to merchants making enough money on the weekend after Thanksgiving to put their businesses into the 'black' for the year.  Beginning in the early 2000's, stores began opening up around 6:00 or 7:00 am.  Since then, opening times have been inching earlier and earlier.  The K-Mart flyer I just read is opening for 'Black Friday' at 8 pm Thanksgiving night.  Isn't it ironic that Thanksgiving is being eaten?

Thanksgiving in America exists inside the bubbles of our homes.  Most people still eat too much, gather with family, and watch football.  The Dallas Cowboys linked themselves with Thanksgiving in the mid 1960's.  NFL popularity soared beginning in the 1960's, and the league wanted a Thanksgiving day game.  Every team with the exception of the Cowboys turned the league down flat.  Tex Schram, long time original owner of the Cowboys, realized this game could showcase his team nationally.  In this era there were perhaps five channels of TV, and you only had that many in the cities.  Getting the Cowboys beamed into every living room in America on Thanksgiving Day  is a pivotal base of the claim that the Cowboys are America's Team.  

Generally, the Cowboys have been charmed on Thanksgiving Day.  Other teams were stunned by the popularity of the Thanksgiving Day games.  Jerry Jones understands how important this game is.  He hosts a major Thanksgiving meal for all the Cowboy employees who are expected to work on the fourth Thursday in November, no excuses accepted.  Other NFL teams have lobbied to join the party.  This Thanksgiving there will be three pro games.  I hope all their employees get a free turkey dinner paid for by the owners.  

Thanksgiving is really linked with college football.  Some of the most intense state rivalries are played out over Thanksgiving.  For Drake and I that means the Oklahoma/Oklahoma State game.  For Texans, Thanksgiving has meant Texas vs. Texas A&M since the 1990s.  This 100 year rivalry crumbled when A&M deserted their long time football conference.  Texas will make do with Kansas State this year.  It just doesn't have the same excitement.  I'm hoping Texas Tech will pick up the rivalry banner.  Flipping through the channels, you can find a panoply of college rivalries still being played out on Thanksgiving Day and throughout the weekend.

Thanksgiving drifting into ghost holiday status is hateful.  First, Thanksgiving is an American holiday.  It goes all the way back to 1621 and the Colonial era of American history - the kernel of the Pilgrim/Indian legend.  It became a formal holiday in 1863 - proclaimed by Abraham Lincoln as a day of Thanksgiving.  It was a morale booster during the height of the Civil War.  Americans seized the holiday with both hands.  While its formal origins may have been overtly political, it has evolved into the least political, least polarizing holiday in the United States.  It is not a Christian, Jewish, or Muslim holiday.  Each nationality prepares its favored foods for the Thanksgiving meal.  In the Southwest, Mexican-Americans use the gathering time to make tamales, a many hands needed, time consuming holiday ritual among the women.  I've been the lucky recipient of some of these home made tamales.    

Today I made cranberry jelly from my grandmother's recipe.  As I stirred down the bubbling sauce, I could visualize her doing the same thing at her stove 50 years ago.  I also usually make her pecan pie.  I make my own special version of pumpkin pie.  These are the Thanksgiving treats in our household and may make a short encore appearance at Christmas, but I rarely make them at any other time of the year.  They belong to Thanksgiving first and foremost.  The jelly which lasts until the springtime remains a lingering taste of Thanksgiving until it's gone.

Outside of our homes, Thanksgiving is fading.  Every major store has begun hanging Christmas Decorations the day after Halloween.  Soon, they will take down the red, white and blue 4th of July bunting and replace it with Christmas trees and tinsel.  I wonder if kids still trace their hands on brown construction paper, cut out the outline and glue construction paper feathers to the fingertips?  Where is Squanto?  Pilgrim hats are in short supply.  The only thing that will deter Walmart, Kmart, and all the other 'marts' from eating up Thanksgiving Day is to refuse to shop that day.  I'm planning on another piece of pie, with whipped cream of course, on Thanksgiving evening rather than rushing down to the stores to shop.  Hope you plan to join me in the "Have Another Piece of Pie" shopping boycott movement this coming Thursday.  I want to keep my Thanksgiving Day.                 

Observations of the Oregon Coast

Today we packed up and left Seal Rock, Oregon.  A mild weather front came through, and it got significantly 'cooler' by about 10 degrees.  At this point, I can confidently say winter has arrived on the Central Coast of Oregon.  Coincidentally, the temps in Sun City dropped below 90 this week - thank heaven!  I've actually liked the overcast skies and the intermittent rain of the Oregon Coast.  When the sun does peek out, the rains have cleaned the air and the blue sky looks pristine and delicate.  My favorite quote about the rainy weather is this:  "If you don't like the rain, move somewhere else!"  The only stone in my shoe about lots of rain is having to always have/wear/deal with rain gear. I'm pretty sure I'd go bananas in a climate with real winter where you always have to wear coats/sweaters/hats/gloves/boots.  Note to self:  Avoid winter.

Breakfast is just not going to be the same.  For the past 9 weeks, I've eaten my oatmeal while watching the waves break over the Seal Rocks.  The ocean view changed each day.  The color of the water was different each morning depending on the amount of sunlight.    The waves sometime barely lapped against the rocks.  Other days four foot waves crash ashore washing over the gaping string of lava rocks visible out the dining room window.  Every morning I got to see gliding formations of brown pelicans skimming over the tops of the waves and diving into the ocean for their breakfast.  The gulls as well as a murder of crows also swirled around each morning.

To get to the beach, all we had to do was to walk across the street.  The rocks are even more exposed during low tide, and you can find some mighty interesting creatures clinging to the rocks patiently waiting for the ocean to come back and cover them over.  Every time I went to the Seal Rock beach, there was always a new revelation.  The last trip to 'our' beach revealed a pair of black oyster catchers and other birds I'd never seen before.     

Gradually, we became so picky about our beach walks, we only went during low tide when the nooks and crannies holding animals, shells, and rocks revealed themselves.  Each beach we walked had its own unique characteristics.  We walked one beach barefoot.  (For the record, this was Drake's idea.)  This entire beach was one smooth stretch of sand with almost no rocks, or shells for miles.  

My favorite beach was Quail Creek because their rocks were filled with small tidal pools.  When I first saw these, they captured me completely.  I had never seen a wild starfish or an amenome in the ocean.    These animals seem to be plants since they don't have arms, legs, paws, eyes, ears or other accouterments we expect when we think 'animal'.  

The obvious mammals at the beach are the seals.  They became Drake's passion.  We had a small group of gray seals that hung around the Seal Rocks.  Some place names do have their origin in fact.  The seals like the rocks at low tide.  They can clamber aboard a certain set of rocks as the ocean recedes, and Drake delighted in watching them through MY binoculars, his Christmas gift to me.   

  All along the coast there are largish creeks that flow down the small hills and straight into the sea.  Most beaches are bisected by a stream of fresh water bubbling into the sea.  Often the only way to cross over the fresh water stream to the other side of the beach is at low tide.  When we went to the Oregon State University research facility, Hatfield Marine Center, they had a chart showing how the salt water penetrates an amazingly long way up the creek.  They also had a Pacific octopus.  There is significant ocean research going on in this area of the Pacific Coast.  This is a place where Oregon State does marine research, and is an NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration) station.  The Coast Guard is also stationed at Newport with both boats (no surprise) and a spiffy orange helicopter. 

Beaches are only one of the smooth spots of the Oregon Coast.  I really loved the food.  You only really get fresh seafood at the  ocean.  We ate in many places where they had the name of the boat that caught our lunch.  In towns like Newport, Lincoln City, and Florence you have to enjoy the tourist scene.  Vacationers come to the beaches in droves.  We missed the real season arriving after Labor Day.  I tried to cut a bit of slack for the locals since we met them at the end of a tourist season and they were tired, but overall their public behavior toward outsiders was pretty atrocious.  It was small stuff:  rudeness, mild road rage, exasperation and tiny snubs.  Gradually, I became acquainted with individual people, and each of them validated my not so favorable impression of the people inside the community.  They explained it as an insider/outsider thing; a way to preserve their identity in a sea of strangers.

The Pacific Coast at Oregon is striking, and beautiful in the extreme.  We have loved this place.  It has enriched my life, and my pictures allow me to relive it.

    There are lots of them, but you're welcome to see this place through my eyes.

https://picasaweb.google.com/jalyss1/2012OregonCoastAndSealRock?authkey=Gv1sRgCKGYjJek9smMcg

Election Night in America

I'm watching election coverage along with everyone else in America, well, except for those folks watching Bridezilla re-runs, and those who are Netflixing. Currently we are flipping between CNN, Fox, and PBS.  CNN gets the coverage edge because I'm enthralled with the 'smart board'.  I wonder how many hours John King had to practice to be able to manipulate those giant touch and spread multi-screens.  I also wonder who wrote the computer program that runs it.  We do have a fascination with the Presidential race.   The irony is your County Commissioner race has more impact on your daily life.  The County Commissioner gets our potholes fixed, allocates the county's money, and solves those niggling local problems that make steam come out of our ears.  

I do know I'm very grateful I'm not living in a 'battleground', 'swing', 'decisive' state.  From what I've been able to glean, it's been non-stop TV and radio commercials in those states thanks to the influx of soft money OKed by a wrong headed Supreme Court decision.  I think if I'd been subjected to non-stop negative political ads, I would have checked NEITHER on the ballot, and sent each campaign a bill for my earplugs.  The dollar amount spent on political campaigns for Congress and the White House is going to top $4 BILLION dollars.  How obscene and shameful that number is in these hard economic times, and in light of the natural disaster in the Northeast.   It seems that the Senate is going to stay Democratic and the House of Representatives is going to stay Republican.  Whichever Presidential candidate wins doesn't really matter.  Hello, four more years of gridlocked do nothing government.  What did $4 billion dollars buy? 

I've also been thinking of past elections.  The first one I remember is 1960; I was 10 years old.  Some of you can remember the excitement when John Kennedy was elected. My 10 year old Oklahoma self thought he talked funny but had great hair.  Only after studying American history did I learn that the Chicago mayor cooked crucial Cook County ballot boxes which swung Illinois and thus the election to Kennedy.  Nixon decided not to contest those Chicago results because he thought it would be too divisive for the country.  Doesn't that seem like a quaint idea in these election litigation times?  Think about what happens in American history if Nixon wins the 1960 election.  I'd like to peek at the past 50 years' of American history in an alternate universe where the 1960 election went to Nixon.

I think one of the surprises this year was the lack of a serious or even semi-serious third party candidate.  Speaking of Richard Nixon, he adopted the George Wallace (third party candidate) southern strategy and turned the South which had been voting Democratic since the Civil War into Republican territory.  The left wing of the Democratic party still contends the 5% of the vote Ralph Nader got in Florida in 2000 defeated Al Gore.  What generally happens in American politics is that 'good ideas' of third party candidates are co-opted by either the Democrats or Republicans.  One famous example of co-opting an idea is Social Security.  This was a Eugene V Debs idea that Franklin Roosevelt picked up.  (Debs was a labor leader, the founder of the American Socialist Party and got 6%, a million votes, running for President while he was in prison for opposing World War I.)  The most recent third party candidate who influenced policy is Ross Perot with his magic markers and cardboard charts explaining the deficit to the American public.  The winner of that election?  Bill Clinton who became a deficit hawk and balanced the budget.

As I sit here watching returns, one thing is abundantly clear:  We are a divided people.  Half of us are positive the other half is wrong.  We've been stuck here for twelve years now.  In these past twelve years, the losers have been all of us in the middle.  A key in American politics for over 200 years has been compromise.  The government of this country was intentionally structured to foster compromise.  Today in Congress compromise is not just a dirty word or an unpopular idea; it's dead and buried.  If you shear off 15% of the right wing politicos and 15% of the left wing politicos, there isn't a dime's worth of political differences between the rest of us.  I just don't understand why 60% of us are being disenfranchised by the extremist kooks on BOTH ends of the spectrum.  They've got Congress completely stopped in its tracks.  Where are the politicians who understand and practice statesmanship?  They are being held hostage by threats and intimidation.  Get out of line and suggest or endorse a compromise to achieve solutions, and outside money will miraculously appear to defeat you in your next election.  Sigh.  I guess it's time to wait for 2014 and hope we can break the gridlock in THAT election.  I wonder how much money will be spent to make sure we stay gridlocked.  That certainly seems to be the result of the flood of political money washing over this entire country.           

  

Twenty-Five Reasons Why I Dislike Young Children***

1)  They are boring; the younger they are, the more boring they are.

2)  It's always me, me, me with them.

3)  They don't follow directions.

4)  Give them an opportunity, and it's whine, whine, whine.

5)  Picky eaters are the norm.

6)  They have to be cleaned and dressed.

7)  You have to tie shoes, zip zippers, and button buttons  for A LONG TIME.

8)  They can't cut up their own food.

9)  Voice modulation is a mystery to them.

10)  They calculate when your food is the most hot and delicious then demand both your hands to do something for THEM.

11)  They take naps at inconvenient times.

12)  They have short legs and no stamina when traveling.

13)  They insist on putting sticky, dirty fingers as well as drool mixed with food on your best clothes.

14)  They drag around disgusting objects which you have to keep track of. 

15)  They wake you up in the middle of the night to look under their beds.

16)  They throw tantrums in public to cause you maximum discomfort.

17)  They interrupt your sex life.

18)  They expect to always open the first present.

19)  You have to clean up disgusting substances they've created.

20)  They bring home diseases and spread them around.

21)  You have to take them trick or treating instead of going to your own party.

22)  You're expected to attend school pageants and photograph them.

23)  They don't understand the concept 'white lie'.

24)  Your embarrassment is their weapon.

25)   They stay up too late and then refuse to sleep through the night.



***Fortunately, my own child wasn't nearly as disgusting as other children.  I don't understand how these other parents put up with their nasty offspring.

Oregon Wine Tourist

When we drove from Portland to Seal Rock, we were amazed at the wineries along Oregon State Highway 99W.  There are hundreds of small vineyards along a one hundred mile route.  There's no way to see them all in a weekend or even perhaps even in a month.  Some of the smaller wineries only make a few hundred cases of wine in a good year.  Even in the biggest and best distributed wineries, there are several varieties made that can only be purchased at the winery.  

I discovered Oregon has a 'state soil'. It's called Jory, and I've been standing on it all day long.  Apparently, this type of soil is mineral rich, iron heavy and eight feet deep particularly around Dundee.  This special soil on the sloped hills in this part of Oregon makes superb Pinot Noir wine.  Even more incredible, identical varieties of grapes have different flavors based on what side of the hill they grow on.  An excellent winery can produce different tasting Pinot Noirs based on the exact location where the grapes have been grown.

My favorite story comes from Erath Winery.  They make several different Pinot Noir varieties.  One of them is called "Leland".  Several years ago, a couple retired to this area, and the guy decided he needed a retirement hobby. He planted his four acres in grapes, and over the years, taught himself how to grow grapes.  Now, Erath buys his entire crop every year and makes "Leland", which sells only at the winery for $50 a bottle.  That points out another wrinkle in Oregon wine country.  There are several vineyards that are NOT wineries.  Some grow grapes and sell them to local wineries.  Grapes with 'reputation', such as Mr. Leland's, are sought after.  Wineries try to lock in their selected growers and build reputations for wine made from grapes they don't even grow.     

We saw every variety of tasting room.  The most lavish was a super contemporary tasting room on top of what passes for a 'mountain' here.  Some were little rooms carved out of the winery floor.  Others were refurbished farm houses.  Wine labels are meant to be distinctive.  My favorite label was the Four Graces Winery.  Its name refers to the four daughters of the owner, and their names are written in beautiful script around the edge of the neck label on each bottle.  Another winery owner loves poetry and calligraphy, so one of their specialized wines is in a bottle that has an original poem written by the owner in calligraphy and then silk screened onto the bottle.  Drake's souvenir of this trip is a hat from a certain winery. Their logo has a pair of meadowlarks, the Oregon state bird, sitting on an Oregon grape branch, not a vine, but a stunted evergreen shrub that is the state plant.  Sadly, the logo was better than the wine. 

A small winery called "Twelve" is owned by an older couple who threw caution to the wind, took the plunge late in their lives and started a winery.  The wife runs the tasting room while her husband handles the vines.  It was revealing how much esoteric knowledge it takes to make great wine.    It doesn't seem to be an exact science.  Each year produces a different quality of wine depending on how wet, how dry, how cool, and a bunch of other factors that are so nuanced it takes years to figure them all out and compensate for them.  Apparently, 2008 was the perfect year for the grapes, and if your wine was bad in 2008...well, as the owner of Twelve said, "Time to find another career".  I also learned today that wine is stored in French oak casks.  Baffled, I asked, "Why not American oak?"  Turns out to have something to do with open/closed wood.  Who knew?  

To my untutored eye, it seemed that the Oregon wine business was mature, but compared to California, it's in elementary school. Since it's a statewide economic advantage for the Oregon wine industry to succeed, it's still collaborative to a certain extent.  The Twelve owner opined that they wouldn't have been able to make it in California because the other California owners wouldn't have been as willing to help them learn. The Twelve Winery make small amounts of wine not yet widely distributed, but it's lovely.      

We managed to see a double digit number of wineries helped by dry weather the first day.  We devised a system to help us decide what we liked.  The supermarkets here naturally carry a big selection of Oregon wine, and I'm hoping our system I recorded on my Iphone is going to help us with future purchases. The weather isn't going to be so cooperative on our second day - an incoming 'rain event' is being referred to as A SOAKER.  Haven't seen one of those here.  It should be interesting.  Even this big event won't deliver constant rain.  It will be intermittent, but when raining, it's going to be heavy showers.  I know we won't be driving all the dirt roads we did today.  Shouldn't be a problem; there are wineries and wine tasting rooms lining the main state highway and scattered throughout the towns of the region.

McMinnville, Oregon is the biggest town with 35,000 people smack dab in the middle of this part of Oregon wine country.  It looks like a fun place to spend a couple of months, drink a lot of really good boutique wine that's never distributed anywhere outside the winery, eat some inventive cuisine which compliments the wine, and access an area of Oregon that looks like it has a lot to offer.

I think we are now heading into the next season - the rainy one.  The weather forecasts are showing only rain for the next several days, then a flicker of sunshine followed by more days of rain.  I wish I could just store some of these and trot them out in Arizona.  On the second day of this little trip, I can see to be constantly wet, bedraggled, and struggling to get rain wear on and off everywhere you go would become very tiresome indeed.