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RULE Numero uno: ART for ART's sake. RULE #2: As still a NOVICE in wine education, my VINO passion for this living art vintefication comes through in literary flights of allegory to paint w/words as I normally do with paint, expressive images of how tasting e exploring wine impacts me. Somewhat barouque style at time just to enthusiasism, not "fan rah-rah" and not any less credible, just do my best to share passion and energy for the artistry found alive in the bottle.

I've been a Sportscar idioso since I was age 10 when I walked past a white/black Alfa Romeo Guilietta Spider everyday on my way to Westwood Hills Elementary. I am steady~state of euthymia, happy, except please to keep thy distance when I am working on der ALFA's. I could never, still can not, spell correctly because those school days I'm a product of were BFTDD [before they diagnosed dyslexia]though I did all 4 point grades in English, Lit und writing courses in college. I am an artist in every sense, a fine arts major from Kendall by schooling, and an engineer from natural inclination and so by trade. . .but I did major in Philosophy and Psychology also. Picasso was my mentor from decades afar and I cried the day he died because my dream was to one day meet him and watch and learn from his energy like I did my on Earth mentor, Ray Weidenaarer.

I read Sartre, "Nausea", Camus's "The Stranger" "The Plague" e "The Fall", Terry Southern's "Candy", and Edgar Rice Burroughs' "Princess of Mars" all when I was 13 in the ninth grade in Junior High, but I didn't really get whacked in both skull & sense of humorousity until I read every book by Kurt Vonnegut Jr, circa 1979-85 ish. Yeah, 'life can be painful, but that doesn't mean its serious' sort'a whacked. HiHo. My dear Dad taught me the joys of hours and hours of patient fishing, and to never expect to catch any. He invited me for 10 years to join him on fishing excursions, through out most of my 20's, but while he was renewed in his own enthusiasm for fishing going into his mid-50's as a way maybe to capture his long ago memories of youth, I was resistant and never went because I think I was too busy getting on with catching something else, the beauty of girls and solid maturity, never expecting, of course, to catch either, so I didn't ever go with him. The next thing I know, he is gone, and so our my chances to ever fish with him again.

Each year I still drive 4 hours and then walk and wade 5 miles and 2 hours to stand and fish with him. My dear Mom left us in misery from cancer a few years before his shortened life ended. I found she had saved hundreds of Conde Nast and 'Holiday' magazines in the attic that I knew she loved, but never understood why she ferreted them away like gold bars, until 30 years later when I found myself doing the same damn thing with Forza mags: like gold.

You can have your eyes open everyday and still not see what's going on around you until 30 years later, ja?

I was founder, with friends, of the West Michigan Alfa Romeo Owners, inc. We like leaky but gorgeous cars und all things Italian. Life ist some fun, isn't it? People ask this and I always reply, "it beats the alternative." "That's the way it goes" ~ „Das die Weise ist, geht sie“

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