Grape Stompin'

Yesterday, we went to a grape stompin' at Irvin House Vineyards on Wardmalaw Island. It was the first grape stomp for either of us. Traditionally, harvested grapes were placed in a huge wooden vat and the harvesters would stomp on them to remove the juice from the ripened grapes. Part of the process of making wine. This Carolina vineyard only cultivates native American grapes and from it create their five varieties of wine. The Grape Stompin' celebrates the grape harvest and is a family event with grapes being stomped in half wooden barrels with live music, arts and crafts sales, barbecue, games and, of course, wine. We found it enjoyable and reconnected with some folks we hadn't seen in awhile. We would have enjoyed it more had we brought some chairs and some friends to have shared the joy with.

Whew!

The last few have wiped me out. I've been working on a special project of mine and it's been energy intensive. It's required a lot of research on line and a number of face time meetings with some other people. I've been learning to use Google Docs. And have been investigating starting a facebook group.

Gotta love it

This kind of blows my mind. Is this a mash up or what? Sometimes the creativity just blows you away in it's universality!

Just a blog

Today was one of those days that was good although nothing exciting happened. But what is exciting anyway? Nothing of creatively happened although I did watch a Disney/Pixar film on TV. There was a very good show on this a.m., The Rise of the Video Game. It traced the games from their humble beginnings of games such as "Pong", to the multi player games of today. Not only the graphics and technology but how the games reflect our society. Role playing with avatars in virtual reality environments are almost spooky. It is easy to see how a person could get the two confused. What is real and what is not. It begs to answer Plato's question about the shadow of the lion on the cave wall.

Which was real?

Enough of this heavy stuff! We spent most of the day at the lake with church friends. We had fun and overate of the hamburgers, hot dogs, and chicken sandwiches. After returning home I tried my hand at veggie burgers. A combination of chick peas, potatoes, breadcrumbs and various made a presentable pattie. I browned 'em up in a skillet before serving 'em up on a bun. They were surprisingly good. I was testing the recipe for a camping menu.

This is a link to one of our favorite San Diego resturants. http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=1h&oq=&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4ADBR_enUS277US277&q=hash+house+san+diego

Dillinger

This is a great gangster film. I liked it very much although the 1973 movie Dillinger starring Warren Oates was good, let's face it , although Oates may have looked more like the real Dillinger there is no mistaking Johnny Depp's adding something to the role. Besides, Depp's brooding look adds so much to the character. I liked the music to this one, it wasn't some banjo picking of some '30's vintage jazz.

I like the gangster films. I guess it's the rat-tat-tat of tommy guns and the "high-speed" car chases. I thought there was a serious flaw in this one . I remembered that Dillinger was betrayed by "the woman in red", but noticed the "the woman" in this movie wore an orange dress. Further research shows that the movie was historically correct and "the woman" wore an orange dress. However, the lights of the the theater made the dress appear red to the FBI agents in the ambush. Another interesting fact was that Purvis had a problem lighting his cigar as a signal to the other agents to ambush Dillinger but they recognised his attempts as the signal which allowed them to surprise Dillinger and successfully shoot him in the back.

As an aside, I'm amazed at how easily the gangsters and G-men handle the tommy guns. I picked up one of these, Thompson sub-machine guns, the other day and found that it weighed about ten pounds without the drum magazine.

Notes on the FBI's list of public enemies of this era:

* John Dillinger was killed and not captured.

* Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were killed and not captured.

* Baby-faced Nelson was killed and not captured.

* Machine gun Kelly was the only notable public enemy that was captured rather than killed. he died in prison of natural causes.