POSTING # 6: The Ice Wine Harvest; Mince Tarts in Hilton Head; Canadians Celebrating the U.S Presidential Inauguration; Arrogant Bankers; Short Stuff

The Ice Wine Harvest

While we were on holiday and enjoying the sun in South Carolina, we did take time--- now and then---to worry about the ice wine harvest back in the Virgil area. (I know this may seem hard to believe but you’re just going to have to trust us.)

Picking ice wine grapes is a tricky business. As you know, they stay on the vines after the normal grapes are picked, waiting until they have frozen and thawed enough times to bring the sugar and acid content up to the desired levels. When the berries become brown they are ready to harvest but the actual picking has to wait until some night when the temperature is -10C or colder.

Some vineyards had picked their grapes during a cold spell in December but other vineyard managers felt the grapes weren’t quite ready and gambled on a cold spell in January.

The gamble paid off. The second week of January was ideal for picking and the 2008 crop is now safely in fermentation vats.

I hear that the yield was large and the winemakers expect that 2008 will prove to be a very good year for ice wine.

I like to think that our worrying helped.



Mince Tarts in Hilton Head

In the Posting #5, I mentioned that we were taking mincemeat with us so I could have my 12 tarts between Christmas and New Years. Our plan, you will recall, was to buy frozen tart shells and fill them with good Canadian mincemeat.

But, there were no tart shells to be had in Hilton Head! And we weren’t about to try to make pastry dough in a skimpily-equipped vacation kitchen.

Happily, Mrs. Smith came to our rescue. One supermarket had two frozen mincemeat pies made by Mrs. Smith. Pat used her skills in geometry and quilting to calculate, with great precision, slices of pie that would be exactly equal to a normal tart.

According to Pat’s calculations, I have had the equivalent of at least 14 tarts.

We feel well prepared for 2009.

Canadians Celebrating the U.S Presidential Inauguration


After cheering, holding our breath, biting our nails etc. for Obama last fall, it didn’t seem right just to sit in our rented condo and watch the inauguration on television. It was a time to be with others. But, how to do that?

Then we saw an advertisement announcing an inauguration lunch at a local restaurant, Dye’s Gullah Fixin’s, that we had visited the week before. (The Gullah are descendants of blacks who settled along the coast of North and South Carolina after the Civil War. Dye offers some wonderful dishes from her Gullah ancestors including light, rich corn bread served with home-made sugar cane syrup, fried oysters, and peach dump---sliced peaches are ‘dumped’ into a baking dish with batter.)

The lunch was sponsored by the Beaufort County Democratic Club South of the Broad (the Broad is a river that divides Beaufort County between the city of Beaufort in the north and Hilton Head in the south). We sent an email to the organizer (to be honest, we were a little economical with the truth and didn’t say we were Canadians just in case…). He replied saying he had reserved tickets for us but warned the restaurant would be crowded.

We got there early and found space at a table with two other couples, from Pittsburgh. We shook hands, “Hi, I’m John and this is my wife Pat.”

One of the women said, “You’re Canadians.”

Pat looked at her, “How did you know? We haven’t said, ‘Out’ ‘About’ or ‘Eh’?”

“It’s your accent.”

Pat explained that we weren’t going to say we were Canadians for fear they would think we were crashing their party.

“Oh, you’re very welcome.” (And, indeed, we couldn’t have been treated more warmly.)

We learned later that the woman who ‘outed’ us attends the Shaw Festival with her husband every May and October. She certainly knows her Canadian accents!

The restaurant filled quickly and the organizer kept wandering around, wringing his hands, and saying, “I hope the Fire Marshall doesn’t drop in.”

We noticed there was a reporter with a notebook interviewing three women at a table behind us. Here is part of her article as it appeared in the Island Packet on the day after the inauguration. The reporter captured very well the mood and emotions of the party.


Julie Cordray of Sun City Hilton Head is black and grew up in South Carolina during the civil rights era.
Ina Takashima of Hilton Head Island is a Japanese-American who was incarcerated with her parents in an internment camp during World War II.
Lena Epps Brooker is a Native American who grew up in a part of North Carolina that had three-way segregation separating whites, blacks and "Indians."
“For the three women who sat among a larger group of friends, Obama's swearing-in was the culmination of lifelong hopes -- hopes their parents told them to hold onto from the time they were girls -- that one day a racial minority would win the White House.
"My parents told me that change would come, that barriers would come down," Brooker said. "Today, it did."
"Minorities are in board rooms and running businesses," she continued. "This is the last barrier. It's been reached. What my parents told me about -- it's here."
Cordray said she felt a "sense of completeness" as Obama took the oath. "It empowered all of us," the Georgetown native said.
Takashima still had tears running down her face 10 minutes after the new president finished his inaugural speech.
"This means the world to me," she said. "After suffering prejudice and hatred in my life, this day has finally come."
The three women weren't the only ones moved by the historic inauguration.
Obama supporters at Tuesday's gathering watched the event on two televisions placed on opposite sides of the small Gullah restaurant. One was propped up on a yellow ladder, a microphone perched next to it to amplify the sound. Beneath the television hung a poster with an image of Obama's face and the word "hope."
People stood and wept and cheered during the swearing in and after the inaugural speech. They sang the national anthem along with the United States Navy Band Sea Chanters as though the Hilton Head gathering was actually taking place at the Capitol.

It seemed to me that the whites, although pleased with the election of the first African-American, were rejoicing primarily because the Bush years were over and because the Obama victory promised more responsible national and international policies.

For the non-whites, the inauguration meant all of that but something else. They were celebrating the beginning of a new era, an era that promised greater fairness in the pursuit of the happiness promised nearly 250 years ago in the Declaration of Independence.

A remarkable day.

A remarkable nation!

Arrogant Bankers

The media are full these days of stories about Wall Street Bankers, their greed, conceit and, often, plain stupidity.
It remind me of a story that a friend tells of a run-in she had a few years ago with her banker. She lives in a small U.S. town and was having a contractor replace her sidewalk, steps and patio. When he had finished he gave her a bill for the price they had agreed upon---$7000---and asked if she could give it to him in cash (I hope neither she nor he is ever offered a job in Washington that requires them to reveal all their tax histories!).
Our friend went to her bank, was greeted by name by the teller and gave her a withdrawal slip for the $7000.
The teller started when she saw the amount, “I’m sorry but I can’t give you that much cash”.
“Why not? There’s enough money to cover it.”
“I just can’t.”
“But it’s my money.”
“I better let you see the manager.”
Our friend, keeping her cool remarkably well, sat down in front of the manager’s desk. He engaged in some small talk about her family and then said, “Now tell me dear, what are you going to do with this money?”
Our friend told us that she considered and rejected several options in the second or two after the banker’s question. Should she tell him the truth? Should she tell him it was none of his business? Should she tell him that his question was insulting and demeaning?
In the end, she leaned forward and whispered in a confidential tone, “Well, you know what young lovers are like.”
The banker had the decency to turn red. He quickly initialed the withdrawal slip and passed our friend back to the teller.

Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

Last month, coming back from a stroll by the ocean, Pat and I were crossing the narrow wooden ramp over the dunes and met a couple with two Prince Charles Spaniels. The man was about 20 feet ahead of his wife, being pulled along by a lovely dog, with a tennis ball in its mouth. The dog paused to sniff Pat, keeping the ball in its mouth. Pat leaned over, let the dog smell her hand, and then ruffled his fur and told him what a fine dog he was.

Suddenly, the dog with the woman began to bark furiously. The woman tried to shush it but finally had to pick it up. We left the man and walked to the woman and the still-barking dog.

The woman frowned at us and said accusingly, “You touched her sister.”

We didn’t know what to say.

Then the dog stopped barking and leaned over to sniff us. After the hand-sniffing ritual, we told her what a beautiful dog she was and played with her ears. If she had been a cat, she would have been purring.

The women, a little friendlier now, told us that her dog couldn’t stand anyone paying attention to her sister.

Apparently, sibling rivalry is not just a human condition.

We asked if her dog also liked to play fetch on the beach.

“No, she can’t be bothered. She just chases the birds.”

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Years ago when the children were young, we went for a swim at an ocean beach that was new to us. The waves were fairly high and I wasn’t sure whether there might be an undertow. The two boys knew about swimming in the ocean but they were getting quite far out. I thought it would be a good idea to give them a warning.

“Watch for an undertow”, I shouted.

Our daughter (who was younger than the boys, didn’t have any ocean experience and had no idea what an undertow was) stopped what she was doing. She decided that it would be a good idea to repeat the warning (she had a fine set of lungs and as is normal with youngest children she loved a chance to tell her older siblings what to do). She let out two good shouts, repeating what she thought she had heard.

Then she turned to me, with a growing look of horror, “What’s an undertoad, Dad?’

(I still wonder what kind of ugly, threatening reptile her imagination had conjured up.)

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See you next Sunday for more stories from our family’s universe!