Vintage

Living here in the middle of the vineyards, how could I not photograph vintage wines. These are actually empty bottles that live on top of our spice cabinet. We had reasons for saving them when we put them up there. Some have a personal connection and some just have labels I like.

Jasper, the little dog on the ClosJaspere bottle belonged to our Maureen and Kelly, our landlords and friends when we rented a house in Sebastopol. They made the wine from the vineyard that was in front of our house. Maureen is from Montreal, hence the name in French.

The Black Kite also has a connection with them. Dana and Jim gave us the wine and I loved the label (the black kite has a red eye) and stuck the bottle on the kitchen windowsill. Kelly saw it there, asked where we got it and casually mentioned that he designed the label. When he's not spending weekends in Sebastopol, he runs his own advertising design business.

Silver Oak and Williams Sellyem are both premium wines, meaning very pricey. Silver Oak was given to us by visiting friends and a friend from Santa Rosa works at Williams Sellyem and brought a bottle to dinner. 

I just loved the Dancing Crow...both the image and the label. There are four more bottles on top of another cupboard, but I'll save them for another time.

I had my semi-annual MOT this morning with a doctor I'm getting to like better and better. We talked about the state of medical care here, the fact that there aren't enough doctors, and they don't get paid enough to be able to devote more than a few minutes to each patient. 'It's a mess', she concluded. She recommended the neurology department at UCSF in San Francisco forJohn and said that a lot of their appointments were virtual and that they had great support services for both of us. The medical group she belongs to has closed all their labs, so she sent me around the block to a new one. Although there is a real person sitting behind the glass, she directed me to sign in at a kiosk using my driving license. I fumbled around in my too small purse for my license and congratulated myself for putting all my medical cards in it at the last minute, for I needed them too. I was a bit annoyed by it at first, but it all went very efficiently and I guess I can congratulate myself for getting through the whole somewhat dehumanizing process without trouble.

My quote of the day says it all without me having to say anything:

 I don't know. I'm not. I'm not a lawyer. I don't know....
-Donald Trump when asked in a wide ranging television interview whether he believes citizens and non-citizens both deserve due process under the law as laid out in the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution, which he swore to uphold when he took the oath of office.