Finger Lakes (FLX) Voices

Category: Uncategorized

  • This is not my favorite post.

    This is not my favorite post.

    An Opening Statement: This is my first attempt at a blog post in a minute or two. Just no time, what with me being Doc Smith in the Village of Hammondsport for the last year and a half. A lot has shifted in that time, not just in my environment but there’s been an internal…

  • A Pittsburgh Story.

    A Pittsburgh Story.

    We visited our son in Pittsburgh this past weekend. I’d never been to this western Pennsylvania city until we went to visit the Pitt campus when our son was a high school senior. He’s now a junior there and I’ve still only been a handful of times, although that’s another story. Time is the slow,…

  • The continuing search for knowledge and context.

    There’s a scene in the original Jaws movie where everyone is fleeing from the water, in fear that a large shadow moving towards shore is the man-eating Great White Shark of said movie. One guy on shore yells out, “It’s ok! It’s only bluefish!” Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever caught a bluefish, but…

  • Both Sides Now. Part one: Maloney’s.

    Give some money to the girl outside, as much as you can spare. C’mon in, have a good time and pull you up a chair. If you’re holding anything you know, it’s just polite to share. Try and keep the conversation light. — Brian Wright, Red Rooster Social Club. Amy and I came to the…

  • Weathering the Storm.

    I was a military man, or at least I was in the military, for just under ten years. That’s about one sixth of my life at this point, and it’s been almost thirty years since I was discharged, a fair amount of time to develop perspective. The military is one of those experiences that look…

  • The Tito Telegraph.

    September 21 update from Tito. For the last few years I’ve been in a constant state of exhaustion. Minus the 6 weeks I had a functioning kidney earlier this year and the 16 days after this second transplant. This started probably around November 2020. Every day since then has been rough. I tried not to…

  • A strong foundation.

    I wrote about my Finger Lakes wine pyramid theory a couple of weeks ago. I was hesitant to broach the subject because any conversation about a hierarchy implies that something is better than something else. Obviously, all of us have things that we like better than others, sweet vs. savory, light vs. dense texture, childhood…

  • Above all, balance.

    “There’ll be one corporation making one little box. It’ll show you what you want and tell you what you want, and cost whatever you got.” Greg Brown, ‘Where is Maria’. 1996. We’ve just finished four days of the 2023 FLXcursion Riesling extravaganza and I’ll be writing a lot about it, but I wanted to start…

  • A Sequel.

    This post really isn’t about wine, but I don’t have anywhere else to post it, so bear with me. I visited my mother in memory care a few weeks ago and wrote about a chicken, some of you were kind enough to comment on my idea to send my mother’s possessions out into the world…

  • Random thoughts from the borderlands.

    There’s not that many wineries in the Finger Lakes. There, I said it. I know when you’re driving around the trails, it seems like they’re everywhere, clustered around the shores of the lakes like travelers to a spa, taking in that altered atmosphere. (A strategy that doesn’t always work.) Try finding more than a handful…