About Me
I live and work in the Napa Valley of California. Born in South Bend, Indiana, I grew up in Pennsylvania, attended college in Virginia and in Mexico, as well as graduating from the State Penn. Have been engaged in the Napa wine industry, as a winemaker and related fields, for more than half my life. Came to California after college, intending to work in the wine industry for only a couple of years, but the opportunities just kept coming, and I and my wife just stayed. We live smack dab in the heart of the Napa Valley! Still love and miss the East Coast, but don't miss the weather.
I met my wife of many years as a student in Mexico, and we speak Spanish in our household (I was nearly born in Mexico, and learned Spanish not from parents, but from the age of 12 in US classrooms). LOL, I'm a native speaker now!
Occupation
Wine industry, oak wine barrel sales to wineries across North America. Lots of travel, and I love it!
Favorite Music
1930s jazz and dance band music. I will sing some forgotten songs from another era on Youtube soon. Hence, my interest in Ysabellabrave.
Latin music from the 1940s to present: rumbas, mambo, cumbias, bossa nova, salsa.
1960s and 1970s rock, Motown and R&B
Favorite Shows & Movies
No TV except occasional PBS drama and documentaries (Ken Burns). Movies: The Unbearable Lightness of Being; Amalie; anything Spielberg, Chaplin's later work, early Disney features; classic 1940s stuff like Citizen Kane; anything which sucks you into another
Favorite Books
Non-fiction histories: Thucydides (the greatest!), Fernand Braudel, David McCullough. Biography from all good authors. Poetry: Sappho, Robert Herrick, Coleridge, Blake, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson,TS Eliot. Modern literature: Carlos Fuentes, Vladimir Nabokov, Umberto Ecco, John Fowles,. Popular literature: Ayn Rand in my youth, R.F. Delderfield, James Norman Hall (many South Seas stories). Humor: Mark Twain, H.L. Menken
Relationship Status
Married
Interests
Classical history, particularly the culture of 6th-5th Century BC Ionia and Athens, and 1st Century AD Rome; plus late Roman and early Christian authors, philosophy and polemics (St. Augustine, et. al.)
Photography: until the advent of the digital revolution, perfecting the art of Kodachrome's possibilities; also videography in analog until very recently. I also do 3D experiments.
Politics: libertarian, with emphasis on the "liberal" aspects instead of the conservative ones, which unfortunately have body-snatched the movement
Gardening, landscapes, with an emphasis on creating paradise in your own back yard.
Genealogy and family history: have uploaded huge files, thousands of names to the Internet
Hawaii and Hawaiian culture: rural Hawaii is earth's only paradise.
Latin-America and its culture
Architecture and art history
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Joined: 10/18/2007
Ysabella Brave
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Maurixio
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on 04.10.2008
at 2:34 am
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Wherever you are, wherever you go, I wish you all the nicest things you'd like to have, today, tomorrow, all over the future...
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