This column ends with a story about food and wine pairing, so I did an online search on “When did food and wine pairing start?” CoPilot gave me this: “Origins of Food and Wine Pairing – Food and wine pairing is not a practice with a single, exact starting date, but its roots go back […]
History
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The Loose Cannon: Mirrors, memories and 20/20 hindsight
It was a beautiful Saturday morning when I decided to take a walk through town. As I strolled, I ruminated on what I might write about for my next column. As I passed by the playground at Yountville Park in the north end of town, there was a young dad there with his son doing […]
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The Loose Cannon: Time to say goodbye, for now
Knowing that the Sun would be shutting down, I asked editor Lisa Adams Walter if I could write a “Time to say goodbye” column. She said “Yes, I would welcome a ‘goodbye for now’ column; our final issue will be on May 21.” My response was, “Goodbye for now,” of course!” “For now.” Two words […]
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The Loose Cannon: Napa Valley Grape Harvest – 1960
Grape harvesting in the Napa Valley has changed a lot since 1960. For us, the 1960s was a period of change in harvesting grapes. We went from hauling individual redwood grape boxes to the winery to hauling the grapes in what were called grape gondolas. Assuming that Napa Valley was not the first to use […]
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The Loose Cannon: A Napa childhood barn idea—and one unforgettable parade machine
My dad managed the Mt. Eden ranch on the Oakville Crossroad after returning home from WWII. The Mt. Eden ranch is the current location of the Rudd and PlumpJack wine estates. Our house was surrounded by vineyards. When I tell people that, they imagine an idyllic setting in which to grow up. But to me, […]
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The Loose Cannon: Holding the line on history, the family that kept Yountville’s windmill standing
After I wrote the column about the windmill on Yount Street, I received an email from Lisa Duff Khajavi who lived with her family in Yountville from 1978 (first living on Starkey St.) until she graduated from Justin-Siena High School in 1982 and moved away to attend Pepperdine University. Her folks, James Lee and Lorna […]
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The Loose Cannon: Relics of the Napa Valley – windmills and tankhouses tell stories
I’m pleased that this relic from the past has survived and is still standing in the 6700 block of Yount Street today: That is a Fairbanks-Morse windmill built to pump water. Originally developed in the 1800s, windmills of this nature were quite common prior to the availability of electricity and gas engines. When the wheel […]
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The Loose Cannon: Chris Brown – A Life Well Lived!
Back in June of 2018, I went to Wednesday night bocce with my mixed heritage black lab, Yogi. Lin was out of town, so the two of us boys went unsupervised. Over the course of the evening, I drank a bit too much, but not so much that I didn’t know I shouldn’t be driving. […]
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The Loose Cannon: From HAL to Alexa+ – is Big Brother in the Living Room?
Lin is becoming concerned about me. Out of necessity, she has been in Texas for several weeks now, but I have shared some of my conversations at home with our “Alexa” with her. Amazon tells us: Alexa is Amazon’s cloud-based voice assistant that helps you control devices, access information and perform tasks using natural language […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Documentary shines light on Chinese immigrants who helped build Napa Valley
Chinese immigrants arrived in the Napa Valley in the mid-1800s to work in the vineyards, tanneries, hop fields and nearby mines. They also worked as domestic servants and laborers. Yet their contribution to the development of the Napa Valley has been largely forgotten. The Chinatowns they built in Calistoga, Napa and St. Helena have disappeared. […]