Columns

Editor: An open plea to all Sonoma County Vineyards: Please call

One of my favorite features of Facebook is the time capsule/memory thing they do. A week ago one of my favorite videos of all time popped up, and I watched it a few times, soaking in the memories. In the video, Thomas is about six. He is staring at our Thanksgiving turkey, which is sitting on a platter on the counter, waiting to be barbequed. He tells me, “I’m going to talk to the turkey.” In answer to my question of why he wants to talk to the turkey, he informs me, “Because.” (Well, of course. What was I thinking?)

The good news about the controversy swirling around the county¹s

“Dorothy Parker – What Fresh Hell Is This?” a biography by Marion Meade. 451 pages with index and illustrations. The question is one that Parker often used to answer her telephone. The subject of this biography is often irascible, willful and not easy to like; she became a leading voice in The New Yorker at its inception, followed by several years working in Hollywood, friends with Hemingway, Fitzgerald and the entire world of New York writers who gathered at the round table in the Algonquin Hotel. Her response to meeting Will Rogers was, “I always liked a man I never met.” Meade manages to portray her subject in a sympathetic manner and gives us a portrait full of the life that Parker always exhibited across the years. Check it out.