Wine Blog

GM’s finance arm GMAC remains silent on final bailout hurdle even after key deadline passes – Minneapolis Star Tribune
GRAND BLANC, Mich. – Even after a crucial deadline came and went, the financing arm of General Motors Corp. remained silent Saturday on whether it cleared a final hurdle to become a bank holding company and gain access to billions in federal bailout money. Analysts have speculated that if GMAC

De Long’s Wine Grape Varietal Table
Learn about Wine the Visual Way.

You consider yourself fairly open minded about wine. You’re familiar with the big five — Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, Sauvignon Blanc, and Chardonnay — and are getting comfortable with more obscure grape varieties: the occasional Albarino, Petite Sirah, or Viognier. But just when you thought you had the situation under control, your waiter suggests a Lagrein, your local liquor store is pushing Xynomavro, and your friends now swear by Pineau d’Aunis. What to do?

The popular wine reference, De long’s Wine Grape Varietal Table has been improved and expanded. Just as with the first edition, the world of wine grapes is organized in a clear, concise and easy to use reference similar to a periodic table. The table contains 184 red and white grape varieties organized by both body (vertically) and acidity (horizontally). The Wine Indexes, which help to answer the bacchanalian question “what grape are you drinking?”, now include all wine regions worldwide. To fit all the additional information in, the table is now 24 x 36 inches (printed on 110 lb. acid-free archival paper), and the indexes now comprise an 88 page perfect-bound book. The table and index book are packaged in an attractive and sturdy gift box.

It makes a great gift for novice or expert lovers of wine and is the first in the De Long’s Wine Info Series, a concise set of wine information guides.

Customer Review: top chart
An excellent tool for training, eduction or just curiosity. It is very easy to understand and reference.

Customer Review: Fabulous Chart.
I have many friends who enjoy wine, some of them in the food/hospitality business. They are all jealous of this chart.

Do you drink grapefruit juice every morning? Have you taken St. John’s wort recently? Hormonal birth control pills can interact with many other things. Find out what you are doing that might lower your birth control’s effectiveness even if you didn’t know.

Timing. It is important to take your birth control pill at the same time every day. Aim to take it within the same hour, if possible. This is particularly important for progestin-only pills. If you are constantly late with your pills, choose another time that is more convenient for you. Consider setting your watch to beep, or another similar reminder to help you take your pills at the right time.

Storage. Don’t store your medicine someplace that is too hot or too cold. You want a place that is out of direct sunlight, such as a drawer. Heat and cold can affect different medications different ways, and often they can lower the effectiveness.

Birth control pills, like all other kinds of pills, are a type of medication. This means that you need to always inform your doctor and pharmacist of what kind of birth control you are on. This is to help you avoid any complications or bad interactions between drugs. Here are some things that interact with birth control. (For more information on how hormonal birth control works, and the risks and side effects, as well as other birth control options, visit www.theguideto-birthcontrol.com)

Some antibiotics. Rifampin, or Rifapentine is an antibiotic generally used to treat tuberculosis. Other antibiotics are generally fine when you are on the pill, however. Demeclocyclene and doxycyclene are two other antibiotics that can interfere with your birth control. Ask your doctor for other alternatives, and make sure that you get prescribed something that won’t interfere with your contraceptive plan.

St. John’s Wort. This is an herbal remedy that you can buy at any pharmacy. It is not prescription or over the counter. It helps combat depression. However, it also lessens the effectiveness of birth control, and as such, should not be taken without consulting a health care professional.

Grapefruit and Grapefruit Juice. Grapefruit contains a compound that slows the absorption of estrogen hormones to the body. This means that it does not affect progestin-only pills.

Antifungal medications. Certain medications that are taken orally to treat yeast infections can disrupt oral contraceptives. This includes griseofulvin.

Antihistamines. There is currently a debate in the medical community if anti-allergy medications, or antihistamines can be linked to the failure of birth control.

Anticonvulsants. Many medications taken to prevent seizures can lessen the effectiveness of birth control pills. Speak to your doctor before dealing with these.

Some other drugs that might interact with your birth control include corticosteroids, bronchidilators, and certain anxiety medications. These are not entirely confirmed, so ask your health care professional about interactions.

These interactions apply to other methods of hormonal birth control as well, including the Patch, the Vaginal Ring, and Depo-Provera.

Just as your other medication can affect your birth control, remember that your birth control can also affect your other medication. Avoiding negative drug interactions is important for you on both counts, so always ask your doctor or pharmacist about drug interactions when you get a new prescription.

For more information on all types of birth control, including hormonal, barrier-based (condoms, etc) and more, visit The Guide to Birth Control.

About the Author

Lilith Mill is a women’s rights activist and birth control expert. For more information on all types of birth control, including hormonal, barrier-based (condoms, etc) and more, visit The Guide to Birth Control. –

A Touch of the Grape (Hemlock Falls Mysteries) With upstate New York in a tourist slump, Sarah and Meg Quilliam are desperate to keep their inn running. But their only guests are “The Crafty Ladies”, a group of middle-aged artists who make art out of recyclables. But their creative flow is interrupted when one of the ladies is killed in a fire at the inn–and another soon after. Now Sarah and Meg are really desperate. Includes a recipe from the Inn at Hemlock Falls.

L.A. Lakers snap Celtics’ win streak – Herald Tribune
Kobe Bryant had 27 points, nine rebounds and five assists, Pau Gasol scored seven of his 20 points in the final three minutes, and the Lakers beat Boston 92-83 Thursday to snap the Celtics’ franchise-record 19-game winning streak. The game was the first between the teams since the Celtics romped to

Amateurs are trying genetic engineering at home – Town Hall
The Apple computer was invented in a garage. Same with the Google search engine. Now, tinkerers are working at home with the basic building blocks of life itself. Using homemade lab equipment and the wealth of scientific knowledge available online, these hobbyists are trying to create new life forms

Plum Wine
Bottles of homemade plum wine link two worlds, two eras, and two lives through the eyes of Barbara Jefferson, a young American teaching at a Tokyo university. When her surrogate mother, Michi, dies, Barbara inherits an extraordinary gift: a tansu chest filled with bottles of homemade plum wine wrapped in sheets of rice paper covered in elegant calligraphy—one bottle for each of the last twenty years of Michi’s life.

Why did Michi leave her memoirs to Barbara, who cannot read Japanese? Seeking a translator, Barbara turns to an enigmatic pottery artist named Seiji, who will offer her a companionship as tender as it is forbidden. But as the two lovers unravel the mysteries of Michi’s life, a story that draws them through the aftermath of World War II and the hidden world of the hibakusha, Hiroshima survivors, Barbara begins to suspect that Seiji may be hiding the truth about Michi’s past—and a heartbreaking secret of his own.

Customer Review: Overcoming our past
This love story confronts the issues of how our own personal pain from past experience affects our ability to love in the future. The setting of this book takes you to post Hiroshima Japan. The affects on the people of this place and how it has affected others around the world. Not only does it look at war it also embraces the issues that are placed on children who are not given the love that most children take for granted. Sometimes we can overcome our past and sometimes we cannot. I especially liked the setting of Japan and the descriptions of the beauty of the land. Being able to have a small window into the world of another culture was a pleasure for me. While this was a Love Story it was more about our ability to look at what responsibility we each have to take in our own personal decisions. I believe this to be the best part of this book. While the stories themselves were adequate it was the ability to cause the reader to explore their own feelings regarding themselves and the world that truly made it worth the read.

Customer Review: Reading Between Cultures
I throughly enjoyed this book. Since I lived six years in Japan (from 1993-99) while immersing myself in the culture, I was delighted to see the accuracy of Angela’s DAvis-Gardner portrayal Japanese way of thinking and relationships. The story caught me up in its suspense as I read on to discover where Barbara was going to find intimacy and how she’d manage these strange cross-cultural relationships, and what the writing on these plum wine bottles revealed. Descriptive language in this novel was beautiful and some passages brought an amused smile to my lips.

I was astonished by the range of reviews by others. Several talked about how they couldn’t understand how Barbara could be attracted to Seiji. Some found both characters unsympathetic or shallow. I don’t find fault with these characters but with others reading and understanding of these two protagonists.

I think critics who are harsh on these characterizations haven’t lived alone in a foreign land and felt the keen loneliness inherent in that situation, especially in a land where the ideal of men and the values they lives by (work has priority over relationships, relationship with mother has priority over spouse) are so different than western values.

Both Barbara and Seiji were sympathetic characters for me because I understood and felt their dilemmas and could see the cross-cultural issues at play. I could understand how Barbara would waver between going along with Seiji’s ways and trying to change him to American romantic ideals.

I thank Angela for a compelling read that enlightened me to the shame and sadness experienced by survivors of Hiroshima.