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Salt Lake City, – I may have to become a Mormon. Turns out the
last international airport in the United Snakes that gives even a nod and a
wink to the weak and sinful amongst us is SLC, which extends a helping hand
to those of us who've failed to kick the nicotine habit. At the end of every
concourse at Salt Lake is a compound for cigarette smokers, choking down
their last puff before embarking upon 12-hour, smoke-free and
peanut-deficient flights. Perhaps the Mormons are teaching the rest of the
nation a lesson in tolerance.
A half-dozen years
ago, Detroit, MSP and even LAX provided such sanctuary inside Checkpoint
Charlie, but those are long gone. Hell, it was not that many decades ago that
the airlines served, with your multiple-course meal in coach, a 5-pack of Winstons to light up after dessert.
Northwest
Airlines tried in vain to keep the smoking rooms open at its World Clubs, but
was legislated out its of kindness by government authorities. Now, at those
places, and all others in the U.S., you wanna
smoke, go all the way outside and resubmit yourself to body cavity checks.
Lighting
up in a wind- and rain-besotted outdoor hovel (you can't smoke on the other
side of the street, where the terminal is) at Spokane, we were joined by a
Transportation Security Administration agent who lit up. We did our normal
friendly griping, to which she rejoined: “Yeah, it's
reverse discrimination in a way. But it's to our benefit and our health.
They're just trying to protect us from ourselves.” God help us:
she meant it, and she's touching your junk every day.
So there's
the upside of Delta's conquest of Northwest Airlines: Notwithstanding that a
ride on Delta in coach class is tantamount to enduring a hemorrhoid-ectomy sans anaesthetic,
at least they route you through Salt Lake and the last stand against
intolerance.
San
Francisco –
Last Saturday fetched up that rarest of San Francisco days: no fog, no wind,
no rain, just beautiful sunshine, as we wended our way across the Golden Gate
northbound from downtown and wound up through the Mayacamas
Mountains through a herd of tiny (by Idaho standards) but obviously well-fed
black-tailed deer to Gordon Holmes' fabled Lookout Ridge
Winery. And
“lookout” it commands, over a spectacular, 360-degree view of the
Sonoma and Napa valleys a thousand feet below.
We are on
a mission: to taste Gordon's wine and talk about gold, silver, lead, zinc and
copper mining. There was a side-bet, too; the San Francisco Hard Assets
conference was going on downtown at an adjacent Marriott, but such seemed
anti-climatic after a visit to the elusive Mr.
Holmes' elusive, and exclusive, juice factory. It being before noon, the sips
were shallow but significant: first a charming chardonnay, followed by a
slurping of pinot and cab, as Gordon spun out his 61-year life-story as an
investor, publisher, and now award-winning wine-maker.
Gordon
likes the high country better than the fabled valleys we survey below, for
the purposes of growing grapes. Drainage is better, and the rockiness of the
soil forces the vines to work a little harder, and
the plants get a 360-degree view of the weather. He comes by viticulture and
horticulture honestly: his grandfather, Harry, even co-wrote a book on how to
grow stuff in this part of the world.
“I
always knew I was going to be a wine-maker,” he recalls, winding up the
life-story he is about to tell his guests. But first there was Wall Street to
conquer: he bought his first mining stock at age 13 and sold it for a tidy
profit. By the age of 21 he had acquired quite a bit of knowledge about the
stock market and about the wine business. Next to conquer was the publishing world,
which he did as a young Californian helping write the business plan for Investors Business Daily. He went out on his own,
founding supply-side investor and broker print publications in New York and
doing spectacularly well financially. Then at the end of the millennium he
sold his print media, shed his Italian-tailored suits and returned to
California to settle into his first passion: “making juice.”
A
coincidence of conversation with neighbour Ken
Behring and having his wife contract multiple-sclerosis, which confined her
to a wheel-chair, got Holmes thinking about the plight of the several hundred
million folks on the planet immobilized by accident of birth and without the
means to get around. So now Gordon Holmes gives away a wheel-chair for every bottle
of wine he sells. Even at $100 a bottle he takes a $300 hit for every
wheel-chair that goes with it. “Corporate karma,” he calls it.
How interesting it is, that silver mining companies have stepped up to
Holmes's plate.
Wallace,
Idaho –
Perhaps our big government would better serve us by backing off its attack on
smokers, and buying a few cases of Lookout Ridge wine instead.
David
Bond
Editor : The
Silver Valley Mining Journal
www.silverminers.com
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