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Twenty-second birthdays. The pressure from only a year before to partake in a crazy night of inebriation has waned.
This past Thursday, I visited Salem Glen Vineyard and Winery with friends to celebrate Sarah's 22nd birthday. For only $4 we enjoyed a full round of wine tasting--from driest to sweetest. The owner, Dustin, asked what wines we preferred. Only knowing the difference between red, white, and rosé wines, I told him it depended on whether I was with my parents or making the purchase by myself. We learned how to properly taste wine and a received a broad overview of the fermentation process. Grapes ferment in large stainless steel vats opposite the simple bar where we tasted. The owner and founder, Dustin, left St. Paul, MN and turned a dairy farm in the Zumbro River Valley into a vineyard and winery. Dustin began growing vines in 2000 and opened the winery in 2006. Now, 2400 vines that can resist temperatures down to -40 F cover the sloping plains.
In August, Salem Glen plans to complete construction of a new wine-tasting venue on the property. 
The new home will be rented out for private gatherings (weddings, parties...) and hopefully be home to live music events. Also in August, they will open the vineyard to guests to pick grapes in exchange for wine. Good deal.
It would be financially irresponsible for me to develop a fine taste for wine at 22. While I look forward to using my new wine-tasting skills, I will always be ready to share a boxed wine with friends.
I never have given blood. I am not a big fan of needles being used on my body. I have given hair for cancer patients. Today was the second time I went in for "a big chop." I will admit, my hair had reached the ugly stage and at that length I was only growing it so that I could donate more. The dual thrill of coming home with hair that will need less shampoo and sending in an envelope filled with a ponytail makes it worth my while. Two great organizations exist for donating hair. Two years ago, I donated hair to "Pantene Beautiful Lengths" a program that works with The American Cancer Society to provide real-hair wigs to women fighting cancer (minimum donation 8"). Today, the hairdresser gleefully chopped my ponytail. Tomorrow, I am going to send in my ponytail to "Locks of Love," which provides hair pieces to children and adolescents suffering from long-term medical hair loss for any reason (minimum donation 10"). I was getting a bit attached to the hair and that is flat out unhealthy. So now I greet summer and soon DC humidity with short locks (and a tiny ponytail).
If interested in donating your hair, check out:
1. Locks of Love
2. Pantene Beautiful Lengths
Over Christmas vacation I only saw one movie in theaters, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Only yesterday did I sit down to watch another December drama, Seven Pounds, starring Will Smith. Not much can be said of the film without giving away what the cover calls "one secret." While the ending is fairly predictable from the midway point of the movie, intrigue runs high throughout the first half. Not a film to be forgotten after the credits, but one to be discussed with fellow viewers.
The title of the film, "Seven Pounds," references "pounds of flesh," a phrase from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. "Pounds of flesh" denotes "a debt harshly insisted upon" (originally referencing Antonio's debt to Shylock).
Divine Touch
What apparition! Ah, what light!
A white star fell into the garden,
Unexpected, unsought. Luck,
arrow, flower, fire.
In the high grass, in the wide silk,
it fell from the house of time.
A star came back to our world.
My hands bear its scar.
—Translated from the Romanian by Andrei Codrescu
(from La cumpana apelor, 1933)
Holding the white trumpet-like flower of the angel lily, he smelled the faint fragrance yet maintained a respect for the poisonous sap lurking in the veins of the African plant brought to Washington D.C. by a traveled friar. Nearby, through the gate once marked “Cloister: Do Not Enter,” rose gardens flourished amidst brick pillars with stone panels depicting the Stations of the Cross.
Throughout the afternoon, Mark Emmell and landscapers from his company Greensmith, dug, measured, and fashioned a fish pool that will be the central component of a memorial garden for Friar James, who was an etymologist by trade. After completion, bog plants will surround the pond to attract an array of insects. Until then, the bees buzz from a banana flower to the garden guild's bookishly labeled medicinal, culinary, household, and ritual herb-beds.
As a child, Emmell walked from his home in the surrounding Brookland neighborhood to the then 100-acre grounds of The Franciscan Monastery. Visits to his uncle working the switchboard were interspersed with time exploring the woods, cemetery, fields, and farm. As a father, Mark brought his own children to the now 45-acre monastery for Easter and discovered weeds taller than the rose bushes and poison-ivy blanketing parts of the property. At this time, Mark's sisters, volunteers in the parish, suggested their brother's landscaping expertise to a concerned friar.
Thirteen years later, the grounds boast a half-dozen palms fluttering in the wind, an expansive rose collection, and manicured gardens surrounding shrine-grottos. Dedicated in 1899, the church is a replica of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, situated inside the walls of Jerusalem and venerated by believers as the place of Christ's crucifixion and burial. The wild, tropical landscaping surrounding the Church of the Holy Sepulchre fits the church's mission.
In a brown habit tied at the waist with a rope belt and Tevas, Father Jacob-Matthew explains, the shrine church was built “so that people in the United States would be able to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land without physically having to board a boat and travel for 30 or 40 days to get to Jerusalem.” Father Jacob-Matthew welcomes thousands of visitors each year to the high domed church containing a crucifix hanging in line with the altar and a replica of Christ's tomb.
As the busloads of tourists increased throughout recent years, a group of Washingtonians formed a Garden Guild, and Mark Emmell's company Greensmiths was relegated to specially contracted projects. During one of the Garden Guild's Christmas poinsettia sales, Emmell recalls the large wooden doors of the portiuncula chapel opened to show glowing votive candles and Christmas wreaths. An old black gentleman with tear-filled eyes came to the opened doors and commented, “All my life, I have been wanting to see what's in there.”
While some are grateful for the open doors of the monastery, others have taken advantage of the welcoming atmosphere. During one incident, a thief stole the purses of two women in a tour group. While investigating the case, undercover investigators donned the brown habits of the friars. Emmell laughed remembering the shiny shoes that distinguished them from the friars.
Parishioners arriving in the winter months for daily mass walk along shoveled walks thanks to Emmell. After one large snowstorm came through, Emmell arrived well before 3 a.m. before the rest of the crew, to shovel the walks and parking lots before the first mass. He recalled, “The clouds were scutting by and there was a nice moon rising and it was so pretty. I just walked the whole property, and I saw a fox run in front of me with a whole mouth full of persimmons, and lots of wildlife. There was a pair of hawks here for the longest time.”
After the snow melts each spring, Emmell uncovers the palms lying dormant in the greenhouse, root bulbs still wet to preserve life. With co-workers, he lays the palms in slings, and carries them to the entryway to erect them for the summer months. As in the past dozen years, the palms quickly took root and now their leaves flutter in the autumn wind.
Visit http://www.myfranciscan.org/Default.aspx to learn more.
Twenty-second birthdays. The pressure from only a year before to partake in a crazy night of inebriation has waned.
The new home will be rented out for private gatherings (weddings, parties...) and hopefully be home to live music events. Also in August, they will open the vineyard to guests to pick grapes in exchange for wine. Good deal.
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