2007 José Maria da Fonseca “Twin Vines”

Vinho Verde, Portugal

$9

As long as the economy remains in the doldrums, I will continue to seek out wines with a strong price to value ratio and with summer in full swing, that task becomes a little easier. Hot weather quaffables, although never the last word in complexity, tend to be lighter on both the palate and the pocketbook.

This off-dry Portuguese white, served chilled, is clean and refreshing with tangy citrus flavors and a floral aroma. The acidity keeps the fruit in check for a nicely balanced wine that pairs well with seafood and chicken dishes, and is versatile enough to stand up to the robust flavors typical of Portuguese cuisine—garlic, onion, cilantro, bay leaves and coriander. The light alcohol content (10%) and mild effervescence make it a nice aperitif as well.

“Vinho Verde,” which translates to “green wine,” refers to its youth rather than color—the wines are meant to be enjoyed within a year of release. The Vinho Verde region lies in the lush northwest corner of the country between the Douro and Minho rivers. The winery is owned by the 8^th generation of the Soares Franco family, and “Twin Vines” celebrates the 2007 birth of twin daughters to Antonio Maria Soares Franco and his wife.

Available at Bevmo and other retailers.

The Big-Box Swindle

I’ve just received a notice from the library that in two days this book I’ve checked out no less than three times is, once again, due. It’s the Big-Box Swindle by Stacy Mitchell. I admit, it took me two and a half of those checkouts to actually get it read. (I was also reading several other books, including the Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, which is so delightful that it can be read in one checkout.) But this isn’t to say that Big-Box Swindle isn’t a good read. It’s well written and fascinating. It’s also a bit uncomfortable. It’s sort of like watching the commercials asking for money for starving children or reading a diet book that tells you everything you’ve been eating is killing you.

Supplied with unbelievable stats and research from the Institute for Local Self Reliance, where the author is a senior researcher, Mitchell presents an iron-clad argument against Wal-Mart, Home Depot, etc. Anyone who reads this book will never step into a Target and buy a $10 t-shirt – even if it’s a very cute t-shirt– again without at least thinking about it. In fact, this book has made me think constantly about where I spend money.

Like so many people I’ve met, I only became interested in the issue of big boxes when, living in an L.A. exurb, another one was threatening to open in our area. I met a bunch of people who were fighting against the Home Depot and then gradually started to learn why it was so important to oppose the Depots of the world. I plan to cover this more in depth soon, but for now back to the Big-Box Swindle. As I’ve said, it’s due and I’m not planning to check it out a fourth time. My initial inclination was to finish the book and do a feature interview with Mitchell. I contacted her but her schedule prevented it. At first, I thought, “OK, she’s a researcher, not a media hound.” Later I found a bunch of places she’d been interviewed (including an audio interview that you can listen to below). I guess Ex/Urb, though, doesn’t yet have the clout to get authors to do interviews from their Paris hotel rooms or wherever. In an email, she urged me to use stats or other info from the book. So, instead of a feature interview, I’m posting an “Out Here” on it and, yep, I’ll use some of Mitchell’s fascinating stats…

For example, do you really believe Wal-Mart advertisements that they are the low-price leader? Lately, I’ve also watched ads where they claim they save the average family thousands of dollars a year. In 2005, a research firm called Zenith Management Consulting checked the prices of 3,800 items at Wal-Mart, Kmart, chain drugstores and chain supermarkets in 60 cities. On more than 80 percent of the items, Wal-Mart did not have the lowest prices. According to research cited in Big-Box Swindle, the chain pulls a lot of funny business, puts cheap stuff in the aisles to lure customers and thus makes us believe everything there is priced rock-bottom. Home Depot, Wal-Mart and other big chains have also been accused of going into communities with super-cheap prices to start and, once the local competition is put out of business, raising prices. This happens so gradually that few people really notice. Furthermore, despite what their public relations efforts claim, big boxes don’t treat their employees or the communities very well. A huge portion of big-box workers are on public assistance because while these companies are some of the most profitable imaginable, they don’t pay workers enough to live. At first blush you might think that’s the worker’s problem; he or she should get a better job. But think about it just one step further. What it really means is that while we frequent these stores to save money, they are actually doing us in. Big boxes help drive out local businesses (that tend to pay employees more and contribute more to local tax bases) and then taxpayers have to subsidize their workers. Big boxes have also figured out a gazillion tax loopholes so that very little of their profits stay in our local communities, according to Mitchell.

The big-box shopping plaza with the huge parking lot is what some call derisively the “suburban model.”  If you read Big-Box Swindle, you’ll see that it all pretty much had to do with the way suburbs were planned and the way our government gave incentives to developers of these stores. And now Mitchell and others have pointed out that the suburban big-box trend is being imported into urban areas. West Hollywood and Manhattan are now home to the likes of Target and Home Depot. What a switch! The ‘burbs are influencing urban America.

I think the truth is that perhaps in so many shopping ways urban America and suburban America aren’t so different.  Big boxes have figured that out. I’m not a huge fan of big box in general, but I’ll confess that I shop at Target occasionally (not without guilt thanks to Mitchell) and so do many city friends. However, if suburbia has helped start the problem my bet is that we’re also going to help turn the tide. People like those I’ll be profiling in the next couple of weeks are fighting back. Suburban community leaders are also starting to get it. We can’t offer enormous tax breaks to big boxes when they come into our communities! We can’t serve up loopholes to them so that they are ridiculously profitable while their workers are forced on public assistance!  There is a place for big boxes but they can’t be given preferential treatment over locally owned businesses.

But, still, there’s the average suburban person. When I first heard that Home Depot wanted to move into my neighborhood, I didn’t think it was that big of a deal. One of my neighbors (who has since moved to the Boston burbs so she’s their problem now) told me she wanted a Wal-Mart instead of Home Depot because the prices were so great. Another friend wondered about a recent spate of foot massage shops opening on a main drag in our area. “How can they approve so many foot massage places and shoot down a Home Depot?” she asked.

If you’re wondering too, please read Big-Box Swindle. I’m returning it today. It’ll be waiting for you.

Click here to listen to Stacey Mitchell’s KUCI interview on the Big-Box Swindle.

She’s not having a midlife crisis, she’s reclaiming her love for live music. Follow mom of three Debbie Miller on her journey…

One Thursday several weeks ago my babysitter texted me out of the blue offering up her services. Of course, my husband and I jumped at the chance to get out.

I went online and checked out some local venues for live music. Zoey’s in Ventura, once again, piqued my interest. Someone named Gabriel Gordon was going to be playing in a couple of hours. I didn’t know of Gordon at the time, but that was remedied when I jumped on My Space and found his page. In case you don’t know, My Space isn’t just for the kids; It’s a great resource for music fans. It has streaming music, videos and personalized pages.

Within minutes, I knew Gabriel Gordon was someone I’d like to hear. The intensity of his lyrics drew me in.

My musical journey kept going with ITunes. I was able to sample songs and download Gabriel’s music within minutes, and burn CDs.

Just as the babysitter arrived, I loaded the CDs into the car stereo, and we drove to Ventura, which is just a long enough drive to hear his album Frequency.

Two hours into my musical experience with Gabriel Gordon, I was sitting in a room thoroughly enjoying his soulful sound.

In my opinion, you just can’t beat the experience of  discovering music and then going out to see it live in the same evening! It reminds me, too, of what we’re always trying to encourage for our kids…explore, discover, make experiences real and meaningful. Next time you get the chance, check out your locals clubs, find the music on My Space and Itunes and then go out and have the experience. It’s good for the marriage, good for the soul and, needless to say, music to the ears!

You can view Gabriel Gordon’s page at http://www.myspace.com/gabrielgordon

Why did you get married? What did you expect out of marriage?

I suppose the answer to those two questions might be very different from one person to another, but I am willing to bet you did not get married so you could have sex.

Here’s a fascinating statistic I found while researching my MSNBC column for this week:

Among men born between 1933 and 1942, nearly 60 percent were virgins at age 18. Among women in the same age cohort, 81 percent were virgins at age 18 (a few girls must have been VERY popular). Most women in that age group were also virgins when they got married — 54 percent.

Just imagine the changes people who are now between 76 and 67 years old have seen! Those born in 1942 were 25 in 1967, the start of the “Summer of Love” and the 1960s impact on American sexuality is now so well known it’s a cliché. In the space of one generation the percentage of women who were virgins at marriage was cut by more than half.

Today, the mean age of first intercourse in this country is about 17 for both boys and girls, which means that a lot of boys and girls are having sex before age 17. (Sorry to ruin your day moms and dads.) Yet the average age of first marriage has risen to about 25 for women and slightly older for men, the oldest it has ever been.

So people no longer get married to bless their mutual lust. Sex has been cut out of the marriage equation.

If not for sex, then why? In the nineteenth century many people got married for “institutional” reasons — to seal family ties, secure property, create a family as a public unit of the society. After World War I, we got married for romance and friendship and to divide labor in the new suburbs: woman in apron, man in gray suit, lawn care on Saturday. As sociologist Christine Whelan pointed out to me, now many of us get married as a form of self-improvement, what she calls the “personalized” marriage. Somehow, we think, the marriage is going to make us, as individuals, a better, happier person.

When young people are asked why they might get married, “raising children” ranks eighth on a list. I found that amazing. Certainly many childless couples have long and happy marriages — I didn’t find it amazing because I think having children is the only reason to get married — and certainly some unmarried people (I know one such couple, together for more than 25 years now) can raise great kids without ever getting married. But listing children as eighth stunned me.

What’s the most popular answer? “Soul mate.”

Really? I mean it’s great if your husband or wife is truly your soul mate, but doesn’’t this set us up for some pretty deep disillusionment when your soul mate comes to the startling revelation that he totally missed out on that brief period when retro pork chop sideburns came back and wants to grow a pair? Or when your soul mate refers to the Disney Concert Hall, which you adore, as that “over hyped hunk of crumpled paper”? After all, qualifications for the job of “soul mate” can be pretty fuzzy, especially in the beginning of a relationship when your vision just might be clouded by your firm belief that it will never be physically possible to have enough sex with this person. Then, anybody could be a soul mate.

We love marriage in this country — we marry at nearly double the rate of some other industrialized nations — but I’m not sure we get that marriage is a working relationship in which two parties have agreed to combine for a common purpose, one that probably should not include self-help or the expectation that the next fifty years is supposed to be spent in blushing bliss. That leads to divorce, or, in a worse-case scenario, standing before a bank of microphones trying to explain why you flew to Argentina to see a woman whose tan lines are, like, the best. We’d all like to avoid that.

Don’t forget to check out Brian Alexander’s MSNBC Sexploration column. Alexander, a freelance writer in Southern California,  is the author of America Unzipped.

The eco bag craze is showing no signs of slowing down. Here are a few fun options.

The wiener dog bag is everyone’s fav. Find it at Fred Flare.

The reusable sandwich pouch. Sounds messy but is easy to clean and
cuts down on all those plastic bags.

This jute bag is eco friendly and announces it right on the bag.

Baggu bags fold up wonderfully small so you don’t have a trunk full of totes!