Wine Country

Greetings, Friends,

I write to you from Napa Valley, California, where Speaker Pelosi and her family have invited us to sojourn this weekend, on the occasion of the annual “Speaker’s Cabinet”. Major donors to the Democratic Party are invited to spend two days in the heart of wine country, and to hear from some of today’s brightest political luminaries. Last night, over dinner, we heard from James Carville, who ran Bill Clinton’s Presidential Campaign in 1992. His topic was healthcare. Tonight, we will hear from Obama’s top political advisor, David Axelrod.

It has been a breath of fresh air for one who finds himself, at times, less politically savvy than his fellows. So it is with me, though I know as much as a person in my position is given to know, yet I am by no stretch a shrewd political thinker. Many of the guests this weekend are enthusiasts, and they understand the importance of funding a party that stands for change. They are well-read and eager to understand, but they know the big picture apart from the intricacies of legislative process. Above all, they are concerned with the state of world affairs, and do what they can to improve the world that the next generation will inherit. I am happy not to feel dwarfed by their understanding of policy, which is not so back in DC, where everyone you meet is a political scientist!

As for Napa Valley: wow! The place is gorgeous, every bit so as I imagined it would be. I’ve never been this way before, so I was not sure what to expect. The place is one, gigantic vineyard, stretching as far as the eye can see. As we zoomed by in our buses, I thought to myself how peaceful it must be to work on the land, and to draw forth life from its soil. Each individual vine wanting personal care, and the hours flying by while the vintners toil away in the fields; it must be immensely satisfying to be thus in communion with nature. We city folk miss out on the beauty of creation when all we see are the hard sidewalks. We waken to unnatural noise, car horns, telephones, but never to birdsong or the lapping of waves. We feel hard, man-made textures with our fingers and beneath our feet, but never the softness of grass or the richness of earth. 

I am reminded that cities exist outside of nature. The reality of living shoulder to should with hundreds of thousands and millions of others, is not to be found anywhere else in creation. Nor are the cars and buses that cart us around, or flashy lights that desensitize us to the beauty of moonlight and starshine.

I love coming to secluded valleys like Napa where nature is alive and well, and an animal can feel like an animal, even if he calls himself a human in the roaring metropolis.