There’s an old East Texas term called "firch-piling" that I learned about from an Oregon magazine many moons ago. The magazine, called
RAIN in the late 1970’s, was about A.T. (appropriate technology) and it was a simple black and white monthly issue. Anyway, I loved that ‘ol rag and read it like it was the New Testament when I first got here to Texas.
Ancil Nance took many of the cover shots and I still regret letting them go. They were prescient. But then, many years ago a lot of people were talking about a lot of things and not many of us were listening. Now, we’ve got hell to pay. But I’m getting off the subject.
One of the stories was about the East Texas practice of not letting anything usable get thrown away. People would go around the curbs and corners when things were laid out for the bulky trash pickup (still happens here in Dallas to this day) and drive by in their van or pick-up and collect anything that they thought they could use. My living room is made up of used furniture, some vintage and some valuable. A most treasured piece is my two-piece Haywood-Wakefield sofa. It was being thrown away. I firched-piled it and then took it home and refinished it. Now it’s worth something. And again I’m getting off the subject.
So tonight I was cruising around the cyber-neighborhood and firched a couple of sites that are worth bringing home and telling everyone about.
How to Pronounce Italian Wine is one of those sites I will send to a million people. Anyone who needs to understand a little more about a grape and how to say it, in Italian, should run, not walk, to this site. Pina runs this blog and also can be found at @Vino_Italiano in Twitterland, where I found her amazing and animated site while rummaging around.
Detroit Drinks and its author, Putnam Weekly, is a must for your Google Reader. I remember this guy when we first started e-mailing in the mid 1990’s. He was and still is passionate about wine , Italian and otherwise, and now he blogs and tweets (@putnam100)and all that growed-up stuff. Nice re-union from the firch pile.
Sunday we went out into the “country” for Mother’s day. At the farm we saw acres and acres of dandelions and I thought about my grandmas. They would love this post, from another site I firched from another Twitterer, @everything_wine . The tweet directed me to a new blog, VINTROSPECTIVE –> An Italian Wine Blog, by Joel Mack, also found here @vintrospective on the Twitterpile.
The post that got my firchpile fired up was one about dandelions. Seeing as we have a mountain of them, I can have my firch and eat it too, thanks to Signore Mack.
Lorenzo Gabba can be found @_enzo on the tweetball field or on Lorenzo’s Blog. I'm thinking right now wine-folks like Roberto Paris, Andrea Fassone and Giulio Galli would like this post, Italian Region Launches Grape and Football Contest. I’ll send them this link via Facebook, as Roberto is in Thailand, Giulio is in San Antonio, Texas and Andrea is in Bed-Stuy. And that’s the way lot of ex-pats stay in touch in this busy and bustling world.
That’s it. Bonna notte y’all.
