Off to France Today

We're going to spend one night in Poil Rouge, one night in Charnay, then drive across the country to not attend Vinexpo but to attend all the various "off" gatherings around Vinexpo.

I still keep time as if I am a student. Every year we go to France at the end of the school year and it makes me feel young, still keeping time as if the academic year just ended. We will be returning at the very beginning of September, as if we had to start classes yet again.

The 2008/2009 academic season has been a tumultuous season for me. My major academic work was coming down with brain cancer and having an ailing mother. My cancer seems to be stable but I may spend the rest of my life hobbling around on a cane at the best. Of course, I am trying to see the glass as half full, so at least I'm not in a wheelchair and can still manage to bob around, if just barely. Additionally, I won't be dead from cancer in three months or some other catastrophic diagnosis. The tumor is stable and not spreading.

I have two more chemotherapy sessions this summer and then I will probably be examined every two months for a year to make sure the cancer remains stable. Things could be worse.

My mother has 318 diseases and is old. On the other hand, she is not in pain from any of her chronic illnesses and can still be delighted by having people visit her. Modern medicine keeps the elderly bopping along, the same modern medicine which allows me to travel to Poil Rouge and write this blog, so you have to be appreciative. Even if you wonder if modern medicine is always beneficial.

Denyse has been fabulous with me through all these trials. We celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary recently and renewed our vows and meant every revowed word. A series of friends, led by Donna Siegel and Joe Dougherty and the late Linus Kessler have been incredibly supportive and loving. Not to mention Mike Wheeler and David Lillie and so many other folks.

My son graduated college and my daughter continues her crazy Montréal life. They're wonderful kids because they are not traditionally wonderful. Frankly, they're both crazy and a father's delight.

Louis/Dressner Selections (LDM Wines) continues to prosper. We continue to add a series of fabulous growers in France and Italy and our partner Kevin McKenna has had to shoulder an incredible burden with my illness. Sheila Doherty continues to brilliantly manage our international operations, Shawn Mead has done a great job on the West Coast and Lee Campbell is doing superb sales work in New York. I am very proud of the work we have done to support farmers in Europe and to bring real wine to an American audience.

We were able to participate in the formation of Farm Wine Imports in California, with Keven Clancy and Jeff Vierra. This distributor will handle our wines in that state, along with José Pastor's Spanish wines, a range of wines for Tom Calder, the outstanding California wines of Steve Edmunds and other possibilities from around the wine world. This is a new company and we see great possibilities in the California market.

On a broader scale, the world is insanely screwed up, ethnic genocidal war continues everywhere, and we're now paying for 20 years of allowing greedy Madoffesque figures to dominate the international economy. I'm a Vietnam Era skeptical leftist, but I have to admit that Obama seems an incredibly smart, compassionate politician. I wouldn't want to inherit the problems he's been stuck with, but what a pleasure to actually have someone with an idea in his head and some passion about the world in The White House.

On the glass half empty side, my closest American family has been horrifying. Dr. Barbara Hirsch, the famous Great Neck Endocrinologist, and my brother Ira Dressner continue to be selfish, egomaniacal and petty family hoodlums who have treated my late father and my ailing mother with contempt and unusually morbid exploitative hijinks. It is shameful to have such relatives and I feel terrible for my mother, to whom Barbara and Ira still matter. Personally, I'm surrounded by people who love me, my real family, not these genetically allied imposter's for a family. Oh well, you can't have everything and some glasses have to be half full or empty.

I need to rest from this hectic academic year. My oncologist told me yesterday that everything is stable but it was unlikely I will regain full use of my right foot and leg. Of course, this means I may never ride a bicycle again, something that would be very sad for me and a major setback.

I'm going to take it easy in Poil Rouge, get some exercise, see some physical therapists, read books on my Kindle, relax, calm down and try to prove my oncologist wrong although I'm certain he is right.

I used to believe in Chairman Mao's fable of the old man who moved the mountain, I no longer do. But perhaps I can still move a small hill.

Have a great summer and I'll be in contact soon from Poil Rouge.

Joe Dressner