Header Strip Links

From Vine to Glass Touring the Fine Wines in New Jersey May 4th

Thursday eve, May 4, 6:30 at the Cranbury Library

From Vine to Glass  Touring the Fine Wines in New Jersey

As the sixth largest producer of wine in the United States, New Jersey boasts 55 commercial wineries and a growing number of wine-grape farms.  And in the Dionysian Society blind tasting pitting the best wines of France and California vs. New Jersey – guess who took top honors?   Wine author and hobby vintner Bart Jackson guides you around the Garden State’s wine offerings, explaining what grapes thrive in her four growing regions, and what winery events not to miss. (Opera & wine, anyone?) Bart also provides tips on selecting, tasting, and growing, as well as some of the best ways to launch your own wine trail explorations.  All is presented with good humor and touches of history…(Do you know how many wineries in Burlington county were closed at the outset of Prohibition?)  Come and discover the tasteful bounty growing all around us.

Bart Jackson, author of The Garden States Winery Guide, is a veteran advocate and explorer of New Jersey’s wine industry. Since 1995, he and his wife Lorraine have grown the grapes in their own hobby vineyard in Cranbury from which they joyfully press and produce their own Chateau Bonne Chance vintages.  Bart is CEO of Prometheus Publishing, hosts The Art of the CEO radio show, and is the founder of The Prometheus Social Enterprise Awards, bringing the most inventive social contributors to light. His other books range from Whitewater – Running the Wild Rivers of North America to the bestselling CEO of Yourself – Getting Down to the Business of Your More Rewarding Life.  As a globe-trotting journalist, Bart has carted his pen and curiosity and wine thirst through over 80 countries.  His most prized writings are the poems penned to his bride Lorraine, which are published on the north wall of their Cranbury home.

To learn more visit From Vine to Glass Touring the Fine Wines in New Jersey – The Art of the CEO Radio

 

The Thanksgiving List

The problem is that my Thanksgiving Thankful List is like my elevator pitch – unless the elevator is running from Boston to Baltimore, I never have enough time.  SO… instead of boring all my relatives at the feast table with my blessings, while they are salivating for turkey, I thought I’d share a few of the angels who continue to brighten my days.

– Most recently, when that hefty tree fell across the road blocking our path home yesterday, I thank the nameless fellow motorist who helped me sweat & wrestle it off to the side…couldn’t have done it without you, pal.

– When the media tries to terrify me with tales of shootings, I think of John whose personal crusade and clever dedication have lowered gun violence in Yonkers by 86 % – and still counting down.  (John gave up his scholarship to Julliard to work for the Salvation Army and YMCA.)

– Kudos to Katie in Haiti – the medical doctor who has founded a clinic in Haiti’s rural northwest that provides healing, food and hope to the poorest of the poor.

Oh, and thanks to Lorraine who brought awareness of Katie’s work, by hosting a multi-church fundraiser for the cause.

– When newspapers gleefully portray the gore of battle, I catch the news from Mel who founded the NonViolent Peacekeepers and learn of the latest war-torn regions into which he’s sent unarmed peace keepers to halt the rape and slaughter of civilians.

– And special hats off to Orondaam for our lunch at Social Enterprise Summit, where he explained how, from his Nigerian homeland, his Slum2School enterprise has built schools, funded teachers, and awarded scholarships, giving education to tens of thousands of young people trapped in Africa’s poverty stricken regions.

– Then, of course, I thank the frenziedly active Dale, whose Entrepreneur Zones venture is helping distressed communities across the nation bootstrap their way out of hopelessness.  (He’s even honored me with the ability to pitch in and help.)

I’m just getting wound up, but this elevator is not running to Baltimore.  So allow me one more note of thanks to the bedraggled band of New England Pilgrims who in 1620, with half their members dead after the first year in the New World, found reason and energy to raise their hands to heaven and give thanks.  And this year we all still follow that tradition.  My we each find the embers of hope this thanksgiving and perhaps labor a bit to blow them into a warming flame.

 

Happy Thanksgiving, Bart Jackson

 

5th Annual Delaware River Cleanup

On a sunny Saturday morning of September 17, Bart and Lorraine joined  another 300 muddy, joyful souls along the banks of the Delaware for the 5th Annual Delaware River Cleanup.

Most groups labored by foot, but we joined the canoe crew filling out boats with old chairs and pipes to ancient steering wheels – and a horrendous amount of plastic bottles.  All great fun with a marvelous group of environmentally conscious folks.

Time to Rethatch Our Teahouse

Twenty some years ago my wife Lorraine awoke and assured me that I was craving to build an authentic Japanese Teahouse in our back meadow.  So I did – and the original thatch has lasted a quarter century.  These pictures show the new bundles of thatch I scythed down, hauled up, and tied down onto the roof, with a lot of help from my buddy – Thanks Marvin.  Everyone should have a retreat, be it for solitude and/or contemplation with a few close friends.

 

The Harmonies of our World – From Costa Rica’s Bellbird To Joshua Bell

‘Twas a dizzyingly moveable feast of music.   Within barely more than one brief rotation of our terrestrial orb I have had my soul opened to the finest music that we humans and the Divine have to offer.

The morning sun’s lifting over the Osa Peninsula in southern Costa Rica once again orchestrates a fugal flood of God’s most elegant song birds.  Our guide Abraham slings his scope and tripod over shoulder, leading Lorraine and me down slender trails through the leafy jungle.  Somewhere, amidst this dense ramage, bellbirds cello, pink-legged woodrails trill, tanagers staccato, and the clay-colored thrush lets loose the sweet stab of a call that has won him the honor of Costa Rica’s National bird.  Thousands join the chorus – even sun-dappled pairs of macaws lend their raucous cries to this symphonic surge of life.

Compared to Abraham, Lorraine and I cannot find a lion in our living room, but with his tutelage and our binoculars we try to poke our eyes where bodies could not possibly penetrate – to spy the sources of this symphony in the bush.  With each bird sighted comes an almost disenchanting ease at their songs.  Such magnificent rhapsodies so effortlessly, so spontaneously brought forth – and yet enchanting beyond telling.

Then, suddenly – thanks to the near-magical mechanics of today’s travel, and scores unseen assisting hands –  here Lorraine and I sit: a mere tanager’s swoop from virtuoso violinist Joshua Bell and the Academy of St. Martins in the Fields Orchestra performing Paganini’s Violin Concerto No. 1.  (After landing at Newark airport, a friend raced us home with enough time to pick up our tickets and arrive back at Newark’s NJ Performing Arts Center for the 8 p.m. curtain.) Poised concentration etched Bell’s face and passion poured through his agile fingers and on into the 1713 Huberman Stradivarius which delivered his mastery.  That same awe of the Avian’s morning’s symphony returned.  Again, we paused, still, amazed that such beauty was ours for the hearing…reveling in the sounds and letting our souls crescendo and descend with the moment of the music.

But with this second concerto an additional emotion kept creeping in: admiration.  Joshua Bell had labored admirably, astoundingly, to achieve this pinnacle of performance.  The untold thousands of hours of practice, the hundreds of thousands of hours of his fellow musicians in the orchestra, had prepared them for this soul-enriching experience we were sharing.  And even during the performance, each measure of music hung precariously on that instant’s expertise.

The entire house rose to its feet and applauded the artists – none more enthusiastically than Lorraine and I.  To compare the morning’s vs. the evening’s symphony would be ludicrous.  Both transformed and uplifted me.  Both were divinely inspired.  Yet walking out of NJPAC into the evening air, the truth of this beauty became clear: whatever the source we are better for seeking it; we should accept it with gratitude; and while beauty’s creation comes with easy spontaneity for some and only with sweat for others, it always God’s best within us.

             – Bart Jackson