T.

I learned today that gin is made from vodka,

flavored with juniper berries. This from my

newly-21-year-old-son. This is one of the

many advantages to having children:

they teach us important facts about the world.

So why is it that vodka tastes good while gin

(in my opinion) tastes like poison? I should clarify:

vodka doesn't actually taste good, it just tastes

less toxic that gin. Now, I know there are people

out there who swear by gin (Melinda), but in 1979

in a Paris disco complete with rotating mirrored ball

and sloping floor (site of a former movie theater)

I consumed more than a reasonable share of gin & tonics

and became intimate with a toilette publique Francaise.

That summer, if it wasn't gin it was pernod, and if it wasn't

pernod it was a nice glass of cotes du Rhone which I could

make last an entire evening at a sidewalk cafe. Ah......

to be twenty-two again, thin as a baguette.......

No more gin. No more pernod; but a nice Rhone wine

will cure any malady. And I don't really have any desire

to be twenty-two encore .