tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-54315933969409482842024-03-13T08:13:09.684-07:00 Booklovers' Guide To WinePatrick Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07463162348305396076noreply@blogger.comBlogger119125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5431593396940948284.post-58959651363649553602023-10-10T11:28:00.000-07:002023-10-10T11:28:33.222-07:00ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AS A LYING TEENAGER<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><a name="_Hlk147760052"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In an article for the Guardian on September 5, 2023, Elif
Batuman described how she decided to use ChatGPT to help her locate a
half-remember passage in Marcel Proust’s voluminous novel ‘<i>In Search of Lost
Time’</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although ChatGPT kept
offering her possible answers, they were always vague, sometimes contradictory
and, despite Batuman’s increasingly specific prodding, never actually produced
the passage she had been seeking.<o:p></o:p></span></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk147760052;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Intrigued by her article, I decided
to repeat her exercise, and asked ChatGPT to locate a passage in Proust’s novel
in which the narrator describes seeing a girl in a railway carriage smoking a
cigarette.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk147760052;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">As Elif Batuman had discovered,
ChatGPT certainly had a general understanding and familiarity with Proust’s
seven-volume novel. Like any well-read and educated person, ChatGPT was aware
that a major theme of the novel was that memories of past events continue to
exist and can be triggered unexpectedly by some trivial act. The most famous
example is of the narrator dipping a little madeleine cake in a cup of tea and
being transported back to his childhood.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk147760052;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">ChatGPT informed me that the incident
with the girl in the railway carriage occurred in volume one, <i>Swann’s Way</i>,
and the smell of the cigarette smoke transported the narrator back to his youth
in the village of Combray.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk147760052;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In fact, the incident occurs in
volume four, <i>Cities of the Plain</i>, and there is no mention of cigarette
smoke, let alone its smell. Rather than looking backwards, Proust looks forward
in time, wondering what happened to the girl, whom he never saw again after
that brief encounter.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk147760052;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Just as Batuman’s had described in
her article, whenever I corrected ChatGPT, it very politely and immediately
agreed with me, apologizing for its mistake, and rephrasing its answer to
include the new information that I had provided. But again, it never actually
located or quoted the specific passage I was seeking.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk147760052;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Increasingly I felt as though I was
dealing with a shifty but quick-witted teenager, trying to conceal the fact he
had not done his homework or read the assigned text. The initial answer it
provided was a complete lie. It had made an intelligent guess and constructed a
fairly compelling answer that would have satisfied the average person. However,
having previously written two books about Marcel Proust’s novel, I was not so
easily fooled.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk147760052;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">So that is probably the state of
Artificial Intelligence in the Fall of 2023. No longer in its infancy, it has
become a shifty teenager endlessly improvising and lying, if need be, in order
to appear plausible, while it plans its next move. As we know, many awkward
teenagers grow up to be honest and trustworthy adults, on the other hand, some
others do not.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>Patrick Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07463162348305396076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5431593396940948284.post-34532473025023300352022-12-08T08:38:00.002-08:002022-12-08T08:46:50.183-08:00BOOMER 1(a)<p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">On July 1, 1946, two days before I was born, the
Americans conducted the first in a series of nuclear tests called ‘Operation
Crossroads’. The tests took place in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, at the
Bikini Atoll in Micronesia. On July 5<sup>th</sup>, two days after I was born,
the French fashion designer, Louis Reard, launched a new two piece, swim-suit
design in a Paris fashion show. He named his new design the bikini. Both these
‘bikini’ incidents caused some international controversy, thus allowing me to
slip unnoticed into this world. Not surprisingly, throughout my life, I have
always had a fondness for bikinis.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">I was born just ten months after the Second World War ended
with the surrender of Japan, and just over a year after the war ended in Europe
with the death of Hitler. But memories and signs of the war were everywhere
throughout my childhood. Wounded men wearing their ‘de-mob’ suits were a common
sight and most cities showed signs of German bombing raids. Playing hide-and-seek
with other kids in bomb sites and air raid shelters was just part of the world
that I was born into.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">My paternal grandfather was a captain in the British Royal
Navy, stationed in Portsmouth, an important Naval base where I was born, next
to Southampton. Obviously, I was too young to remember, but most of the streets
and buildings where my mother gave birth had been demolished by unrelenting
German bombing attacks. As a result, following the war, housing was in
desperately short supply and my parent’s and my first home was a prefab. Prefabricated
homes had been erected during the war as a short term measure for temporarily housing
bombed-out families, but prefab estates remained part of the British landscape
well into the 1970s.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">I was too young to know what I was missing, but the
war had caused such food shortages that everything was rationed. My earliest
memories are of shopping with my mother and her precious Ration Book. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #232323; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Sugar, butter, cheese,
margarine, cooking fat, bacon, meat, and tea were all strictly controlled
and carefully accounted for in the Ministry of Food Ration Book. I was almost
ten when rationing finally ended and I had my first candy-bar.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #232323; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Despite the austerity,
the rationing, and the ever present bombsites, the Britain I was born into was
truly Great Britain. It had emerged victorious from a terrible world war, it
was the center of the greatest empire that history had ever known, its language
was spoken and recognized worldwide and, along with the United States of
America and the Soviet Union, it was a world Super-Power. On the day of my
birth, July 3, 1946, Great Britain was still at the pinnacle of its power, but
in the almost eighty years that have passed since then, there has been a slow,
steady, cruelly inexorable decline; Great Britain has become Brexit.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #232323; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In my mid 30s I moved
to the United States and have lived here ever since. After all the gloomy
English class divisions and labor unrest of the late 70s, the America where my
family and I settled, was a sunny, friendly land of boundless optimism; our
friends were equally divided between Democrats and Republicans, political
discourse was cordial and there was a widespread understanding that with hard
work and a cheerful disposition, anything was possible. Growth and steady
progress was seen as an ineluctable Law of Nature. But today I live in a nation
bitterly divided between Blue States and Red, where political discourse is
impossible, gun violence and mass-shootings are a common occurrence and most
people are fearful for their future. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #232323; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The purpose of this
book is to trace Great Britain’s national decline and show how my fellow
countrymen and my generation of fellow ‘baby-boomers’ have accepted and
adapted, or ignored and denied that sad transformation of our once proud
heritage. It will also trace and describe, if not explain, how the sunny and
optimistic America of the 1980s has become a dark, distrustful nation of fear.
The book will show how the baby-boomer generation, born with such promise and
blessed with such wealth, is leaving the world a darker and a sadly poorer
place.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><br /><p></p>Patrick Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07463162348305396076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5431593396940948284.post-17460867927927496862022-12-08T08:26:00.000-08:002022-12-08T08:26:05.729-08:00BOOMER<p> My current work in progress is a book about how the world has changed since I was born in 1946.</p><p>I will post excerpts here, from time to time, as the book progresses.</p>Patrick Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07463162348305396076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5431593396940948284.post-40758533789027702712022-11-13T09:12:00.004-08:002022-11-13T09:12:45.053-08:00DONALD TRUMP IS A LOSER<p> Does the Miami Herald have the moral and political fortitude
to announce, or at very least, publish this letter, announcing that these
midterm results have finally confirmed (two years later) that ‘DONALD TRUMP IS A
LOSER’?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>Patrick Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07463162348305396076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5431593396940948284.post-13688659216986981682022-11-04T12:00:00.000-07:002022-11-04T12:00:34.332-07:00 Shades of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact<p><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Vladimir Putin had many
motives to support Trump’s candidacy in 2016, if for no other reason than his
dislike of Hilary Clinton. But now, in 2022, he has far more serious reasons to
support Trump’s political advance, and to use all the power and resources of the
Russian clandestine agencies. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: 14pt;">If the MAGA party wins back the house later this month, US aid and funding for Ukraine will be quickly shut off, and if Trump
regains the White House in 2024, the renewed bromance concerning Ukraine will
resemble nothing less than the 1939 Hitler-Stalin division of Poland.</span></p>Patrick Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07463162348305396076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5431593396940948284.post-46464787617408021612022-06-17T08:02:00.000-07:002022-06-17T08:02:05.706-07:00BUILDING PARADISE<p> <span> </span><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">The COVID lockdown of the past two
years has actually proved quite productive for me. Unable to go carousing out
on the town, I was forced to stay home and write. In addition to researching
and writing </span><i style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">A Dance to Lost Time,</i><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.3in;"> comparing the authors Marcel Proust
and Anthony Powell, I have also written </span><i style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">Building Paradise</i><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">, a history of
Miami, my hometown.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 4.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;"><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Less
than one hundred and thirty years ago, Miami did not exist. Apart from a small,
abandoned army post and some derelict slave quarters, the only sign of life was
an orange grove planted by a middle-aged widow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In less than a decade after Julia Tuttle cleared a space in the
wilderness to plant her first orange tree, Miami sprang magically to life and
today, that same humble orange grove has a glittering glass and steel skyline
to rival Shanghai or Manhattan.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 4.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;"><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In
the Florida Land Boom of the early twentieth century Miami became ‘Paradise
Found’, the most exotic and sought-after city in North America. It was a
tropical paradise filled with Hollywood celebrities, movie stars, European
aristocracy, Washington big shots, Wall Street tycoons and all the leading
mobsters between Las Vegas and New York. Miami was a developers’ paradise, new
buildings and sub-divisions sprang up almost daily, to accommodate the endless
stream of new arrivals lured by the Magic City’s reputation of sun, sand, sin,
and sex. Miami had become a paradise for starting over, for creating a new
life. Refugees from political oppression or economic despair and people
escaping from past indiscretions or serious legal problems could all find a new
beginning in this sunny paradise of optimism and endless opportunities.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 4.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;"><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">But
it all came crashing down in the late seventies, when Miami became synonymous
with deadly race riots, civic corruption, violent drug warfare and political
scandals. In November 1981, <i>Time Magazine</i> featured a cover headline
describing South Florida as ‘Paradise Lost’. By the end of the century Miami
was bankrupt and Wall Street rated its bonds as worthless junk.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 4.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;"><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">But
whether from hurricanes, police scandals, race riots or bankruptcy, the Magic
City displays an endless ability to bounce back and reinvent itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As we enter the twenty-first century,
Paradise has, once again, been restored. The city has a <i>AAA</i> bond rating
from Wall Street, Miami neighborhoods from South Beach to Wynwood have become
synonymous with all that is hip, cool, and fashionable, while property values
are, once again, the highest in the nation. Whether it’s for the Ultra Music
Festival, the Miami Book Fair or Art Basel Miami Beach – the Magic City
continues to entice and attract visitors from all over the world.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 4.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;"><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In
just one-hundred years, Miami has already had more history, more glamour, more
stories, and more excitement than most other cities see in a thousand, and this
new book ‘<i>Building Paradise’ </i>aims to tell those stories.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 4.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 4.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 4.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 4.0pt; text-indent: .3in;"><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>Patrick Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07463162348305396076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5431593396940948284.post-71901377264293293202022-06-10T09:07:00.002-07:002022-06-10T09:07:31.120-07:00NEW BOOK<p></p><p class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Forced into COVID
lockdown in the Spring of 2020, I decided to re-read two of my favorite novels,
Marcel Proust's <i>'In Search of Lost Time</i> ' and Anthony Powell's '<i>A
Dance to the Music of Time'</i>. They are two of the longest novels ever
written and share many similarities. Both are first person narratives covering
about 50 years of the narrator's life, and include many real world events
between the years of 1871 and 1971. Both novels contain a wide selection of
unforgettable characters, examine profound philosophical themes and both are
extraordinarily funny. Having read both novels several times over the past
fifty years, I've been unable to decide which one I enjoyed most.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style", serif; font-size: 12pt;">But, despite the
similarities, their popular reception has proved remarkably different. The seven volumes of </span><i style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style", serif; font-size: 12pt;">In Search of Lost Time</i><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> have been translated
into more than a dozen languages, including several different English versions,
but the twelve volumes of </span><i style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style", serif; font-size: 12pt;">A Dance to the Music of Time</i><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> have been
translated into only three other languages. There have been more than three
thousand books written about Proust but less than a dozen written about Powell.</span></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style", serif; font-size: 12pt;">My new book, </span><i style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style", serif; font-size: 12pt;">A
Dance to Lost Time</i><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style", serif; font-size: 12pt;">, seeks to examine the differences between the two books
and, if not explain, at least explore the disparity in their reception. If my
book can persuade a reader to subsequently read one, if not both, of these
splendid novels - then all those months of lockdown will not have been in vain.</span></p><br /><p></p>Patrick Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07463162348305396076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5431593396940948284.post-3270113067623838332021-04-09T13:27:00.002-07:002021-05-09T13:03:09.723-07:00<p> <b><span style="color: red;">ON-LINE WINE CLASSES </span></b></p><p>Since March 2020, my various Wine Appreciation classes conducted at the Coral Gables Museum, have moved online and are currently offered through Zoom.</p><p>I have been offering a six-week, wide-ranging class covering all aspects of wine appreciation as well as a more focused three-week class.</p><p>The one-hour classes begin at 6:30PM on Wednesday evenings.</p><p>I also offer the occasional stand alone class. For example, I devoted one class to focus just on white wines. To celebrate Valentine's Day I offered a class where we examined a dozen famous lovers from Antony & Cleopatra to Napoleon and Josephine.</p><p>Our next class devoted to SHERRY (the wines of Jerez) will be held on Wednesday, April 28, 2021 to celebrate the year in 1587 when Sir Francis Drake stole two-million bottles of sherry from the King of Spain.<br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-b6fYIF5TttE/YHC4aeC1wwI/AAAAAAAANu4/QQ4lHcynbugVryGbxOwbwxPCZX2zqemggCLcBGAsYHQ/s624/Cover%2Bimage.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="624" height="327" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-b6fYIF5TttE/YHC4aeC1wwI/AAAAAAAANu4/QQ4lHcynbugVryGbxOwbwxPCZX2zqemggCLcBGAsYHQ/w409-h327/Cover%2Bimage.png" width="409" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a name="_Hlk71468098"><span style="color: white;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><b><span color="windowtext">WINE IN A
TIME OF CHOLERA</span></b></span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></span></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: white;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext">Wine in a Time of Cholera part 1</span></span><span class="MsoHyperlink">: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0dwvT4qq-0</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: white;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext">Wine in a Time of Cholera part 2 </span></span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXljNiJWdU4">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXljNiJWdU4</a><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext"> </span></span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: white;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext">Wine in a Time of Cholera part 3 </span></span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xax3IamFfJk">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xax3IamFfJk</a><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: white;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext">Wine in a Time of Cholera part 4 </span></span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wejIue2Eefc">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wejIue2Eefc</a><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: white;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext">Wine in a Time of Cholera part 5 </span></span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uw8pCFdi-MI">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uw8pCFdi-MI</a><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: white;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext">Wine in a Time of Cholera part 6 </span></span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-UDQPOcdzc">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-UDQPOcdzc</a><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: white;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext">White Wine in a Time of Cholera </span></span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgPnqL6Q1L0">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgPnqL6Q1L0</a><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: white;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext">Valentine Special: <a name="_Hlk64147384"></a></span></span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeJPFZOluY8">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeJPFZOluY8</a><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext"> </span></span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: white;"><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext">Wine in a time of Cholera: Sherry </span></span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xPkD8d29kc">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xPkD8d29kc</a></span><span class="MsoHyperlink"><span color="windowtext"> </span></span><o:p></o:p></p></div><p></p>Patrick Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07463162348305396076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5431593396940948284.post-68188916854866055042021-02-16T12:12:00.000-08:002021-02-16T12:12:13.620-08:00Wine In A Time Of Cholera<p><b><span style="color: red;">ON-LINE WINE CLASSES </span></b></p><p>Since March 2020, my various Wine Appreciation classes conducted at the Coral Gables Museum, have moved online and are currently offered through Zoom.</p><p>I have been offering a six-week, wide-ranging class covering all aspects of wine appreciation as well as a more focused three-week class.</p><p>The one-hour classes begin at 6:30PM on Wednesday evenings.</p><p>I also offer the occasional stand alone class. For example, I devoted one class to focus just on white wines. To celebrate Valentine's Day I offered a class where we examined a dozen famous lovers from Antony & Cleopatra to Napoleon and Josephine.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-YCvs_QxM_HI/YCwkzZ9X8eI/AAAAAAAANsg/n47MNIIy4tkHWh-Fj-ZKIm9JN42uFnqBQCLcBGAsYHQ/image.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: red;"><img alt="" data-original-height="542" data-original-width="602" height="483" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-YCvs_QxM_HI/YCwkzZ9X8eI/AAAAAAAANsg/n47MNIIy4tkHWh-Fj-ZKIm9JN42uFnqBQCLcBGAsYHQ/w537-h483/image.png" width="537" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;">Each one-hour class begins at 6:30PM on Wednesday evenings.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;">For information about the next scheduled class</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;">Please call the Museum at 305-603-8067 or go to:</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://coralgablesmuseum.org/wine-appreciation-program/" target="_blank">https://coralgablesmuseum.org/wine-appreciation-program/ </a></span></div><br /><br /><p></p>Patrick Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07463162348305396076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5431593396940948284.post-21592197982976410502020-08-05T08:21:00.005-07:002020-09-26T13:13:54.947-07:00On-Line Wine Appreciation Program<h2 style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #cc0000; font-weight: 700;">CORAL GABLES MUSEUM ON ZOOM </span></h2>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">For the duration of the Coronavirus lock-down, the
Museum has transformed its popular wine appreciation classes to an on-line
format using Zoom technology.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">We offer a series of 6 one-hour classes
from 6:30 PM, each Wednesday evening. The current classes began on September 2 and will continue till October 7th.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">As soon as you sign-up for the program you will
receive a list of the 6 wines to purchase (1 bottle for each class) and you
will also receive a Zoom address and a password to enter the class.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">(If you are unfamiliar with Zoom, we will send you
simple step by step instructions.)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">The total cost of the six-week program is $90. Since most people will watch with their spouse or with friends, this
works out at less than $8 per person, per evening.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">The current class is fully booked, but to reserve your place in the next class, please call the Museum
at <b>305-603-8067.</b></span></h4><div><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Alternatively, watch the informative video at </span><span style="font-family: times new roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><b><u>https://coralgablesmuseum.org/wine-appreciation-program/ </u></b></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><font face="verdana"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p><b> Next W</b></o:p></span><b style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">ine Zooming Class</span></b></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><font face="verdana">Wednesday evening 6:30 – 7:30PM<o:p></o:p></font></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><font face="verdana"><span style="color: red;">November 4<sup>th</sup> through December 9,
2020</span><o:p></o:p></font></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><font face="verdana">In the comfort of your own home</font></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><font face="verdana">and the
company of good friends</font><o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br /></span></b></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br /></span></b></p><br />Patrick Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07463162348305396076noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5431593396940948284.post-40029843747164191642020-04-02T10:12:00.001-07:002020-04-02T10:12:35.850-07:00On-Line Wine ClassBecause few people could attend the final class of our six-week program on March 16, I have posted a summary of the class in two videos on Facebook at <a href="https://www.facebook.com/gables.wine.3">https://www.facebook.com/gables.wine.3</a><br />
<br />
Unfortunately you need to provide your own wine.<br />
Enjoy!<br />
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<br />Patrick Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07463162348305396076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5431593396940948284.post-1450210762848103262019-08-11T08:28:00.000-07:002019-11-10T13:50:17.707-08:00TWO NEW WINE APPRECIATION PROGRAMSMiami wine lovers now have a choice of two different wine appreciation programs, both offered by the <i>Coral Gables Museum</i> on Monday evenings from 6 - 8 PM, and both taught by Patrick Alexander..<br />
<br />
<b><span style="color: red;"><a href="http://bookloverswineguide.blogspot.com/p/the-books-books-wine-appreciation.html">A Basic 6-week</a></span></b> program is offered by the <i>Coral Gables Museum</i> at 285 Aragon Avenue.<br />
<br />
<b><span style="color: red;"><a href="http://bookloverswineguide.blogspot.com/p/advanced-wine-class.html">A Master 3-week</a></span></b> program is also available for those students who have already taken the basic 6-week program.<br />
<br />
For details about the next available classes, go to <a href="http://www.gableswine.com/">www.GablesWine.com</a><br />
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<br />Patrick Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07463162348305396076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5431593396940948284.post-73941125844458141352019-05-11T07:23:00.001-07:002019-05-11T07:27:43.917-07:00Fast Boats & German Cars [2]<span style="background-color: red;"><br /></span>
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<b><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">Gus Boulis, cruising to nowhere: February 6, 2001</span></b></h3>
<span style="background-color: red;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Like Don Aronow, Gus Boulis exemplified the ‘American
Dream’ but, as with Aronow, the dream ended in a nightmare. Both men were
self-made millionaires, both built fortunes in the boats and on the waters off
the coast of Florida, and both met their bullet- riddled fate, sitting in
expensive German cars in the mean streets of Miami.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Born in a small Greek fishing village, Boulis dropped out
of school and emigrated to Canada where he took a job as a dish-washer in a
sandwich shop. Within a few years he had taken over the shop and expanded it to
a chain of over 200 stores which he eventually sold. When he moved to Miami at
the age of 25, he was already a multimillionaire. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Upon his arrival
he purchased Miami’s most famous Mafia hangout, the Gold Coast Restaurant and
Lounge. The Gold Coast was a favorite place for everyone to meet, from John
Gotti and Meyer Lansky to Frank Sinatra and Cary Grant; it was mentioned in the
Kefauver Committee hearings into Organized Crime and in the JFK Assassination
files, as well as being featured in Elmore Leonard’s novel Gold Coast. In May
1994, Boulis turned it into Miami Subs and five years later he sold the
expanded chain to Nathan’s Famous hot dog chain for $4.2 million.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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Boulis had also purchased a small shipping company which
he operated out of Key Largo. His ‘cruises to nowhere’ would sail three-miles
out to sea, where Florida’s gambling prohibitions did not apply. His floating
casino empire was extremely successful but unfortunately attracted opposition
from various Federal, State and local authorities. Eventually Boulis was forced
to withdraw from the gambling business and he sold SunCruz Casinos to a couple
of Washington lobbyists for $147.5 million. But the deal was more complex than
it appeared on the surface. Firstly, Boulis maintained a secret ten-percent
interest in the company and secondly, the lobbyists were Jack Abramoff and Adam
Kidan, two of the slimiest denizens of the DC Swamp. Relationships swiftly
soured, accusations of double dealing and non-payments at one point even led to
fistfights. Within just a couple of months, just two days before he was due to
appear in Federal court to face questions about his finances and the sale of
SunCruz Casinos, Gus Boulis was murdered.<o:p></o:p></div>
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As with the murder of Aronow, the details and precise
motivations for the murder are murky. What is known is that there was extreme
bad blood between Boulis and the Abramoff/ Kidan partnership. It is also known
that Kidan had a business relationship with Anthony ‘Big Tony’ Moscatiello who
was also a bookkeeper for the Gambino crime family. Moscatiello in turn had a
close working relationship with Anthony ‘Little Tony’ Ferrari, and James
"Pudgy" Fiorillo. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Late in the after-noon of February 6, 2001, Boulis was
driving home from the office in his green BMW when the road was blocked by a
Mazda Miata forcing him to a stop. Seconds later, a black Mustang pulled up to
the driver’s side of the BMW and fired several shots. The Mustang then calmly
drove away, followed by the Mazda and a red Volkswagen Jetta driven by ‘Pudgy’
Fiorillo. Badly wounded and bleeding profusely, Boulis continued driving a few
more blocks until his car hit a tree and he died shortly after.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Big Tony, Little Tony and Pudgy were eventually charged,
tried and convicted of the Boulis contract killing but Kidan and Abramoff were
never charged with ordering it. On August 11, 2005, Abramoff and Kidan were
indicted by a federal grand jury in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on fraud charges
relating to the disputed $23 million bank transfer used as down payment for the
purchase of SunCruz Casinos. Kidan pleaded guilty on December 15, 2005,
Abramoff pleaded guilty on January 3, 2006. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The actual murder trial dragged-on for years, but
eventually ‘Pudgy’ Fiorillo pleaded guilty to conspiracy in 2012, and ‘Little
Tony’ Ferrari was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in
prison without the possibility of parole. On July 1, 2015, ‘Big Tony’
Moscatiello was convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit
murder. He was sentenced to life in prison following the sentencing
recommendation of the jury that convicted him. However, as recently as June
2018, ‘Big Tony’ was awarded a new trial by the Fourth District Court of
Appeals. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Abramoff of course, famously had his own problems to
worry about. At the time of the SunCruz purchase he was one of the most powerful
lobbyists in Washington. A senior member of the Republican Party, he was the DC
‘go-to man’ if you wanted anything done. He was however notoriously corrupt and
involved in all sorts of major Federal swindles, particularly involving the
Native American Tribes. But it was SunCruz and the feud with Gus Boulis however
that marked the precipitous beginning of his downfall. After pleading guilty in
2006 to the SunCruz fraud and various other scandals, Abramoff was sentenced to
six years in Federal prison. But he did not go down alone. His corruption trial
resulted in convictions and jail sentences for twenty-one other prominent
Washington politicians, attorneys, lobbyists, White House officials and members
of Congress including Tom Delay and Bob Ney. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Gus Boulis would no doubt find comfort from the fact that
the brutal murder in Miami of a humble Greek fisherman’s son caused
unparalleled turmoil and scandal at the highest levels of the American
government.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Excerpt from <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1790983886/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i2" target="_blank">"Miami Murders Most Foul"</a> by Patrick Alexander</div>
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<br />Patrick Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07463162348305396076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5431593396940948284.post-19206860209539936502019-03-14T08:43:00.000-07:002019-03-14T08:44:10.494-07:00Go Fast Boats and German Cars [1]<h2>
<b>Don Aronow, the Cigarette King: February 3, 1987</b></h2>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">Don Aronow’s life in many ways represents the American
dream. The Brooklyn born, youngest son of Russian Jewish immigrants, he left
school without completing his education and tried a variety of jobs before
joining his father-in-law’s construction company. After creating his own
successful construction company, he was able to retire to Miami as a self-made
millionaire at the age of 32. In Miami he developed a taste for racing boats,
first as a hobby and then he started designing his own boats, which he built
into a successful business. Very soon he was touring the world, winning
international races and selling his designs. Aronow's boats won over 350
offshore races and he was a two-time world champion and three-time U.S.
champion. He had been elected to every powerboating Hall of Fame in existence
and he is one of only two Americans to have ever received the UIM Gold Medal of
Honor in Monaco.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">Because of his success and fame in the world of
power-boat racing, Aronow formed a close friendship with Vice President George
H.W. Bush, a fellow aficionado. Bush himself had owned one of Aronow’s most
famous designs, the Cigarette boat and was instrumental in Aronow’s Blue
Thunder catamarans being adopted by the US Customs Service for chasing drug
smugglers in the waters off South Florida.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">Very soon, Aronow’s business model resembled a perpetual
motion machine, with Miami’s Cocaine Cowboys buying his Cigarette boats to
outrun the lawmen and the lawmen buying his Blue Thunders to chase them. Aronow
was steadily increasing the speed of the go-fast boats he designed while lawmen
and cowboys raced to outmaneuver each other. It was the perfect business model.
Aronow was well aware that the drug smugglers were as fond of his boats as the
lawmen. “We in the ocean-racing fraternity are flattered that the dope runners
prefer our kind of boat,” he told Sports Illustrated in 1979, “but when they
get caught, we don’t like it. We have torn emotions. A kid who works for me was
offered $100,000 to run out to sea one night and resupply fuel for a dope boat.
He refused, but it must have been a terrible temptation. Heck, lately we’ve
been getting letters from jailbirds still behind bars, asking for complete
specs and prices on our Cigarettes.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">The world of off-shore powerboat racing, not to mention
the world of cocaine smuggling is a testosterone fueled, competitive
environment of rivalry and violence. Aronow’s boatyard was located on 188th
Street, Miami, known as Thunderboat Row, home of all the world’s most
aggressively famous racing brands: Apache, Cigarette, Formula, Donzi, Magnum,
Squadron, Flight, Nova, Pantera, Cougar, Tempest and of course Blue Thunder.
George Bush was not the only famous and powerful customer in Aronow’s boatyard,
others included ex-President Lyndon Johnson, King Juan Carlos of Spain, King
Hussain of Jordan, the Sultan of Oman, Jean-Claud ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier of Haiti,
Christina Onassis and the late Shah of Iran.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">Aronow’s social circle encompassed more than just
monarchs and presidents, many of his friends had less savory backgrounds.
Having made his initial fortune in New York’s construction industry, Aronow was
undoubtedly well connected with the city’s organized crime families and when he
moved to Miami, he became a close friend of Meyer Lansky, the Mafia’s CFO. He
also made new friends in the world of off-shore racing; people like Ben Kramer,
Augusto Falcon and Salvador Magluta, or Willy and Sal as they were known. All
three men were well known and respected as successful offshore racers. Kramer
won the world title in 1984 and had his own boat design and building company,
Apache Performance Boats. Falcon won the 1986 Offshore Challenge off the
Florida Keys; Magluta had won three national championships and was a member of
the commission that oversees the American Power Boat Association. All three men
also earned billions of dollars smuggling cocaine and marijuana into the United
States, using planes and go-fast boats.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">In 1984 Aronow sold his USA Racing company, which built
the Blue Thunder boats, to Ben Kramer in return for a Bell helicopter, real
estate, various assets and some undeclared cash. However, when the Feds
discovered the company was now owned by Kramer, a convicted felon, they
threatened to cancel the Blue Thunder contract. To save the government
contract, Aronow agreed to buy back his company and he returned the helicopter
and other assets to Kramer but, it has been suggested, that he did not return
the undeclared cash. Because there was
no record of the cash which had been exchanged ‘under the table’, there was
nothing Kramer could legally do to recover it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">On the afternoon of February 3, 1987, Aronow, in his
white Mercedes, was leaving Kramer’s office at Apache Performance Boats, when
he was approached by a dark blue Lincoln Continental with tinted windows. Both
cars stopped in the middle of the street and the two drivers lowered their
windows. After exchanging a few words, Aronow was shot at least three times; in
the face, in the arm and in the groin. He died shortly afterwards. The Lincoln
sped away, never to be seen again.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">There was endless speculation about the killer. Was it a
jealous husband? Aronow was known as an active ‘ladies’ man’. Could it have
been a mob-hit? he knew and conducted business with all sorts of unsavory
characters. Was he too close to the Feds – might someone have suspected him of
snitching?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">In the meantime, Kramer had been arrested on new drug
charges and was being held in the Federal Metropolitan Correctional Center in
South Dade, near the Everglades. In April of 1989, Kramer was waiting in the
prison recreation yard for a friend to collect him with his helicopter. Before
it landed, Kramer grabbed hold of the right-hand skid while it still hovered
above the prison yard. Unfortunately, his weight tilted the machine as it rose
into the air, causing the rotors to snag in the prison’s coiled razor wire and
bringing men and machine all crashing to the ground, breaking Kramer’s leg.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">Finally, after many years of investigation, Bobby Young,
a career criminal and a member of the ‘Dixie Mafia’ admitted to being the
triggerman in Aronow’s murder. Although Young refused to rat on Kramer himself,
Young’s attorney agreed to testify that Young had been hired by Kramer to kill
Aronow. Finally, Kramer himself, if only to regain the comforts of a Federal
prison, and escape the horrendous conditions of Dade County Jail, pleaded No
Contest to the murder of Aronow.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">But there still remain a lot of unanswered questions. Why
was Aronow really killed, and who was really behind his murder? Who owned the
Blue Lincoln? Kramer isn’t talking, why should he? – he’s serving a life
sentence with a broken leg and no possibility of parole. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">The only certainty that emerges from this story is that
‘Speed Kills’.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</h2>
<span style="background-color: #2f2f2f; color: #cccccc; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;">For more Miami murders </span><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1790983886/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i2" style="background-color: #2f2f2f; color: #ff9f03; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;" target="_blank">CLICK HERE</a>Patrick Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07463162348305396076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5431593396940948284.post-81679631866129162222019-02-07T14:39:00.000-08:002019-02-07T14:39:23.880-08:00Death in the City Beautiful [4]<br />
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<b>Susan Sutton and the bad son: August 2004</b><o:p></o:p></div>
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<b><br /></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Just a couple of years after the <span style="line-height: 107%;">Maggie
Locascio murder</span>, in Augu</span>st 2004, another
murder case featured a father and son facing each other in a courtroom setting.
The cases were also similar in their focus on security cameras. In each case
the security camera provided a rock-solid alibi but, ironically the cameras
also provided evidence of guilt.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
John Sutton, a well-known Gables lawyer, and his wife
Susan had hosted a birthday party in their home on Orduna Drive, off Granada
Blvd. in the area once known as The Devil’s Den – where Dora Sugg had been
brutally murdered exactly one hundred years earlier.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Guests at the party included their son Christopher, his
girlfriend Juliette and John’s Law Partner, Teddy Montoto. Soon after the
guests left, and John and Susan retired to their separate bedrooms, somebody
entered the house and shot both of them where they lay. Susan died immediately
but her husband, seriously wounded and now blind, eventually survived.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
Moments after police reached the house, Teddy Montoto
also arrived. He told police he had been on the phone with Susan when he heard
shots. He also told police that he was an expert marksman and had spent the day
at target practice with his gun. The police tested his gun and gave Montoto a
polygraph test. His gun passed the test, but he did not. After further
questioning, Montoto confessed that he and Susan had been having a sexual
affair. Another possible suspect was the couple’s 25-year-old son, Christopher.
Even ten years later, Christopher still resented his parents for sending him to
a brutal reform school as a teenager. Christopher had a long history of violent
behavior, death threats and even a journal entry describing how to get hold of
his parent’s wealth. At his mother’s funeral, Christopher seemed to know
details of the crime known only to the police. But at the time of the murder,
Christopher and his girlfriend were both attending a late-night movie as proved
by the theatre’s security cameras.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
However, the security cameras also showed Christopher
leaving the cinema around midnight and immediately calling someone on his
cell-phone. Phone records showed that the person he called, and whom he had
called 331 times over the previous few days, was Garrett Kopp. Police then
discovered that Kopp had been arrested less than 24 hours after the murder for
threatening somebody with a gun. Tests soon proved it was the same Glock 9 mm
semi-automatic pistol that had killed Susan Sutton. After six hours of intense interrogation,
Kopp confessed to the murders and said he had been hired by Christopher, who
wanted his parents dead.<o:p></o:p></div>
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During the lengthy and emotional trial it was shown that
Christopher and Kopp were long-time dope-dealing buddies. It was also shown
that Christopher had purchased the gun and had drawn Kopp a plan of the house,
marking his parent’s bedrooms. His girlfriend Juliette described how
Christopher had spent five years talking about killing his parents and
constantly demanding money from them. After a day and a half of deliberations,
the jury found Christopher guilty of first-degree murder. Before sentencing, an
emotional John Sutton addressed the court but did not request leniency for his
son.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
"Regardless of the result, this is a bad case,"
he said. "I lost Susan. I lost Christopher long before that. I lost my
eyesight ..." Asked if he still loved Christopher, the father told the
court, "I would have to say that I do not. And it's hard...”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
Christopher is serving life without the possibility of
parole and Kopp will not be eligible for release till 2035. It would appear
that despite all the manicured lawns and elegant mansions, the dark shadows of
The Devil’s Den still linger to this day.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
For more Miami murders <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1790983886/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i2" target="_blank">CLICK HERE</a><o:p></o:p></div>
<br />Patrick Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07463162348305396076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5431593396940948284.post-91492750775330788342019-02-04T14:28:00.000-08:002019-02-04T14:28:23.880-08:00Death in the City Beautiful [3]<br />
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<b>Maggie Locascio and the brother-in-law: Oct. 30, 2001</b><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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If the twentieth century in Coral Gables had a bloody
beginning with the murder of Dora Suggs, so too did the twenty-first century. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
On October 30, 2001, just before Halloween, Maggie
Locascio drove her Mercedes into the garage of her home at 2806 Granada Blvd.,
opposite the DeSoto Plaza fountain and just a few blocks from “Fatty” Walsh’s
Biltmore Hotel. Returning home with a new hairstyle and a fresh manicure, she
was about to start a whole new phase in her life. The following day, she was
due to appear in court to end her marriage of 28 years. As part of the divorce
settlement, the court would award her fifty-percent of her husband’s assets;
however, being a CPA, Maggie knew that her husband, Edward Sr, had declared
only a small portion of his vast fortune. In court, the following day, she was
scheduled to reveal to the judge where all the other millions were hidden.
Unfortunately, she never made it to court.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Her dead body was found sprawled on the kitchen floor.
Her head had been brutally bludgeoned, and her body badly kicked and repeatedly
stabbed. There was blood everywhere. Her husband lived in a condo on Miami
Beach and the security cameras showed him popping out of his condo for no more
than a few moments throughout the day and night of the murder. His alibi could
not be more solid and the following day, in court, he demanded that the divorce
proceedings be dismissed and all his assets unfrozen.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
Eventually, blood samples, fingerprints, DNA swabs and a
bag full of evidence proved that the murder was committed by Edward’s
estranged, younger brother Michael who lived in Charlotte N.C., was unemployed
and addicted to pills. The two brothers had not made contact for several years.
But then, in the six weeks prior to the murder, they exchanged thirty-nine
phone conversations. The condo security camera that proved Edward’s alibi, also
showed his blood-spattered brother, Michael, visiting him just two hours after
the murder.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
Michael was quickly arrested, found guilty and sentenced
to life in prison. Despite constant pressure on the authorities from his son,
Edward Jr., it was many years later that Edward Sr. was finally charged as
co-conspirator and mastermind of the murder. The evidence was entirely
circumstantial; the trial was lengthy and included one of those ‘only-in-Miami’
moments when it was revealed that the lead detective had been sleeping with one
of the major witnesses. Despite the lack of a smoking gun, Edward Locascio Sr.
was found guilty of murder in the first degree and sentenced, like his brother,
to life in prison.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
Years later, in a prison interview, Edward Sr. argued that
he and his brother had been framed by his own twenty-year-old son, Edward Jr.
who would now inherit the mansion on Granada Blvd. as well as all the family
millions. For fourteen years following the murder, the house remained empty
until the court recently ordered it sold at auction. It is currently in the
process of being restored and the blood stains finally removed.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1790983886/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i2" target="_blank">Miami Murders most Foul</a></div>
<br /><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Patrick Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07463162348305396076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5431593396940948284.post-8110461033887992972019-01-31T08:23:00.001-08:002023-10-10T11:21:03.651-07:00Death in the City Beautiful [2]<br />
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<b>Fatty Walsh, the ghost of the Biltmore: March 7, 1929</b><o:p></o:p></div>
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<b><br /></b></div>
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Thomas “Fatty” Walsh was a well-known New York mobster
and a close associate of Charles “Lucky” Luciano, Jack “Legs” Diamond and
“Dutch” Schultz with whom he shared various business interests. Earlier in his
career, Mr. Walsh had been employed as a bodyguard for Arnold Rothstein, the
legendary gangster, famous for fixing the 1919 World Series. Ironically, Walsh
was also suspected of murdering Rothstein over a gambling debt in 1928.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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But, on March 4, 1929, less than a year after Rothstein’s
assassination, Walsh had his own problems with a gambling debt. The details
remain murky, but Walsh appears to have been running a card-game in a
Prohibition era speakeasy he was operating from his suite on the 13th floor of
the Biltmore Hotel. The suite is commonly known as the Al Capone Suite, named
after another of Mr. Walsh’s business associates who shared his affection for
the Coral Gables hotel. Following a possible misunderstanding over cards
played, or money owed, Walsh was shot dead by a rival underworld figure, Edward
Wilson, who then fled to Cuba.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
Possibly because his murder remained unpunished, the
ghost of “Fatty” Walsh continues to haunt the hotel, especially on the 13th
floor. During his lifetime, Mr. Walsh was known as a ‘ladies’ man’ which
perhaps explains why the elevator, unexpectedly and unbidden, often delivers
attractive young women to the 13th floor. One young couple pressed the button
for the 4th floor where they were staying but arrived at the 13th floor for no
reason. No sooner had the wife stepped out than the elevator slammed shut and
returned her husband to the hotel lobby. Strange sounds in the 13th floor
suite, lights turning on or off, the elevator behaving erratically are all
signs that “Fatty” Walsh is restless and seeks company.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />Patrick Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07463162348305396076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5431593396940948284.post-70317242791569057252019-01-26T11:18:00.000-08:002019-01-26T11:18:41.283-08:00Death in the City Beautiful [1]<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<b>Dora Suggs and the Devil’s Den: December 1905:</b><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
Long before George Merrick turned the wilderness, west of
Coconut Grove into the city of Coral Gables, various hardy souls, known as
homesteaders, lived on isolated farms out in the back-country. In December
1905, one of these souls, Dora Suggs, rode her mule and wagon into Coconut
Grove (or Cocoanut Grove as it was then spelled) to buy Christmas provisions
for her husband Gideon and their children. That was the last time her family
saw her alive.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
Returning from Coconut Grove, in the gathering winter
twilight, she was riding through an especially desolate stretch of countryside
known as ‘The Devil’s Den’, when she was dragged from her carriage and
assaulted. These days it is a place of manicured lawns and gracious
single-family homes, at the intersection of Granada Boulevard and Blue Road,
but in those days, it was a narrow, muddy track that followed a creek, through
a dark grove of Florida slash pines and palmettos. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
The unaccompanied wagon and mule arrived back at the
Suggs’ homestead and her husband immediately organized a search party. Her body
was found in The Devil’s Den at 10:00pm; she had been brutally raped and mutilated.
Her skull had been crushed-in with rocks. Footprints around the body showed
that her assailant wore size twelve boots, but there were no other clues.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
The following day, Edward (Cady) Brown was arrested for
Dora Suggs’ murder. The main evidence against him appears to be that he was
black. On being sentenced to death he said, “I don’t know how they can hang a
man for something he knows nothing about.” Within just six months he was
charged, tried, found guilty and hanged. Despite his neck being broken by the
fall, he continued to show signs of life and his boots continued to kick for a
further eighteen and a half minutes. His boots were a size ten. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
Dora Suggs is buried in Coral Gables’ historic Pinewood
Cemetery where her tombstone reads<i> “1872 - December 18th, 1905.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Died tragically at the Devils Den, Wife of
Gideon David Suggs.”</i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<i>For more about Miami Murders Most Foul <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1790983886/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i2" target="_blank">CLICK HERE</a></i></div>
<br />Patrick Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07463162348305396076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5431593396940948284.post-82821979175400907282019-01-17T09:41:00.001-08:002019-01-17T09:41:31.466-08:00The Real Housewives of South Florida [3]<br />
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<b>Candy Mossler: June 30, 1964</b><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
Jacques and Candace Mossler had been married for fifteen
glamorous years when he was found brutally murdered in his luxurious Key
Biscayne apartment. Already immensely rich when they married, Jacques
introduced Candy, a poor girl from rural Georgia, to a life of luxury and
social eminence which she could never have dreamed of. Thanks to Jacques’
wealth and social connections, she became well known as a charming hostess;
entertaining visiting film stars and other celebrities at their various homes
in Miami and Texas. Dressed always in the latest fashions, with an hour-glass
figure, platinum-blond hair and her rich southern drawl, she adapted to her new
role as a socialite with a natural ease. Candy Mossler quickly became a
prominent and glamorous figure in a wide range of civic, cultural and
charitable causes. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
But Candy, only 46, found her 69 year old husband too
elderly for her tastes and for three years had been conducting a passionate
love affair with her handsome 25 year old nephew, Mel Powers. Powers had been
jailed as a swindler at a young age and upon his release from prison his mother
suggested he contact her sister, his wealthy aunt, Candy Mossler. After meeting
her tall, broad-shouldered nephew, Candy persuaded her husband to offer Mel a
job in one of his companies and to let him stay in their Houston family
mansion. With Jacques so often travelling on business and Candy and Mel alone
in the house, it was not long before the household servants became aware of the
couple’s unbridled and adulterous passion. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
Candy was already so fond of shopping for jewelry and the
latest haute-couture, that Jacques had joked she would “shop me to death.” She
now took Mel with her on her shopping expeditions and, in return for his
exertions in the bedroom, she showered him with expensive gifts. When they
could not be together physically, they exchanged detailed descriptions of their
more intimate desires and shared memories, in a series of letter and sweaty love
notes. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
Eventually Jacques discovered evidence of the affair and
had Mel thrown out of the house. He also considered getting a divorce until his
accountant explained that half of his vast fortune would go to his ex-wife.
Finally, with all the different homes that they owned, Jacques decided it was
possible for them to live separate lives while remaining married. If Candy had
filed for divorce, she would be left with nothing. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
At the time of the murder Candy’s alibi was watertight.
She happened to be out driving with her children, mailing a letter at 1:00 in
the morning. While driving, she developed so severe a migraine that she had to
visit a hospital. When she and the children eventually returned home just
before dawn, she found Jacques dead and told the police that it must have been
a botched robbery. Her husband must have interrupted the burglars she
suggested. The police did not agree; this was no casual murder they said, this
was a crime of passion. Jacques body had received 39 stab wounds and his skull
had been completely crushed by repeated blows from a blunt instrument. Normal
burglars, however brutal, would normally restrict themselves to just a couple
of fatal stabbings, not 39. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
While searching the Key Biscayne apartment, investigators
found Jacques’ journal in which he had written “If Mel and Candace don’t kill
me first, I’ll have to kill them.” It did not take police long to identify
Mel’s identity nor to discover that he’d flown into Miami on the day of the
murder and flown back to Houston on the first flight out the following morning.
In addition to intimate photographs and steamy love letters between nephew and
aunt, police collected much more evidence including bloodstains, fingerprints
and witnesses willing to testify that Mel had often threatened to kill his
uncle-in-law. Both Mel and his aunt were charged with first degree murder and
ordered to stand trial in courtroom 6-1 of the Dade County Courthouse.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
Even fifty years later, the Mossler trial is still
referred to as the ‘trial of the century’. The New York Times described it as
the ‘Most spectacular homicide trial ever.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It had everything to feed the public’s prurient appetites: wealth,
celebrity, adultery, incest, steamy sex and murder. The Los Angeles Times
decried the courtroom evidence as ‘detailed and lascivious’ but, nonetheless,
shared the details with its readers.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
Because the nature of the evidence was so salacious,
nobody under the age of 21 was permitted in the courtroom. Starting at dawn,
lines to enter the court house stretched around the block and people brought
their own packed lunches rather than risk losing their seats during the lunch
break.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
Armed with Jacques’ money, Candy was able to hire Percy
Foreman, the nation’s most famous and expensive criminal attorney. Foreman had defended
more than 700 clients charged with homicide and had lost only one. Life
magazine said Foreman wore suits that looked like "freshly-laundered
potato sacks." Time magazine called him "the biggest, brashest,
brightest criminal lawyer in the U.S." It was also said, according to Life
magazine that “if you hire Percy, you’re guilty as hell!”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
The trial lasted thirty-three days and the prosecution
called 224 witnesses, each of whom added lurid details about the couple’s
adulterous and extravagant relationship. Police produced evidence of the
nephew’s brief visit to Miami on the night of the murder, bloodstains in his
rental car, finger and palm-prints at the Key Biscayne murder scene. The
prosecutor asked the jury to ask themselves why Candy had decided to get the
children out of bed to mail a letter at one-o-clock in the morning. The jurors
were shown Jacques’ journal entries and listened as the prosecutor read from a
selection of Mel and Candy’s love notes. The government felt confident their
case was watertight and the Dade State Attorney only needed an hour to present
his final summary.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
Percy Foreman did not call any witnesses and, when he
rose to give his summary, he said he would make just a few remarks. In fact, he
spoke for slightly less than five-hours, non-stop. He attacked everybody except
the defendants. He attacked the police and prosecution, he attacked all the
witnesses and he even attacked the victim, Jacques Mossler. The witnesses, he
claimed, were bottom-feeding scum, liars and criminals. “They seined the
cesspools of the penitentiaries and insane asylums for anybody who would
testify. And they didn't come up with an edible fish."<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
There were hundreds of people, he argued, who wanted the
vicious, crooked Mossler dead. Jacques Mossler was "a ruthless financier,
a mastermind of a great financial empire, hated by thousands of people and a
sexual deviate who slept with an ax at his bedside to protect him from his
enemies.” Using an unidentified hair found on Mossler’s dead body, Foreman went
on to argue that Mossier's sexual appetites—"transvestitism,
homosexuality, voyeurism and every conceivable type of perversion, masochism,
sadism,"—had caused his own death; he was murdered, said Foreman, by a
slighted homosexual lover.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
But the trial was all about Candy. She played to the
crowd and she played to the all-male jury. Her elegant clothes, her winsome
smile, her beauty all had an effect and at one point the judge was forced to
reprimand her for lounging seductively across two chairs.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
After four days of deliberations, the jury came back with
a verdict of not guilty. Mel and Candy were free to leave and they stepped out
of the courthouse waving to the waiting crowds who thronged Flagler street and
who cheered as they drove away in a gold-plated, Cadillac convertible. Hosting
a celebration dinner party later that night at their hotel, they invited Percy
Foreman to join them as their guest of honor. He refused to attend and said,
"I may represent these people but I don't have to associate with
them," <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
Together, Mel and Candy returned to Houston where Candy
inherited all of Jacques’ fortune. She then proceeded to dump her nephew in
favor of an even younger man, Barnett Garrison, whom she eventually married.
This marriage was equally unfortunate. Less than a year after the wedding,
Barnett, wearing a gun in his belt, suffered irreparable brain damage after
falling forty-feet from his wife’s third-floor bedroom window to the concrete
below.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
Candy herself died many years later of an accidental drug
overdose, alone in her suite at the iconic Fontainebleau Hotel on Miami Beach.
She had been an addict for years. Perhaps the most memorable quote from the
whole affair was when Candy held a spontaneous pre-trial press conference.
“Mrs. Mossler” one of the reporters said. “You’ve been accused of committing
adultery and of committing incest. You’re even accused of committing murder.
How do you respond to that?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
“Well honey” she drawled, with a smile. “Nobody’s
perfect.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />Patrick Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07463162348305396076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5431593396940948284.post-62616275494176078212019-01-14T07:26:00.000-08:002019-01-14T07:26:27.891-08:00THE REAL HOUSEWIVES OF SOUTH FLORIDA [2]<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<b>Joyce Cohen: March 7, 1986</b><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
Joyce Lemay was only 24 when she met and married a
significantly older, multi-millionaire developer named Stanley Cohen. From
their luxury mansions in Coconut Grove and Steamboat Springs, Colorado, they
enjoyed an exotic social whirl on the international party circuit. Miami and
Coconut Grove in the early 1980’s was awash with illicit drugs and Joyce soon
developed a taste for cocaine – about once every fifteen minutes. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
But sadly, such fairy-tale lives cannot last forever,
and, in this case, five years was certainly pushing it. Stanley was already
seeking love elsewhere and, to her close confidants, Joyce worried that she
might soon lose her meal ticket. And then tragedy struck.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
Around 5:00AM, Joyce Cohen called 911, screaming that her
husband had been shot during a home invasion. She explained that after seeing
two strange men, she had hidden in a back room with her Doberman pinscher.
Police and paramedics found Stanley Cohen with four bullets in the back of his
head, dead.<o:p></o:p></div>
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From the time they arrived on the scene, Police were
suspicious. Why was the alarm disconnected, why was the guard dog locked up and
why was Stanley’s 0.38 caliber revolver, wiped clean of prints, hidden in some
bushes outside the window? Furthermore, if this really was a home invasion, why
was nothing stolen despite the piles of cash and cocaine lying all around?<o:p></o:p></div>
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As one report observed, Joyce’s story had more holes in
it than her late husband’s head. Sensing their suspicions, Joyce forced the
police to leave her house until they could produce a search warrant and the
next morning's Miami Herald carried a story of the Cohen homicide under the
headline "Prominent Builder Murdered in Home; Wife Keeps Police Outside
for More Than Eight Hours."<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Despite their suspicions, police did not have enough
evidence to press charges until almost three years later. After watching a
program about the unsolved murder on TV, Frank Zuccarello, 25, a jailed member
of a home-invasion gang, contacted police and told them that he and two
accomplices had committed the murder. He claimed they had been hired by Joyce
Cohen who had let them into the house and gave them her husband’s gun. In
return for killing her husband, she promised them $100,000 worth of cocaine <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Although the murder weapon, found in the garden, had been
wiped clean of prints, a small piece of tissue paper had been caught in the
trigger guard. The tissue matched a larger piece containing powder residue and
Joyce’s DNA which had been found in her bathroom.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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In the meantime, Stanley’s older children had prevented
Joyce from benefiting from his estate, and when police finally arrested her,
she was living with her new boyfriend in a Virginia trailer park. It took three
years to bring her to court, and three weeks inside court to try her. The trial
had included endless testimony from a succession of friends and associates who
described Joyce’s constant complaints about her boring marriage and how she
would like to get rid of her husband but keep his money. The most damming
evidence however came from Zuccarello who described in minute detail how the
murder was plotted in a 7-11 parking lot and how he and Joyce waited together
downstairs while his partner, Tony Caracciolo went upstairs to commit the
murder.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In November 1989, Joyce Cohen was found guilty of first
degree murder and sentenced to life in prison plus fifteen years for
conspiracy. “"Do not feel sorry for her because she's a woman” the
prosecutor said. “She's a cold, calculating murderess who put on a good show
for everyone."<o:p></o:p></div>
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And that should have been the end of the story but,
unlike Stanley, the story refused to die. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Zuccarello’s two accomplices, though
pleading no-contest to second-degree murder, have both denied any involvement and
both insist they’ve never met the Cohens. Joyce Cohen herself, not
surprisingly, has continued, over the years, to make impassioned pleas of
innocence. The key witness, Zuccarello, despite an incredibly long and sinister
rap-sheet, was released after just a few years in jail. There are many,
including some of the jurors, who believe he is a professional liar and made-up
the contract-killing story in return for early release.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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In 1998, a Miami TV reporter, Gail Bright, revealed that
one of the lead detectives in the case had told her that Zuccarello’s testimony
was a complete fabrication and that none of the three men had ever been to the
Cohen’s house. Frustrated by their inability to collect sufficient evidence,
despite their conviction that Joyce had personally murdered her husband, the
police had finally coached Zuccarello, a well-known snitch, to make up his
story. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Sentenced to twenty-five years to life, Cohen should have
been eligible for parole in 2014, however in 2013, the Florida Parole
Commission voted to extend her release date to 2048, by which time she will be
97 years old.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />Patrick Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07463162348305396076noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5431593396940948284.post-19836031956199377042019-01-12T08:33:00.000-08:002019-01-12T08:33:00.233-08:00THE REAL HOUSEWIVES OF SOUTH FLORIDA [1]<br />
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<i>He was old and rich, while she<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i>Was thirty-two or thirty-three.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i>She gave him two more years to live,<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i>And that was all she meant to give.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i>The following three murders involve younger wives accused
or suspected of killing their wealthy, older husbands. Only one of them was
convicted while the other two were found not-guilty. Even so </i>…<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>1. Denise Calvo: September 18, 2003</b><o:p></o:p></div>
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When Denise and Jose Calvo pulled into the driveway of
their luxury home in Coconut Grove, they were confronted by an armed attacker.
The large black man pointed his gun at Jose and grabbed his $75,000, diamond
encrusted Rolex watch, his wallet and his gold wedding ring. He then demanded
the keys to the Mercedes Benz S-500. The idea of the bandit driving off with
Anthony, their two-year old son, strapped in the back seat terrified Denise.
Pretending to reach under the dashboard for the keys, she pulled out her husband’s
gun and opened fire. The attacker fired his gun at the same time, shooting Jose
in the face and killing him. One of Denise’s bullets hit the man’s shoulder as
he turned to flee, the others blew-out the back windows of his Honda Civic.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It was a horrifying confrontation which sent shock waves
through the affluent neighborhood. Jose and Denise were active and well-known
figures in the South Florida community. He was a prominent civic leader and
owned a $33 million Buick dealership in nearby Coral Gables. She was a much
younger, attractive socialite and both were on the charity dinner circuit and
involved with the sponsorship of local museums, universities and churches.
South Florida had lost one of its most esteemed and respectable citizens
despite the heroic efforts of his wife to protect him. How could anyone feel
safe?<o:p></o:p></div>
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Bravely appearing on television, Denise minutely
described the events of that tragic evening and implored anyone with knowledge
to come forward so that justice could be done and she and her two-year old son
could find ‘closure’.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The gunman’s Honda Civic, with its blown-out rear windows
and blood-stained interior was soon located, not far from the murder site. It
was not long before the gunman himself, identified through DNA, was also
located, hiding in a trailer in a remote part of rural South Carolina. Anthony
Craig Lee was arrested and charged with Jose Calvo’s murder. Lee had recently
served ten years for stealing Rolex watches. Since his release from prison, he
had been living with his mother, just around the corner, but ‘across the
tracks’, from the Calvo mansion in Coconut Grove.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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That is when the apparently simple and clear-cut story of
a botched carjacking became more complex and acquired its patina of South
Florida weirdness. The first surprise was that Denise had very recently become
the beneficiary of her husband’s million-and-a-half-dollar life-insurance
policy. A bigger surprise was that Anthony Lee’s mother was also Denise Calvo’s
main crack cocaine supplier, and the two had been close friends for years.
Denise was also on close and friendly terms with the son, Anthony, her
husband’s killer. Further investigations revealed that, when not attending
charity galas at the Biltmore Hotel, Jose and Denise both enjoyed crack-fueled
sex orgies with two or three black prostitutes in the seedier parts of Coconut
Grove. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Denise herself, had been arrested, several years earlier,
for offering crack cocaine to an undercover agent. Strangely, the case never
went to trial and then, even more mysteriously, all the paperwork eventually
vanished from the public record. Finally, police discovered that far from being
descended from old South Florida money, Denise was actually the daughter of
Michael Angelo Caligiuri, a fugitive from Federal racketeering charges. He was
described by authorities as an armed and dangerous New York mobster in the
Gambino family; the sort of person who it’s nice to be nice to, and not nice,
not to be nice to.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The late Jose Calvo himself was also not quite what he
appeared in public. Despite his expensive Mercedes and his diamond encrusted
Rolex, he had told a bankruptcy judge just a few months previously that his
total assets of $190 included $5 cash, $50 in clothing and a $10 Seiko watch.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Eventually Anthony Lee appeared in court on a charge of
first-degree murder. Jose Calvo would be avenged, and justice would finally be
done. But even the trial itself was filled with surprises and moments of drama.
It began with a string of prostitutes and pimps from Coconut Grove describing the
Calvo’s sex-parties behind the Walgreens parking lot. They were followed by
several drug-dealers recounting the daily deliveries of crack cocaine to the
Calvo mansion. All of this proved dramatic fodder to Lee’s defense attorney,
South Florida’s legendary Ellis Rubin. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Rubin was internationally famous for his unique criminal
defense strategies. For example, back in 1977 he defended Ronny Zamora, a
15-year-old who had robbed and murdered an 82 year old neighbor, on the grounds
that Ronny had been exposed and addicted to too much TV violence. In 1993 he
defended Kathy Willets, the ‘Trollop of Tamarac’, by blaming Prozac. Willets
and her husband, a Broward County policeman, were charged with running a
brothel out of their family home in Tamarac, just north of Miami. Rubin’s
defense was that his client’s consumption of Prozac had turned her into a
nymphomaniac with insatiable sexual cravings. Her poor husband, finally unable
to satisfy her himself, was obliged to hide in a bedroom closet while a minimum
of eight men each day would diligently attend to her needs.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
In court, Rubin argued that Anthony Lee was simply a dupe
of Denise Calvo and that it was her plan to kill her husband and then to kill
Lee. He actually demanded that the bullet, still lodged in Lee’s shoulder be
surgically removed in the courtroom while he watched. He argued that the bullet
would match the one which had killed Jose Calvo. Rubin’s behavior in court
reached such a highpoint that the exasperated judge ordered him to “sit in the
corner” and write a letter of apology.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Despite all Rubin’s theatrics and all of the
incriminating revelations about her past, Denise was never charged with her
husband’s murder. To this day, she remains a free woman with an unblemished
record and has always denied being a crack-monster. “I only consume powdered
coke” she insisted proudly.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br /><br />
<i>From my latest book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1790983886/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i4" target="_blank">"Miami: Murders Most Foul"</a> which describes twenty-five or so of South Florida's more colorful and exotic murders.</i>Patrick Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07463162348305396076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5431593396940948284.post-21149414578133064152018-12-27T09:59:00.000-08:002018-12-27T09:59:44.048-08:00Best wines for a romantic day on the beach<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText">
For those of us lucky enough to live in South Florida, it
is never too early to plan a day at the beach. Since moving to Miami several
years ago, my wife and I always try to spend New Year’s Day sunning ourselves
on the sand at South Beach. But those poor, cold residents of chillier climes
can still warm themselves by planning and imagining a romantic expedition to
the beach, later in the year.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The big question of course is ‘what’s the best wine to
bring to the beach?’<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The Wine-Awesome website, The BackLabel <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="https://www.thebacklabel.com/">https://www.thebacklabel.com/</a>
offers the following excellent suggestions. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Sauvignon Blanc<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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A solid “SB” is the perfect beach companion. The typical bottle
will come with generous servings of flavors like grapefruit, pineapple and
lemongrass… easy and designed to delight. Consider its crispness and slight
crunchiness your reward for being so good at sunbathing. The best SBs come from
the upper Loire Valley in France or from Marlborough in New Zealand’s South
Island.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Gruner-Veltliner<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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Affectionately called “Gru-vee,” this grape produces some
of the most absurdly refreshing and pert vino in the Milky Way Galaxy. It’s
super acidic, tart (and almost minty) qualities are complemented perfectly by a
big hit of fresh peach. Gru-vee is a great way to hold off the heat and keep
your mouth from melting, unless you’re into that. The best Gru-vees come from
Austria and the Danube Valley.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Vinho Verde <o:p></o:p></b></div>
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Vinho Verde is one of Portugal’s best known contributions
to the wine world, and it’s one of the freshest, lightest and most delightful
summer wines there is. In Portuguese, “vinho verde” literally means “green
wine.” Not as in the color green, more as in ripe. Plus, most vinho verde has a
lower alcohol content than your average white, making all day drinking that
much more manageable. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Rosé:<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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It’s pink, it’s popular, it’s summery and it feels just
as home on the beach as it does in the vineyard. A good take on rosé combines
the freshness and drinkability of a white with some of the body and flavoring
of a red… allowing you to quench your thirst without skimping on flavor. Plus,
like we said, it’s pink. Don’t spread out on a towel without it. Just make sure
that your Rosé comes from Provence on France’s Mediterranean coast. Rosé from
elsewhere is usually too sweet.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Cava:<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
Going to the beach is a celebration of summer, of sun and
of doing absolutely nothing for days on end. Celebrations call for bubbly! So
next time you trek down to the water’s edge, bring some of “Spain’s Champagne”
AKA Cava. It’s an effervescent, crisp explosion of bubbles that will complement
the crashing waves perfectly. Make sure it’s good and dry for ultimate
satisfaction.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Albariño:<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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The sloth and sleepiness of the sun is no match for this
insanely bright, tart and acidic vino from Spain. Green apples and melons and
lemons and a definite hint of ocean air will keep you cool, wakeful and feeling
refreshed. It not only tastes like the ocean, it’s about as refreshing as that
first chilly dip of the day. The best Albariño comes from just north of the Portuguese
border in Galicia and in fact the best Vinho Verde wine is made with Albariño
grapes.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<o:p>Now all you need is a cooler of ice to keep it cool, two elegant, beach-friendly wine glasses, some tasty nibbles, a large beach towel, some sunscreen and an itsy-bitsy, teenie-weenie yellow polka dot bikini and an attractive companion to pair with the wine.</o:p></div>
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<o:p><br /></o:p></div>
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<o:p>Cheers - enjoy!</o:p></div>
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<o:p><br /></o:p></div>
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<o:p><br /></o:p></div>
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<o:p><br /></o:p></div>
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<o:p><br /></o:p></div>
<br />Patrick Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07463162348305396076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5431593396940948284.post-26579129763318683902018-10-19T16:50:00.001-07:002018-10-19T16:50:47.848-07:00Master Sommeliers' Scandal<br />
<h3 style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 15.0pt; mso-outline-level: 1;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"><i>(From the New Yorker) </i></span></b><b><i>By <a class="Link__link___3dWao " href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/bianca-bosker" rel="author" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; text-rendering: geometricprecision;" title="Bianca Bosker">Bianca Bosker</a> </i></b><b><i>October 18, 2018</i></b></h3>
<div>
<b><i><br /></i></b></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<b><i>The Cheating Scandal That Has Shaken the World of Master
Wine Sommeliers</i></b><o:p></o:p></div>
<div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
In early September, fifty-six nervous sommeliers in
pressed suits and shined shoes assembled at the Four Seasons Hotel in St.
Louis, Missouri. They were there to attempt the most difficult and prestigious
test in their industry: the Master Sommelier Exam, a three-part,
application-only ordeal that just two hundred and forty-nine individuals
worldwide have passed—fewer than have travelled to space. The test includes a
fifty-minute oral theory section, administered in advance, which ninety per
cent of people fail; an elaborate assessment of service skills; and a famously
challenging blind tasting. Some of this year’s sommeliers had been preparing
for the Master exam for fifteen years; others were taking it for the sixth or
eighth time. When the results were decided, the chairman of the Court of Master
Sommeliers, the nonprofit organization that administers the Master exam,
announced, over raised glasses of champagne, that a record twenty-four
candidates had passed.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
Then, five weeks later, on October 9th, the court made a
scandalous revelation: it had been discovered that one of the test’s proctors,
a Master Sommelier, had leaked “detailed information” about the blind tasting
to an unknown number of examinees. In response, the court’s board had
unanimously voted that the leaker would have his Master title revoked. (The
person’s identity has been reported by an industry publication but remains
unconfirmed by the court.) More controversially, the court also stripped twenty-three
of the twenty-four newly anointed Master Sommeliers of their titles, pending a
redo of the blind-tasting portion of the test. (One person was spared because
he passed the tasting in 2017.)<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
Revelation of deceit in fine wine’s most sacrosanct circle
has rattled the tight-knit world of sommeliers, who pride themselves on
presenting a decorous, unflappable face to those outside their ranks.
Sommeliers have entered a period of mourning for their defrocked colleagues.
(“Friday tasting group felt a little heavy this morning,” one wrote on
Instagram.) The drama has also enthralled those outside wine industry, in part
because recent works like the movie “Somm” and the TV series “Uncorked” have
exposed a broad audience to the perverse difficulty of the Master
exam—psychologically, physically, intellectually—and the masochistic dedication
it requires. Like athletes dissecting their winning play after the big game,
this year’s class of new Masters gave interviews detailing their strategies for
success: twenty to thirty hours of studying per week, coaching from sports
psychologists, “mountains of credit-card debt.” Master status comes with the
industry’s top bragging rights, plus a hefty raise. (On average, Masters earn
double their previous salary.) But for many sommeliers it is an honor imbued
with almost spiritual significance—the oenological equivalent of running a
marathon, winning an Oscar, and being canonized, all rolled into one. “For some
people,” one sommelier told me, “this test is life.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
The court has said that it will reinstate the Master
title to those who pass the tasting portion of the test again. Yet, more than
the other sections of the exam, blind tasting is a “headfuck,” as one sommelier
who’s taken it multiple times told me. No matter how much preparation is done,
there is no guarantee that a sommelier who nails it one time will be able to
repeat the feat the next. Candidates have twenty-five minutes to describe,
analyze, and identify six unmarked, pre-poured glasses of wine. Their
performance can be thrown off by elevation, by the time of day, by an errant
sip of too-hot tea, by an unlucky lineup that doesn’t play to their personal
strengths, or, in this case, by the added pressure of hoping to clear one’s
name of any whiff of scandal. “Being asked to retest with your Masters
reputation on the line in conjunction with the sheer difficulty of the exam
sounds like any wine professional’s nightmare,” Cristie Norman, a certified
sommelier, explained in Eater. “It’s more than likely that some, if not most,
of the twenty-three will not pass again, but this does not necessarily mean
they cheated the first time.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
Nineteen of the twenty-three Masters who had their status
revoked have appealed the court’s decision. In a letter, which was obtained by
the Chicago Tribune, they demanded an apology and the reinstatement of their
titles. (On Facebook, one ex-Master was offered the name of a good attorney.)
Exchanges on industry discussion boards usually buzzing with study tips and
pairing suggestions have devolved into quarrels over the court’s handling of
the misconduct. “An organization that treats its new members like this needs to
be seriously overhauled and revamped,” one wine pro said in a discussion forum
on the Web site GuildSomm. “If it happened once, how do we know it has not
happened before?” another GuildSomm commenter asked, in reference to the
cheating.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
This is a rare instance of open rebellion against the
court, which for more than forty years has been a powerful gatekeeper within
the élite world of sommeliers. There is no school you can attend to become a
sommelier. Gaining the necessary skills to advance through the court’s
certifications—which are not mandatory, but can open doors—is a bit like
studying for the MCAT but also a bit like jockeying for a country-club
membership: you have to get on the good side of the existing Master Sommeliers,
an insular, overwhelmingly male cohort who can provide a leg up to aspiring
Masters through mentorship and coaching. (Eighty-four per cent of the Master
Sommeliers in the U.S. are male.) Many veterans of Master exams have also found
the grading to be perplexingly opaque—those who take the test never receive an
exact score, for instance, leaving them to wonder whether they flubbed the
theory section by two points or twenty. A once-aspiring Master Sommelier who
attempted the exam and flunked the service portion told me that she was
informed by the judges that she failed because her demeanor seemed different
from usual, even though none of the judges had ever seen her work in a dining
room before. For some, the cheating debacle has inspired broader questions
about the court’s outsized control over the lives of sommeliers. “It’s good
this has been exposed because there is so much exclusivity,” one person who has
taken the Master Sommelier exam told me. “It’s wine, not saving lives. Why is
it harder to become a Master Sommelier than a doctor?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
Several younger sommeliers who have worked toward court
certification told me that the cheating debacle has rattled their trust in the
organization. They wonder whether the indiscretion has irrevocably tainted the
court, whether they should endure the pain of studying if a fairly earned
diploma can suddenly be revoked. (Still, none was willing to criticize the
court on the record.) Among the twenty-three Master Sommeliers who’ve lost
their titles, some intend to reconvene their study groups, uncork fresh
bottles, and resume their rigorous blind-tasting training as soon as possible.
One of them, Vincent Morrow, wrote on GuildSomm that he is worried about having
lost a month of preparation, and about the fresh expense of buying practice
wines, which cost him seven thousand dollars ahead of the September exam. But,
he added, “I’m not opposed to a retake; I plan to do it immediately—I want my
name cleared, and I wish a complete investigation and the cheaters coming
forward would do it for me.” Not all feel so optimistic. “I will probably be
one of the candidates who will not retake the exam,” one of the demoted Masters
told the wine-news site SevenFifty Daily. “I want to find a different industry
to work in. I want this to be over.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-gastronomy/the-cheating-scandal-that-has-shaken-the-world-of-elite-sommeliers </span></div>
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<br />Patrick Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07463162348305396076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5431593396940948284.post-88892892886186317522018-07-12T09:21:00.000-07:002018-07-12T09:44:37.950-07:00SHERRY<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: .3in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">Sherry
is a fortified white wine grown and produced exclusively in a very small region of Spain called Jerez, just outside Cadiz in Southern Andalusia. Unfortunately, because
the name was not legally protected until 1996, “Sherry” has become synonymous
with sickly, sweet wines from South Africa, California, and Cyprus. Sherry is
now defined by law as the English name for the wines of Jerez, and, far from
being sweet, most Sherry is among the driest of all wines.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-indent: .3in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">Sherry is made primarily from the Palomino
grape and sometimes, for sweet versions, with Pedro Ximenez. The wine is
fermented to about 11 percent alcohol, and then blended with brandy to bring it
to 15 percent or higher. The four most common styles of Sherry are:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Fino</i>: This is the
palest and driest. Alcohol 15-17. Sugar grams per liter: 0 – 5<o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Amontillado</i>: Slightly
darker than Fino. Alcohol 16-17%. Sugar g/l: 0 – 5<o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Oloroso</i>: Darker,
fuller bodied slightly oxidized. Alcohol 17-22%. Sugar g/l: 0 – 5<o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Pedro
Ximénez</i>:
Dark, full-bodied and very sweet. Alcohol 15-22%. Sugar g/l:
212+</span></li>
</ul>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">After fermentation and the fortification with brandy,
the Sherry is aged using the solera system in which the barrels of aging wine
are stored in a pyramid style with the oldest on the bottom and newest barrels
on top. Wine to be bottled is drawn from one third of the oldest, bottom
barrels, which are then topped-up with wine from the layer above and so on,
until there is space in the top layer of barrels for the new wine to be added.
Consequently, over the years and decades, the wines of various vintages are
blended together, which is why a bottle of Sherry never has a vintage year on
the label. In some cases, some of the content of the bottle could be more than
a hundred years old. Dry Sherry is a popular drink all over Spain, not just in
Andalusia, and has been extremely popular in England since long before
Shakespeare celebrated it in his plays. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">Sherry is the 'Shakespeare' of wines. Both offer the
widest variety of styles, from the driest <i>Fino </i>to the sweetest <i>Pedro Ximenez,</i>
or the broadest comedy of Bottom to the most sublime tragedy of Lear. They are
both unique and have no peers; the solera system is unique to Sherry, and the
sheer volume and range of the written word is unique to Shakespeare. Not only
does Shakespeare make more than thirty-five direct references to Sherry in his
plays, but during his lifetime, Sir Francis Drake “liberated” 2,900 butts of
Sherry (2.25 million bottles) from the King of Spain, and brought them home to
England. The richness, the range, the historic parallels, will forever unite
the Bard of Avon with the sack of Jerez.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">Shakespeare’s most famous Sherry drinker, of course,
was Sir John Falstaff, who called it “sac” and attributes the bravery and
military success of Prince Hal to his consumption of Sherry. He also adds that
Sherry produces “excellent wit,” while it “warms the blood.” In conclusion, Sir
John avows that if he had a thousand sons, the first thing he would teach them is
to reject all small thin wines and to devote themselves to Sherry.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Part of the payment to England’s Poet Laureate, since
the time of Shakespeare’s drinking companion, Ben Johnson, has traditionally
been a barrel of Sherry. England’s current Poet Laureate, Carol Anne Duffy, was
presented with 720 bottles of Sherry in 2012. Sherry is typically drunk as an
aperitif before meals. </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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Patrick Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07463162348305396076noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5431593396940948284.post-84946001863927613542018-06-14T16:19:00.000-07:002018-06-14T16:19:27.563-07:00CHINA<br />
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China it is one of the oldest wine-producing countries on
the planet. However, wine has not been an important aspect of Chinese culture
until very recently. Already within the first two decades of the new century,
China has become not only a major producer but also a major consumer of wine.
Within the next decade, China could prove itself one of the leading players in
the world of wine.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Although grape wine has been consumed in China for at
least 4,600 years, a stronger version containing up to 20 percent alcohol, called
<i>Huangjiu</i>, or “yellow-wine,” made from fermented rice and cereals, has always
been more popular. Additionally, the Chinese have always consumed a distilled
version called <i>Baijiu</i>, which has a 40-60 percent alcohol content. Alcohol in
China is typically consumed in the form of toasts, drunk in small shot glasses
and tossed to the back of the throat—the complete opposite of everything
described in Chapter One of my book.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Modern Vitis vinifera grapes were probably first
introduced by the Greeks, led by Alexander the Great in the third century BC,
and planted in the extreme west of China in what is today’s Xinjiang Autonomous
Region. Marco Polo referred to the local wines when he passed through this area
in the thirteenth century. This Uighur populated province (ironically the most
Islamic part of China) is still the major wine-producing region in the nation,
even though it clings to the edge of the Gobi Desert. One of the vineyards
covers twenty-five thousand acres at 262 feet below sea level!<o:p></o:p></div>
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Following Deng Xiaoping’s Economic Reforms in the early
1980s, agricultural land was de-collectivized, private entrepreneurs were
permitted to develop vineyards, and foreign investment was encouraged. At the
same time, a growing middle class was becoming exposed to the outside world,
traveling to Europe and bringing back knowledge about foreign
cultures—including wine.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The French brandy house, Remy Martin/Cointreau,
established a joint venture in 1980 which eventually became Dynasty Wines,
producing over one hundred types of wine products in China. Initially, Chinese
wines were limited to the export market, but with the growing wealth of the
domestic market in the twenty-firstt century and a fast evolving appreciation
for wine, 90 percent of Chinese wine is now consumed domestically. While the
disposable income of the growing middle class accounts for the consumption of
home-grown Chinese wine, it is only the extreme wealth of the Chinese
billionaire class that can account for an obsessive consumption of French,
especially Bordeaux, wines. The Chinese love of Bordeaux wine is delightfully
explored in the 2013 movie <i>Red Obsession</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Although most Chinese wine comes from the Xinjiang
Autonomous Region on the border with Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and
Kazakhstan, a new northern area, Ningxia Province, also bordering the Gobi
Desert, is rapidly becoming the center of China’s fine-wine industry. With
160,000 acres of vineyards planned by 2020, Ningxia will be three times the
size of Napa. The French luxury goods giant LVMH has recently invested $28
million in a state-of-the-art winery called Chandon. An international
competition named "Bordeaux Against Ningxia" was held in Beijing in
December 2011, when experts from China and France tasted five wines from each region.
Ningxia was the clear winner, with four out of five of the top wines. The best
wine in the whole competition was the 2009 Chairman's Reserve, a Cabernet
Sauvignon which even Robert Parker rated as “not bad.” It is unclear whether
the name referred to Chairman Mao and his Little Red Book.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Another rapidly expanding wine-growing area is Shandong
Province on the coast of the Yellow Sea, which, with 140 wineries, already
produces 40 percent of Chinese wine. The latest company to invest in Shandong
is Bordeaux’s Domains Barons de Rothschild, which harvested its third vintage
in 2015. Based on Rothschild’s previous successes in California and Chile,
Shandong Province is a region to keep an eye on.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In just the past decade, China has become one of the
world’s top ten wine markets, and is actually the largest consumer of red wine
in the world, as well as being the sixth largest producer of wine. Between 2006
and 2015, China’s wine consumption grew by 54 percent. According to Sotheby’s,
it is no longer London or New York but Hong Kong which is now the world’s
largest market for fine wines at auction. Furthermore, China is one of the
world’s biggest consumers of Bordeaux’s Premier Cru wines, and has had a
significant effect on the price structure. Chinese billionaires have long had a
predilection for Château Lafite (like the English aristocracy before them),
followed by Château Latour, Château Mouton-Rothschild, Château Margaux and
finally by Château Haut-Brion. This preference for Lafite has had the
unfortunate consequence of making Lafite the most popular target of
international wine-fraud, resulting in a number of recent scandals and
uncertainty in the Chinese market. There is a growing tendency among Chinese
billionaires, therefore, to focus on the previously overlooked Château
Haut-Brion wines (Jefferson’s favorite), because its unique bottle shape makes
it more difficult for criminals to reproduce. <o:p></o:p></div>
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But despite China’s seeming integration into the
international wine market, it retains certain Chinese idiosyncrasies. For
example, the reason that Chinese are almost exclusively red wine drinkers has
less to do with their appreciation of tannins and more to do with red being a
lucky color traditionally associated with good fortune and good health. The
Chinese still serve wine in small, shot-sized wine glasses, and, although it is
a sign of progress that wine is replacing strong <i>baijiu</i> spirits at business
banquets, it means that when that priceless 1959 Château Lafite is being
poured, all the guests can toss it back in a hearty group toast without even
needing to taste it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />Patrick Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07463162348305396076noreply@blogger.com0