Category Archives: de rebus familiaribus

A new wine app rewrites the book.

Posted on by

Giving a big shout-out today to our friend Tahiirah Habibi, one of the wine professionals whose career shaped and informed mine. We first met in 2023 at a wine tasting I hosted in Atlanta (above). But I had been following her for years prior to that.

During my years teaching communications in the grad program at Slow Food U., I would point my students to her social media as an example of a new expression of socially informed and activist wine writing.

She is one of the extraordinary, unstoppable humans who never cease to inspire and engage people around her.

Her latest project is her new wine app, Wine-ish (find a link to sign up on the landing page of her website, tahiirahhabibi.com). I recommend it. The onboarding questions alone made me think about wine and my perceptions of wine in ways I didn’t expect. Just like everything Tahiirah does, she’s taking this in a new direction that will only bring more dimension to wine and the wine lover experience.

I’m so out of the wine game at this point. But when I saw Tahiirah’s new app, I just couldn’t resist checking it out. Even though I’m not writing about wine anymore, I’m still enjoying the evolving wine world and the connections it makes throughout the world. I’m blessed for the connections that it gave me.

Congrats, Tahiirah! Can’t wait to watch it grow and see where it goes!

Georgia needs your help! Hear her perform “Swan Lake” this Sunday!

Posted on by

As the proud parents of a Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts student, Tracie and I invite you to support Georgia’s school.

This Sunday 9/27, she will be performing in the HSPVA Music Fest, 12:30-6 p.m. Purchase tickets by clicking here.

The orchestra will take a stage at 3 p.m. But that’s just one of the gazillion performances that will be happening that day: each and every one of HSPVA’s roughly 70 students will be performing or showing artwork. This includes band, jazz, orchestra, chamber, soloists, theater, art installations… We can’t wait and we hope to see you there!

Like high school students across the U.S., Georgia is raising money for her school. Not only do ticket proceeds go to our school’s $100k goal. But you can also donate directly in Georgia’s name.

Please consider supporting her. She’s working so hard these days as she’s adjusting to academic life at one of the best public schools in the nation. We are so proud of her.

Please join us on Sunday. We’ll be there all day. And please do consider buying tickets and/or donating to Georgia’s page.

I can’t wait to hear them perform. Georgia loves the orchestra program and there’s no doubt that they are going to steal the show!

See you on Sunday! Thanks for supporting our growing girl.

Mom, happy birthday. It’s been less than a year that you left us.

Posted on by

Mom, today is your birthday. Your memory is 93 years old. It’s been less than a year since you left us. That anniversary is also around the corner.

It’s been a rough year for me. I dearly miss our nearly daily calls and our visits with the girls in San Diego.

There were two things in life that you always said I was good at. One was cooking. You were a great cook and together we were gourmet partners in culinary crime, mostly through our often-epic restaurant-going. When you were still strong enough to visit Texas, you enjoyed the food I made us at the house and I would cook in your kitchen whenever I got the chance.

The other thing you said I was good at was parenting. You used to tell me that you loved seeing how much I love being a dad. Anyone who knows me knows that family is more important to me than anything else in the world. Joy never came easy to you, except when it came to the girls. You would really light up when we visited and you would tell me how impressed you were with “how well-behaved” they were.

I wish I could tell you about how Georgia stumbled academically during her early weeks at the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. And how she’s now turned that all around and she’s back to where she needs to be with her grades. Every day when I pick her up, she tells me how much she loves the orchestra there. I’m so unbelievably proud of her and the person she is becoming.

I wish I could tell you how I almost fell out of my chair when Lila came home from shopping and showed us her new homecoming dress. It’s beautiful! I nearly picked up my phone to send a photo to the woman and family friend who took care of you. She would share (and also take delight in seeing) those photos. I wish I could tell you how hard she’s working on her big auditions coming up later this year.

I wish you could see how I’ve decorated my office with postcards you collected over your lifetime. How our walls are covered with freshly framed artwork from your collection (we love our Henry Millers!).

Mom, I just wish I could tell you happy birthday like I did ever since I was old enough to speak.

Shanah tovah. Parzen family new year letter.

Posted on by

Shanah tovah, everyone. Happy new year.

Like we do every year at our house, we celebrate the holiday by dipping apples in honey to remind us of our hopes for sweetness and joy in our year ahead.

Georgia is learning that academics at the school for the performing and visual arts is no walk in the park. But she’s about to finish her first month with her head held high. The upside is that her musicianship is becoming more finely tuned and honed with each passing day. She picks up her viola every day with gusto and fire.

Her gift to me is that I get to spend time with her driving her downtown every morning. We chat about everything under the sun.

Lila Jane is enjoying her “senior” year and her close-knit crew of friends at her middle school. She has been working so hard for her upcoming auditions (region orchestra and high school for the performing arts). It’s so beautiful to hear her play. Her teachers are confident that she is strong and on the right track. We are so proud of her.

She leaves the house impeccably dressed every day and her room is always neat and tidy. She’s been making smoothies for everyone.

Tillie, our wayward rescue, has finally begun to settle into her life with us. Lila is “her person” but she’s starting to open up with Tracie, Georgia, and me. Paco continues to live his life as the bravest, most fiercely loyal and super cuddly chihuahueño on the planet.

I know it’s old news at this point, but Tracie’s career continues to expand. She’s about to close her biggest transaction to date. Now that she’s more comfortable at work, she’s been taking more time out for me and the girls. That’s been so lovely. I can’t wait to post the love songs I’ve written for her this year.

This is my first new year without my mom. Her birthday and the anniversary of her death are around the corner. My father died this year as well. It’s been a rough time for me. But I have my family, my health, my activism, my writing, and my music. Poo, poo, poo… I have so much to be thankful for.

Happy new year. May yours be filled with health, joy, and light.

Parzen family letter: first day of high school!

Posted on by

We still can’t believe it’s finally here: Georgia’s first day of school at the Kinder High School for the Performing & Visual Arts in downtown Houston.

That’s Georgia on the right (OBVIOUSLY! as she would say), wearing her favorite Gorillaz shirt and sporting her super cool new accessorized purse.

Tracie and I dropped her off early this morning. Wow! We are so excited for her year ahead, the new friends she’ll make, the music she’ll play, the concerts… How can I deny that this is one of my dreams come true?

Lila Jane, à gauche, started her last year at Meyerland Middle School a week ago Monday.

Always impeccably put together, with myriad bedazzled accessories and a speckled red beagle named Tillie by her side, she is playing once again in the school’s varsity orchestra and will be traveling to Chicago this winter for a performance at the Midwest Clinic International Band and Orchestra Conference. Wow! Just wow! That’s a big one.

She’s gearing up for her Region Orchestra tryout and her Kinder HSPVA audition early next year. Her playing is so gorgeous these days and we are all geeked for her year ahead as a “senior” and the concerts and recitals she’ll perform in.

Tracie has been working as hard as ever and — poo, poo, poo — her career continues to move at a brisk clip. We made sure to take some serious time off this summer to recharge. That was wonderful and we had a blast exploring fun hotels and restaurants in New Orleans.

Me? I’ve been working on the writing project I’m launching later this year (stay tuned!), putting finishing touches on my 14th-century wine book translation to be published by U. of Toronto, and contributing to the Southeast Texas Impact Initiative newsletter.

It’s been a really tough year for me. Both of my parents have died. My dog died. I had emergency surgery to remove a tumor from my neck. But even in my darkest moments, I was surrounded by Tracie, the girls, the dogs, and my Texas families… always reminding me of the countless blessings in my life.

Happy back to school, everyone! Stay safe.

Happy birthday Lila Jane! 13!

Posted on by

Happy birthday sweet Lila Jane! You are 13!

You’ve had a great year.

Great grades. Varsity orchestra. First chair and excellence award at your summer music camp (that was so awesome!). Tons of friends who adore you. Your room, always impeccably organized and beautifully decorated. The most special little beagle/red heeler mix, Tillie Billie Eilish. And a family that loves and is so proud of you.

Mommy and I are so proud of the young person you are becoming. We’ve watched you grow both inside and out this year. And we know you are ready and strong for the big year ahead.

Happy birthday, sweet girl! We’ve been celebrating with family and friends all week and tonight we’ll share another birthday cake with your California friends. Happy birthday! We love you.

My father’s day gift came early this year…

Posted on by

My father’s day came early this year in the form of a beautiful forest-green Fender Jazz Bass that Tracie knew I had been wanting for the little recording studio I’ve been building. Man, it’s sweet!

But I haven’t been able to play it at all since I brought it home on Thursday. Not one lick.

And that’s the best part: Georgia, 14-going-on-15 and soon to be high schooler, has spent every free moment of her weekend playing and practicing the songs she’s been working on.

For as long as I live, I’ll never forget the moment and the feeling when I set her and her bass up with her favorite guitar strap: a hand-stitched, star-spangled strap from Austin, Texas, that my lucky Telecaster wore when I lived in NYC and used to tour the country with a couple of different bands.

As soon as I finished tinkering with the strap locks, she got out her Green Day photo book to show me: the guitar player has a strap just like hers.

I thought I was going to melt. What a great father’s day this has already been.

Happy father’s day to all the dads, to all the families, all around!

(I’ll get my hands on the bass tomorrow while she’s at music camp…)

What it’s like to grow up the son of a sexual predator.

Posted on by

Thanks to everyone who reached out to share condolences after the death of my father, Zane Parzen.

I loved my father. I also saw what a destructively toxic and even outright evil person he was. And while I was never sexually abused by him, the emotional abuse I suffered as his child was only rivaled by the awful way he treated my mother and my brothers.

I was 15 years old when the San Diego Reader, the city’s weekly rag, published a front-page story about my father and one of the women he abused while she was in his care, including the photo above.

It was just the tip of the iceberg. His case became a national sensation and even inspired a Hollywood movie.

After my mother died in October of last year, I finally read the book that Evelyn Walker, one of his victims, wrote about him. It was published in 1986 while I was a freshman at UCLA. I also discovered that much has been written about him in the meantime. He became the “textbook” case for sexual malpractice.

Through my research, I also learned that what had happened was much worse than the adults told us when we were children. Much worse.

Even after he left our family, I always stayed in touch with him and visited him often. After he was viciously rude to Tracie at a family reunion in Texas, I cut him off from my family. But I would still go visit him when I could. As he lay dying last week in Plattsburgh, New York, where he lived with his third wife, no one came to visit him but me. No one. [update: since posting this I was informed that my little brother visited with Zane before he died; other than him I am not aware of anyone else]

It’s been a really tough week for me. One of the hardest things is that I have no one to share my mourning. That’s the saddest part: after all he did to his family and to his patients and G-d knows to whom else, no one came to say goodbye… except me. [update: as per above, except me and my little brother]

I plan to write more about him and his legacy here. Thanks for all the words of support and solidarity. As my friend Shawn Amos once wrote about a parent, I never met anyone who could be so mean and mean so much to me.

Zane Parzen, psyschoanalyst whose sexual malpractice case set legal precedent, dies at 92.

Posted on by

Zane Parzen, whose 1981 sexual malpractice case set a legal precedent, has died from complications from dementia. His death in Plattsburgh, New York, was confirmed by his wife Tanya Parzen.

Parzen was a prominent psychoanalyst in San Diego when he was accused of having sexual relations with multiple women who were in his care. It was later revealed that he had also been giving patients a dangerous cocktail of drugs. The emotional toll led some of the women to attempt suicide.

In the late 1970s, after Parzen had been practicing medicine in California for a decade, one of his patients, Evelyn Walker, formally revealed that she had been in a years-long sexual and romantic relationship with Parzen.

The $4.6 million settlement in her 1981 lawsuit against Parzen set a record for amount awarded in a sexual malpractice case. It also prompted insurance companies to discontinue sexual malpractice coverage. During the trial, Parzen admitted in open court that he had abused Walker and multiple other women. While the insurance company was ultimately forced to pay a reduced amount, Parzen faced no criminal charges. His medical license was restricted but never revoked.

In 1986, Walker published an account of her experience titled “A Killing Cure.” In the book, she describes the abuse, including graphic details of their relationship.

Zane Parzen was born in 1933 in South Bend, Indiana, to Louis and Ethel (Levy) Dribin. Parzen’s father died of cancer when he was eight years old. His mother remarried a rabbi, Maurice Parzen, who adopted Ethel’s sons. Parzen graduated at the top of his class at Central High School and attended Harvard for two years before completing his degree at Indiana University. He attended medical school at the University of Chicago where he was trained as a Freudian psychoanalyst.

He is survived by his wife Tanya; and three sons from his marriage to Judith Parzen: Tad Parzen, Jeremy Parzen, and Micah Parzen.

More notes about his life and legacy to come.

Bravissima Georgia!

Posted on by

The day Tracie and I first kissed. The day we were married. The days our girls were born. Georgia’s 8th grade concerto. Best days of my life. Bravissima Georgia! What a gift you have given your father. Your hard work and devotion to your music… you are an inspiration to me. Now on to HSPVA! @tracieparzen I love them so much! I love you! Thank you to orchestra director Tim. Thank you to all her wonderful teachers over the years. Thank you to all of the teachers who came to hear her. Thank you to our wonderful and fabulously supportive group of parents and awesome PTO. Thanks to my Levy, Kelly, and Branch families for sharing this unforgettable performance and evening with us. Too many blessings to count on a beautiful spring morning in Houston. (JC Bach, viola concerto in C minor, Meyerland Middle School, May 28, 2026)