Happy birthday, sweet Georgia P!

Your fifth birthday is actually on Monday but your birthday celebration begins today and your birthday party tomorrow — with your pink party favors and pink birthday cake that mommy is making for you — is sure to be a smash!

We have a whole bunch of presents lined up for you and your grandparents and your aunts, uncles, and cousins will bring more with them tomorrow for your birthday celebration.

But like every year when your birthday rolls around, I can’t help but think to myself that you are the greatest gift of all.

Your sweetness, yours sassiness, your empathy, your humor, your bright bright smile, your kisses and hugs, your love of music and singing, your love of drums, your love of rock ‘n’ roll, your love of Broadway musicals (like father like daughter!), your love of rhymes, your love of books… You have shared with us a joy I never knew could exist until you came into our lives.

All the birthday gifts in the world and a million more would never be enough to repay you for the blessings you have brought into my life and all that you have taught me about being a father.

And by the way, it is SO MUCH FUN to be your dad.

I love you. Happy fifth birthday, sweet girl!

Wow, what a year it’s been!

A year of a lot of high highs and low lows, moments of great joy and moments of deep-reaching soul searching as we try to figure out how the world is changing around us.

All in all, in the little bubble that we call home in Westbury (in southwest Houston), it’s been a wonderful year.

The girls are growing and growing and are enjoying their Westbury Methodist Day School pre-school immensely. And Georgia is looking forward to next year in kindergarten at Parker Elementary, a music magnet school (and one of the reasons we have decided to stay in this neighborhood). Lila Jane started dance this year at Banbury Dance School (whose mistresses are straight out of central casting) and she can’t get enough of it. Both girls are healthy and happy and bubbly and so much fun to be around.

The other day, I cried a little as I said goodbye to them before I left for an umpteenth trip to Italy.

“Don’t be sad, daddy,” said Georgia confidently. “You need to be happy on your trip!”

They’re both polite, sweet, and very social little girls and they really understand the importance of empathy and kindness to others. What a blessing they are to us!

Tracie continues to bake and sell “character cookies” and that’s been a fun adventure for her in part because of the new community it’s opened up to our family, both here in Houston and online. She recently made cookies for a best friend’s wedding in Manhattan but hasn’t abandoned all the baptisms and birthday parties where character cookies are needed here in our corner of southeast Texas. She’s also really been enjoying her work with Rodan + Fields skincare, another network and community that’s opened up to her through her professional life. As the girls become easier to care for, I think it’s been great for her to expand her social life through work. And the extra family income ain’t hurting either!

My marketing consulting business continues to thrive and I have some great new clients lined up for next year. But the thing I’m the most excited about is my new adjunct position with the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Italy, which will become an EU-accredited institution of higher education next year. I taught one seminar there this year in Italian and next year, I’ll be teaching three seminars in the Master’s in Italian Wine Culture program — all in English. It’s funny how I’ve come full circle to being a teacher again, something I love and enjoy dearly. That Ph.D. came in handy after all!

I’ve handed off wine director duties at Sotto in Los Angeles to my colleague there but I will continue to consult on the wine program there as we prepare to open a new downtown restaurant called Rossoblu (part of the same restaurant group). Writing the list at Sotto was so rewarding, on so many levels. And now I’m really looking forward to writing a pan-Italian list, with a focus on sparkling wine, at the new venue.

All in all, there’s really not much to complain about. One of my career goals for 2017, I like to joke, is to go to Italy less (I made 9 trips there this year!). Not a bad problem to have, I guess…

The rapidly evolving political climate in the U.S. and Europe has both Tracie and me deeply concerned about the future of tolerance and humanity- and humanitarian-focused policy in the western world. And we are also carefully watching the December political reform referendum in Italy, which will ultimately affect so many people we love and people we work with. I haven’t shied from writing about my political and ideological views on the blog. The issues at stake are too important to me — and to the future of our family — for me to remain silent. In January, discourse and posturing will become action and activism. May G-d help us all. May G-d bless us all.

In the meantime, Tracie and the girls are the light and the joy that make me excited to get out of bed every morning and the images that I conjure in my mind when anxiety keeps me from sleep.

I hope this letter finds you all well. Sending much love and hope from Texas. Happy Thanksgiving to all.

Jeremy

P.S. I wasn’t able to do a wine club offering in time for Thanksgiving this year. But I’m planning one that will go out early next week. If you’re interested please let me know asap. I’ve already taken a lot of orders and the wine is going fast (even before the offer goes out).

P.P.S. In case you missed Parzen Family Singers’ new Christmas songs, click here to hear/download them! Happy holidays!

The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sounds of silence…

Above: the number of Post-it notes at the Union Square subway station in Manhattan continues to grow. In another chapter of my life, I visited that subway stop nearly every day. This image and the ones that follow were sent to me by my friend and Manhattanite Ben Shapiro. Click on the images below for high-resolution versions and feel free to share them as you like.

According to a Fox News post published this week, “President-elect Donald Trump’s immigration advisers could recommend a registry for immigrants from Muslim countries and countries with significant problems with terrorism, according to a top ally.”

“Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach,” wrote the editors of the Fox website, “an immigration hard-liner who has been advising Trump, told Reuters that transition policy advisers are weighing the merits of such a registry.”

“A prominent supporter of Donald J. Trump [Carl Higbie] drew concern and condemnation from advocates for Muslims’ rights on Wednesday,” reported the New York Times this week, “after he cited World War II-era Japanese-American internment camps as a ‘precedent’ for an immigrant registry suggested by a member of the president-elect’s transition team.”

As a Jew who grew up attending a minimum of two hours of Shoah studies each week at Hebrew school until I became bar mitzvah at age 13 and as a student of European history throughout my undergraduate and graduate student career, the thought of a public registry of persons based on their religious beliefs sounds as horrific to me today as it did when President Trump first entertained the idea during his campaign many months ago.

The difference is that now, in Trump America, the registry could very well be implemented.

As a Jew I stand with our Muslim sisters and brothers and I applaud the formation, this week, of the Muslim-Jewish Advisory Council, “a new national group of leading Muslim and Jewish Americans [that] was launched this month at a meeting convened by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).”

I applaud Jewish and Muslim leaders for taking a stand on the terrifying prospect that our nation could embrace such a policy. And I hope Christian leaders will do the same.

Mitt Romney and Ted Cruz are devoutly religious political figures within the Republican party. It’s hard for me to imagine that a registry based on religious beliefs will align with their Christian beliefs. I trust that their belief in G-d and the teachings of Jesus Christ will trump Trump’s vision for a religious-based registry.

Here in Houston, the mood is tense and people speak of the current situation — as Trump administration appointments trickle in — in hushed and restrained tones. So far my friends on the right have refrained (mostly) from deriding me for my views. (Surprisingly, the criticism of my politically inspired blogging has come mostly from the West Bank of the country.) Friends on the left seem to wait until the “coast is clear” before they speak up about their feelings. But when they do, their pain and disbelief seem to bleed from them.

Please have a look at the Post-its that follow. These tiny notes, like prayers tucked into the ancient walls of the Temple, speak volumes… (Thank you, Ben, for sending and sharing them.)

Above: in the wake of Trump’s win, the German magazine Der Spiegel published a cover that depicted him as a flaming asteroid heading toward earth. The title read: “the end of the world as we know it” (image via Twitter).

The day after Donald Trump was elected as the next president of the United States, my friend Eric Asimov, wine critic for the New York Times tweeted the following:

As a white male I’m ashamed.
As a Jew I’m afraid.
As an American, 2018 can’t come soon enough.
As an earthling, I grieve for my planet.
(see tweet)

I have a lot of admiration for Eric, as a writer and a wine expert and taster. And I also know him to be a wise and adept arbiter of the zeitgeist. His sentiment resonated with me deeply and I retweeted him.

Here are just a few of the tweets that he received in response

Jews aren’t white, future lampshade. Stop pretending to be white, nobody is falling for it anymore.
(see tweet)

How can you be both White and Jew? Son of a Jew = Jew. Jew = NOT White.
(see tweet in thread)

This morning, my family and I awoke early to discover that Donald Trump has appointed his campaign manager Stephen Bannon, the executive editor of Breitbart News, as a top advisor.

Bannon is a self-avowed anti-semite and a champion of the extreme right movement in our country, the alt-right, whose members regularly espouse anti-semitic, misogynist, and racist rhetoric. There is no question where Bannon stands: between his own personal affirmations and the hate-fueled ideology that very publicly drives his media outlet, his anti-semitic views are well known among political and cultural observers.

He is not only one of the architects of our new president’s campaign but he is now going to be one of his top advisors in the White House.

Donald Trump claims not to be an anti-semite but he clearly holds the values and ideologies of anti-semites in high esteem. He has such great admiration for Bannon that he is going to work very closely with him in shaping American policy.

I am a Jew and I cannot stand for my president to allow such hatred to become part of my country’s policies.

His supporters claim that Jews are not “white.” That’s okay with me. I don’t need to be white. But does that mean that my children are not white? Gauging from Bannon’s supporters’ tone, they don’t consider my children to be white since they are part Jew. That’s okay with me, too.

But these attitudes are terrifying to me in the parallels that we can draw between them and the early policies of Nazi Germany. The historic similarities are uncanny.

Clearly, Bannon doesn’t subscribe to Judeo-Christian values. But does he subscribe to Christian values? Is anti-semitism okay with Christians? I’ll have to ask some of my “white” friends.

This is my president, people. I didn’t vote for him but he is my president. He is your president. He is our president. We cannot stand for this… The Parzen family will not stand for this. No ends justify these means.

The words of the prophets
are written on the subway walls
and tenement halls
and whispered in the sounds of silence.

Above: people fastened Post-it notes to the walls of the subway in New York City yesterday, prayers laical and religious, uttered in disbelief (photos by via Ben Shapiro).

“You’re going back to a different America than the one you left,” said one of my best friends in Italy yesterday as we continued to parse the meaning of the Trump presidency, the uncertainties it brings, and the dark future it conjures.

“Our only hope is in the Republicans,” he added, noting that the party of the American Right is the only political force that can reel in our newly elected, often unpredictable, and famously temperamental president.

From the 20-something students at the University of Gastronomic Sciences to my middle-aged Italian wine trade counterparts, not one person I spoke to expressed optimism this week in the wake of the election. I’ll just leave it at that.

Driving to Milan from Piedmont yesterday evening, I realized that actually I’m not going back to a different America. In fact, I’m going back to the America that always was and has been: the America I had conveniently (however wrongly and unwisely) chosen to ignore and the America who elected Donald Trump and delivered him and all the baggage that comes with him to the White House.

His overt misogyny, his latent and manifest bigotry, and his revolting macho swagger were no match for the hopes, desires, and dreams of the socially, culturally, and economically disenfranchised among us. In the end, their aspirations for our country trumped Trump. And so be it. So it is and so it will be. It’s their fair-and-square turn to lead us into the future. Echoing the vanquished, I believe that we owe it to them to let them lead and we owe it to them to support them in their endeavor to succeed.

Congratulations, Mr. Trump, and congratulations to all those who supported him. Let me be the first to say that I am with you even though I wasn’t among you. You are my sisters and brothers and I am your countryman. Lead on and I will follow and support you, not begrudgingly but earnestly and hopefully however mindfully.

And the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls…

Dear Georgia P and Lila Jane,

Tonight I leave for the umpteenth trip abroad this year for work. The last for 2016, thank goodness!

The two of you couldn’t have given me a better going-away present.

Yesterday, on the way back from the Houston Museum of Natural Science and lunch at the bagel place, we talked about how I was going away on a trip and I told you how much I was going to miss you.

“I’m going to miss you guys so much,” I said.

“I’m going to miss you, too, daddy!” Georgia, you told me.

“I’m going to miss you, too!” Lila Jane, you chimed in.

“I love you guys,” I answered.

“I love you, too!”

“I love you, too!”

Then I said: “I’m going to be so sad without you.”

“You can’t be sad on your trip, daddy!” Georgia, you confidently counseled me. “You need to be happy on your trip.”

You both could tell that I was tearing up a little in the driver’s seat of our minivan.

If there’s anything I hope that your mother and I can give you, it’s empathy… empathy for each other and everyone in our family, empathy for everyone we meet, every day… empathy for humankind and the world we live in…

Some day I’ll look back on this weekend and think about how you two came with your mother and me on Saturday morning to vote for Hilary Clinton, who will most likely be the first woman president of our country.

And I’ll also remember that this was the weekend that Anthony Bourdain aired his “Parts Unknown” episode devoted to Houston.

In it, he celebrates our city’s rich diversity of peoples and food cultures (check out Alison Cook’s review of the episode, which I believe you can access for a limited time). A number of the places he visits are right up the road from us on Hillcroft and we’ve been to a bunch of them together.

In a week, this tumultuous, roller-coaster ride of an election season will finally come to a close and we will have a new president. As Bourdain implies in his not-too-subtle riff on our nation’s mood, diversity and empathy are two things that can only make the world a brighter place.

The sun is shining today on all of us and I will miss you dearly when I’m gone. Your empathy, your hearts, your sweet sweet smiles are the greatest going-away gift I could ever receive. I love you…

Before I met you I could hardly tie my shoes
Before you came into my life I could never lose the lonely blues
But knowing that you love me there’s no way that I could lose
You are my wife and lover, you are my muse

Happy birthday, Tracie P!

The girls and I already began celebrating this weekend with cards, roses, and chocolates and a steak dinner with one of our favorite red wines on Sunday night (man, those steaks you brought home were good!). But today, October 11, is the day you came into this world.

Every time we celebrate a family holiday, my memories drift back to 2007 (nearly 10 years ago!) when I first discovered your blog and 2008 when we first started writing each other and I first visited you in Texas. Later that year you came to visit me in San Diego for the first time.

It’s so incredible to think about how the winds of fate brought us together and what we have built together since that time.

The girls and I love you so much and we love, love, love our lives together. The joys and fears, the highs and lows, the triumphs and the challenges… Every moment of life with you is a blessing and a miracle.

Here’s a little family video that I put together to celebrate your birthday this year, with photos from the Parzen family fall.

We love you, mommy… I love you, piccina… Happy birthday!