At the top of the driveway was a beautiful landscaped and yet simple building that was the tasting room. The real surprise was on entering the building – a guitar, gold and platinum records and a lot of pictures of The Doobie Brothers!

Bruce Cohn was a hippie with a recording studio in 1970. A bunch of guys showed up wearing motorcycle clothes and everyone at the studio didn’t really want to have anything to do with them. The group called themselves, ‘The Puds’. They played some songs for Bruce and he was impressed with their songs, their music and their style.They didn’t have a manager so Bruce agreed to be their manager on one term….they had to change their name. After a couple of days of jamming, drinking and smoking weed, the group still hadn’t come up with a new name. Bruce met with them and told them, “Why not name yourselves what you know best, The Doobies,” and the rest became history.

Bruce manages The Doobie Brothers to this day, but after four years on the road he wanted a better place to raise his family. The tasting room is the original home that was run down when the Cohn’s purchased it and remodeled it for their house. He named the place Olive Hill Estate Vineyards after the numerous olive trees and vines that were growing on the property. The barns and other buildings from the original dairy farm now are used as wine makers building, private tasting rooms, Cohn’s Classic Cars and Cigar shop and the Olive Oil Shop.

In 1974, the grapes were sold to August Sebastiani, of Sebastiani Winery, who also taught Bruce the finer points of grape contracts. In 1975, Bruce became friends with Charlie Wagner of Caymus Vineyards. Charlie made wine for Bruce for several years and in 1978, Wagner encouraged Bruce to make his own wines as vineyard designates. In 1978, Ravenswood and Gundlach-Bundschu both made Olive Hill Cabernets and won awards for the wines. The 1980 Gundlach-Bundschu Olive Hill Cabernet not only won numerous awards, but was picked by President Reagan as a gift to the Chinese people. Two hundred cases where sent to China to represent an example of steller California wines.

In 1984, B.R. Cohn established its own winery and the first winemaker was the famous Helen Turley. Because of the natural warm springs under the soil, the Sonoma Mountains located to the East and cooling breezes off the Pacific to the West, the area is perfect for growing Cabernet Sauvignon. Tom Montgomery is now the winemaker and the majority of the wines are made from vineyard designate blocks located on the property. Other varietals grown on the estate include Petit Sirah, Pinot Noir, Zinfandel, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, and Malbec. They also grow Chardonnay in Carneros and Merlot in Sonoma. The classic wine produced is the Olive Hill Estate Vineyard Special Selection Cabernet Sauvignon, named in honor of Charlie Wagner.

After many years of their kids coming home with black stains and making a mess of their clothes and house, Bruce’s wife gave him an ultimatum…..either do something with the olive trees or she will cut them down! The result is an ultra premium extra virgin olive oil made from the 145 year old Picholine Olive trees. Today, B.R. Cohn has a wide assortment of premium olive oils and also imports some olive oils and balsamic vinegars from Italy.

Each fall, B.R. Cohn hosts a Fall Festival and Golf Tournament. The Doobie Brothers, as well as many other name bands and singers, play each year. Money raised goes to the Valley of the Moon Children’s Foundation as well as other youth charity organizations. Last year $400,000 was raised for the charities.

If you get the chance to visit Sonoma Valley, please consider this winery for a visit. It has a great story, fantastic wines, beautiful olive oils, and a very relaxing atmosphere. We had lunch on the veranda with a glass of wine!
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Biographical Sketch:

Leslie and Bob Rose, proprietors of “Sandhills Winery,” West End, NC adore wine. After working in corporate America for most of their careers, they began making their own wine about 6 years ago. They started making wine from kits, buying juice from all over the world and making all of the different varietals. After rave reviews from friends and families, they decided to leave the “safe” mode of working for others to create their own business. They opened their doors on February 20, 2009. Nominated for Entrepreneur of the Year in their first year by the Moore County Chamber of Commerce, they won the nomination in January of 2010.

Click on Leslie’s name in the left sidebar for a more complete biography and a list of articles posted on this website.

Ravel was born in 1875 in the small town of Ciboure near the Spanish border. His father was Swiss and his mother Basque. He showed musical interest at a fairly early age, although he was not a prodigy. He began lessons in piano and harmony at age seven and soon began composing small piano pieces. Ravel received great support from his parents for his musical pursuits from the outset.

Later he passed the entrance exam to the Paris Conservatoire. Ravel was not overly impressed with the instruction, rules, and regimen at the Conservatoire and was actually expelled a number of times. He studied there off and on for quite a few years, but never distinguished himself. His attitude, no doubt, cost him selection to attend the famous Prix de Rome. This mark of accomplishment among young French composers was denied Ravel who was rejected four times. On the fourth, his friends and colleagues raised a great hue and cry, because they felt strongly that he deserved to win.

Ravel’s musical career began in the nineteenth century, but most of his important work was done in the twentieth. Because of this chronology and his style of composing, it is not easy to categorize him. He is not post-romantic like Mahler, not twentieth century like Bartok. He does not consider himself a modern composer, “in the strictest sense of the word, because my music is evolutionary, not revolutionary.” Some call him an impressionist in the mold of Debussy, but musicologist Karl Haas says, not so. He says that, “…because of these (Ravel’s) clear-cut and well-sculpted lines that it is difficult to see any justification for calling Ravel an Impressionist.”

Ravel names numerous composers from previous periods who influenced his work. He liked Liszt, Saint Saens, and Chopin. He was quite aware of Couperin, a French Baroque composer. In fact, Ravel wrote a six-part piece, “Le Tombeau de Couperin,” (The Tomb of Couperin) which was dedicated to six of Ravel’s fallen comrades in WW I. Chabrier and Satie were also strong influences. Above all, Ravel loved Mozart and stated that, “I have never stopped studying Mozart.”

Ravel’s most productive period was during the years leading up to WW I. During the war itself, he continued to write, “for his country,” at a much slower pace. After numerous failed attempts, he was finally accepted into the French army as a truck driver. He became somewhat depressed with the carnage and quite ill with dysentery and eventually was discharged. Not long after, he sustained the most devastating setback of all when his mother died. She had been the most important person in his life and her death was almost unbearable.

After the war, he continued to write and began to tour with his music. As did many Continental composers, Ravel made numerous trips to England. He also visited North America where he toured many cities in Canada and the U.S. He came to love orchestral jazz, especially the music of Paul Whiteman and George Gershwin. He became essentially an international composer after these visits. He played and conducted his own music, though he did not particularly enjoy either activity. He was not considered a virtuoso pianist (even though he wrote virtuoso piano music) or conductor, but recognized that these were things he had to do.

Ravel the man was a self-possessed, rather private individual. He was always well-dressed, even considered something of a dandy. He never married and was not known to be very close to any particular woman, although he enjoyed women’s company. His confirmed bachelorhood inevitably gave rise to speculation that he might be homosexual. This speculation seems unfounded, because his name was never linked to any particular man.

Like some other greats, Ravel’s output is not large. But what he did write was memorable and recognized as being of very high and enduring quality. His greatest masterpiece is “Daphnis and Chloe” which was written for Ballet Russes director Sergei Diaghilev. It was never a successful ballet, but the two orchestral suites from “Daphnis and Chloe” are some of the most popular and beautiful music then and now. Two piano concertos also remain popular. One is the “Piano Concerto in D for Left Hand” written for pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who lost his right hand in WW I. The other, much lighter piece, is “Piano Concerto in G,” which to me sounds a bit like Gershwin. “La Valse” and “Pavane pour une infante défunte” (Pavane for a dead Princess) are often heard today. Perhaps his best known is the ever popular “Bolero,” which Ravel claims is devoid of music.

Ravel was considered to be a superb orchestrator. He orchestrated a number of his own works originally written for piano. Perhaps his best known orchestration of an original piano piece is Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.” Ravel’s orchestrated version is the one usually heard.

Ravel claimed that, “Great music must always come from the heart. Music that is made only with technique and intellect is not worth the paper it’s written on,” (James Burnett’s “Ravel, The Illustrated Lives of the Great Composers”). Ravel was able to combine all of these aspects to create the kind of music that easily places him among the greats.
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Biographical Sketch:

Click on Don Delauter in the Left Sidebar for Other Articles and a Biographical Sketch.

We bicycled to these piscatorial pleasure pits between times when our dads could take us “real fishing” and when we should have been studying or in class. Most people call their favorite places “fishing holes.” These really were holes. Although we found a few ponds within bicycling range, most were merely wide spots in local canals or drainage ditches. We could jump across some. Most reached depths of only one or two feet deep, but to us, they represented heavenly oases of freedom from chores, nagging mothers, cleanliness, homework, responsibility, girls and everything else preteen boys despised.

During the school week, probably when we should have been paying more attention to our studies, we planned our adventures down to the last details with more intricate machinations than Eisenhower used to land in Normandy. We probably all could have received college academic scholarships if we had put as much effort into our studies or listened to our teachers drone on about math, grammar and other things that didn’t matter to fifth graders.

As Saturday or another chosen day approached, we scoured our freezers for bait — frozen shrimp, chicken livers, gizzards, old hot dogs, bread, cheese, or whatever our mothers wouldn’t terribly miss. Sometimes, we pooled our allowances to buy real worms or night crawlers. On rare occasions, we actually had shiners or crickets.

When we couldn’t find sufficient bait, we caught our own. We scooped crawfish and grass shrimp from roadside ditches. We snatched grasshoppers and crickets from vacant lots. We overturned pine straw to capture succulent worms. We kept some smaller fish from previous expeditions for cut bait.

With tempting bait secured, we stuffed stringers into our pockets, grabbed the bait in one hand and pedaled our bicycles to our chosen honey hole. One hand clutched a rod and a handlebar, while our other hand gripped a tackle box. Fortunately, we didn’t have the amount of tackle then that we find so necessary now.

Steering our bicycles and holding our equipment as best we could, we set off on our adventures. During most times, it was an all-day safari.

Often, we headed to our favorite “honey hole,” “Ol’ Five Pound Canal,” also known as “Fishing Hole No. 3,” one of about a dozen holes we claimed for our own around town. This muddy drainage ditch flowing through our section of town. It widened briefly as it crossed under a four-lane road. Under the bridge, it deepened to about five feet deep. We could barely cast across it when our spin-casting reels weren’t clogged with sand and mud.

Away from the road, the canal narrowed and became shallow again. Most days, it averaged one to two feet deep, but became a raging torrent after a severe downpour. Periodic floods dumped new catfish into our “honey hole.” During low water, the fish became trapped in the relative depths under the bridge. Occasionally, we spotted one wary old whiskered giant, at least for those waters. We dubbed him “Ol’ Five Pound.”

For years, we and other kids chased “Ol’ Five Pound.” He tormented us with his infrequent appearances. Sometimes, he surfaced just a few feet from us, daunting us and refusing all offerings. We tried everything we could to nab that cagey critter. Nothing worked. He stripped off bait cleanly from our hooks.

Occasionally, someone hooked him. Inevitably, he broke the line, straightened or spit the hook, rolling back into the gray-green waters. Sometimes, he tore the guts out of ill-maintained cheap reels.

Each year, as we grew, his legend grew more — as did his real and imagined size. Always, he seemed bigger than the last time we spotted him.

Years later, we heard that someone did catch a 10-pound blue catfish from that hole. Same fish? Perhaps, but I prefer to think that Ol’ Five Pound died at a ripe old age after many years of ruling his muddy kingdom and daunting kids.
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Biographical Sketch:

A native of Louisiana, John N. Felsher is a professional freelance writer and photographer with more than 1,450 articles in more than 105 magazines to his credit. He’s also the National Fishing Writer for Examiner.com (www.examiner.com/x-16491-Fishing-Examiner)

John hosts a weekly Outdoors radio show on WNSP in Mobile, Alabama. Go to the podcast archives at www.wnsp.com to listen. Contact him through his website at www.JohnNFelsher.com

• Our national budget deficit has exceeded $1 trillion every year of Barack Obama’s presidency and his most recent budget forecasts more of the same as far as the eye can see. Eventually, we’ll have trouble finding anyone to buy our bonds and then, when interest rates inevitably rise from their current low levels, the United States will be Greece. Meanwhile, the Democrat-controlled Senate can’t even find time to pass a budget. They just keep on spending.

• The left wing ideologues President Obama has placed in every corner of our government are choking off private business activity and the entrepreneurial spirit and self-reliance of our people. They actually brag about the increased number of people on food stamps.

• President Obama squandered the first two years of his administration pushing through a health care bill that we cannot afford and the constitutionality of which is in question. This in spite of the fact that the American people repeatedly said they didn’t want it and their priorities were jobs and the economy.

• The GSA spends $800,000 on a lavish four-day conference in Las Vegas and then makes jokes about how they’re ripping off the taxpayers.

• Agents of the once-proud Secret Service consorted with prostitutes in Columbia while they prepared for a Presidential visit. Instead of running around the world attending conferences, maybe the President ought to stay home and work on solving our nation’s problems.

• President Obama vetoed the Keystone XL pipeline to satisfy his “green” supporters. As a result, we continue to buy oil from Saudi Arabia rather than Canada. He also wasted billions in taxpayer dollars supporting “green” initiatives, like Solyndra, when we ought to be aggressively developing our own oil and gas reserves instead.

I could go on and on, but you get the message.

The American people have a unique opportunity on November 6, 2012 to end this failed experiment with “Hope and Change,” reign in our federal government, get it on the right track to fiscal and budgetary stability and reestablish a healthy balance between governmental regulation and the free enterprise system.
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Biographical Sketch:

Click on John Rowerdink in the Left Column for Other Articles and a Biographical Sketch.

It is not well known, but factual, that at that time tanks buttoned up for combat are duck soup for well-trained and determined infantry, as their occupants have very little vision of a battlefield and they must have the eyes and ears of infantry GIs to survive. As one tank officer told me during the Ardennes campaign when we were up against the German 88s, he knew nothing about what was going on outside until he heard a slap against the tank hull. He could see 2 holes, one coming in and the other going out, and he knew that he had about 5 seconds to get out of it before it burst into flames! I can personally recall even now about 5 different ways that one infantry soldier, properly trained, armed and determined, can take out a tank.

Our 11th Armored Division infantry units were loaded onto a troop transport in the French port of Le Havre for the voyage back to God’s Country. For this trip back, we needed no convoy for protection, although all of the German U-Boats in the Atlantic Ocean had not yet surrendered. Our ship was too fast for a U-Boat to waylay. The trip took 6 days. The weather over the North Atlantic could not have been better, as compared to the violent storms we had encountered going over. We entered Boston Harbor to a hero’s greeting with big signs along the docks welcoming the, “Heroes of the 11th Armored Division,” fire boats sprayed huge streams, the Red Cross ladies meeting each of us as we debarked with a welcome home kiss. We were loaded into waiting buses and whisked to Camp Miles Standish for transportation home. We were then segregated into various groups depending upon our home locations and loaded into waiting troop trains. It was beautifully organized! Within a matter of hours, all the trains had departed and we were all off on our various ways home. All of us were in Pullman sleepers, a far cry from the side-door Pullmans (boxcars) which carried us from Camp Cooke, CA, our training camp, to the ports of embarkation to go to war!

Each Pullman car held about 45 troops, all headed to a common destination. Each car was supervised by a junior officer so as to retain some form of discipline en route. Meals were taken in the dining cars, a far cry from the army chow which had sustained us for the past year. The car I was in was routed to Fort MacArthur in San Pedro, California, carrying only GI’s from that state. The trip was to take 5 days.

Our train stopped en route in the Kansas City, Mo. Rail yards, the individual cars being reattached to other trains headed for their specific destinations. While parked on a siding, we were advised that our layover would be about 2 hours while we sat there. This was in the middle of August, trains had no air-conditioning then, and it soon became extremely hot in our car. I was waited upon by a delegation of senior non-coms asking for permission for the troops to detrain and visit a local bar for some relief from the heat and a chance to get a beer or two. They promised me that they would keep control over the GI’s. After a few moments reflection, I agreed, but reminded them that they had better be back on the train within the 2 hours limit or their rest and recuperation leave would probably be spent in a local military stockade, rather than in their own homes. With many promises of compliance, they all left for the nearest bar. After watching them depart, I decided that getting a beer was a pretty good idea, and so I also detrained.

When I returned in about an hour and a half, I saw a melee of the troops around one end of the car, some on the steps and not in the car, and others still not able to get even that far. I asked one of the non-coms what was going on. He told me that one of the GIs had had too much beer, and he was on the car’s vestibule at the entrance into the car, waving a knife and threatening to kill anyone else who tried to get into the car. I went around the side of the car to look into a window and saw this GI, who I recognized as one of my platoon, obviously quite drunk and threatening with his trench knife anyone who tried to get on. There was no reasoning with him. Obviously, I had to do something!

Without saying anything more to anyone, I went to the other end of the car and was able to board it. Slowly, I moved up the aisle, holding my finger to my lips so that the GIs in front of the drunk would not give me away. I was able to silently creep up (not an easy feat while wearing combat boots) to about 4 feet to the rear of the drunk, jumped the rest of the distance onto his back, thus knocking him face down with me on top of him. While he was thrashing his arms to get at me with his knife, I was able to apply a full-nelson hold from his back around his neck and doubled him up so that he could not reach me with the knife. One of the non-coms then stepped on his knife-holding hand and snatched it away. I then hollered to another one of the non-coms to go to the next car where there was a medical officer and ask him to come with his medical kit and give this poor fellow a shot of morphine, which he did. That soon quieted down the drunk, and he shortly went to sleep. We put him into a bathroom with a guard mounted outside as he slept off his jag. The remaining soldiers were then able to board the car, which soon was hooked up to a train bound for Los Angeles. Just another ho-hum day in the life of an infantry rifle platoon leader! However, these men had been trained as killers, and killers they were, a fact that should not have been forgotten by any commissioned officer who aspired to command them and to survive the war!

While we were en route to Los Angeles, the first atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the second one was dropped 3 days later on Nagasaki. When our car was dropped off at Fort MacArthur, the Japanese were about to surrender and, the next day, after I was processed through and released for my leave, the Japs had given up. I arrived in my hometown while the celebration was still going on! What a homecoming!

What a reprieve from my having to face a deadly assault onto a heavily fortified and hostile beach head! Early on, I became one of those who have wholly supported the use of the atomic weapon to end that war. That undoubtedly saved my life! And, even though I am a staunch Republican, I have been an admirer of President Harry Truman ever since.

During the course of my leave, I was still pondering my orders to report to Fort Bragg. The more I thought about this, the less enthusiasm I felt. This post was built on sand in the piney woods of North Carolina and, at that time, before air-conditioning and DDT, this post was considered to be a hot, muggy, bug-infested domain. Now that the war was over, I felt, there had to be some way I could stay in California with my wife rather than being separated once again for an unknown period of time. In discussing this with my father-in-law, he told me that he was acquainted with the Commanding General of the 9th Service Command, who was in charge of all army posts in the 9 western states. They had met in some Rotary conventions before the war, and liked each other. Within a few days after his calling the General, my orders were changed and I was to report not to Fort Bragg, but to Camp Roberts near Paso Robles, CA, to be assigned to an infantry replacement training company. Our country was still in need of trained infantry replacements because of our occupation commitments and these replacements would take the place of those whose combat services entitled them to come back home.

Thus began my military career as a peacetime soldier. It was better than being shot at, but it also had its problems.
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Biographical Sketch:

Click on Ted Shebs in the Left Column for Other Articles and a Biographical Sketch.

We used the sell off as a chance to increase our holdings of long term bonds, and it looks to be one of those temporary moments when investors get confused and stampede in the same direction. We went the opposite way. Yields have since retreated and the stock market has lost its sizzle.

Cumulative total returns for various markets through March 31, 2012, year to date, last three years and the last five years are shown in the chart above. The histogram below displays the same data easier visual comparisons.

Ben Bernanke’s remarks on March 26 to a business economists group were, for us, the exclamation point of the month. While describing the tepid “recovery”, he also said that consumers and businesses could be cajoled into more producing and consuming by “continued accommodative policies”. While it is fairly well known that the Fed is set to keep short term interest rates low until 2014, this comment points toward more Fed buying of longer term bonds, thus flattening the yield curve and producing even lower current yields for savers of all stripes (including large and systemically important pension funds).

Since these funds are not earning their actuarially required rate of return, they are becoming massively underfunded (in pension speak “accumulated unfunded pension benefit obligation”). This is truly the ticking time bomb that is going to blow up the fiscal health of many U.S. states and private companies over the next decade if intentional repression of interest rates is not lifted by the Fed.

Current macroeconomic evidence points to sluggish economic growth globally, especially in the Eurozone, which may be entering a recession. After breathing a sigh of relief during the Greek bailout “anti-climax”, investors have turned their attention to Spain, where interest costs are rising sharply. Investors should be clear that the ECB, having cleaned house of those pesky Germans, is hell bent on throwing money at whatever country or economy poses the next challenge, through what has now been dubbed “LITRO” in market-speak. It is a page right out of Bernanke’s playbook: creating money (more debt) to lend to insolvent banks/countries with non-performing assets whose values are heading south. The debt contagion has not gone away, and investors should be settling in their seats for the next act of the ongoing drama/tragedy staged by the EU.

We don’t know where all this is going to wind up, but investors ought to be noticing the huge divergence in performance between stock indices and gold mining shares – the gap has rarely been this wide. Talk of market manipulation by central banks and high frequency traders cannot obscure the value in the ground of proven gold reserves that are enormously underpriced at present. This looks to be among the biggest long term divergences that have occurred in the markets over the past year, which normally spells opportunity. If gold is the “anti-Dollar”, or safe haven asset in a world of perilous paper, then gold mining shares should soar once they get their mojo back.

Thanks for reading our Journal, and we’ll be back in early May with more observations and reports on portfolio activity.

©2012 Stratford Advisors, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Click on Robert E. “Emery” Pike in the Left Sidebar for Additional Articles and a Biographical Sketch.

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