May 29, 2007
Wine weekend
Destination marketing: it's Patrick McFarlan's specialty. Happens that he's employed by Willows Lodge in Woodinville; that doesn't stop him from marketing Washington's distant vineyards. As president of the Woodinville Chamber of Commerce last year, he spearheaded an event called the Washington Wine Highway, held again this past weekend on the lawn at Chateau Ste. Michelle.
Food, drink, and roadsigns that let you pretend you were in Yakima or Walla Walla without having to spend hours and hours on the Interstate. They told the food vendors to expect 1,500 at each booth, but the hot tickets, like Elliott's Copper River salmon filets and 0/8 Seafood's scallop sashimi, served 2,000 portions on Saturday alone.
Numbers not as high back at The Bellevue Collection (high-end shopping in and around Bellevue Square), which piggybacked onto the weekend with a lower-key promotion of wine dinners and tastings. Not quite as focused, perhaps, on the simple pleasures of eating, drinking and snoozing on the grass.
Death penalty
Larceny pays, if you're the ceo. Should you get caught with your hand in the company till (or fingering your back-dated stock options), you might have to submit to the indignity of a perp walk but the stockholders pay your legal fees and the odds are you won't do a day in the pokey. (Get busted for stealing a loaf of bread, on the other hand, and it's hard time for sure.) But what penalty awaits those who abuse public trust?
In this country, there's always a convenient underling to take the fall for huge public scandals. It's part of the job description, as in "Goat, comma, scape."
So what a welcome surprise to see two developments from across the Pacific. In Japan, the agriculture minister committed suicide rather than face questioning in a corruption scandal. And in China, the official in charge of drug safety has actually been sentenced to death.
Can you imagine anything like that here? "Heck of a job, Brownie" would take on a whole new dimension.