On A Personal Note....

Scene from my last cocktail hour with my uncle. He wasn’t able to drink by then but I’m glad he was around to share in the moment.

I often throw a detail or two about my life into what’s supposed to be a booze writeup, but I rarely make it all about me or my loved ones. The article I wrote for ForbesLife the other day is an exception.

When my uncle Arnold died in May, I knew I wanted to write a tribute to him. It wasn’t just that he was like a surrogate parent to me after my mother died when I was in my 20s. It was Arnold who taught me how to make a proper martini, which is a pretty big deal for someone in my line of work. He taught me a lot else besides. I sat down to write about Arnold, through the lens of a drinks writer as well as that of a grieving nephew, a few weeks after he died. I had no idea if what came out was any good, so I sent it off to my editor at Forbes asking what, if anything, I should do with it. He wisely suggested that I focus it more on drinks, because as it stood it was all over the place, touching on a lot of aspects of Arnold’s personality and life without digging deep enough into any of them. I agreed — and then did nothing with it for the next several months. I just couldn’t bear to look at it again and go back to the sadness I was feeling when I wrote the draft.

Arnold’s birthday was last Thursday — he would have turned 95 — and I figured, if I’m going to get this done, now would be a good time. I hit “publish” (we post our own articles on the Forbes website) with a few hours to spare. I hope you like it. I hope he likes it, too. He was a pretty avid reader of my work when he was alive, so I hope this one somehow reached him, wherever he is now. Link is -> HERE <-.