Drinking as a Metaphor?

Got this off the New York Magazine Blog for a cocktail that has hit the New York bars via England....

The Sully

From the oft-apocryphal British newsletter Popbitch: “Most popular cocktail in New York — The Sully, named Capt. Chesley B. ‘Sully’ Sullenberger. It’s two shots of Grey Goose and a splash of water.”

The witty combination of vodka and a splash, while nothing new, led me thinking about the news that has dominated the last few weeks. Hope, fear, tragedy, hope.

I love television. There I’ve said it. It was the bane of the intellectual crowd while growing up and I turned my nose up at it for many years, oblivious to the fact that I was on the opening credits to the Mary Tyler Moore show for two years. Ok, I still watched All My Children, cable was new and WILD (anyone remember the original Ugly George with his silver hot pants and camera the size of a small breakfast table?) and some PBS, and I was out a lot in the 70’s and 80’s, a lot. But now that I am on the other side of the middle age hill, I have TV’s all over the house, at least one is on all the time so all the news that’s fit for propaganda gets into my view.

So when Captain Sullengerger and his amazing crew came in for a landing on the Hudson, I watched. When our newly elected President was inaugurated, I watched, and then this week, it was late, I was flipping through the channels and there was another plane down, this one not as lucky and I watched. The news of a failing economy, a stimulus package that confounds me and must give all parents pause as it is their children who will pay, empty restaurants, caterers going out of business, a woman who has had a liter of children implanted by a mad scientist of a doctor and I am left here shaking my head. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON OUT THERE? And then the fear sets in.

I am getting on a plane this week to go to a conference I look forward to. While a grueling experience of classes that start HOURS earlier than I like to be awake, this conference, energizes me, gives me new ideas, creates avenues of thought on how to do my business a little better, fresher and more exciting. (I still need to work on profitability, maybe next year…) BUT it is the plane ride that has me a little freaked. I don’t care about the shoes, or how they made you throw out toothpicks and carry teensy tiny bottles of stuff for years, it is the randomness of luck. It is the Ponzi scheme that is Washington, heartless executives who knowingly let tainted food be distributed and then go out of business, physicians that use women who might not be “all there” to conduct experiements and weather, something no one has any control over.

So when I see a recipe for a cocktail that is mostly something that can both help and hurt with a splash of something that makes life possible, I wonder if I can use that as a metaphor for coping. I think I need to turn the TV’s off and drink more water.