Month: December 2011

My Most Interesting Discovered Drinky Thing Of 2011

mapof_ferryland

This has been a year that I have thought about history a bit more than others. Canadian history for the most part. We make great mistakes in considering our own time on this land. We dismiss the First Nations. We pretend that Canada began when the current constitution was signed in 1867. But Canada has been populated for thousands of years and Europeans have been nibbling at the edges for the best part of a millennium. Vikings lived in northern Newfoundland back then. In 1674, the Hudson’s Bay Company was importing malt and hops into the Arctic. But this year I came across another couple of fact that I found most interesting in this report. It’s in the bibliography:

ROSS, L. (1980) – 16th-Century Spanish Basque Coopering Technology: A Report of the Staved Containers Found in 1978-1979 on the Wreck of the Whaling Galleon San Juan, Sunk in Red Bay, Labrador, 1565. Manuscript Report Series.Ottawa. 408.

See that? 1565. And the other thing? Staved containers. I have found West Country seasonal fishermen recorded as importing malt as part of their seasonal businesses packing salt cod for the Iberian market in the 1630s. How far before that did the practice occur? Peter E. Pope in his book Fish into Wine: The Newfoundland Plantation in the Seventeenth Century explains that there was a regular practice of travel each spring from Elizabethan England to what is now eastern Canada for this fishing trade. It is inconceivable that these men in the 1500s did not ship malt, too. That they did not pack drinks in casks for the voyage here and back, too.

But where are the records? Where are the records for Albany ale for that matter like Taylor’s brewing books? Or early Ontario beer? That’s the thing. The records. In overseeing the OCB wiki, it has already become a little bit of a jostle over which record is the one to be trusted. Yet there is the tantalizing possibility that in the later half of the 1500s on cool spring days on the Newfoundland shore, men made beer for themselves many decades before the first beer was thought made in this country. There is a phrase for those whose families went on in places like Ferryland to shift to year round residence: masterless men. Don’t you think they might have made themselves a little beer?

You Fest Of Linky Goodness For Nameless Week

So what do you call the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve? I don’t think of them as the holidays. They are the weeks before the 24th when you spend and spend and spend and spend and spend as if you were in some sort of Bacchanalian cult… oh, well there is that. These days are the days of foreboding. Not of the New Year. But of the New Year’s Eve party. The dark night. Evening of the lost… of the damned. Speaking of the lost and the damned, how unholy a thing it would be to be a journalist this week. Nothing happens, like this:

♦ Who caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaares! Yet it’s is the Glob’s #1 sports story Thursday evening under the heading “The Game Changer.”

♦ Tribe? Remember when the tribes of reel-to-reel rumbled against thos of the 8 track? That’s what this will be like in 25 years.

♦ zzzzzzz…

♦ Even God is getting bored with this person in the news. Sweet touch with the allegation that Ron Paul is corrupt. God’s response: “…of all the things I made Ron Paul to be, you think I needed to throw in corrupt?”

♦ And then there are the Jays. At least the Sox are making trades that I might understand one day.

OK. That’ll do. That’s what you can say about 2011. That’ll do for now.

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The Good News And Bad News For Harper At Christmas

Odd but interesting column by Wente this week in The Glob, the Old and Stale, the Blobby Male… I’ll be here all week, try the liver:

To tell the truth, I don’t agree with all of Mr. Harper’s policies myself. (e.g., the niqab.) But it seems obvious to me that his government is far more in touch with mainstream Canadians than all those critics who accuse him of abandoning the mainstream. He’s worse than an extremist – he’s a populist. Or else he has duped and terrorized the masses so effectively that they are powerless to resist. Kind of like you-know-who.

Sure he is liked. He is also increasingly irrelevant. The retraction of the Feds from the exercise of their own powers combined with confirmation that they cannot dabble in provincial powers has left Mr. Harper as the king of very little. Sure, he has added back the “Royal” to the separate wings of the armed forces but, as a recent chat with a committed military officer reminded me, pretty much only as a matter of branding even if welcome. Nothing has changed in the continued sensible and increased integration of our military as a single fighting force. And, sure, he likes to pay attention to the Arctic more than places where a lot of people live but as that is the only mandated geographic area of Federal administration one would assume he might. And, sure, he like to talk about a balanced budget and spending prudently but one day he might try to pull it off as his Liberal predecessors did.

Mr. Harper believes in a weak limited national government, which is his right, but that means he himself is made weaker, less relevant to the national discourse. For now, we are paying more attention to ourselves as Canadians expressed through our provincial and municipal policies and operations. And why not? We have many layers of meaning, we Canadians. When Harper is replaced the focus will change. What an utterly boring legacy he has mapped out for himself.

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A Merry Christmas Eve Strikes Good Beer Blog HQ

I love when Christmas Eve is Saturday. It creates a whole gentle extra day of laying around, wrapping gifts, watching the Jets and Giants, sipping beer, eating cheese, sampling squares, nibbling on cold beef, consuming tidbits and generally chewing and not shifting. I have chatted on IM with the newly crowned cham-peen of the sub-continent. Stan has sent merry wishes and had same returned. Ron has told me what he was tippling and I wondered back whether we were going to have a drinkalongathon. If you have not already, read Martyn on the meaning of beef at this time of year.

It is a happy day. I adjudicated a difference of opinion on The Oxford Companion to Beer wiki. And it’s St. Bernardus Christmas Ale in the mid-afternoon today. They should make a Christmas Eve Ale, too. Imagine the marketing possibilities. Tomorrow, I just bet the kids get me beer books. I win that bet because I have already bought them and, later tonight, will wrap them with a tag that says from them to me.

Happy Christmas Eve. Let tomorrow take care of tomorrow.

So… Where Was I? Oh, Yes! Beer And Me

When I began blogging almost nine years ago I remember being asked what blogging was. I replied I was writing a magazine about me. And I suppose that is what I have been doing. Here there have been 2,516 posts and over there another 5,377. Most astoundingly to me are the 38,973 collective comments – beyond the filtered spam – that have been left by folks like you. I suppose I have read them all. I don’t recall.

The end of the annual Christmas beery photo contest serves as something of a conclusion of the bloggy season in a way. It’s good to reflect. To slow down for Yule and also think about the beer and blog connection. In one real sense, I have put my dedication to the fluid on display. Perhaps even my weakness to its call. I am not one to blindly boost good beer, after all, so much as to admit its grip – or, perhaps, only its deep abiding attraction. I don’t really care about my right to good beer, the role of those slagged as neo-prohibitionists or even matters of snobby status. I don’t think I have really discovered any truths. I don’t want a job. I really just like the beer and like the regular discipline of writing about it.

So, away we go with the seasons. As we again turn slowly into the light of the sun as winter solstice passes with this longest night of the year, I will have beer and keep writing about it. I will enjoy it and I will think about it. I hope you do, too.

It’s The Bestest Christmas Present Ever!!!

I love when a dictator dies. Sadly, as with today’s death of the North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, sometimes it isn’t when surrounded by your subjects who are filling your body with bullets. But, nonetheless, ding dong the witch is dead. The British keep an oddly stiff upper lip:

Speaking today the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, said: “The people of N Korea are in official mourning after the death of Kim Jong Il. We understand this is a difficult time for them. “This could be a turning point for North Korea. We hope that their new leadership will recognise that engagement with the international community offers the best prospect of improving the lives of ordinary North Korean people.”

Difficult time? Difficult time??? The man who is nuts is dead. He fed his people juche and grass and ignorance and gulags. We only have hints of how bad it is. Now he is in Hell. Good.

At least there is hope. It’s not like Canada’s secret mission in 2006 was going to be a real breakthrough. Maybe these people can now get a chance to enjoy their lives.

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English-Speaking Atheists Lose Their Columnist Saint

I can’t say that I am particularly struck by the loss of Christopher Hitchens but its in the same way that I was not moved by the death of Steve Jobs. Like Jobs, Hitchens was something of a presentation of himself – not a bad thing in itself but it does distract from whether the output was as valuable as claimed. That being said, David Frum has an excellent memorial to the man in the National Post that captures bits of his appeal:

As the event broke up, a crowd of questioners formed around him. I created a diversion thinking it would help him escape for some needed rest. But Christopher declined the offer. He stood with them, as tired as I was, but ready to adjourn to a nearby bar and converse with total strangers till the bars closed. Hitchens was not one of those romantics who fetishized “dialogue.” Far from suffering fools gladly, he delighted in making fools suffer. When he heard that another friend, a professor, had a habit of seducing female students in his writing seminars, he shook his head pityingly. “It’s not worth it. Afterward, you have to read their short stories.”

Frum called him “a man of moral clarity.” I would have thought “amoral” or perhaps ethical was more the proper word. The man he most reminded me of was Mencken. Both had that sort of rhetorical skill that aligned well with their failure to actually meaningfully participate in anything that added to the public good. Both were keen observers and skilled reporters. The sort of person who can tell you what a poor job someone, anyone, yourself even has done but would not actually engage with the doing themselves. Both were famous drinkers.

I am sure that we benefit somewhat from these columnists, folk who can sharply report on the human condition. But they never really get to anything of value as to the why of it all. They have their own belief system which is immune to denting and judge all from that place on the orb with skill, charisma and something of an ultimate pointlessness. Humans already know life is hard and confused, that our leaders make many bad calls. Directing us to that obvious state of affairs, however insightfully or entertainingly, is not the stuff of heroes.

English-Speaking Atheists Lose Their Columnist Saint

I can’t say that I am particularly struck by the loss of Christopher Hitchens but its in the same way that I was not moved by the death of Steve Jobs. Like Jobs, Hitchens was something of a presentation of himself – not a bad thing in itself but it does distract from whether the output was as valuable as claimed. That being said, David Frum has an excellent memorial to the man in the National Post that captures bits of his appeal:

As the event broke up, a crowd of questioners formed around him. I created a diversion thinking it would help him escape for some needed rest. But Christopher declined the offer. He stood with them, as tired as I was, but ready to adjourn to a nearby bar and converse with total strangers till the bars closed. Hitchens was not one of those romantics who fetishized “dialogue.” Far from suffering fools gladly, he delighted in making fools suffer. When he heard that another friend, a professor, had a habit of seducing female students in his writing seminars, he shook his head pityingly. “It’s not worth it. Afterward, you have to read their short stories.”

Frum called him “a man of moral clarity.” I would have thought “amoral” or perhaps ethical was more the proper word. The man he most reminded me of was Mencken. Both had that sort of rhetorical skill that aligned well with their failure to actually meaningfully participate in anything that added to the public good. Both were keen observers and skilled reporters. The sort of person who can tell you what a poor job someone, anyone, yourself even has done but would not actually engage with the doing themselves. Both were famous drinkers.

I am sure that we benefit somewhat from these columnists, folk who can sharply report on the human condition. But they never really get to anything of value as to the why of it all. They have their own belief system which is immune to denting and judge all from that place on the orb with skill, charisma and something of an ultimate pointlessness. Humans already know life is hard and confused, that our leaders make many bad calls. Directing us to that obvious state of affairs, however insightfully or entertainingly, is not the stuff of heroes.

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Your Weekend Links Of Note For A Day At The Hospital

Efficient. Kind. Relaxed. Excellent. It was a good day at the hospital helping the lad get through what turned out to be a far less onerous than feared experience of an eyeball straightening. More nip than tuck, I have spent longer stretches at the dentist. Shades of my two days long medical stays of my youth disappeared. Validated Kate’s observations, too. Realized that I have sat in small city hospital waiting rooms in Canada, the US and Poland and each time thought pretty good people go into this work. Today, a small “hooray” went up among the post-op nurses at one point. I gave the “what was that face” to one of them and was told “the babies are through.” Hooray for the babies, indeed.

♦ Good to see the students of Syracuse can tell pedophilia from hate crime.

♦ I really hope many of these citizenship investigations are linked to the PEI passport selling scandal. Good to know, by comparison, that some Spuds have some sense.

♦ Boys need this last line of defends. It’s like Cold War MAD – mutually assured destruction. I recall when the bag tag war of 1982 broke out at undergrad. We needed, after only two days, a formal truce.

♦ Seventeen century science is absolutely neato: this and this, too

There. Weekend is here. Tomorrow? A Montreal Gazette weekend edition and maybe an obscure mammal in form of sausage.

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More Linky Weekend Goodness For Late Fall

Where were we? Ah, yes. The great explosion of 1840:

Another huge fire erupted on 18 April 1840, this time on Counter’s wharf and, aided by the explosion of gunpowder stored in one of the warehouses, spread across much of the waterfront area. Strong winds helped it extend to the whole of the north block of the Market Square, and to most of the next block up to Store Street (now Princess Street)

Never heard of it until a month or so ago. You would think that the destruction of much of the town would be a folk tale, collective memory. Never understood why Ontario is not interested in its own past like other parts of Canada, the English speaking world.

♦ Saturday night update: The Flea, mon cher, teaches how to KooDon’t.
♦ Best thing ever on the internet: what is brown and sticky?

♦ I had no idea that, besides interest on debt, Italy was actually in the black. Canadian Conservatives everywhere must be hailing it as solvency as they do with Mulroney’s terms.

♦ Really? Do you think? Do you think a cabinet member gets attention from “foreign lady reporters” from nations run by totalitarian regimes because they find Tories hot?

♦ I had no idea that Harper has expanded the Federal public service by 13%. No wonder they think that Mulroney got us to solvency.

♦ What is it with all these odd Tory stories? I mean if they are going to be doing all the social engineering I really hope they know how to plug in the toaster first.

♦ Finally – a break from Ottawa’s amateur hour. A great story from Humblebub.

That’s enough of that. Check out the great series at NCPR on the state of the nations on the two sides of the Great Lakes.

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