Author: Alan

Friday Bullets For Truck Week

It was “Truck Day” this week and so by extension this is Truck Week. Is February Truck Month? It’s not a bad idea. The beginning of the end of winter. You can see it in how the sun melts the road cover even if you can’t feel it in a skip in your step. A few short weeks are left. Lawns shall be mown. Pork shall be smoked. Did you realized it’s two weeks tomorrow that the first game of spring training is played? Life has meaning again.

  • We Do What We Want Update: if it weren’t so sad it would be a great Kids in the Hall script – ““It’s like we’re on CSI or an investigative forensic thing – who’s put the ‘not’ in. I’d like to know what your issue is,” she said then. “What is your issue?” Resign.
  • Deferring a political and cultural question to the Canadian Standards Association, safe keeper of hockey helmets and other consumer products is both startling innovative and wildly dumb.
  • See. Tail. Wag. Dog… See. Crisis. In. Right. Begin.
  • Make your own joke here: “Bay Street lawyers fear job losses.”
  • I really dislike suits but mainly because they look like really dull pajamas made of far too heavy a cloth.
  • Really? “This government has a hostility toward people who think for a living or people who write for a living…”?

Did you know a Bieber movie opens today? Spot man with pre-teen.

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What Is Canadian Exceptionalism? [“Rimshot”!]

I watched a biography of Ronald Reagan on PBS last night and was reminded of a lot of things. He was my high school to my getting into law school. He did come across as an old stuffy bumpkin know it all as well as your favorite uncle. All anyone had to do back then was to say “wehhlll” and toggle his head to get a laugh. But he told a good story. And he used the phrase “self-government” in a way Canadians don’t understand. For us it is just about autonomy – whether a euphemism for Quebec separation or greater First Nations autonomy. But in the states, it means running your own affairs. It may also mean less government, more local government or a bunch of other things. I don’t really know. See, I am Canadian.

Over on Facebook, a beer blogging acquaintance supposed that there must be something called “Canadian exceptionalism” which immediately struck me as an oxymoron – like curling action. All I could think of was “Canada would be a greater nation except…” Don’t get me wrong, I think this is a great country except we don’t talk about it. The very idea is a dirty phrase politically. We have other things to do. Ronnie Raygun would have talked about it. He had no issue with the idea of unity, purpose and a greater collective good. In that sense he is mirrored by Obama. He just didn’t see it as a function of government action. He did see it, however, as a proper government policy but one placing the function over into the private sector, aligning it with the responsibility of each citizen. Responsibility. He was no Randian.

Is there something or someone to blame for the drift from a paradigm that Reagan would even recognize let alone support? Did he create a backlash such that conservatism had to become what it is today, the neighbour of disloyalty, the ideological puritan happy to bring the house down, the disassembler? In taking apart the story of the other side did it also throw out the idea of having any story at all? Or have we just drifted of our own accord without anyone to give a better road map, tell a better story.

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Canadian Conservatives Are My Kind Of Conservative

Political culture is a weird thing. It doesn’t translate well from nation to nation and leaving the words associated with themselves rather meaningless. Conservative or liberal? Anarchist or patriot? Who know what any of this stuff means? Yet, there are moments when you know that being a Canadian politician means there is one thing you can’t disapprove: beer.

Opposition Leader Tim Hudak says he won’t rule out bringing back “buck a beer” if he becomes premier this fall. “Many folks, myself included, look forward to that $24 two-four on the May 24 weekend,” Hudak told reporters on Monday. “That is now something that has passed under Dalton McGuinty.” The Progressive Conservatives are yet to release their official election platform, but Hudak says he’s committed to reducing the cost of living – and that could include beer prices. “I do hear from people who say ‘Come on, I can’t even get a buck a beer in this province thanks to Dalton McGuinty’s policies,” Hudak said.

Blame the government for the price of beer? Well, you can when the government controls the minimum retail price through a Crown owned corporation and making “recommendations”. Still, no social conservatism that tells us beer is bad… and not even fiscal libertarian conservatism telling us that the LCBO needs to be broken up and privatized. No, it’s the progressives v. the liberals up here for control of the centre… every election time… time after time. Will they actually lower the minimum price if they don’t get in? Hudack says: “We’ll have more to say in the time ahead about some of the ideas we are hearing from Ontario families”. I look forward to what my ten year old advises on this point.

Breaking News: Their First Beer Festival In 400 Years

Big news out of Lyme Regis in Dorset, England as they are reviving or at least reinterpreting a festival that ended back in 1610.

The ale will be in full flow at Lyme Regis when the town hosts its first beer festival in 400 years. A festival called The Cobb Ale started in Lyme in the 14th century and lasted for around 250 years. The annual knees-up was held to raise money for the maintenance of the Cobb but it was stopped around 1610 by the Puritans. Now three local brewers, the Mighty Hop Brewery and Town Mill Brewery, both in Lyme Regis, and North Chideock’s Art Brew, will revive the tradition for a one-day festival in March.

Friggin’ Puritans. They ruin all the fun. But there is fun – real fun – to be had and it is not some phony baloney made up thing. You know that’s true because the Victorians wrote about it. That clip way up above is from the 1856 books called The Social History of The People of the Southern Counties by George Roberts who spends twenty pages or so – from 327 to 346 or so – on the history of the Cobb Ale festival. It is great stuff.

OK, it may be an utter lie as might be the renewal but it is very entertaining. Martyn and other cleverer folk than me know more about this stuff but the very idea that something celebrating 1376 could be celebrated still is very appealing to me. I might take it so far that, for me, the distinction between “ale” as festival and “ale” as the juice that makes the community festive described by both Martyn and George above escapes me a bit in the light of the knowledge that they who celebrated knew the resonance of one meaning to the other. It’s a bit like “party” as both noun and verb in the sense that one parties at the party. Having an ale at an ale must have been all quite affirming.

Book Review: Edinburgh Pub Walks by Bob Steel

epw1I get cranky. Especially when I have had a cold since Thursday and couldn’t get out on the snowshoes this weekend as planned. Heck, I really could not maintain much of a level of consciousness given the fever here, the aches there and the surreal effect of cold medication. Not prime time for the beer fan. So, it’s a good thing we have books for these drier stretches. I got this one in the mail a few months ago. Been wondering when I would post about it. I really should post more reviews of CAMRA’s excellent books but when this rare review copy came, I noticed my street address was off by about 127 front doors. Some guy two tenths of a mile away must have a great collection.

Anyway, I love this book. Why? Well, for one thing I am familiar with some walks covered having family that live on a few of the streets named upon the maps. I have spent some time there. I even dodged an indignant but well emptied bottle flung from a terrace far far above one Saturday at Hibs when Georgie Best was a no show and my father decided to leave early. But those connections to the town aren’t what makes this book work for me. No, its the maps themselves that draw you in. Bright, well laid out and placed smartly on the page they offer clear instruction by the clever use of colour leaving no real need for a table explaining what means what. Then there are the photos which make you want to crawl right though into that place in Prestonpans or the other on Rose Street. [Sadly, it appears that the Rose Street Brewery, where I spent a few happy days in 1986, is not more or at least not worth mentioning.] And then there are the walking tours. I don’t know of any North American pub guide based on this idea but it is an excellent one. Implicitly moderate or perhaps otherwise sensible, the 25 routes provide more information than a traveler might ever require and maybe even enough to keep a local well occupied.

The book seems to have been backed by the combination of CAMRA and Caledonian Brewery which might lead one to worry that a fix was in. Not a chance as there is every indication of as ecumenical an approach to mentioning tap offerings as you might wish. Well worth the investment for anyone there in Edinburgh or planning to be.

A Treasure Trove of Tiny Teutonic Glassware

I am a lucky man. I was almost into a nap after a failed morning of showshoeing followed by some throwing around of embarrassingly light weights when the family poured back into the house with many purchases – including a collection of tiny German beer glasses bought at a charity second hand shop. Most are 200 ml with one 300 ml from Franz of Rastatt that sits before me filled with Bernardus Abt 12. They are lovely things. The stemmed Dortmunder Union glass is particularly sweet. Each one cost only around 99 cents and apparently there are more, though the rest suffer from chips and scratches.

The funny thing is, of course, that I am not all that keen on German beers as a general thing. Yet whenever I get these tiny glasses with their heavily embossed brightly painted branding it’s like your first glimpse of your stuffed socking on Christmas Day. There is a delicacy about them. The glass is thin. The art work is thoughtful, larded with crests and Gothic script. And then there is this thing that I am going to call “hand feel” – the pleasure of the physical design. There is that one with the stem but others are slightly scalloped on the vertical. The rest give a subtle nod to the needs of the hand whether as a slender cylinder or a gentle widening then tapering that just fits.

Clearly someone packed it in. These could have been consigned by an executor or an abandoned spouse. The glass I use now may have been once untouchable, sitting in an cabinet behind glass. Mine now. I do as I wish with them.

Friday Bullets For The Day Of Mr Interesting

A big day. An idea I have helped frame has turned into a 26 person meeting. Yesterday, too, I had to report on work to a multi-level meeting with about as many people. I sat next to someone who crossed borders to get there and who has a profession utterly different from mine. But we chatted about stuff that help frame a big idea. I don’t know how my path got set out as it has but every since I started spending my time in big meetings about ideas that become neat things I have liked my job more. It reminds me of playing with Lego.

  • Willie Mays! I still have Willie Mays baseball cards that I bought in grade one. I think I always like Willie Mays because of how close his name was to Oor Wullie.
  • Is there a “difference between the public square and the common room of a private club”?
  • Onions actually slinging low.
  • “…40 per cent of Canadians think they are worse off now than they were before…” Worse off? Certainly not improved. Chretien created the changes we will still live by. National discourse certainly lessened by the bear of little imagination.
  • Extreme Shepherding!!!
  • Vintage base ball breaks out in Hamilton. Need to speak to those people.

Gotta go. Gotta go play with the Lego of the mind.

Evan Rail Ensured My New Glarus Mules Were Happy

Does that make sense? My co-workers have family in Wisconsin which means I get a share in New Glarus mixed cases once in a while. Moon Man Pale Ale. Me happy. To keep them happy in return – because only a fool does not want to keep that deal going – I share some of my beer travel findings and have been pleased to hear that a beer like Hennepin or a timely biere de garde is well received. To keep them really happy, hitting good beer folk up for tips when they travel is clever and, as they just were traveling in Prague, it means a plea from me goes to Evan and, in return, I get treats from Prague including this nice glass and bottle as well as a couple of Primator 16s.

Ain’t life great? Thanks Evan. Life lesson for today: treat your mules well and they will treat you well.

Speaking Of Collapses, What Did You Think Of That?

The funniest thing? At the beginning of the game, TSN had a camera in the living room of the Prime Minister’s house, the whole family gathered as it on a stage dressed in various reddish sweaters. Yet, during the five goal third period collapse, the camera never when back to their grim response to once and future evil empire slicing the hopes and dreams out of our lads. Only a neutered press statement generically praising all medal winners as if this were pre-school t-ball. Too bad. One might have hoped for a touch of classic conservative give up at a moment like that, complaining on the one hand, whining of the other but never getting it right. Or do they have to go off and figure out how to blame the Liberals for this, too?

Vlad will be pleased his “instructions to immediately redress the intolerable situation” were heeded.

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