If you can't get the malty good stuff my neighbor makes, or the excellent porter from my son-in-law's basement brewery, try the Marzen from the Leinenkugel family plant up in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. A six-pack came my way as a gift last week. It's new to me, and I'm impressed.
It's a middling-dark brew in the light heavyweight class that feels substantial on the tongue. Comfortable in the mouth, you might say, and I think that's because the Leinenkugels have learned restraint with hops.
Leading to my morning rant. Brewers of the world: You can not improve mediocre beer by tripling the hops. (I'm thinking mainly of Sam Adams here.)
I omit discussion of those who train the horse to go in a brown bottle, toss in some cherry syrup or lemon peels, and call their ad agency.
Sep 25, 2012
Sep 24, 2012
Hello, Monday
Cheerily in front of a small fire on a 37-degree morning, I attended to Dr. Nancy Snyderman, she of the whip-me shoes and the MSNBC gig.
She praised Mayor Bloomberg for killing the Big Gulp. "That's what leaders do ... it's a matter of public health." Yes. When Americans are fatter than a Somali goat boy the Republic is lost.
So do your part. Find some dude drinking a Dr. Pepper and shoot him. Pour encourager les autres.
---
Over on CNN the newsies offered an insipid campaign analysis. Who's "better" on gun control, Obama or Romney? Not even CNN could root out a difference. They both detest armed proles but, having counted us, find silence expedient. Of course if His Ineptness wins, he'll have a lot more flexibility.
The highlight turned out to be an allegation that Americans, collectively, possessed guns at a rate of 88.8 per hundred. Okay, I'll scarf up that credibility enhancing "point-eight" and merely observe that makes us 11.2 guns-per-hundred shy of the optimum.
---
The motivation to rant hatefully -- meaning usefully --is still low. I dislike being insipid, but, dagnabbit, it's just too hard to hate when you're feeling spiritually obese.
Lessee, among other things...
--K and D delivered a weighty home-grown watermelon last night, and I offered a fine fat "Oktoberfest" Marzen in thanks.
--My oldest friend, resident of one of the large eastern communes for many decades, visited. We continued the political debate begun when we were in junior high, back in the Coolidge administration or thereabouts. As the curtain fell we agreed that things are badly f*cked up. (N.B. He isn't fat, but he's sturdier than a rural Ethopian, so I suppose the good MSNBC doctor could find something horrifying about his Body Mass Index.)
--I'm idling away some spare time with a great rarity -- a readable college text book. Can't remember where I picked up Kent Steckmesser's The Westward Movement ; A Short HIstory, but I'm glad I did. The chapters on the Rocky Mountain fur trade are stunningly well written and exasperatingly free of the usual college-professor mistakes. He's even careful to lay out the evidence that John C. Fremont would be a "whodat?" except for (a) having married the boss's daughter and thereby (b) acquired the money to hire Kit Carson and Tom Fitzpatrick to take his hand and lead him around the American West.
She praised Mayor Bloomberg for killing the Big Gulp. "That's what leaders do ... it's a matter of public health." Yes. When Americans are fatter than a Somali goat boy the Republic is lost.
So do your part. Find some dude drinking a Dr. Pepper and shoot him. Pour encourager les autres.
---
Over on CNN the newsies offered an insipid campaign analysis. Who's "better" on gun control, Obama or Romney? Not even CNN could root out a difference. They both detest armed proles but, having counted us, find silence expedient. Of course if His Ineptness wins, he'll have a lot more flexibility.
The highlight turned out to be an allegation that Americans, collectively, possessed guns at a rate of 88.8 per hundred. Okay, I'll scarf up that credibility enhancing "point-eight" and merely observe that makes us 11.2 guns-per-hundred shy of the optimum.
---
The motivation to rant hatefully -- meaning usefully --is still low. I dislike being insipid, but, dagnabbit, it's just too hard to hate when you're feeling spiritually obese.
Lessee, among other things...
--K and D delivered a weighty home-grown watermelon last night, and I offered a fine fat "Oktoberfest" Marzen in thanks.
--My oldest friend, resident of one of the large eastern communes for many decades, visited. We continued the political debate begun when we were in junior high, back in the Coolidge administration or thereabouts. As the curtain fell we agreed that things are badly f*cked up. (N.B. He isn't fat, but he's sturdier than a rural Ethopian, so I suppose the good MSNBC doctor could find something horrifying about his Body Mass Index.)
--I'm idling away some spare time with a great rarity -- a readable college text book. Can't remember where I picked up Kent Steckmesser's The Westward Movement ; A Short HIstory, but I'm glad I did. The chapters on the Rocky Mountain fur trade are stunningly well written and exasperatingly free of the usual college-professor mistakes. He's even careful to lay out the evidence that John C. Fremont would be a "whodat?" except for (a) having married the boss's daughter and thereby (b) acquired the money to hire Kit Carson and Tom Fitzpatrick to take his hand and lead him around the American West.
Sep 23, 2012
Firepower (a little retro)
A.D. 1866 really wasn't so long ago. Even a Boomer might have heard Grandpa tell stories of the old-timers he knew, guys who were in their prime when White America hadn't quite finished stealing the Redskin West. If he were poor or ludditical, that same pioneer might have lived out his life with a cap and ball rifle, maybe the Model 1861 Springfield he carried home from the War for Southern Autonomy.
But the winds of change were blowing. A few repeaters were on the market in 1866.
That was the year when Washington decided to see if its troopers could swipe the Powder River Country from Red Cloud and his Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho pardners. Turns out they couldn't, though not for lack of trying -- trying in the sense of, say, the Keystone Kops trying to take down a large Mexican drug cartel.
---
Late in July Lieutenant George Templeton led his motley detachment of 29 men, three women and a child out of Fort Reno. Destination: the site the still-unbuilt Fort Phil Kearney, 60 miles northwest along the Bozeman Trail. Among his crew were a civilian named Captain Marr, lately of the Missouri Volunteers, and Army Chaplain David White.
About half way, at Crazy Woman Creek, the rightful owners rose from the their hidden positions and charged the little batch of invaders who were mostly armed with those '61 Springfield's. In the end, all was well, but just by a hair and with a little help from advanced technology. Let Dee Brown make the points:
In the first attack, "Captain Marr, who had a Henry rifle, a sixteen-shooter, used it with wholesome effect on the running Indians, and stopped two of them permanently."
The Sioux withdrew to regroup and charged again. This time they wounded Chaplain White slightly ("more angered than injured"). He mounted a little counter attack of his own and returned to the his lines shouting. "Ravine clear down as far as the creek."
"All seven charges in his pepperbox had gone off at once, killing one Indian and frightening the others into flight."
---000---
"Powder River Country" is a loose descriptor, but it's not too far wrong to think of it as most of northeast Wyoming from the Big Horns almost to the Black Hills.
---
Mostly from "The Fetterman Massacre" by Dee Brown, 1962, ISBN 0-8032-5730-9. Chapter IV.
But the winds of change were blowing. A few repeaters were on the market in 1866.
That was the year when Washington decided to see if its troopers could swipe the Powder River Country from Red Cloud and his Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho pardners. Turns out they couldn't, though not for lack of trying -- trying in the sense of, say, the Keystone Kops trying to take down a large Mexican drug cartel.
---
Late in July Lieutenant George Templeton led his motley detachment of 29 men, three women and a child out of Fort Reno. Destination: the site the still-unbuilt Fort Phil Kearney, 60 miles northwest along the Bozeman Trail. Among his crew were a civilian named Captain Marr, lately of the Missouri Volunteers, and Army Chaplain David White.
About half way, at Crazy Woman Creek, the rightful owners rose from the their hidden positions and charged the little batch of invaders who were mostly armed with those '61 Springfield's. In the end, all was well, but just by a hair and with a little help from advanced technology. Let Dee Brown make the points:
In the first attack, "Captain Marr, who had a Henry rifle, a sixteen-shooter, used it with wholesome effect on the running Indians, and stopped two of them permanently."
The Sioux withdrew to regroup and charged again. This time they wounded Chaplain White slightly ("more angered than injured"). He mounted a little counter attack of his own and returned to the his lines shouting. "Ravine clear down as far as the creek."
"All seven charges in his pepperbox had gone off at once, killing one Indian and frightening the others into flight."
---000---
"Powder River Country" is a loose descriptor, but it's not too far wrong to think of it as most of northeast Wyoming from the Big Horns almost to the Black Hills.
---
Mostly from "The Fetterman Massacre" by Dee Brown, 1962, ISBN 0-8032-5730-9. Chapter IV.
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