Missing Links

As I've been remaking this blog, I've been reading a lot of sites that had somehow never made it onto my blogroll. There's a ton of great writing out there to pay attention to - if you don't use Google Reader or some other aggregator, you're missing a lot.

Help me fill in the missing links on my blogroll. Here are a few I'm adding today:

Average Jane: I can't believe I haven't had Average Jane on my blogroll! I've known her in the real world for at least a couple years, and read her blog faithfully. She is anything but average - a smart ad person who also sings in rock bands. Her blog covers everything from recipes to relationship musings, in a friendly, thoughtful manner.

Kansas Sity Sinic: A Johnson County Republican woman who posts frequently and briefly. She keeps things light and amusing, and probably provokes more thought that way than she would if she posted long annotated diatribes about policy matters. And she's funny 9 times out of 10.

Absolutely Feisty: Young single mother battles her way through battles internal and external with a good heart and a sassy attitude. A must-read, but pay attention. Some of her best posts get deleted within 24 hours, when she gets her temper back!

Hot Blog on a Stick: Part of the Bull E. Vard and Chimpotle media empire, this blog focuses on the food you don't want to admit you've eaten. Unabashedly lowbrow, their two-voiced takedown of the Domino's bread bowl was one of the most descriptive pieces of writing on bad food I have ever read.

KC Hop Head: The guy's a new homebrewer and he's already putting raisins in his porter. That sort of creativity makes me suspect he's going to be brewing some of the best beer in the region soon. His writing is sharp and intelligent.

Keep on Truckin': "Some call it making new mistakes. I say I’m having new adventures." This woman is in the process of changing her life after a divorce, and her breezy wit leaves you only wishing that she would post more often. (Hint, hint.)

May's Machete: I won't even try to sum up what you'll find here. She describes it as "A cutting-edge view of lifestyle, culture and society", but that sounds like a pretentious literary magazine to me. May writes challenging, though-provoking, intimate stuff that makes you think a little harder and a little more clearly. A new favorite.

Show Me Eats: Food reviews from small town Missouri. Next time you're headed to the hinterlands, check this place out for thoughts on where to eat that doesn't involve a corporate drive-through.

Show-Me Beer: If you're a beer enthusiast, it's a great time to be alive. Show-Me Beer helps you sort through the wonderful array of options showing up on the shelves. Easy to read and well-informed, this blog is a free course in beer tasting, without the snobbery.

The Wort Hog Beer Blog: Another new brewer, now branching into the world of mead, too. ("Wort" is the word for beer before it ferments. Brewers make wort, yeast makes beer.) Her posts are well-researched and informative.

Shane Life: Another personal-musings blog. As a genre, these are the best or the worst of the blog world - it depends on whether you are engaged by the writing and the topics. Shane is deep without being "heavy", and has a knack for coming up with topics that have been kicking around in the back of my own mind.
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Alright, friends, what have I missed? Comment or email with suggestions about what else I should have in my blogroll.

Sunday Poetry: The Snake, by Emily Dickinson

The Snake

A narrow fellow in the grass
Occasionally rides;
You may have met him,---did you not,
His notice sudden is.

The grass divides as with a comb
A spotted shaft is seen;
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on.

He likes a boggy acre,
A floor too cool for corn.
Yet when a child, and barefoot,
I more than once, at morn,

Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash
Unbraiding in the sun,--
When, stooping to secure it,
It wrinkled, and was gone.

Several of nature's people
I know, and they know me;
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality;

But never met this fellow,
Attended or alone,
Without a tighter breathing,
And zero at the bone.

- by Emily Dickinson
___________________________________________

I'm not really a fan of Emily Dickinson's poetry. The Belle of Amherst's poetry strikes me as remote and high-falutin'. Most of her poetry seems somehow artificial and a little tedious. Her elliptical discussions of Death and Love and Whatever she chooses to capitalize seem like clever parlor talk to me, tied up in propriety and passivity, and tangled with sentence structures twisted to fit the poem. "Did you not - his appearance sudden is"? Emily Dickinson may be the inspiration for Yoda.

And yet I know I'm missing something. Dickinson is widely regarded as one of the greats, and my lack of appreciation for her work probably speaks more of my incomplete aesthetic make-up than it speaks of any flaw in her approach. To me, Dickinson is kind of like opera - I acknowledge that people far smarter than me find great pleasure in it, but the pleasure eludes me.

All that said, this is my favorite of her poems. The descriptions of a snake as a narrow fellow in the grass, and parting the grass like a comb are both creative and fresh. But the line that has stayed with me for years is "zero at the bone" - to me, a perfect description of that shock of fear and panic that jolts you on occasion. That feeling after your car skids to a halt inches from another, or when the phone rings at night, and your thoughts fly toward where your children are.

The fact that a 19th century recluse penned words that ring to true to a blogger in the 21st century is an impressive display of the power of Dickinson's language and thought.

(Buy Emily Dickinson's poetry in an old edition at someplace wonderful like Spivey's or Prospero's. Buying a used volume of old poetry is a glorious form of green.)

3 Quarters Well Spent

75¢ won't buy you much these days. Even most candy bars will set you back a dollar. Don't bother walking into a coffee shop with 75¢.

But that same 75¢ will buy you a copy of the Kansas City Star to read as you're drinking a cup of that coffee you can't afford.

Most of the times I have mentioned the Star on this blog, I am complaining. I complain about Abouhalkah, I complain about Kraske, I complain about whatever grabs my eye. If I assembled my mentions of the Star into one grand post, it would be a vitriolic mess of negativity and mockery. (The fact that it would be mostly justified doesn't make it any more attractive.)

In keeping with my lapse-prone resolve to be a more positive voice, though, consider what your 3 quarters could buy you today. Dan Margolies does a masterful job of analyzing numbers and arguments in an article debunking the myth that "tort reform" can play a sizable role in lessening health care costs. That's the sort of work that takes time and judgment to produce - time and judgment you won't often see invested on a TV clip or a partisan blog.

There's also an ironic article provided by the Associated Press about Washington University closing its Center for the Study of Ethics and Human Values in the wake of scandals involving two faculty members (Jeff Smith and Timothy Kuklo).

The letters to the editor include thought-inspiring contributions by Dan Cofran, Ed Casey and Larry Rizzo.

The sports page brings good news about the Cardinals and bad news about the Royals, along with an interesting article about whether Tank Tyler is "mean enough" to play nose tackle for the Chiefs.

All this, plus the comics, for 75¢.

It's true that you can freeload and get most of this material online, but unless you're really strapped for cash, it's worth the money to get the actual paper version to have and to hold, and feel good for paying your share to support what's left of the Kansas City Star.

(As an aside, I never knew how to make the ¢ symbol on my keyboard until a friend directed me to this site, which has a great menu of keyboard tricks.)

Wake Up Songs

My alarm clock uses my iPod to wake me up. Because I tend to keep my iPod on shuffle, and my music selection is eclectic (fancy word for strange), my days start off with a wide range of inspirations.

This morning, I woke up to Muddy Waters' "(I'm Your) Hoochie Coochie Man", but the snooze button proved too tempting. Next up was the Talking Heads' perky "This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)", which got me bouncing into my day.

I've discovered a few principles for morning music. Jazz can set the mood for a great day - give me Brubeck's "Take Five" in the morning, and I'll greet the day with a smile. Alt.Country, like Ryan Adams or Slaid Cleaves, can keep me in s pensive state for the whole morning. Classical music is beautiful, but makes me late to work. A dose of the Clash makes me invincible.

One morning I woke up to the BoDeans shouting "Sylvia" at the top of their lungs, and it almost gave both of us a heart attack.

Of course, I could carefully select what music I want to have wake me in the morning, but where's the fun in that?

Free Beer Tonight! And You Can Judge Me . . .

Tonight is the first round of the 75th Street Homebrew Contest; they'll be narrowing the field to 5 choices tonight. Customers will get the opportunity to taste the submissions and cast their votes. I have 5 submissions, so get out and vote for one of them (or whichever beer you think is best, even if it's not one of mine).

Here's what I submitted:

"'Round Midnight" - a schwarzbier. It's dark but smooth and easy-drinking. Just a touch of roasted malts and german hops in a smooth German lager. It's my favorite of the beers I submitted.

"Jim's Milk Stout" - a sweet stout based on Left Hand Brewery's version. No real milk is put into the beer, but it gets a dose of lactose, the natural dairy sugar. The lactose adds body and just a touch of sweetness. This one is very easy to drink.

"Not my Brother" - a Hefewezen. Get it? The name is a play on "he's not heavy (hefe), he's my brother"? Oh, never mind . . . This is the beer I wrote about brewing in this post, and that proved more popular than the milk stout in this post. Hefeweizens are funky beers, but people love them.

"Power Porter" - a Robust Porter. It's pretty tasty, but there's probably not enough left to make it through the contest, so don't waste a vote on it. But take a sample, anyhow, and let me know what you think.

"NOLA Voodoo" - a Dark American Lager. I brewed this beer more for the challenge than for enjoyment. It's based upon normal American mega-beer, with added darkness and just a touch of added flavor. It's the only beer I've ever brewed that included corn and rice, just like the big breweries do. The beer itself is pretty flavorless, which is a virtue for this style, and a bit of a challenge to accomplish as a brewer. Obviously, I'm not a huge fan of the beer, but it might appeal to some people, and, by submitting it to the contest, I hope I get rid of enough that I can use the keg for something I enjoy more!

I don't know what else got submitted, or how many other beers will be available for tasting. But I'm certain there will be some great beers there for the free sampling, so come out and vote for your favorites.

Hamburger Helper

I want your advice.

What kind of burger should be the special at Blanc Burgers + Bottles? In the relatively near future, I get to meet with Chef Josh Eans to design a new burger which will then be put on special for the weekend.

The pressure is on to come up with something amazing. After all, the Inside Out Burger (bleu cheese stuffed burger, applewood smoked bacon, onion ring, home-made catsup, mustard, butter lettuce on an onion brioche bun) is thought by many to be the best burger in the world. My personal favorite is the Au Poivre (pepper-crusted burger, creamy green peppercorn sauce, grilled onions, watercress, salt and pepper brioche bun).

If my name is going to be attached to something that I want people to choose over those two platters of heaven, I need to come up with something world-changing.

Right now, I'm thinking maybe a variation on the Aspen Burger, a regional favorite from upstate New York featuring sour cream and sauteed mushrooms. Perhaps if we jazzed it up a little by using creme fraiche and some gourmet mushrooms, we could bring a bit of Schenectady to Kansas City.

Or we could go to the opposite corner of the United States for some inspiration. How about a green chile and sharp cheddar burger? Maybe serve it with some sort of mole sauce?

I LOVE Blanc Burgers + Bottles. The first time I went there, I returned 5 times over the next two weeks. Their Au Poivre burger may be tied for "Best Sandwich in Kansas City" with "#1 (spicy)" ordered at the counter from Bella Napoli.

I need to bring my "A game" to this assignment. Any advice?

Sunday Poetry: As Needed, by Jordan Smith

As Needed

Xanax, 1 mg, as needed, which is up to me,
I guess, who needs or doesn’t that cold white
Flower at the brain’s stem. And what am I trading:
Skeptical irony for spiking adrenalin, even, a wash,
I think, when I talk to my wife in the hospital
For her second pulmonary embolism in two weekends.
Oh, I was clearer-headed than that winter’s day, as sharp,
As numb, knowing the road to the ER, the routine
Of triage and waiting, good at pretending it wasn’t,
Nothing was happening. Are you taking care,
The good wishers all ask, and yes I say, meaning
I’ve got my mechanisms of defense all in place,
Got one foot moving ahead of the next, and
That’s all folks, until the pills wear off, and what’s
Left is what I started with, minus whatever this new
Need is I’ve learned now that I know what’s needed.

- by Jordan Smith

____________________________________________________

Does poetry need to speak across generations to be great? This one won't. The first line virtually eliminates it from "classic" status, if it ever sought such, by including the name of a pharmaceutical and nonpoetical dose that will fade from collective consciousness in a few years when other, better psychotropics are created. Nobody will want to read a poem with a footnote on its first word, even if academics were willing to provide such explanatory text for a contemporary poem.

No, this poem is written with a short shelf life - it is like fresh fish or corn on the cob, meant to be enjoyed soon or not at all. This is not a poem for future generations; it is ours alone.

Is it a good poem? I think it is - the description of the anxiety prevented by the Xanax as "that cold white flower at the brain's stem" is a striking image, and the levels of meaning brought forth by the word "need" gives it a richness beyond its immediacy. Xanax is a habit-forming drug; has the speaker created a need for it, or is he freshly aware of his need for his wife, or is it a reference to the prescriptive advice to take the pills "as needed"?

It's a thought-provoking little poem. Depending on how you read it, each line has 5 or 6 stressed syllables, with no rhyming. He plays with cliches in the poem - "that's all folks", "one foot in front of the other", "good wishers" instead of well-wishers. The resort to cliche is not a weakness; it is a means of conveying the dead-brained banality of keeping moving in painful times.

Over a quarter century ago, I took creative writing classes from Jordan Smith, and argued with him about the necessity of structure. His relationship with form was casual and fleeting, while my own was dogmatic. I haven't corresponded with him since I wrote him a note after reading his book, "An Apology for Loving the Old Hymns". I was pleased to find an entire book by him available for free online, called "The Flute Is Zero", and borrowed "As Needed" from it.

(Buy Jordan Smith's poetry here, or wherever you buy poetry.)

Hefeweizen vs. Milk Stout

Yesterday evening, I donated two 5 gallon kegs of beer to a charity event for to support ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease) research. The event was spectacular, and I was honored to have my beer be served at the same event that featured Christopher Elbow chocolates and spectacular food served by Chefs Jasper Mirabile, Charles d’Ablaing, Marshall Roth, Josh Eans, Todd Walleen, Jeff Troiola and Nick Jonjevic. Those are all culinary allstars - it was kind of intimidating to be on the same menu.

The event came at a good time, because I have a great supply of beer right now. Out of a selection of Schwarzbier, Dark American Lager, Milk Stout, Hefeweizen, and Robust Porter, I chose the two freshest - Milk Stout and Hefeweizen. The weather was perfect for either - cool enough to tackle a rich stout, but after a day warm enough to crave the refreshment of a Hefeweizen.

To my surprise, the Hefeweizen won the popularity contest, hands down. I had expected the richer, sweeter, chocolaty Milk Stout to draw more drinkers, especially since it was served next to a great selection of cigars provided by Fidel's. Hefeweizens are a little funky and playful, with banana esters and cloudy yeast. But, the masses spoke, and when I went to pick up the leftovers today, the Hefeweizen was all gone, while I got to bring home a gallon or so of the Milk Stout.

As a homebrewer, you don't often get the opportunity to gauge public reaction. When you serve your beer to friends, they are obligated to say nice things. When you submit your beer to contests, you get expert opinions focused on nuances that would completely elude the average person. Honest popular opinion is scarce.

The thrill of the evening, though, was walking out and seeing Chef Josh Eans, a beer expert who has put together one of Kansas City's most intelligent beer lists (.pdf), sipping a glass of my homebrewed Milk Stout with a smile on his face.

And the fact that it all supported an effort to find a cure for a horrible disease made it even better.

Princess Garden: BEST Chinese Restaurant in Kansas City

The presumption encompassed in that title is staggering. Here I am, a middle-aged guy who's lived most of his life in Kansas City, has never set foot in Asia, much less China, and never studied Chinese cuisine.

The absurdity is heightened by the very title I want to award. Best Chinese Restaurant?? Is there a best American restaurant? Is it a cajun seafood steakhouse with Philly cheese-steaks and funnel cakes? We can't even agree on a best Kansas City-style barbecue restaurant, but I'm blithely going to choose one restaurant to represent the cuisine of a billion-plus people in 8 Great Traditions?

You betcha! The significance of a writer's proclamations lies in the eyes of the beholder. It's not whether you agree or disagree with me - it's whether you read it and give it a second thought.

All that philosophizing aside, the indisputable winner (even though I've only visited probably a dozen or so of the options here in KC) is Princess Garden on Wornall.

Princess Garden is a classic of the genre. Carved Chinese marble lions greet you from the parking lot at 8906 Wornall, and the decor of red and gold looks exactly like a typical restaurant in Beijing, Shanghai or Xi'an - at least to me it does. The carpet, the paintings, even the darkened, empty bar off to the right of the pay stand all scream real China, at least as imagined by Kansas Citians.


The drink menu is a hoot. Fresh from the early 70s, it features My Tais, Fog Cutters and a wide range of elaborate concoctions, with a page titled "Strong, for those who enjoy drinking." The alcoholic fantasyland is heightened by descriptions like "Shark's Tooth - the bite of this drink is so sharp and quick that you won't feel a thing" and "Princess Garden Express - You will feel the hit by this extraordinary drink - try it and experience yourself." Alas, I'm a beer drinker, so I haven't experienced myself yet.

But the food is the attraction, and the food is great. In our most recent trip (when the kids were in town - this is a nostalgic favorite for them, even though Sam gets to eat in NYC's Chinatown), we had the crab rangoon and the steamed dumplings. Both are exactly what you would expect from a good Chinese restaurant - nothing super fancy, nothing to elevate the genre to a whole new level with challenging and intriguing tastes and textures - simply solid, competent examples of what you would expect.

As always, we got the Crunchy Beef as an entree. I haven't seen this on other menus, but it is pieces of beef the size of shoe-string potatoes, fried to a crispy exterior and served with mu shu pancakes in a sticky sauce. Rich, decadent and wonderful.

We also had a dish with an impossibly long title, including words such as "sizzling", "yellow noodles" and "double faced" - it was spectacular. The noodles are both tender and crispy, depending on how soaked they are in the light sauce, and covered with chicken, shrimp and vegetables.

As I hope I made clear in the first paragraphs, I have no business offering superlatives about Chinese restaurants. And I can say with legitimacy and integrity is that Princess Garden is a family favorite, with food that satisfies and always meets or exceeds our midwestern expectations. The staff is friendly, and the service is good. I don't know if it is authentic or not. I just know that our family has had many, many happy meals there, and I recommend it to anyone who is wants food that is as far from chic as it is from Beijing.

Great Food Tomorrow Night! And an Opportunity to Support the ALS Foundation

How does "Smoked Porter Braised Piedmontese Short Ribs,Black Truffle Grits, Tomato Jam, and Baby Arugula" sound? How about "Tomato Water Poached Halibut, Spanish Sweet Tarragon, Watermelon and Heirloom Tomatoes with Radish accents"? Does "Lemon Grass Seared Fresh Water Prawn, Corn, Green Tomato and Turnip Fricassee, Herb Pistou" sound good?

There will be some homebrew by me on the porch, too.

Better yet, the proceeds will go to support the local ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease) Foundation.

Tickets are still available here. It's going to be a fantastic evening for a great cause.

New Orleans' Carver High & Its Field of Dreams

My daughter, having recently graduated from Tulane, is staying in New Orleans for a year with a program designed to help 9th Ward high school students become high school graduates. It's an important goal for a part of the city that "Great Work Brownie" somehow didn't reach. 4 years after Hurricane Katrina, Carver High remains shuttered, and the students attend classes in trailers.

The school used to be a football powerhouse pre-Katrina, and some ambitious people are working to restore that source of community pride.



As a parent, it's awfully exciting to see my daughter drawn to where she can do the most good, in the presence of others who have bold dreams, real initiative, and problem-solving skills.

Strangers on the Internet - Let's Be Careful Out There

I talked with a few people involved in politics recently, and confirmed what I had personally noticed. There seems to be an uptick in the number of new "acquaintances" on the internet eager to share dirt and rumors, or to seek information or opinions about local figures. I had one stranger recently share some outlandish lies about a few women involved in state and local politics.

We're a year away from elections, and the lying and elaborate deceptions are already starting up.

Personally, I'm glad to be on the sidelines these days. If you're in the thick of it, though, please be aware and don't take candy from strangers. Or give it, either.

Sunday Poetry: Colors Passing Through Us, by Marge Piercy

Colors Passing Through Us

Purple as tulips in May, mauve
into lush velvet, purple
as the stain blackberries leave
on the lips, on the hands,
the purple of ripe grapes
sunlit and warm as flesh.

Every day I will give you a color,
like a new flower in a bud vase
on your desk. Every day
I will paint you, as women
color each other with henna
on hands and on feet.

Red as henna, as cinnamon,
as coals after the fire is banked,
the cardinal in the feeder,
the roses tumbling on the arbor
their weight bending the wood
the red of the syrup I make from petals.

Orange as the perfumed fruit
hanging their globes on the glossy tree,
orange as pumpkins in the field,
orange as butterflyweed and the monarchs
who come to eat it, orange as my
cat running lithe through the high grass.

Yellow as a goat's wise and wicked eyes,
yellow as a hill of daffodils,
yellow as dandelions by the highway,
yellow as butter and egg yolks,
yellow as a school bus stopping you,
yellow as a slicker in a downpour.

Here is my bouquet, here is a sing
song of all the things you make
me think of, here is oblique
praise for the height and depth
of you and the width too.
Here is my box of new crayons at your feet.

Green as mint jelly, green
as a frog on a lily pad twanging,
the green of cos lettuce upright
about to bolt into opulent towers,
green as Grand Chartreuse in a clear
glass, green as wine bottles.

Blue as cornflowers, delphiniums,
bachelors' buttons. Blue as Roquefort,
blue as Saga. Blue as still water.
Blue as the eyes of a Siamese cat.
Blue as shadows on new snow, as a spring
azure sipping from a puddle on the blacktop.

Cobalt as the midnight sky
when day has gone without a trace
and we lie in each other's arms
eyes shut and fingers open
and all the colors of the world
pass through our bodies like strings of fire.

- by Marge Piercy
___________________________________________________

By all rights, this poem ought to drown itself in a pool of self-indulgence. This poem abandons the discipline of rhyme and regular meter, and then plunges its undisciplined self into the deep, deep ocean of love poems - an ocean of triteness and banality filled to flooding by every mediocre wannabe poet who feels the need to write down that feeling s/he feels when the crush of the day enlivens his/her world.

Despite all that, Marge Piercy emerges from that ocean with a pearl in hand. This poem is beautiful.

There are several things going on in this poem that make it stand out. First, despite the lack of a regular metrical rhythm, Piercy builds her poem with the solid wood of sestets (6-line stanzas - most often used as the tasty morsel at the end of a sonnet) and a strong preference for lines with 4 stresses each. This is not an iambic pentameter robot, but it's not loosey-goosey, windblown words on a page, either.

Piercy also adds structure through her theme. Each stanza, except the second and the sixth, tackles its own color. And hurrah for the second and the sixth - they tell us what is going on - they clue us into why these colors are being shown to us. And the fact that they are not the first and the last stanzas keeps them from tying up this poem into a tidy little package - their positioning breaks the thematic structure enough to keep it from becoming a catalog of colors.

But what really makes this poem stand out is its specificity. The grapes are "warm as flesh." The orange is not just the color of her cat, but the color of her cat "running lithe through the high grass." The yellow is not the yellow of a raincoat, but "yellow as a slicker in a downpour."

As Marianne Moore called for, this poem presents "imaginary gardens with real toads in them."

(Buy Marge Piercy's poetry at Rainy Day Books, or whichever local bookstore you prefer.)

Like Twitter, Only Less Irksome, and for a Good Cause

I don't understand the fundamentals of the local Twestival currently going on in Kansas City, like where the money comes from or why they want your (or my) input, but it's an easy way to help direct some money to a local charity. I just cast my 3 free votes at the local Twestival and it was easy as pie - no registering or entering information about myself. Two of my votes went to Wayside Waifs, since they have done a great job of spreading the word, and one went to one of the other 4 great charities represented.

Homecomings

Tomorrow morning, I'll be gathering children at the airport. They won't look like children - they will look like a 23 year old man whose self-reliance in New York is impressive, and a 22 year old woman who is completely competent to manage her own life in the strange city of New Orleans. In fact, appearances are reality - it's just in my imagination that they are children.

We're thrilled to have them back for a few days.

A Little Background on Boulevard's New Beer

The next Smokestack Series scheduled to hit the shelves will be a Doppelbock bearing the name Seeyoulator. I haven't tasted it yet, but I thought I might share a little background on the name and the history of doppelbocks.

Doppelbocks are a thick, rich beer brewed as "liquid bread" by German monks to sustain themselves through Lenten days of fasting, when the ban on solid food was made merciful by the flowing of an extra-strong, chewy lager. A doppelbock has a rich mouthfeel, enhanced with generous amounts of protein and unfermentable malt sugars.

Originally brewed by the vegetarian Paulaner monks in the mid-1600s, Salvator Doppelbock was viewed as such a wonderful indulgence that some of the more worry-prone monks thought it wise to gain papal approval for drinking this liquid bread during Lent. So, they sent a barrel of it to the Vatican, for the Pope to sample. Sanitation and refrigeration in the 17th century were non-existent, and, when the Pope finally tasted the soured, nasty beer, he deemed it an appropriate drink for those doing penance during Lent, and, thus, the monks of Paulaner were given specific Papal approval to brew and drink Salvator during a season when everyone else was suffering.

The monks always called their beer Salvator, though the reason for the name is the subject of some debate.

The name Salvator is another unsolvable mystery. Some say that the monks referred to their sustaining and gladdening brew as Saintly Father Beer or Sankt-Vater-Beir from which Salvator derived. Another theory states that it comes from a passage in the Paulaner’s benediction, “ad sanctum Salvatorem.”

When other breweries began imitating this luscious liquid, they adopted a convention of ending the name of their versions with the -ator suffix. Perhaps such a strong beer leads to quarrels, for there is dispute about whether this convention was intended to pay homage to the original, or whether it was an attempt to cash in on its fame and good reputation.

Soon we will get to try Boulevard's version of the style. When you pop the cork on the first bottle, raise a toast to the good vegetarian monks of Paulaner, and say the name "Seeyoulator" with the reverence befitting a centuries-old tradition.

Out of the Kitchen

It's been a month now since I've done a political post. Friends have wondered what the heck is going on. In a nutshell, the kitchen got hot enough that I couldn't stand the heat. More importantly, I don't want to keep adding to the heat.

I'm focusing on things less hateful.

Sunday Poetry: Sometimes, by Anonymous

Sometimes

Sometimes things don't go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail.
Sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war,
elect an honest man, decide they care
enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best intentions do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen; may it happen for you.

- by Anonymous
________________________________________________

I like to do my own commentary on the poems I select for Sunday poetry, but the poet's own commentary on this poem is more fascinating than anything I can come up with.

She prefers not to have her name associated with it, so I'll respect that wish, although, if you're curious, it's easy to Google.

The dreaded Sometimes

I once had this on my site, though I had long ago got sick of it. But I still got a lot of email asking for information about it so I thought it might save time, especially now it's turned up as a GCSE "unseen poem"! There is also a bit about it on the FAQs on specific poems page, answering the questions "why isn't the language inclusive" and "why don't you like the poem".

But I have now decided to remove the text, though I will keep this information to save email enquiries.

Policy on reproduction of "Sometimes"

* it's OK to put it on personal blogs
* if you're a student, you can use it for coursework
* if you're an exam board, you cannot use it as an exam question
* if you want it for a non-charitable poetry anthology, the answer's no
* I will allow it to be read for charitable purposes (NB NOT medical ones which fund research on animals, and I won't change my mind on that for anyone, so please don't ask). But I would still refuse permission for actual reproduction, unless it was a charity I felt very strongly about.
* if you're an "inclusive language" fanatic who wants to replace "man" with "human being" and ruin the scansion, don't you dare!!! See below...
* and if you do quote or reproduce it, I would rather you left my name off. I really do hate it that much. The comedian Arthur Smith, who's been using it in a charitable/memorial context for some time, respects my feelings on this by never mentioning my name, and I very much appreciate that.

I'm doing this because the poem simply doesn't represent the kind of poet I want to be. I know many people do like it but it exists on many other sites so I am not depriving them of anything, and I'd rather they didn't email asking me to change my mind about it, because I can't.

I wrote it back in the eighties and it appeared in my Selected Poems, which has recently been reprinted by Seren, whom you can contact at this address. It was then included in Poems on the Underground and has since appeared on the trams of Helsinki and the Metro in St Petersburg (there's a good Russian translation on Vitali Ashkinazi's web site. Actually I prefer Vitali's version to the original and one day I might translate it back).

It featured in a BBC Radio 4 programme called The Secret Life of Poems. It has been used by several charities and political organisations, including Charter 88 (for refugees); it has been read during the Irish peace negotiations and in the South African parliament, has been set to music by several people and quoted in other books (most lately appearing in the autobiography of the man in the white suit, Martin Bell).

Despite all this, it wasn't necessarily political, nor is it about depression, though a lot of clinically depressed people think it is. It isn't even basically very optimistic. It was originally written about a sportsman who had a drug problem and it expressed the hope that he might eventually get over it - because things do go right sometimes, but not very often... But it isn't anywhere near skilful or subtle enough and I would cheerfully disown it, if people didn't now and then write to me saying it had helped them. By the way, you might also care to know that I originally wrote "the sun will sometimes melt a field of snow" (the sportsman's drug of choice was cocaine). But I mistyped "sorrow" for "snow" and then decided I liked that better. I believe in letting the keyboard join in the creative process now and then.

Also some people have asked "why the odd spelling of "muscatel" as "muscadel"? Because the line doesn't refer to muscatel grapes; it refers to grape hyacinths, little purple spring flowers which I've always known as "muscadel".

Oh and while we're at it, a small rant... I am sick of seeing versions of this on people's sites which are wrong not because of faulty memory but because they've been deliberately "adapted" for added political correctness or to simplify the vocabulary or grammar. I've seen "man" blithely changed to "woman" by people who apparently don't notice that this screws up the scansion (which to any writer is far more important than being PC). If you don't like it the way it is, then write your own, but don't "adapt" mine and then leave my name on it, because I can scan and I don't want people thinking otherwise! As you may know, I like fan fiction, but all honest fanfic writers include a disclaimer stressing that this is them, not the original.

I think I love this poet! She cares about scansion! She is open enough in her writing that she recognizes a mistaken improvement. She points out that the darned thing isn't even really very optimistic - the fact that things go right "sometimes" is a long way from having them go right frequently.

Sometimes, I get hooked by a poem that the author would disown, and go on to read more of her poetry. Sometimes.

Untold Stories

Today's issue of the Writer's Almanac is brilliant, thought-provoking and free. I have resolved to avoid describing people harshly on this blog, but if you don't subscribe, you're a . . . - ahh, well, let's just say you're depriving yourself of a daily read that educates, enlightens, and inspires.

What happens to stories that don't get told? What does the deprivation of a tale do to the fabric of the world?

A week ago yesterday, a friend I had never met died. (The story of our friendship is an odd one, but unimportant to anyone but me. We became close friends very quickly, and I grew to greatly admire her. We planned to meet on Monday, but my email suggesting a lunch location went unanswered, lost in a dead woman's email.) She went off the road on a quiet highway in Texas, struck a telephone pole and her car burned. I have chatted with her sister on Facebook, and we have decided that she must have been unconscious or dead immediately after the accident, before she could suffer and before the flames touched her. Some stories are almost necessary for the living, and it makes the most sense.

But what could it have been that put her on that highway at that time, when she was so exhausted that she probably fell asleep? Her sister and I figured it out from our separate bits of information. It changed a useless and simply sad death into something noble and inspirational. She was on that road at that time to help someone - when she died, she was doing something kind and selfless. At the hour of her death, she had chosen to go above and beyond what any reasonable person would do to accomplish something good in this world rather than take care of her own comfort and convenience.

That story, which would have died in the car with my friend had her sister and I not blundered into it, brought a dram of peace and goodness to a death which remains sharply painful.

In the context of all that happens in the world, how do stories gain importance and value? Everything that happens is a potential story, but 99.99% of what happens is unworthy of remembrance. Nobody wants to hear the story of how you chose what to eat for dinner (though some Twitter fans don't yet realize that).

Amidst the fire-hose rush of information coming at us every day, great stories pass over us without notice. Today is the birthday of Randy Shilts, who was the first major journalist to notice and cover the rise of AIDS. He paid attention. He got the story. He once said, "I view my role in life as writing stories that wouldn't get written unless I [write] them."

How many laid-off journalists are missing their opportunity - their calling - to find and write those stories today? How many working journalists are too busy filing their 3-paragraph blog entries to focus on, or even notice, important stories in our world? Can a thousand bloggers equal one Randy Shilts? We appear to have rolled the societal dice; may it please be so.

Also on this date, in 1946, Harold Ross, a New Yorker editor wrote a memo to John Hersey about his soon-to-be-published story on Hiroshima. He asked that Hersey tell not just the big story of what happened, but to tell the smaller, literal stories of how 100,000 people died. He asked for a description of the victims' vomiting. He wanted to know "how many were killed by being hit by hard objects, how many by burns, how many by concussion, or shock, or whatever it was?"

The result of that editor's insistence on memorable details was world-changing. The author later wrote, "What has kept the world safe from the bomb since 1945 has not been deterrence, in the sense of fear of specific weapons, so much as it's been memory. The memory of what happened at Hiroshima."

Had Harold Ross not sought the story, and had John Hersey not recorded it so vividly, that story would have been lost in the rush of other details. The New Yorker could have filled its pages with stories of celebrity deaths and fashion trends, and nobody would have been the wiser.

Nobody would have been the wiser.

5 Hints for Craigslist Free Stuff Success

I don't like dickering with people. It offends my sense of dignity to argue with someone over a few dollars, so I avoid the circumstance as much as I can. So, when we recently had a few items of some small value to get rid of at the Gone Mild household, we listed them on Craigslist as free stuff. The karmic good of giving something decent away would outweigh the financial benefit of gaining the hundred bucks or so we might have received through commerce, we reasoned.

We posted the items at around 5:30 one afternoon. The next day, we had a couple hundred responses to choose from. Out of those responses, each of which I read and considered, before forwarding to my lovely spouse, I gleaned a few basic lessons to guide those who want to succeed in scoring free stuff on Craigslist.

1. Be Quick. Even though we opted not to go with the "first come, first served" approach, I'm sure that many listers do use that method, and even those who don't will quickly be inundated with responses. My first response came within seconds of my posting - the one who succeeded came within a couple hours. Believe me, the pool fills up quickly.

2. Think about your email name. Look, I'm an open-minded person, but I'm not going to invite someone who goes by the name "sickandsadistic" to my home. Same thing for PimpMasterJane. I'll admit that Gr8rack and Smooch Smooch got my attention, but not an invitation.

3. Read the Ad. We wanted our stuff picked up on a certain day in the future. Those who responded, "Give me your address, I'll be there immediately" either failed to read, or allowed their sense of urgency to trump their better judgment.

4. Think about the seller's motivation. All we wanted were some warm feelings and the convenience of having our stuff taken away. The people who asked if I would help load the truck didn't do well. The people who wanted to pick and choose did worse. I may go to hell for this, but the person who described her disabilities in graphic detail really should have mentioned how she was going to get the stuff without asking me to deliver it. The ones who did succeed coupled a solid reason for needing the stuff (fire, divorce, unemployment, etc.) with a quick explanation of how they were going to meet my needs ("I have a truck and trailer and can bring a friend at your convenience").

5. Be nice, but don't go overboard. I like to think that giving stuff away is a kind gesture, but "the Hand of God" played less of a role in my decision than a strong desire to avoid arguing about price and condition, at least in my non-theological opinion. Similarly, the people who promised to pay something kind of missed the point. Fortunately, Gr8rack and Smooch Smooch didn't play that game . . .

Beer, Dinner and a Documentary - Guess What the Highlight of My Evening Was . . .

Yesterday, my lovely spouse and I departed work a bit early, so as to make the 5:00 showing of "Food, Inc." at the Tivoli, and to follow it with cashing in a gift certificate dinner at McCoy's Public House.

Food, Inc. tackles the food industry, and does a pretty effective job of it. We see dead chickens and nasty beef processing facilities and even legislators making laws, in an unacknowledged nod to the age-old claim that the legislative process is akin to making sausage. The movie is just okay; close-ups of farmers talking about soybeans and pigs are not the best way to convey factual information. Further, the information conveyed was not particularly groundbreaking - corporations control agriculture for profit, meat-making is a filthy business, and veggie libel laws are unAmerican. The best part of the movie came right before the credits, when they ran suggestions of what you can do to eat healthier and more sustainably. I suppose that if you somehow walked into the movie without any understanding of agricultural issues, the movie might be eye-opening, but I don't think anyone who doesn't already care is likely to fork over money to see a documentary about food.

McCoy's was a lot more enjoyable.

Service started with the waitress seeking our drink order literally before we sat down. I don't like waiting half an hour before getting served, but her haste was a bit extreme.

Fortunately, the beers were better than the service. I tried the milk stout, which was full-bodied and approachable, the way a milk stout ought to be, and a kolsch. I was particularly impressed with the kolsch, which is kind of like Germany's version of cream ale. The beer should be a light, dry, somewhat hoppy ale that leans toward a lager style. I thought the McCoy's version was one of the best I've ever tasted. While the beer was perfectly balanced, I fell in love with the hops. They were floral, almost perfumy, but had a bit of peppery spice to them as well. It packed a lot of subtle flavors into a beer that would be easy to overlook, because it doesn't have huge flavor components screaming for attention.

As for the food at McCoy's, we ignored the movie we had just seen and ordered lobster spring rolls. The chef must have taken the movie more seriously, though, because we found no evidence that any lobster had died to make our spring rolls. Instead, the filling presented a mushy, bland paste of cabbage, with same taste intensity as the bed of styrofoam noodles they were served on.

My wife's mac cheese looked great, and my bite was enjoyable, though she maintained that Cafe Trio's version is far better, and I defer to her expertise. It was a fine entree, if not superlative. Because we had to reach a spending minimum for the gift certificate to apply, I went ahead and ordered a rib-eye steak, which came in the thin-cut style favored by chain steakhouses, and dominated by a dollop of assertive cilantro butter that had not been mentioned on the menu.

Of the three elements of the evening, the beer stood out as the best. In keeping with the "think local" theme of the movie, it was also the element that originated where we drank it.

Kansas City Mystery - "The Dead Man", by Joel Goldman

Last time I read a Joel Goldman mystery, I was more than mildly negative - "Really, this book is awful - execrable dialog with an implausible plot, and minority characters who are so shallow I would accuse the author of racism if he had demonstrated he could write believable characters of any ethnicity." So I was surprised to receive a free review copy of his newest effort, "The Dead Man", starring the same main character and also set in Kansas City.

Deja vu? Thank goodness, deja nope.

"The Dead Man" is a striking success. An alert reader stays one step ahead of Jack Davis most of the way through the book, and an alert Kansas Citian recognizes a few local characters along with the landmarks. I saw through the mystery early in the book, but the novel's pleasure was watching the whole thing play out.

Without spilling any spoilers, the novel focuses on a string of deaths connected to The Harper Institute of the Mind, a fictional and repurposed version of the Stowers Insitute, with a CEO focused on Alzheimer's instead of cancer. Jack Davis, a former FBI agent who retired under suspicious circumstances after his daughter escaped with $5 million and who suffers from a mysterious neurological disorder, gets hired to look into the deaths before the Institute gets sued.

This book excels in its use of flawed characters. Jack Davis is spastic, and his sidekick is a former cop who went crooked. It seems everyone connected to by the Institute carries more baggage than an overhead bin on a weekend flight to Vegas, and the FBI agents are single-minded dimwits. At the end, we have an octogenarian, a crooked cop and an incapacitated hero going to confront the villain. Sherlock Holmes and Miss Jane Marple would be appalled, but it's a likable and believable outcome.

The problems I had with the first book are largely avoided in this one. He mostly sticks with educated, majority characters, so he (thank goodness) avoids presenting a suburbanite's understanding of what a poor black kid must feel. His dialogue is still clipped and terse, but Goldman has either learned to control his tendency toward ludicrous quips, or a wise editor out there spared us from some of the cringe-worthy exchanges that deflated "Shake Down". One last quibble - toward the end of the novel, a journalist claims she will be doing follow-up stories in 5 years, and asserts, "I'm not going anywhere." Mr. Goldman obviously failed to check on the career confidence of print journalists.

That said, this is simply a darned fun read. It's exciting, engaging, and well-crafted. The Kansas City references enliven the book for a local reader, but the book is not dependent on them. I came to this book expecting to find material to mock, but I wound up staying up late last night, turning pages and promising myself to quit after just one more chapter. When I turned the last page, I knew that Joel Goldman had written a fine example of the genre.

Sunday Poetry: Poetry, by Marianne Moore

Poetry

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise
if it must, these things are important not because a

high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because they are
useful. When they become so derivative as to become unintelligible,
the same thing may be said for all of us, that we
do not admire what
we cannot understand: the bat
holding on upside down or in quest of something to

eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless wolf under
a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse
that feels a flea, the base-
ball fan, the statistician--
nor is it valid
to discriminate against "business documents and

school-books"; all these phenomena are important. One must make a distinction
however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the result is not poetry,
nor till the poets among us can be
"literalists of
the imagination"--above
insolence and triviality and can present

for inspection, "imaginary gardens with real toads in them," shall we have
it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,
the raw material of poetry in
all its rawness and
that which is on the other hand
genuine, you are interested in poetry.

- by Marianne Moore
______________________________________________

What do you think of Marianne Moore's defense of poetry? I, personally, like the argument, though I hesitate to call the poem itself a good example of poetry. It reminds me of a tedious professor lecturing in a hall - well informed, and certainly meaningful, but the good stuff is in the quotations, not the narrative.

The poem appears to be almost unstructured, but it is, in fact, a fairly tightly worked example of syllabic structure. For example, each stanza's first line has 19 syllables, and all but one of the stanzas ends with a 13 syllable line. So she paid attention to what she was doing.

But what good does any of that do us? You don't get a rhythm reading this poem - you don't get rocked along with iambic pentameter, kicked by rhythmic feet or treated to clever rhymes. Instead, all you really get is the satisfaction of knowing that the poet was at least paying attention to something, even if it doesn't make any difference to your level of satisfaction. Kind of like having drinking cheap wine from fine crystal, the artistry is superfluous and wasted.

Ultimately, I like the poem. By playing academic syllabic games with poetry, she embodies the tension between great poetry and those who strive to understand it. She knows the way it ought to be - "imaginary gardens with real toads", but she cannot quite get to the point of producing poetry herself. Like her, there are times I dislike poetry, but I remain interested in it.