Monthly Archives: May 2012
The Cemetery Letter
One day my lifetime-so-far Social Security Statement arrived, “Prepared especially for Kihm Winship.” Which is easy to believe because no one else would want it. Laurie said, “Isn’t this funny?” I look at the earnings for my first year out of college: $1,659. My laughter is hollow. But farther up the column I can smile […]
A Bus Ride with Virginia Woolf
July 9, 1998 Yesterday, I was the only person in the Syracuse bus station reading Virginia Woolf’s The Waves. I’ve been trying to finish it for 20 years, but it’s so beautifully written that I stop to marvel at sentences, read them aloud to whoever will listen, drift off in my own reveries inspired by […]
The Beers of Martin Luther
The agricultural revolution and the domestication of cereal grains occurred around 6000 BC. Between 3000 and 2000 BC in Mesopotamia, malting and fermentation were understood and practiced. Barley and wheat were common, and 40% of all cereal grain was used for brewing. Knowledge of brewing spread to Babylon and Egypt, and by a northward route […]
H.L. Mencken, Homebrewer
“No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.” You have undoubtedly heard that phrase before, perhaps in a discussion of politics, television or light beer. It comes to us from Henry Louis Mencken, and alone would have been enough to earn him a place in our collective memory. But he gave […]
Faithful Readers 