by Rob Loughran
You can delay grief with activities or chemicals, but you cannot deny it unless you chose not to heal it. Elisa’s first day of school was also the first day I faced, and precisely the time I began to mend, the actual and excruciating emotion surrounding the death of the woman I loved.
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Two granddaughters make an appearance in the local Press Democrat:
BORROWED
My second-oldest daughter Rachel on her last visit from North Carolina opened her wallet in the Safeway checkout line and I noticed her white Sonoma County library card—replete with a faded Hello Kitty sticker— was on top of all the other debit, credit and ID cards. “You still have,” I asked, “your old library card?”
“Of course,” she said. “It’s one of my prized possessions.”
I was touched.
Rachel was probably six or seven when I took her to the old library (off Commerce by the old TG&Y) to get her key to the real Magic Kingdom.
Books are essential in our family. We all read them voraciously and I’ve written, and even occasionally sell a few. I still recall looks of childhood horror and confusion when Rachel and her older sister Danielle had slumber party guests and we’d turn off the t.v. at nine o’clock and pull out books—R. L. Stine or “The Babysitters’ Club” series for the girls and a Ross Thomas or Lawrence Block mystery for me—and begin to read while there was a fully functioning television with a state of the art VHS (“Be Kind, Rewind!”) in the room.
Books are still paramount in our family’s experience and today I had the privilege of taking my youngest daughter, Elisa’s, two girls Gillian and Gwenyth to the shiny new library in Rohnert Park to get their library cards.
It involved two trips because I needed to provide ID for the children. In the olden days you could just point to the kids and their physical presence in the universe sufficed. But today you are not official—despite the fact you are standing there—until you’ve been quantified and verified by a bar code.
But I digress and the double-trip allowed us to squeeze in a trip to both the Fundemonium hobby shop and Baskin Robbins: making an important and enjoyable day even more so.
Gillian and Gwen filled out the paperwork, displayed their health cards, and devised their own four-digit PIN codes. (The years of their births, but please don’t tell anyone. I’ve been sworn to secrecy.) Then we browsed the stacks and ten-year-old Gillian (after proudly pasting her “I Got My Library Card Today” sticker onto her blue tanktop) checked out the YA novel “A Touch of Frost”. Eight-year-old Gwen opted for volume one of “The Jewel Fairies Collection” (and saved her sticker for a secret, distant, compelling application). Their pristine turquoise library cards were filed away into Gillian’s flowered purse and a tiny pink-and-white wallet with a bow that matched Gwen’s shirt. A successful, fun, landmark day. Perhaps, like Aunt Rachel, a cherished Rite of Passage day: an initiation into the world of reading, delight, illumination. But even though Rachel’s white, Hello Kitty festooned Sonoma County library card proves that I did, thirty years ago, take her on a similar adventure to obtain the treasured card I honestly don’t remember that day.
I’m certain we smiled and joked.
She was happy. I was proud.
But I cannot remember what books she checked out, what she wore, or if an “I Got My Library Card Today” sticker were involved. I didn’t remember what color her first library card was until I’d seen it three decades later, framed and prominent, in her wallet. Unfortunately it turns out that memories, much like library books, are borrowed and loaned, not owned.
I don’t know how often Gwen and Gillian will use their cards, but if they’re like their mom and aunts they will wear them out. I doubt they will save their cards like Rachel but I hope they remember the experience. As for me, like little Gwen tucking her “I Got My Library Card Today” sticker away I am resolved to be more vigilant, less reckless, with today’s memories.
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I worked at Dempsey’s Restaurant & Brewery (Petaluma) for seven years. While working there this is one of the many pieces I wrote for American Brewer:
MARTHA STEWART IS HOMEBREWING
Hi, I’m Martha Stewart, and today we’ll be homebrewing. After savoring the delights of cell-brewed hooch during my stay at “The Academy” I decided, upon my release and the failure of my latest television endeavor, to delve into the art of homebrewing.
Everyone knows that beer is a fermented concoction consisting of water, yeast, malted barley and hops. But all too often the main ingredient, the water, is overlooked. I start my very special homebrewing process by conditioning the water. This consists of bringing the water you will use to a quick boil. In America, incidentally, the greatest country on the face of the earth, we have fluoridated water so that our nation’s youth will have the opportunity to smile as brilliantly, and as often, as I do. This added fluorine boils at a much lower temperature than water, so it will evaporate harmlessly into the atmosphere.
Most of our water also contains chlorine, which will mask the subtle fruity flavor of my homebrewed ale. Chlorine also evaporates below water’s boiling point. But instead of wasting this precious gas, we’ll capture it in this copper coil I've temporarily removed from my backyard sour mash still. Chlorine is, of course, the primary ingredient in mustard gas. This particular gas has been much maligned as a chemical deterrent. It’s been confused with those “poison gases” for so long that people have forgotten that it is technically a blister agent, designed simply to cause huge skin blisters that would render an army unable to fight. The huge number of deaths from mustard gas in World War I is as much the result of the crude delivery system as the mustard gas itself.
Mustard gas is one of my very favorite homemade chemical weapons, as it is cheap and can be manufactured while homebrewing or made from everyday household products like Clorox. Although outlawed following World War I, there is still a brisk demand for this natural, homemade commodity on the Middle Eastern black market.
The barley (Hordeum vulgare) must be malted for the next brewing step. It is soaked and allowed to germinate. It is dried to halt the germination, the sprouts are removed, and the grain—now technically malt—is stored for six weeks. Malted barley can be purchased, but the only shortcut Martha Stewart ever takes is ignoring that irritating little box on the Long Form 1040 where it says: “List Additional Sources of Income.” Plus, I can use the six weeks of downtime to re-grout every swimming pool in the neighborhood, bake some brownies, and knit an all-weather, red, white and blue woolen tarp for Air Force One.
The next step is called mashing, and if this brings to mind my garlicky-blue-cheese-mashed-potatoes, you’re sadly mistaken. The malt is ground, mixed with our conditioned water and heated to 155°. When barley cooks, a mucilaginous substance results. This barley milk is a wonderful nutrient source for those suffering from bleeding gastric ulcers. It can also be used externally as a soothing application for herpes. (I’m a naughty, naughty girl…)
The result of the mashing process is called wort. It is a lovely amber color, exactly the shade of the finest Moroccan hashish. On a tangent, there is a great deal of confusion surrounding the origin of the English word “assassin.” Many etymologists assert that it is derived from the Arabic “Hashshashin,” or “Hashish smoking dope fiend,” as assassinations were carried out by these depraved dope smoking felons. They are half right; Arabic assassins were given hashish to smoke, but it was so that they would experience the rapture of heaven and not fear death. Too bad those ancient sheiks didn’t have my recipe for chocolate blueberry cheesecake; this whole drug problem might well have been averted.
Anyway, the worst is transferred to a kettle for boiling. During this process, dried hop blossoms are added. In addition to preventing spoilage, the hops add aroma and flavor to the beer.
You probably won’t be surprised to learn that I’ve discovered other uses for Hum
ulus lupulus, or our friend the hop plant. The name hops usually refers to the scaly, conelike fruit that develops from the female flowers; hops are most commonly used for their calming effect on the nervous system; hop tea is recommended for nervous diarrhea, insomnia and restlessness. Hops will also help to stimulate appetite, relieve intestinal cramping and dispel flatulence.
Whew! I just wish my cellmate at “The Academy” had consumed more freshly brewed hop tea!
The next step in Martha Stewart Is Homebrewing is the heart of the matter: fermentation. Brewer’s yeast is added to the wort, which converts sugar into alcohol and that effervescent by-product, carbon dioxide. Use a top fermenting ale yeast, and you’ll be sipping suds in six weeks. Bottom fermenting lager yeasts, of course, take a little longer.
It is almost time to sample a batch of Martha Stewart’s Homebrewed ale. But first, we must attend to the one aspect of homebrewing that is often overlooked. That is the Art of naming each individual batch of beer we brew. Whether it’s only a few gallons or enough beer to quench the Minnesota Vikings’ thirst during a party- barge-orgy, your brewing efforts deserve a name that captures the spirit not only of the beer, but also, with your permission, the soul of the brew-mistress.
I’ve come up with the perfect name for my homebrewing effort:
Martha’s Bitter.
Cheers everyone!
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Again, for American Brewer:
BEERCABULARY
What do the words honeymoon, berserk and the phrases Rule of Thumb, Wet your Whistle and Mind your p’s and q’s have in common? They are directly inspired by the world’s favorite alcoholic beverage.
Beer.
Berserk which meant Bear Coat in the ancient Norse language and today means crazy and out of control literally referred to a specific class of Nordic warriors who were seized with a frenzy, ripped off their armor (down to their hairy chests) howled, bit their shields, foamed at the mouth and were considered invincible. They acted in this berserker mode after consuming two or three bucketsful of a lusty and vibrant brew known as aul. The root of our word ale. They were called berserkers in honor of a mythological warrior, Berserker. He could morph into wild beasts of every variety; he was impervious to fire; iron couldn’t harm him. His twelve sons (each also named Berserker) possessed the same genes and inspired the same terror. Modern historians assert that varieties of mushrooms, roots, and herbs were part of the decoction and more responsible for the frenzy than the beer.
Beer has been around as long as civilization and before the invention of the thermometer brewers would dip their thumb or finger into the vat to determine the right temperature for adding yeast. Too high a temperature kills the yeast; too cool and the perambulating-little-yeasties can’t work their magic. That’s where we garnered the phrase Rule of Thumb.
Honeymoon comes from the ancient Norse tradition of the bride’s father supplying his new son-in-law with all the mead he could consume the month following his marriage. Mead, the universal alcohol beverage of that era and locality, is sometimes referred to as a wine, sometimes a honey-beer. This period of time following the nuptials came to be known as a Honeymonth, then a Honeymoon. It is also tied into the traditional idea that consuming honey increases virility, ie, The birds and the bees.
Centuries ago in English pubs each regular patron had their own tankard for hoisting ale. Some consumers had a ceramic whistle baked into their mugs so they could whistle when they were running low on suds; hence To Wet Your Whistle.
Mind your p’s and q’s (meaning to be precise) originated in inns and alehouses. The bartender kept track of the evening’s consumption by marking a p for a pint and a q for a quart.
Off on a bit of a tangent, but still related to beer is the term Hair of the Dog. It was recorded in 1546 in Heywood’s Dialogue Containing Proverbs and Epigrammes. “I pray they let me and my fellow have a Hair of the Dog that bit us last night—and bitten we were both to the brain, alright.” The phrase comes from the accepted 16th century medical practice that when bitten by a mad (rabid) dog, your chances of recovery were enhanced if a poultice made from the hair-of-the-dog-that-bit-you were applied to the wound. The term was first recorded in the U.S. in
1842, but had presumably been used as a hangover cure for many years, although the term hangover didn’t officially appear until 1912.
Tavern and Bar are derived from sacred and legal sources. Tavern is a 13th century English word from the Latin taberna. We also get tabernacle (where Jews give shelter to the Ark of the Covenant and Christians house the Eucharist) from taberna. Bar is a 16th century offering, from the actual physical iron bars pulled down at closing time. Courts of law had the same device, hence the term practicing before the bar.
The simple word beer has an uncertain etymology. Some speculate that it is such an ancient and pervasive word that it’s always been there; kind of like trying to remember when you couldn’t walk. (Last year’s Superbowl party doesn’t count.) The word occurs in Old English, but primarily in poetry. In the 16th century it came into common parlance describing a particular type of strong, hopped malt liquor. Brewhouse has been in use since 1374. Brewpub popped up in the 1980’s to describe, well, brewpubs.
Cheers!
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This “Drinktionary” appeared in Bartender and has been reprinted several times:
A MODEST DRINKTIONARY
“Whiskey”, “Martini”, “Booze”, “Vodka”, “Daiquri”, “Gin”, and “Rum”: words used in every “Bar” and “tavern” in the U.S. But where did these words come from? Who coined them?
“Martini” was first recorded in 1899, but people were drinking the “Martínez” (half gin, half vermouth) since the 1860s. The Martínez was invented by Professor Jerry Thomas of San Francisco's Occidental Hotel. He concocted the potion for a traveler waiting for a ferry boat from San Francisco to Martinez, California.
“Whiskey” derives from the Gaelic, “Usquebaugh”; literally meaning the “Water of Life”. Similarly, “Vodka” comes from the Russian “voda”, “water” and means “little water”. Vodka originated in imperial Russia, it was first introduced to the world during the Crimean war (1853 to 1856). Vodka replaced Scotch as America's most popular spirit in 1975. The origins of “Booze” (appropriately) are clouded and confused. It may be from the Dutch verb “bosen”, “to drink”; from the middle English verb “bousen”, “to carouse”; or from the Old English “bowze” which is the falconry term for a hawk drinking. Others contend that it is connected with the 3000 year old Egyptian word “boozah”, a type of ancient beer.
“Daiquiri”, according to HL Mencken, was invented by the U.S. Army engineers stationed at Daiquiri, Cuba in 1898. They ran out of gin and whiskey and began drinking pale Cuban rum with lime juice. “Rum” has also been called “rumbustion”, “rumbo”, and “rumbullion”. Conjecture is that the name derives from the ending of the Latin word for sugar, “saccarum”. “Gin” was created by the Dutch doctor, Professor Sylvius, as a medicinal tonic. Its name comes from the Dutch “Jenever”, “juniper berries”, which gives gin its distinctive flavor. Gin was first introduced in England in the 17th century as a substitute for brandy, which was, at the time, distilled exclusively by the hated French.
“Tavern” originated in the 13th century and derives from the Latin “taberna”, “shed” or “booth”. Ironically, “taberna” is also the root of the ecclesiastical term “tabernacle”. “Bar” is a 16th-century English word, from the iron bars pulled over the counter at closing time. Similar iron bars were used in the English courts giving us the law term “practicing before the bar”. The term “belly up to the bar”?
No explanation necessary.
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First published in Trail Runner and reprinted in several other running and fitness magazines:
HOW TO RUN A MARATHON AND STILL HAVE TI
ME FOR SEX
The marathon, it has been said, is a lesson in humility. The first marathoner, Phiddipides, dropped stone dead after running to Athens from the plain of Marathon to report the defeat of the Persian fleet.
Humiliation and/or death are not the results we are after here.
There is a proven method of training that will allow you to run a marathon comfortably, safely and enjoyably. And still leave you enough time and energy for job, family, fun, frolic, and, as promised, sex. How? Read on.
How did Jerry Rice prepare for a football game? He didn’t play golf. He ran pass pattern after pass pattern after pass pattern. He worked on what he hoped to do in a football game until it became so ingrained that he didn’t have to think about it during the game. It was simply a part of his physical arsenal: automatic, seemingly effortless, instant.
Conversely, too many people train for a marathon by running 10Ks. This is like Mr. Rice throwing the ball during practice: it’s still football but it’s not the skill pertinent to the desired task and outcome.