Harris Wilder Campaigning for Funkhouser?

The first campaign promise of the 2011 mayoral election has been issued, and it comes from somebody not even running. According to Tony's Kansas City, Harris Wilder has promised to leave Kansas City if Mayor Mark Funkhouser wins reelection in 2011.

Close observers will note that this is not the first time that Mr. Wilder has offered crucial support to the Mayor. When this summer's recall effort failed by a few hundred votes to force an election, it was none other than Harris Wilder who delivered essential complacency to the effort, assuring people that the effort was going to be a ringing success.

Demonstrating his wry and subtle sense of humor, Wilder asserted that a vote for Funkhouser would show that "the voters of Kansas City admit that they don't care about the budget". As treasurer of the recall effort, he somehow generated $33,000 of debt while bringing in only $1,175 in contributions. While Kay Barnes and the developer-funded prior city council managed to spend the our city into a fiscal crisis with larger numbers, Wilder wins hands-down when it comes to percentages.

(All joking aside, Mr. Wilder deserves sincere appreciation for both his passion for his causes - however much I may occasionally think them ill-chosen - and for his willingness to freely speak his mind. I wish him and all who read this a fulfilling 2010.)

Shoe Bomber vs. Underwear Bomber - A Study in Republican Effectiveness

Republican scoundrels are spinning the thwarted terrorist attempt on Christmas Day into a reason to attack President Obama, and the media are repeating the frothing opportunism as if it is legitimate discussion. It's an all-too-familiar pattern of attack and repeat, at a level that leaves thoughtful persons shaking their heads at the breathtaking hypocrisy of it all.

Honestly, it never ever occurred to me to accuse Bush of weakness or failure when the shoe-bomber attempt presented almost exactly the same opportunity to those of us on the left. Foolishly, I viewed the attempted terrorist attack as an attempted terrorist attack, instead of as a welcome cudgel with which to bash our nation's President.

Commenting on a post by Politico noting the wildly different Republican reaction to the two wildly similar situations, John Aravosis of AMERICAblog does a great job of explaining the difference:

I suspect a few things are going on here. First, the shoe bomber incident was three months after September 11. We were all still shell-shocked. Rather than being afraid to criticize the president, I think we were all so scared, the thought didn't even cross our minds (and the same thing applied to the media, which was also tempered following 9/11). Second, Democrats aren't as good at political PR as Republicans are. Republicans are always looking for an opportunity to take advantage of a situation, a crisis. Democrats tend to be more principled. And finally, Republicans are better at shutting down criticism. If Democrats had tried to speak out, the GOP would have accused us of being un-American, and the Democrats would freak.

Around the BLOCK Puts Food Review in Context

Not long ago, I stumbled upon Around the BLOCK, a nicely done local food blog. The author presents thoughtful reviews of well-chosen restaurants, and excels at providing vivid descriptions without lapsing into strident superlatives of praise or denunciation. Intelligence and grace abound.

In the temptingly positive review she posted yesterday about 1924 Main, one paragraph stands out as a must-read for those of us who believe that a thriving restaurant culture is an important and reliable sign of a city's vibrancy:

At 2 courses for $20 or 3 for $25 (all dishes are also offered a la carte), it’s hard to beat the price for an upscale, quality experience. All restaurants are struggling to survive in the sluggish economy, and owner Rob Dalzell has responded by making dinner more affordable without taking away the glamour of dining out. And, he is one of Kansas City’s independent restaurateurs, all of whom should be supported. If we don’t patronize these local treasures, they will not survive and we will be forced to spend our money in chain operations, which typically are less creative, more cookie-cutter, and don’t utilize local farmers. And what fun would that be?

Where will you spend your restaurant dollars in 2010?

Sunday Poetry: Prosody 101, by Linda Pastan

Prosody 101

When they taught me that what mattered most
was not the strict iambic line goose-stepping
over the page but the variations
in that line and the tension produced
on the ear by the surprise of difference,
I understood yet didn't understand
exactly, until just now, years later
in spring, with the trees already lacy
and camellias blowsy with middle age,
I looked out and saw what a cold front had done
to the garden, sweeping in like common language,
unexpected in the sensuous
extravagance of a Maryland spring.
There was a dark edge around each flower
as if it had been outlined in ink
instead of frost, and the tension I felt
between the expected and actual
was like that time I came to you, ready
to say goodbye for good, for you had been
a cold front yourself lately, and as I walked in
you laughed and lifted me up in your arms
as if I too were lacy with spring
instead of middle aged like the camellias,
and I thought: so this is Poetry!

- by Linda Pastan
______________________________________

Poems about poetry are rarely as much fun or as good as this. It starts off by announcing and demonstrating one of the essential secrets to poetry that I love - variations on noticeable rhythm. Pastan does not settle into a "strict iambic line goose-step"; instead, she kicks us around with every form of foot imaginable.

She also treats us to the second secret to poetry that I love - "imaginary gardens with real toads in them," as described by Marianne Moore in another poem about poetry. In this case, the garden itself is the bit of concrete reality that anchors the poem in the everyday world we can relate to. The frost described is a real phenomenon, but it becomes a symbol for the unexpected - both when it comes as common language, or as a warm greeting from a spouse.

(Linda Pastan's poetry may be purchased at your favorite local bookseller.)

Fido is Destroying the Earth - Let's Choose Tastier Pets

A little while ago, I did a post pondering why in the world people willingly invite guests into their homes who literally behave like animals (because they are animals). A few days later, I learned that "owning a great dane [should] make you as much of an eco-outcast as an SUV driver", and that a medium-sized dog has an eco-footprint of 2 acres.

And, pet cats kill whales, dolphins and sea otters with their feces. Killing sea otters?! I'm aghast.

Fortunately, there's a good news for responsible people who choose to share living space with animals. "Rabbits are good," he says, "provided you eat them."

Now, I'm not seriously suggesting that my pet-owning friends should get rid of their dogs and cats, and start raising rabbits. Nor am I unaware that my own hobby of brewing beer stamps its own eco-footprint on our shared earth, and produces a fair amount of CO2. (It's like having millions of yeast cells as pets.)

I am suggesting, however, as does the article cited, that we should all should consider raising tastier pets. My "yeast pets" aren't particularly tasty themselves (except, perhaps, in a hefeweizen, where the yeast is sometimes swirled into suspension to enhance the flavor), but their waste products are alcohol and carbonation, so I think they deserve the greenlight. And while I've never tasted dog or cat (nor do I intend to, though it's acceptable in other cultures), I would support controlled hunts in suburban areas by any groups of people who enjoy it. Moving further down the chain, I don't see why aquarium owners don't switch from guppies to crappie or sea bass. Similarly, Aunt Mabel's parrot could be swapped out for pheasant or quail.

I understand that some of the more squeamish among us my hesitate to "harvest" our own pets. No problem. A few tweaks to the format of most pet shows would convert them into gourmet pageants. The people arguing for dog parks would gain support from hungry hunters. Animal shelters would do a booming business, with "adoptions" measured by the pound.

(As I think the cited article demonstrates, it's pretty easy to find fault with just about any activity done by others. Any human activity has costs and benefits, and those of us who spend our time critiquing the enjoyments of others bring a particularly toxic element of nastiness into our shared environment. A good friend of mine (and a great dane owner) is fond of quoting Chardin - "Joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God." As a corollary, consider what presence that feeling of annoyed indignation might signify.)

Where Have All the Pretzels Gone?

We live in a golden age of beer, with hundreds of brands and varieties easily available at local stores at reasonable prices. No human population has ever, in the history of mankind, had a richer beer experience than American beer lovers today. It is a joyful time to be alive.

But where have all the pretzels gone?

What a painful irony it is that now that I am of age to match pretzels with their proper beverage, the honest pretzel is nearly extinct, preserved only in far-away gourmet sanctuaries beyond the reach of ordinary folk.

Today's pretzels are a shadow of what pretzels should be. Pretzels should be twisted, but now they are pooped preformed from machined tools and baked to bland uniformity. When I was a child, even the mass market brands were twisted, with little extra-browned pretzel nipples to be snapped off the top arch, and a corrugated center where strands of dough did a joyful dance of crispness. Now, mass-market pretzels are flat and uniform, tanned and smooth.


And the snap! Back in the day, when you bit a pretzel, it snapped like a dried branch. The place where it broke would be jagged with striations and spikes. Crumbs were flakes or like tiny twigs of dough. Now, pretzels are like compressed powder. The texture when you break one is like crumbling a clump of laundry detergent.

Don't get me wrong - I'll eat a bag of the current version of mass-market pretzels without a shred of self-control. Even a bad pretzel is, after all, a pretzel, and proof that crispy and salty are two keys to the good life.

But every now and then, I'll recall the pretzels of an earlier time. "Nibble with Gibble's" brand came in plastic bags and a twist-tie, and brightened winters in Schenectady, New York. When my mother passed away a couple years ago, the only item my wise brother sought from the home was a large round Tupperware container that she used to store pretzels in the cabinet when we were kids, but, alas, it was gone like Rosebud.

Snyder's sourdough pretzels are the closest you'll find in our grocery stores to the great pretzels of my childhood, though they are expensive and taste of cardboard. I've heard rumors that there are still great pretzels being made out there, and I may someday resort to mail ordering some. I've even tried baking my own, but they came out stone-hard, and looked more scatological than appetizing.

Even if I mail-order or bake my own, though, it won't be the same. Great pretzels are like a mother's love. You shouldn't need to seek it out, and scarcity reduces, rather than enhances, its value. They're both at their best when they are a comfortable part of everyday life. This holiday season, I miss them both.

Sunday Poetry: Woodchucks, by Maxine Kumin

Woodchucks

Gassing the woodchucks didn't turn out right.
The knockout bomb from the Feed and Grain Exchange
was featured as merciful, quick at the bone
and the case we had against them was airtight,
both exits shoehorned shut with puddingstone,
but they had a sub-sub-basement out of range.

Next morning they turned up again, no worse
for the cyanide than we for our cigarettes
and state-store Scotch, all of us up to scratch.
They brought down the marigolds as a matter of course
and then took over the vegetable patch
nipping the broccoli shoots, beheading the carrots.

The food from our mouths, I said, righteously thrilling
to the feel of the .22, the bullets' neat noses.
I, a lapsed pacifist fallen from grace
puffed with Darwinian pieties for killing,
now drew a bead on the little woodchuck's face.
He died down in the everbearing roses.

Ten minutes later I dropped the mother. She
flipflopped in the air and fell, her needle teeth
still hooked in a leaf of early Swiss chard.
Another baby next. O one-two-three
the murderer inside me rose up hard,
the hawkeye killer came on stage forthwith.

There's one chuck left. Old wily fellow, he keeps
me cocked and ready day after day after day.
All night I hunt his humped-up form. I dream
I sight along the barrel in my sleep.
If only they'd all consented to die unseen
gassed underground the quiet Nazi way.

- Maxine Kumin
_______________________________________________

This poem hinges on the voice. It's not about woodchucks, it's not about killing, it's about the narrator.

On first reading, Woodchucks is an almost cartoonish tale of farmer vs. varmint, only slightly more serious than Elmer Fudd going after Bugs Bunny. It was written in 1972, and it it weren't attributed to Maxine Kumin, it could have been mistaken for Carl Spackler's lone literary achievement.

But there's that last line - too jarring for a folksy farmer poem, and it makes you reread the entire thing, alert for nuance from Kumin. If you know your writers, you remember that Kumin is an animal rights supporter, unlikely to let a killer of animals off so lightly.

Some commentators see a progression in the ferocity of the narrator, but I don't think that's quite it. Despite the narrator's assurances, gassing the family of woodchucks is not truly more merciful than other methods of killing them. The marketing claim that it is somehow more merciful is undercut by the final lines and the reference to the lives lost in the gas chambers of the Holocaust.

The frustration of the failed initial plan annihilation does, however, reveal a deeper bloodthirst in the narrator. It's there in the beginning, with "quick to the bone" death being sought, and the "murderer" is already "inside me" when she resorts to bullets.

Those who prefer to read this poem as a progression of viciousness are missing the more pessimistic point of Kumin's poem. The narrator does not become more dehumanized as the poem progresses - the mass murder of gassing is no less (perhaps more?) dehumanizing than the individual deaths brought by bullets. By the end, the narrator blames the sole survivor for keeping her "cocked and ready", but that implies that the narrator is a gun by her very nature. You can't keep a bouquet "cocked and ready".

On a closing note, did you happen to notice the rhyme in this poem? The rhyming pattern is so subtle - ABCACB - that it is hard to notice, yet makes the poem flow beautifully. Rhyme, in the hand of a master, does not necessarily bring a sing-song tone.

(Purchase Maxine Kumin's poetry here, or at your favorite bookstore. Her Selected Poems, 1960-1990 is genius for 6 cents a page, or less if purchased used.)

Recognized Beer Judge

I received my test scores from the Beer Judge Certification Program yesterday evening, and my score put me at the Recognized Beer Judge category. I did better in my tasting portion than I did in my writing. I was hoping for a better score, but, during the test, I accidentally completely skipped one of the essay questions, and did a poor job of formulating a Weissbier recipe from scratch, without reference materials.

The next level up is Certified Beer Judge, which will require some more experience judging in sanctioned contests (even if I had scored 100% on the test, I could only be "Recognized" until I racked up some more experience points) and a retake of the written portion of the exam.

Cheers to being a dedicated student!

Sunday Poetry: Pioneers! O Pioneers!, by Walt Whitman

Pioneers! O Pioneers!

COME my tan-faced children,
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready,
Have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes?
Pioneers! O pioneers!

For we cannot tarry here,
We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,
We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

O you youths, Western youths,
So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship,
Plain I see you Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Have the elder races halted?
Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there beyond the seas?
We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

All the past we leave behind,
We debouch upon a newer mightier world, varied world,
Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

We detachments steady throwing,
Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep,
Conquering, holding, daring, venturing as we go the unknown ways,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

We primeval forests felling,
We the rivers stemming, vexing we and piercing deep the mines within,
We the surface broad surveying, we the virgin soil upheaving,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Colorado men are we,
From the peaks gigantic, from the great sierras and the high plateaus,
From the mine and from the gully, from the hunting trail we come,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

From Nebraska, from Arkansas,
Central inland race are we, from Missouri, with the continental blood intervein'd,
All the hands of comrades clasping, all the Southern, all the Northern,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

O resistless restless race!
O beloved race in all! O my breast aches with tender love for all!
O I mourn and yet exult, I am rapt with love for all,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Raise the mighty mother mistress,
Waving high the delicate mistress, over all the starry mistress, (bend your heads all,)
Raise the fang'd and warlike mistress, stern, impassive, weapon'd mistress,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

See my children, resolute children,
By those swarms upon our rear we must never yield or falter,
Ages back in ghostly millions frowning there behind us urging,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

On and on the compact ranks,
With accessions ever waiting, with the places of the dead quickly fill'd,
Through the battle, through defeat, moving yet and never stopping,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

O to die advancing on!
Are there some of us to droop and die? has the hour come?
Then upon the march we fittest die, soon and sure the gap is fill'd.
Pioneers! O pioneers!

All the pulses of the world,
Falling in they beat for us, with the Western movement beat,
Holding single or together, steady moving to the front, all for us,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Life's involv'd and varied pageants,
All the forms and shows, all the workmen at their work,
All the seamen and the landsmen, all the masters with their slaves,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

All the hapless silent lovers,
All the prisoners in the prisons, all the righteous and the wicked,
All the joyous, all the sorrowing, all the living, all the dying,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

I too with my soul and body,
We, a curious trio, picking, wandering on our way,
Through these shores amid the shadows, with the apparitions pressing,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Lo, the darting bowling orb!
Lo, the brother orbs around, all the clustering suns and planets,
All the dazzling days, all the mystic nights with dreams,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

These are of us, they are with us,
All for primal needed work, while the followers there in embryo wait behind,
We to-day's procession heading, we the route for travel clearing,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

O you daughters of the West!
O you young and elder daughters! O you mothers and you wives!
Never must you be divided, in our ranks you move united,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Minstrels latent on the prairies!
(Shrouded bards of other lands, you may rest, you have done your work,)
Soon I hear you coming warbling, soon you rise and tramp amid us,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Not for delectations sweet,
Not the cushion and the slipper, not the peaceful and the studious,
Not the riches safe and palling, not for us the tame enjoyment,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Do the feasters gluttonous feast?
Do the corpulent sleepers sleep? have they lock'd and bolted doors?
Still be ours the diet hard, and the blanket on the ground,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Has the night descended?
Was the road of late so toilsome? did we stop discouraged nodding on our way?
Yet a passing hour I yield you in your tracks to pause oblivious,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Till with sound of trumpet,
Far, far off the daybreak call-hark! how loud and clear I hear it wind,
Swift! to the head of the army!-swift! spring to your places,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

- by Walt Whitman
___________________________________________

You've heard snippets of this poem, read by William Geer (Grandpa on The Waltons), on TV commercials selling Levi's jeans. It's brilliant, and I'm sure Whitman is smiling at the audacity.

Like most of Whitman's poems, "Pioneers! O Pioneers" suffers horribly in dissection. There's no point in discussing the rhythm or the rhyme; the rhythm is too natural, and there is no rhyme. Instead of those, we have straight passion - Whitman's words are like bricks thrown at the glass building of complacency.

Whitman is more than rebellion - Whitman is purity of love and self. Whitman calls upon our better side - a celebration of our nation, not a competition of factions. He allows all their due - he mentions Missouri fondly, and describes enough of America to know he is singing of all America.

If you don't have a copy of Leaves of Grass, the volume that Whitman published to the astonishment of all and the horror of some, go buy a copy; it is one of the basic texts of American literature.

Easy Great Bread at Home in 5 Minutes

I've written about my sourdough baking, and I got comments and emails about people's love of home-made fresh bread. But it's an hours-long process, requiring attentive measuring and careful timing, with uncertain results, particularly for newbie bakers. With Farm-to-Market's wonderful bread on supermarket shelves, and Fervere producing some of the best breads in the world, you can avoid the whole hassle for 4 or 5 bucks.

But you can make your whole house smell like baking bread for cents a loaf, and be rewarded with a truly top-notch bread, way up there with Farm-to-Market, without worry and without scheduling your day around it. I don't mean to sound like a street corner evangelist, or a side-show barker, but, seriously, I mean YOU, you should have fresh bread this week.

The secret is cold, wet dough. You spend a few minutes mixing together 3 cups of water, a table spoon and a half of yeast, two teaspoons of salt (more or less, depending on your taste), and six and a half cups of flour in a bowl with a spoon (no kneading), let it sit, covered loosely, for a couple hours, then put it in your refrigerator. Over the next couple weeks (if it lasts that long), you put flour on your hands, grab a grapefruit sized chunk of it, shape it into a sticky ball, let it rest for 40 minutes, and then bake it in a 450 degree oven for half an hour or so. Your hands are dirty for under 5 minutes, and you'll be pulling an awesome loaf of bread out of the oven in less time than it takes for 3 episodes of "Scrubs".

I meant to post a picture of one of the loaves I made this week, but it fell victim to breakfast toast.

If you want to learn more, and make the bread even better, this article is what turned me on to this miracle method, and it has a few tips that are absolutely worth it, like using a pizza stone and putting a pan of water in when you bake the bread. The authors of the article also have a blog and a couple books (Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking and Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day: 100 New Recipes Featuring Whole Grains, Fruits, Vegetables, and Gluten-Free Ingredients). I haven't even read the books yet - the Kansas City Public Library (yea, Waldo Branch!) is working on it for me - but I've been wildly impressed with the breads I've made over the past couple weeks.

Why Pets?

According to her Facebook status, a blog friend was recently bloodied and lacerated by an animal she feeds. Another friend reported that she is constantly sporting puncture wounds and scratches from animals she is rescuing. Yet another bends her social calendar so that she can rush home to tend to two humongous animals that, if not watched, will steal her food from her kitchen counter with four feet on the ground.

Folks, there's something wrong with humans, and pets are proof.

Why would someone allow an animal to wound her, and then feed it? Do you think lions would find a human baby in the wild, decide it's cute, and keep it around the pride for its entire lifetime, feeding it and paying its medical bills? Where's the reciprocity?

I grew up as a dog lover, and I still like dogs, but it's not a close friendship anymore. When your dog jumps on me (or worse), or slobbers on me, or tries to talk me into grabbing a moistened tennis ball - I start deducting points from your assumed IQ.

Twink, Brandy and Bummer - dogs I spent my youth with - were fine companions, but that was in an age before video games and cable. Training a dog to sit still while I place a treat on its nose and hold it until I said "okay", yeah, that was a power rush, but surely there's an iPhone app for that. An app that won't wake you up in the middle of the night because it needs to go outside in 0 degree weather, or get sick on your pillow.

Why do seemingly intelligent friends open their homes to barely-domesticated animals that attack them and cost them money? Why do they arrange their schedules for the convenience of an animal that won't even allow them to sleep late without getting up and letting them make fecal deposits in their yard - fecal deposits which the owner will need to pick up or otherwise deal with?

Just think about that. If, after a wonderful, mind-blowingly romantic and sexy date, your companion took a dump in your bedroom, and then stood there looking at you with a "so what?" look on his or her face, and expected you to put a nice meal in a bowl for him or her, what would your reaction be? But that's acceptable behavior for a creature who will never buy you a nice birthday present, or pay half the cost of your mortgage?

99 Bottles of Beer on the Blog - Baltika #6 Porter

Winter has arrived, and it is time to pour a dark, rich, complex, warming beer. For $1.99, you can have 16.9 ounces of that, in a beer that has its origin in pre-revolution Russia. Baltika #6 Porter is one of the best beer values I've ever found.

Baltic porter is derived from Imperial Stouts, which were brewed by the English for Imperial Russia. Imperial stout is a bigger, stronger stout, and baltic porter is a bigger, stronger version of English porter, brewed in countries like Finland, Poland, Sweden, Lithuania and Russia. Because cold temperatures are easy to find in this region, baltic porters are cold-fermented lagers unlike most other porter styles, which tend to be ales.

Baltika porter pours almost black, with a tan head. The aroma tips you off that you have poured something different. There's malt, chocolate, caramel, dark roasted coffee, port wine, leather, and more. They should make a cologne out of this stuff.

The flavor is all that, plus sweetness. It tastes a bit like the raisins that get baked on top of an oatmeal cookie, verging on acrid, but rescued by sweetness. Hidden in all that flavor is 7% alcohol, which makes it a nice warming beer for a cold winter night.

Designing a Great Bock Beer

Bock can be a confusing beer for the casual drinker. Sometimes it's light-colored (Maibock), sometimes it's dark, thick and rich (doppelbock), and sometimes it's sweet and incredibly strong (eisbock). Worse, the most widely available "bock" in the United States is Shiner Bock, which isn't even a bock (it's just another dark American lager, like Michelob Classic Dark).

This weekend, I went to a moderately well-stocked beer store, and could not find a single tradtional bock on the shelves. The closest thing I could find was Rogue's wonderful Dead Guy Ale, which is similar to a Maibock, but brewed with ale yeast, and a couple doppelbocks.

If I want a great bock, it seems I will need to make it myself.

There are 4 varieties of bock beer. Maibock is moderately strong, pale-colored version of traditional bock beer, with less malty flavor. Traditional bock is the original rich malty German lager, originally brewed in the town of Einbeck in the 1300s. Doppelbock is a dark, rich, malty loaf of bread in a bottle, developed by monks who wanted to get a full meal while avoiding solid food. Eisbock is doppelbock which has been concentrated by freezing and draining away the rich bock concentrate which did not freeze with the water.

I want to make the traditional bock. I've never made one, they're hard to find, and wonderful to drink.

In designing a homebrew recipe, you start with your malts. A good homebrew shop will have a selection of dozens of malts, some of which are meant to be the backbone of a beer (base malts) and some of which are meant to add flavors (specialty malts).

Some "traditional bock" recipes use a fair amount of pilsner malt, which is a (generally) high-quality, very pale grain that was developed in the 1800s and made it possible to make very light-colored lagers. It's a great product, but it wasn't around when bock beers were originally made, and it also needs to be boiled 50% longer than other malts to avoid developing a cooked vegetable taste and smell in the beer. While some award-winning bocks are made with pilsner malt, I'm not going to use it. Instead, I will rely on some of the other interesting European malts available.

The classic malt for bock beer is Munich malt, a slightly darker malt. Weyermann's is a good brand I can buy at my local homebrew shop, and it comes in a light and a darker version. For my 10 gallon batch, I will be using 15 pounds of the lighter version, 10 pounds of the darker version, and 3 pounds of Vienna malt, which is similar to Munich, but gives a bit of a toasted flavor I enjoy.

For hops, I will use just enough German hops to add enough bitterness so that the sweetness is not overwhelming. I will probably add 3 ounces of Hallertau hops, the first hop variety known to be cultivated. I will add them all at the beginning, so that the boil will drive off most of the hop flavor, which would only distract from the maltiness I'm going to be seeking in this beer.

For water, I will use good old Kansas City tap water, filtered through carbon to remove the chorine.

For yeast, I will be using a special variety from one of the big yeast companies, available only temporarily. It is called Hella-bock, and it should "produce rich, full-bodied and malty beers with a complex flavor profile and a great mouth feel." That's what I'm looking for, and I have a batch of Oktoberfest fermenting on it right now. After I keg that beer this weekend, I'll put the bock right on top of the yeast. The more yeast, the better for a strong beer like a bock, and there should be plenty of yeast left over after fermenting the Oktoberfest (yeast doesn't get "used up" when fermenting, it multiplies).

I'll ferment this beer in carboys (large glass bottles) placed in a chest freezer I converted to maintain a temperature of around 48 degrees, which is the temperature this yeast likes to work at. It should produce a rich, clean lager profile at the temperature, without any of the fruitiness or esters that an ale yeast might produce. After a few weeks of fermenting, I'll keg it and store it cold for as long as I can bear. If I were well-disciplined, I would save it for 6 months or more, but something tells me we will be pouring this one at our Mardi Gras party.

Any suggestions for improving this recipe? Any questions? I'll probably be brewing this one on Sunday - let me know if you want to come over and watch the process.

Why Thomas Friedman Should be Ignored

The other night, a smart, informed, generally liberal friend of mine used a recent Thomas Friedman column to bolster a point he was making. Thomas Friedman? Why would intelligent people cite him, much less read him?

At the time, I claimed Thomas Friedman is the dumbest person to be given a prominent role in mainstream punditry, but I was wrong. His problem is not stupidity - he writes coherent sentences, and he discusses high-level topics. So I don't think he's tremendously dumb, particularly when judged against his peers in punditry. He could be in the upper quartile of national pundits.

I think his bigger problem is a complete absence of intellectual accountability, integrity, and shame. In the article my friend cited, he wrote: To me, the most important reason for the Iraq war was never W.M.D. It was to see if we could partner with Iraqis to help them build something that does not exist in the modern Arab world: a state, a context, where the constituent communities — Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds — write their own social contract for how to live together without an iron fist from above. Iraq has proved staggeringly expensive and hugely painful. The mistakes we made should humble anyone about nation-building in Afghanistan. It does me.

Really? Here's how I recall Thomas Friedman justifying the Iraq War (and, yes, this is a real quotation): What (Iraqis) needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, and basically saying, 'Which part of this sentence don't you understand? You don't think, you know, we care about our open society, you think this bubble fantasy, we're just gonna to let it grow? Well, Suck. On. This.

Similarly, Friedman has achieved fame for "Friedman Units" - his series of "6-month windows of opportunity" in Iraq. I don't care about him enough to keep an exhaustive mental list on his costly intellectual blunders, but here's a source with citations that ends mercifully in mid-2006. It would be a major burden to update the list with his many further false but confident prognostications.

In the column my friend cited, I am unable to figure out what point Friedman is making when he writes: "The reason India, with the world’s second-largest population of Muslims, has a thriving Muslim minority (albeit with grievances but with no prisoners in Guantánamo Bay) is because of the context of pluralism and democracy it has built at home". If he's seriously claiming that India does not suffer from Islamic extremist violence, he's seriously misinformed. But it sounds thrillingly intelligent, doesn't it? All he's really doing, though, is taking an unspeakably mundane, obvious point - people view the world from their societal context - and trying to make it into something a little shinier and insightful-seeming by dropping in a half-truth about a foreign land. That's his schtick - he does it all the time.

Yesterday, he was on TV, comparing Afghanistan to a "special needs child". No, really, he did:

Fareed, we're talking about Afghanistan. And we're talking about America in the middle of the great recession. I feel like we're like an unemployed couple who just went out and decided to adopt a special needs baby. You know, I mean, that's really kind of what we're doing. And that's like, whoa, y'know, that terrifies me.

What does it take to be shunned by smart people? How far can he push his luck in twisting obvious facts (our involvement in Afghanistan is expensive) into outrageous metaphors? If Afghanistan is a "special needs child", then it's a "special needs child" that knocked down the World Trade Center, and produces heroin for the world. It doesn't remind me of any "special needs child" I have ever known, and it's hard for me to understand how, exactly, Friedman is able to get away with such crazy talk and still be invited back on TV and offered space in major newspapers.

I don't hate Tom Friedman - I kind of admire his chutzpah. He's obviously selling something that people like to buy - and continue to buy.

If I stood before you and told you that in 6 months, all Arab-Israeli conflicts will be peacefully resolved, you would be surprised, and 6 months later, if I was right, you would think I'm somebody worth listening to. But if I were wrong, and I said, again, without apologizing or explaining my prior mistake, that all Arab-Israeli conflicts will be peacefully resolved in the next 6 months, you would again be surprised, and probably more than a little doubtful that I know what in the hell I'm talking about. Then, if I tried the same thing again in 6 months, still without results, you would stuff a sweat sock in my mouth to shut me up.

But if I were Tom Friedman, you would publish my prediction in the New York Times, and people would invite me onto talk shows to expound upon my incredible insight and wisdom.

I don't know how he does it.

Yes, I'm jealous.

I was wrong when I claimed he is "dumb". That's not true. Instead, he is gilded mediocrity, with a gigantic gap in his moral compass that allows him to endorse a war to tell people to "Suck. On. This."

Sunday Poetry: Cherry Blossoms Blowing In Wet, Blowing Snow, by James Galvin

Cherry Blossoms Blowing In Wet, Blowing Snow

In all the farewells in all the airports in all the profane dawns.

In the Fiat with no documents on the road to Madrid. At the

Corrida. In the Lope de Vega, the Annalena, the Jerome. In time

past, time lost, time yet to pass. In poetry. In watery deserts, on

arid seas, between desserts and seas. In sickness and in health. In

pain and in the celebration of pain. In the delivery room. In the

garden. In the hammock under the aspen. In all the emergencies. In
the waterfall. In toleration. In retaliation. In rhyme. Among cherry

blossoms blowing in wet, blowing snow, weren’t we something?

- by James Galvin


___________________________________________________

There are lots of reasons to dislike this poem, but it's beautiful, and that is enough to overcome the rest. Any editor worthy of a blue pencil would delete the second blowoing in second blowing in the title, and in the final line. Any person with sober judgment would mock the odd typography. It doesn't rhyme, it doesn't follow a traditional form, and it is all a set up for the zinger of the final three words.

A better critic would condemn it, but I love it.

Let's jump right into those final three words, okay? When I first read them, I thought they were heartbreaking - the past tense hinting of a former lover wistfully looking at happier times. But, on rereading, I changed my view. The thought that stretches between the third and fourth lines -

In time

past, time lost, time yet to pass.

- allows me a more optimistic view. There is time for this couple yet to pass. In sickness and in health - a reference to marriage. Children are involved. While retaliation is mentioned, so is toleration.

It all somehow fits. The episodic quality of looking over a life spent together matches the reality of how we (or at least James Galvin and I) gaze backward. We don't remember the day-to-day existence, but we remember moments with astonishing detail. Galvin remembers driving a Fiat without documents, I vividly recall driving our first car - a Dodge Dart Swinger Special with a bullet hole in the windshield - from St. Louis to Columbia, and stopping at a long-gone Nickerson Farms on the way. But I can't tell you what we had for dinner 3 nights ago.

The intrusion of the past tense in "weren't we something" is not at all a statement that "we" are not something now. Instead, it is a recognition that those incidents in the past have changed us - "we" are not the same people we were in the Lope de Vega, or in the delivery room. It's like our early selves are characters in a play that we can look back over, and see how it all leads to now. The upper Mississippi is not like the Mississippi at St. Louis, and the Mississippi at St. Louis is not like the Mississippi at New Orleans, but the Mississippi at New Orleans could look back at Minneapolis and New Orleans and say "wasn't I something?".

(You can purchase James Galvin's poetry from your local independent bookstore, such as Rainy Day Books, or on the internet here. If you don't subscribe to the New Yorker, you really should, and if you do it now, you can get my favorite calendar in the world.)

Democrats are Better People than Republicans

But Max Baucus proves me wrong.

Ignoring the morality of it, how do you think that you will get away with nominating your mistress for one of the most important jobs in the United States, and one which involves investigations into the nominee's background?

Sarah Palin - Lost Leader

Major retailers are selling Sarah Palin's book below cost, losing money on every sale, in an attempt to lure spenders, in the hopes that those buyers will make other, more profitable purchases. The retail strategy is called a "loss leader", though, in Palin's case, the term "lost leader" seems a little more appropriate. She was supposed to be Alaska's governor for a full term, but she lost her will to serve. She was supposed to be a leader of our country, but she complains in her book that she was dominated by mid-level handlers from the McCain campaign. She was supposed to be an opinion leader, but she whines that Katie Couric's questions were too tough.

In any case, it's funny to see her sustained self-pitying is being used as retail bait by Amazon, Target, and Walmart. Perhaps, as a fan of literature, I should be frustrated that the major retailers are artificially advancing the ratings of a sub-par book, but, let's face it, a larger segment of the market wants to read about a failed leader than the Complete Works of Shakespeare.

It's fine with me that those who choose to purchase Ms. Palin's book will only be paying a fraction of the true cost.

If she had been a more appealing politician, we would all be paying the cost now.

Island Beer

If you were going to be stranded on a desert island for a few years, and could only have one brand and type of beer, what would it be?

Believe it or not, that is the kind of thought that crosses my mid-western, non-nautical mind. I've never been near a desert island, but I watched a lot of Gilligan's Island growing up, so maybe that's what generates the question. (Although it appears that marijuana may have been the intoxicant of choice, at least for Mary Ann and Gilligan.)

The question is really a more engaging version of what's your favorite everyday beer? Many of the beers that really astound my taste buds are not beers I would necessarily want to drink on a regular basis. Three Philosophers, for example, is a wonderful, complex, rich beer, but it's a bit of a mouthful for regular drinking.

For my regular beer, I want moderate alcohol level, a refreshing but interesting flavor, and and a medium body. Personally, I enjoy a hop zing, but not so much that the bitterness is overwhelming.

Most of the world has chosen varieties of Pilsner. Budweiser is an adaptation of the style that originated in Czechoslovakia, as is Heineken, Tsing Tao and almost every other top-selling beer in the world. Some variation on the style would certainly be a good choice - I love a good Warsteiner now and then, and could picture it as the beverage of choice if I were Cast Away with a volleyball.

But, for me, pilsners lack the complexity of a great ale. The top-fermenting yeasts put out a few more esters, and the result is a beer that I think has greater depth and richness, without necessarily overloading the beer.

For me, the style I would want at my desert island hide-away would be an American Pale Ale. Medium body, solid hopping levels, spritely carbonation, and a good malt background would be just the thing.

As for brand, it comes down to three top choices. Sierra Nevada Pale Ale is the classic example of the style, and it is one of the best beers in the world. This summer I discovered Deschutes Mirror Pond, and was blown away by perfection. But, for me, if I find myself on a desert island, with one never-ending tap available, I'm going to opt for none other than Boulevard Pale Ale, which always manages to taste "just right". It's balanced slightly sweeter than the other two, and its hope profile blends bitterness, flavor and aroma.

The thought of being restricted to one beer only is a bit disheartening, but I could sit on the beach and feel connected to Kansas City with a Boulevard Pale Ale in my hand. Now for the other obvious question - Ginger or Mary Ann?

Blogger Appreciation - BlogKC

BlogKC is the bass player of the Kansas City Blogosphere, standing way in back, head down, plunking out a rhythm that is essential to the song but almost unnoticeable behind the screaming guitars, dramatic vocalists and hard-blowing brass. Low-key and dependable are the two words that come to mind when I think of BlogKC - two words that rarely come to mind when blogs are the topic.

Low-key is not a kind synonym for bland, though. Attentive readers of BlogKC know that William Rockhill Nelson, the pseudonymous author, has a strong agenda and clear interests. WRN generally tends to focus on the positive, drawing attention to those doing good, and he has a bias for the environment. Who else, in a 2-paragraph piece on the Plaza Lighting Ceremony, devotes more than half the space to highlighting public transportation to the event?

Dating back to 2003, BlogKC has been at this game longer than any other active Kansas City news blog. His first archived post is about Mayor Barnes discussing when the downtown arena would be completed (she was wrong on this, too), and another early post discusses speculation that Claire McCaskill would challenge Bob Holden in a Democratic primary for Governor.

BlogKC does not evoke a lot of superlatives - it doesn't set its sights on that. But when BlogKC speaks, people listen. A recent post about a proposed annexation of 300 acres of urban sprawl in Platte County raised issues that had been completely missed by the undependable and incompetent Star, and people in City Hall were talking about it.

BlogKC is informative, informed, thoughtful, insightful, and fun to read. We've been lucky to have it for a little over 7 years, and I hope we will have its steady, measured voice long into the future.