thanksgiving and the weekend and heavenly beer

We had our first thanksgiving,

 

 

 

and it was interesting a non secular Christmas day without the gifting, generally a good experience with our Germerican friends. In general we are still waiting for summer.  as you can see I am re-enacting the pilgrim claiming his land and receiving food from the Natives. I can see why it is such a popular holiday in the US of A. It is a non religious holiday that can include all those of different faiths, denominations and likewise to give thanks for that there is to give thanks for.

More importantly thanks to a beer book, written by a Woman … Yes can you believe that No seriously.. yes a beer book written by 2 not 1 women. It is fantastic, it is called “ The Naked Pint” and I bought it new.. It is a Fantastic read, it gives a an unadulterated guide to craft beer.  What amazes me the most is the variety of beers that are made around the world, this is mostly written about barley/wheat based beers and not about other fermentable though, so nothing about sorghum beer.  To return to the book, it gives a refreshing view on all the worlds different beers and their histories. I think it is well worthwhile reading if you are a fledgling home brewer to learn about the depth and breadth of the beer varieties world wide. There are a plethora of beer styles with an insane tapestry of history woven into them. One of the most intersting, well i will poke into at least 2 for now are the Trappist beers made by Monks and the Lambics. Both interesting for different reasons, and if I dont run out of stream the sour beers (wheat beers fermented with a combination of yeast and Lactobacilli) . Firstly the Trappist beers, they are only brewed by 7 9 6 monasteries (varying number), and only by monks and for no financial gain and only with specific age old recipes.. damn interesting.

from wikipedia :

• The beer must be brewed within the walls of a Trappist monastery, either by the monks themselves or under their supervision.
• The brewery must be of secondary importance within the monastery and it should witness to the business practices proper to a monastic way of life
• The brewery is not intended to be a profit-making venture. The income covers the living expenses of the monks and the maintenance of the buildings and grounds. Whatever remains is donated to charity for social work and to help persons in need.
• Trappist breweries are constantly monitored to assure the irreproachable quality of their beers

Nonetheless, the long and short is this is amazing, and apparently the beers are heavenly on a number of levels. This Does not include the Abbey beer which is similar but not quite as strict but also a limited pathway to heavenly delights . I see now there is a plethora of new semantics to learn and become fluent in when it comes to the world of beer and more specifically craft beer. It seems as if there is a beer for every possible day or celebration. I wills top now before I wax lyrical, but it is inevitable after the bread commith the wine beer.

 

One thing that it does give me is something else to obsess about in my spare time, one more thing to do, make beers, wines, meads and the likes. It returns me to the thought of the Viking new year celebration or at least the colloquial or version i have in my head from many years ago, the details have most probably changed a lot. All I can remember is that it involved drinking mead and then telling the world about “how cool you are in front of your Peers and country folk” a fantastical idea. I will have to investigate the origins of this. I have after looking found what i had heard many years ago, it is vaguely as I recollect : “In Theodism or Anglo-Saxon neopaganism in particular, the symbel has a particularly high importance, considered "perhaps the highest rite" or "amongst the most holy rites"^[11] celebrated. Symbel consists of rounds of ritual drinking and toasting, and invariably takes place within an enclosed space of some kind.^[12] It is usually inaugurated by three formal rounds, as determined by the host; often led by toasts in honor of the Gods, then ancestors and/or heroes, and then a general or personal boast. Other boasts may take place as necessary. Symbel is always formally closed once the formal boasts are completed, in order that the symbel might maintain its dignity and not degenerate into "mere partying".^[13] The two types of boast are the ȝielp (pronounced 'yelp') and the beot (pronounced 'bayawt', but as one syllable). The former is a boast of one's own worthiness, such as one's accomplishments, ancestry, etc. The latter is a boast of an action one plans to undertake. In order to protect the luck of the hall, such boasts are subject to challenge by the thyle, whose job it is to make sure that unlucky boasts do not contaminate the luck of all present.” --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbel 

 

After reading a few more of these articles on the sumbel it appears that one of the key things is that it is a praise and a ritual toast to Gods/Godesses (you can chose and insert your own deity here), dedication to friends/heros/ancestors others, some form of boasting and oaths. So it does seem that there is alcohol involved and that it is a slightly sombre even and that it is about giving praise and giving some self praise, But very importantly also about making an oath about something you will do? Possibly a historical origin of new years resolutions? Wild leap there, but is is possible. I suppose what this does point out is the way we remember a piece of something in a way we want to remember it. We make it our own and remember what struck as being important.  The human mind in its absolute fragility only remembering limited things of a limited scope that does take history and things into consideration.

 

and yes, I know Wikipedia does not constitute research, these are just nice summary pages on the topics for you to wet your lips on, and i do like including something that is actually half way factual based on what i read in other sources, I do not want these to look like a journal reference, this is a rambling and is not always accurate as it is my musing and not reality.

On a slightly different note, I was thinking a few days back I wonder what books I have that I still want to read and possibly reread and why?

I might go through my book shelf and evaluate them and consider what and why, also possibly what books and authors I would like to read? Here I am more than willing to accept possible suggestions of books and authors from any of my recent and current and future readers?

There are always those books you buy. borrow, steal, get gifted or just mean to read, should read, possibly I need to go through the good Prof’s reading list and start again?

1600 words and the spitefull god

I realised today that the ^a god is a spiteful god, here, Today in godzOwn or as the rest of you know it Aotearoa, interestingly I never knew that it had been labelled such for almost a 100 years.. we learn something new every day. Last bit if trivia is that it can be attributed to Thomas Bracken through a Poem he wrote. Just writing this diveri-forms the thoughts in my brain. You may ask what diveriforming is, well it is a word i made up by combining the General term for certain plants here in NZ and in many other countries where the plants are seen as Diveriform, or having very knotted and messy hair not unlike dreadlocks or my hair if i don't keep it cut really short, or alternatively my beard. Back to the spiteful god, if Logic abides as above where we are in Gods own land and it is spring it is a frigin spitting and rainy spiteful spring day, which follows on a weekend that would toast your marshmallows? Key to multi-questioning thing above drives me towards the question of HES and his book, his handwritten book done by his hand using his Mont Blanc pen? Has it started? How far along the way is this book? after listening to the podcast a few days back about Tom wolf, one point that struck me and reminded me about HES was the notion of handwriting a book, tom wolf choses to handwrite the book mainly because he cannot get spare parts for his typewriters. I suspect it has to do with some form of haptic feedback. you may question, why the sullen pic of me staring at the camera in apparent disdain? multiple reasons abound, one to show the wonderful spiteful vista behind me, partially obscuring the wonders that abound in that which is so quaintly called the inlet. Further in the distance is the Plimerton vista and marina where I often fish, deep in the foreground is the beard, which grants warmth and other social interactions. Interestingly as part of a my current social exercises I have noticed that a beard does change the way people look at you, and no (and yes the comma and the and) it does not hide you in society nor give you a facade to hide behind. In contrast it actually makes you more visible, I am not sure at what length it again begins to hide you. It is a strange thing a beard, it feels almost alien and not part of me, this is especially at its current length which is way longer than before., or maybe not as long as it was when I got married for example?

Thanks goodness, I managed to finish the space next to my beard and fill it with words, mostly meaningless words. On to the next thought for the day? I was attempting to brew at home last night in the week after work, one should not attempt to much in such a short time, this in between bottling the children’s home made ginger beer in between the pumkie’s book club meeting at home last night.  Id decided i would do a fruit~ish beer, but this all turned to proverbial pie.. the blender broker during me grinding the grains, i could not find a way to grind, half way through the mash, i then found the boysenberries were not boysenberries and were black currents.. Then i miscalculated the amounts needed for a good starting SG, then the temperature would not drop in the fermenter till the next morning.. what a mission. But we tossed the Yeast in this morning, lets hope it grows, I now have a few more days to work out what I can do for the secondary ferment and need to get a little more industrial in my attempts and methods in dealing with some of the technical challenges. I then remember we need to also supply a corn bread for our meeting with the pilgrims in the new land where we will give thanks for what we have. Oh and the other reason for the photo of me, is t avert my self consciousness's.

I was rather enthralled yesterday, I came across a  Google meetup with some photographers about inspiration and what drives it and what to do in lulls, amongst them was  Lotus Carrol  of I am Lotus fame. It is interesting to see the person in “virtual flesh after following them on flickr for a couple or more years seeing how they developed from something on the edge of obscurity to a mega social media success? One of the interesting things was how each of them had similar yet quite different drivers for their inspiration and each of them did have some overlap. One of the drivers in the most successful people was to do what they wanted, and the others were driven a lot more by perfection and their search for perfection, and in certain cases it was a drive for expression. A lot seems to depend on what you take photos of and why you take them? I suspect a lot depends on what you aim with your photography or your art, is it an expression or is it a capitalistic venture, each of them has different biases.

sometimes I stare up at the clouds and they look so plain at other times they look fantastical,strange same place similar clouds, more or less colour and scale.

we cant really know how we will feel the next day, unless we make the effort to be that person to have that outlook and be happy and smell the rain in the clouds, hear the birds chirping above the roar of the icy sub Antarctic gale blowing and chilling you to the bone, it can either stop you there and then in your steps and cut you down as if it were a scythe or it can inflate you with crystalline clarity.. bla bla sometimes the lyrical can run away a little. but there you go, be positive don’t see the crap in it, well that is what i try to tell my self I may be fooling myself but I try. there always seems to be some colour in the grey.. well some days.

Sometimes you see life zooming past you, today is the beginning of the year, soon it is Christmas, but it continues and changes and life runs at a million miles an hour, nothing we do can stop it soon it will be the end of the year and not long after that it will be a new year again. The seasons are more  apparent here and eventhough they blend into one long season of discontent and weather at least it lets you know that there are forces way greater than you all around you at every turn.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maybe we would all feel better if we had a flower like the little prince? I have a few in my garden, but they are being eaten by the snails? I wonder do you think the Little prince had to worry about snails? I am not sure,but i do love clouds, and Tiete had to throw that in, recently I was listening to some Tim Minchin clips on youtube, and amongst them he ahs a song where he is rather serious and intersperses this with man i love Boobs.. this reminded me of a friend who had a similar Mantra in south africa in our old life. I then question sometimes if Tim Minchin is as he seems? Is he erudite and clever or is it a cleverly constructed dialogue? Either way I enjoy the outcome of some of his diatribes and rants, somehow the word fountain is slowly drying up today? i have my doubts if I will reach the allocated number of words before i have to rush off again to the next meeting at a customer?

and the words stopped,

Quick before the sun sets…

i had a realisation again, you must say WTF, do you go from one realisation to another No seriously amongst the moments of blank emptiness on the train and general day I was considering a few things.. One most pertinent was me, yes i was wondering about me, and niggling at the back of my brain was the realisation of the silent promise to try and blog every day for a month, to get back in the flow of things. But where to start, primarily a “friend” or at least a person I know on Facebook who also immigrated and that i had sorta know in ZA, who is also male and also around my age/or me around his age, both of us being massively in our middle years. This brought me to consider how we and others react the changing of time and how we see our lives slip like grains of sand falling between our fingers and how each of us reacts differently, I suppose not unlike the way I have always been am prone to hideous bouts of depression, which i now know when then they arrive and know how to dispel them. this Bifurcates my thoughts into 2 distinct streams; one being do yourself a favour and watch hideous kinky it is a movie with  Kate winslet which is fantastic and what is so uber cool are the naked scenes of her show a normal person, intermingled with a crazy as story behind it all; the second arm of the bifurcation is this other person who at this stage should be called Bob. bob is a nice dude, albeit a bit extreme.. but the real point being i see on Facebook he now has a new fiancé, I did not even know he was divorced? This is of course only symptomatic of society and how we live and interact with others, no SLATS not Systematics, that is something totally different. But on the second topic which is way more exiting to me that the prior I now belong to an group/like group or what the .. on Facebook for Coleopterists.. Boy i miss the exiting world of big, small and all things wonderful. I think that will simply Segway me into the next topic, which is what i have done over the last little while, One would imagine that sometimes I am manic, yes that I am.. But i have realised that is what and who and why I exist and what drives me forward every day, the need to see, do, understand and learn more and go and see and catch fishes and watch little brown beetles pollinating lupines on the river bank of the Rangitikei river at dusk (the photos are from the fishing trip i just did with the old dudes of the fishing club). Now  after that a small photo essay with some of the things done and undone.

one of the few pics i took on the Rangitikei trip, I do need (want(would like a small robust portable camera to take with me)) , for interest these are a pest these lupins, they are a ruderal and make a super impressive show.  You can smell them from a long way away. all in all this was a moderately successful exercise, I came away with a fair number offish, I disappointed my self in a lack of focus at times and at others way to much focus, but all in all it was fantastic trip with the oldies.



On being South African and being in another country, but again the debate is still out if i ever was south African or not? difficult question, and no I still don't have an answer about the question posed yesterday, and no i don't think i will have one tomorrow. But i do think that I am happier here, but sadder in the same breath. It is beyond a paradox within a paradox. I do think that the one element that the blogger from last week left out was that if you immigrate and you have friends with you it is awesome, but if you don't it is generally Kak and you need to re-evolve your self and reasons for living and slowly wash the reflection of the others you left behind off your mirror, even though they will always be part of you on the inside and who you really are, their context is spread thinly over these massive distances. It does not mean I do not miss them and what they meant/mean in my life, it just means I had to cut those sinews and let the muscles r-attach again, it is as if i was reborn again to a new world. It is beyond strange to be the stranger in the strangest land. But the solace you get is that there are many of us here, not just south Africans but all types and kinds. Many souties, and it is almost time for our strays and waifs Christmas party as hosted by the non Christians for the mostly non Christians.. this is of course the heathen land. But i return to my comments on Lara Africa, she is awesome, i made a comment on her blog and she responded and does so on all her comments and her poetry is pretty awesome, she seems like she would be an interesting person to meet in real life.  This is way to much sentimentalism, and i suspect i am nearing my required number of words pushed to virtual paper for the day, you must know i am sacrificing coffee this morning to get these words in.. yes sideways.

this is really a nothing pic of me at the station this morning, trying to be more like a celebrity, I gather we need to be more aware of ourselves and do selfies all the time showing our people what we are doing, here i was sitting at the station KAK early in the morning and waiting for the train and for my people who never came, because although i was waiting for the train to Pretoria it never came. a tear welled up in side as I think of the briel sisters sitting on the train to Pretoria, but yea no i shall fear not because my phone and my internet shall comfort me with my brewing book as i wait, neigh pause on the journey of life at this insignificant station on the track of life.. OMG what a crock of shite flows through these fingers?

this is still so far from done, it has taken so long ……and it turned out to be more difficult than i imagined, there are certain things we can do and other things we cannot do, i suspect it is key to attempt mostly things you can do and then some that you cannot really do, this is one of them. It is a challenge. A good challenge, none the less we should move towards the light, oh crap is that the train. stupid joke sorry. But at times i do think we get into such a routine and do not remember who we are and who we want to be and why we did what we did to get where we are and why? we should also remember all of the things we complained about and wanted and want to change about ourselves and start changing them, day by day, word by word, less and less spelling mistakes by the day. We cannot change some things, as they are like the sun in the sky and blue and the grey and the white of the clouds and the wind and the rain. things are what they are. This item is attempting o change the fabric of reality by creating something that isn't, something that is not a part of me, but is something i see and experience from outside that i borrow from others. There are so many that are, i am not, but i respect those that are and this is a homage to them.


this is a picture of many levels, one being proof that it is possible to do something with some planning and determination. To most of you this is just a fish on someone else's extremity. But it represents a number of things. It is proof that we can change, proof that we can follow a recipe, proof that we have commitment, proof that we need determination, proof that we can visualise and be what we want to be and do what we set out. Yes this is just a fish, but rather a fish after work in the afternoon sun, than a backside on the couch watching crap TV. But as a diametrically opposite yet almost as appealing alternative a bum on the couch fondling a home brewed beer or mead.. now there is some thing which is also right. We need to set goals, we need to achieve things albeit small and fantastical.

Lest not forget about the bread which is life, which comes from the beer.



here we have the grans living for the beer, the birth of the germination signals the birth of the beer within a while, you will have to wait and see where this goes, for those not following on other streams, these were some wheat, barley and spelt grains that were germinated and malted and then toasted and roasted in the oven for the beer with frit, unlike the wine dying on the vine, the beer growing in the bowl, somehow can see why Jim Morrison struggled and chose the wine dying on the vine. John Barley Corn just doesn't have the same ring to it, maybe i would have to turn to something a little more agricultural like Jethro Tull, lest not forget which disambiguation you chose, both are agricultural at best. Which reminds me that maybe i need to spotify a little agricultural music today. I leave you with this.. today I managed a meager 1670 odd words or so, self indulgent words none the less, but words they are and they are going towards my monthly total.