Alexandersmap

    Category: Lifestyle

    • Flip

      One of the most popular drinks available in colonial times was a concoction called flip.  I first learned about flip from a great book called And a Bottle of Rum, written by Wayne Curtis.  This is by far the most interesting book I’ve ever read on the subject, and it’s proven to be a source of endless inspiration in book historical and libation exploration.

      “… a tavern keeper started with a large earthenware pitcher or an oversized pewter mug.  This would be filled about two-thirds with strong beer, to which was added some sort of sweetener – molasses, loaf sugar, dried pumpkin, or whatever else was at hand.  Then came five ounces of rum, neither stirred nor shaken but mixed with a device called a loggerhead – a narrow piece of iron about three feet long with a slightly bulbous head the size of a small onion… plunged red-hot into a beer-rum-and-molasses concoction.  The whole mess would foam and hiss and send up a mighty head.  This alcoholic porridge was then decanted into smaller flip tumblers…” – Wayne Curtis, And a Bottle of Rum
      Life was hard in colonial times.  Taverns provided a respite from the hardness of the world.  I suspect I might have spent a fair amount of time in taverns in those times.  But I’d like to think I’d have been out exploring the virgin North American forests, rivers and mountains too.  Leisure time was hard to come by in those days, but it seems a lot of that time was spent in taverns.

      The days are short, the weather’s cold
      By tavern fires tales are told
      Some ask for dram when first come in
      Others with flip and bounce begin – Unknown, borrowed from Wayne Curtis, And a Bottle of Rum

      I read this book maybe ten years ago, and it stays with me.  And of all the drinks Curtis describes, Flip is the one that I’m most fascinated with.  I think it’s high time to take the recipe above and make some.  That’s a February “project”.

    • Rum

      Life for the settlers of North America was hard.  Scraping together enough food to eat from the cold land was certainly challenging.  Having enough food to eat was a daily challenge for settlers.  Compounding this was a general distrust of water was prevalent throughout the colonies as water harbored cholera and other diseases.  Tea was one answer for replacing water.  Rum was a better answer.  Rum not only solved the problem of water-born disease, it also offered critical calories.

      “Rum was not just a diversion; it was nutritionally to colonists who labored to coax a meager sustenance out of a rocky, stump-filled landscape and cold seas.  Alcohol has fewer calories per ounce than straight far but about the same as butter.  It’s five times more caloric than lean meat, and has ten times the calories of whole milk.  A bottle of rum squirreled away in a Grand Banks fishing dory provided the energy to haul nets and aided in choking down hardtack and salt cod.” – Wayne Curtis, And a Bottle of Rum

      Rum, ale and cider were the three primary alcoholic drinks in the 1700’s, and rum was far and away the most popular.  Molasses was shipped up to Boston from the Caribbean, it was made into rum and shipped around the world.  Some of this rum was traded in Africa for slaves, which were shipped to the Caribbean to complete the cycle.  Rum had as large a part to play in the earliest days of the thirteen colonies as any drink.

    • Celestial Dance

      This morning Venus was dancing with the crescent moon, while Juniper looked on with envy.  The air is brutally cold this morning, but getting outside before the sunrise has its benefits.  Watching this tango was one of them.  Sadly I couldn’t get a decent picture of conjunction of these three, but I’m glad to have shared the moment with them.

      My reason for being outside in the first place on this cold morning was to let Bodhi get outside for a little relief.  The days of long power walks are over for him, and it seems I’m not inclined to do many myself without his company.  So seeing celestial dances like this aren’t as common as they once were for me.  I clearly need to change my routine and get back outside.

    • Wooden Pipes

      Before lead and copper and cast iron pipes, there were clay and wood pipes.  Woods pipes sound crazy, but in a time when trees were abundant but copper, iron and lead were harder to come by it made sense to use materials that were readily available.

      Wooden pipes were basically logs that were drilled out.  Nothing especially exotic about this, and it turned out that they could be effective transportation vessels for water when buried underground.  And they would do their job until they rotted away, split or were replaced with more modern options.

      I came across a wooden pipe from the 1870’s or 1880’s at the Department of Public Works in Burlington, Vermont a couple of years ago, and I’ve seen it every time I visit there.  It’s a great reminder of the older infrastructure that our ancestors had to create to support the growing cities of the time.  Yankee ingenuity?  I think so.  And also a time capsule that reminds us of our not-so-distant past.

    • Reading Water

      Back in college when I rowed, we would row in all kinds of conditions.  In general we would row in just about anything.  But two things you never wanted to see when you were rowing were lightning and whitecaps.  Lightning was a problem on summer afternoons.  Whitecaps were a problem on bigger bodies of water.  It’s been years since I rowed.  I have strong memories of rowing in both thunderstorms with lightning crashing around us and in races where the whitecaps were cresting over the gunwales.

      I don’t row on water anymore, but I still look to the water whenever I’m around it, and read the surface as I once did as a rower.  Rowers read the water a little bit differently than sailors do.  Where sailors read the water looking for puffs to propel the boat forward, rowers look to those same puffs with a mental calculation of what that means to the set of the boat.  Wind and water conditions determine rigging, strategy in a race, and whether you’re going out on the water or hitting the ergs.

      Sunday I was looking out at Buzzards Bay and watching the gusts of wind ripple across the glassy water.  It reminded me of those days reading the rivers and lakes that we rowed on.  And I remembered that I miss rowing.

    • Prevailing Winds

      The prevailing winds are different as you move from the North Pole to the South Pole.  Up in the north where I am we have the westerlies.  Which means that the prevailing winds blow from the west eastward.  Further south, roughly around the lattitude of the Gulf of Mexico, the winds blow in the opposite direction, from the east downward towards the equator in a southwest direction.  Below the equator the winds blow from the west in a northeast direction towards the equator.  Further south, the winds blow from east to west.

      Prevailing winds are a strong consideration when you’re planning east-west travel as it will slow down the trip and burn more fuel as you fight the winds.  Going west to east will shorten the trip and save on fuel.  These are factors in flying, but also in sailing.  Adding to the economy in my lattitude on an east-west trip is the Gulf Stream ocean current.

      Prevailing winds also factor into other things.  You don’t want to be downwind of a sewage treatment plant.  Or in my case a next-door neighbor who chain smokes.  Important considerations like these require a sense of place, an understanding of the prevailing winds, and foresight into who is moving next to you.

    • Paradise in the Starbucks Drive-Thru

      I was waiting in a Starbucks drive-thru this morning and looking at the house behind it.  Before there was a Starbucks in this spot there was a Mobile station.  Before that?  Probably the yard of the house I was looking at.  Before that?  Probably farmland for a family that owned a larger plot of land in this corner of Haverhill.  Before that?  Probably a few generations of farmers.  And before that?  Perhaps the Duston family, who lived across the Little River, or another family that settled this land.  Before that?  Deep woodland that the Eastern Abanaki inhabited for centuries.

      I wonder now and then what the generations of people who lived on this land would think of it now.  Plunked down in the Starbucks parking lot, they’d be stunned to see the semicircle of cars lined up around the building as coffee addicts and Frappuccino posers each pulled up and completed their transactions.

      They call this part of Methuen Paradise Valley.  The valley today doesn’t measure up to the name.  Don’t get me wrong, there’s some lovely parts of Haverhill and Methuen.  But the spirit of the place, that intangible that prompted some folks a few generations back to name this place Paradise Valley is gone now.

      “Don’t it always seem to go
       That you don’t know what you’ve got til its gone
       They paved paradise
       And put up a parking lot.” – Big Yellow Taxi, Joni Mitchell

      Conservation and preservation are really the only way forward.  I hope people look up from their phones and lattes long enough to realize that.  Or maybe its just progress and I don’t see it.

    • Stoicism and Daily Habits

      I’m pondering a pair of quotes from the stoics.  They go well together of course; each a call to action.  And these quotes also pair well with two books I’m reading right now.

      “Give yourself fully to your endeavors.  Decide to construct your character through excellent actions and determine to pay the price of a worthy goal.  The trials you encounter will introduce you to your strengths” – Epictetus

      “Not to assume it’s impossible because you find it hard.  But to recognize that if it’s humanly possible, you can do it too.” – Marcus Aurelius

      I’ve been reading a gem of a book, The Daily Stoic, by Ryan Holiday.  This book, as the name indicates, is a daily practice.  Get up in the morning, read the one page quote and thoughts on it from Holiday.  In these days of phone addiction, this is a ritual that I’m enjoying.  I usually switch immediately to reading a few pages of whatever book I’m onto at the moment.  At the moment that means Atomic Habits by James Clear.  Brilliantly crafted book with actionable steps for the reader to establish better daily habits.

      Action is the trick.  Today I had a good day because I took action on the objectives I’d laid out for myself.  Tomorrow I hope to build on today’s momentum with more action and perhaps some solid results.  Consistent daily effort, over time, leads to results.  Nothing new in this, and yet so hard to see the forest for the trees sometimes.  That’s one reason I read so many books like this.  They reinforce the message, dilute the impact of the crushing negativity on social media, the news and from the fellowship of the miserable.

      You are the average of the people you hang with the most.  So I choose to hang out with authors and thought leaders who lead me in the direction I want to go in.  Reading and podcasts offer much more than television and talk radio.  So we’ll see how far of a leap forward I take.  But staying where you are in a rapidly changing world is really going backwards.  And I’m not going to go backwards.

    • Poetry in Motion

      I’m writing this as windblown sleet bounces off the windows, announcing the change in the weather outside.  The overnight snow as turned to sleet, and I hear freezing rain is to our south and may swing up to us.  This would lead to power outages and turn the overnight snow into concrete.  Timing is everything on days like today.  Clean the driveway too soon and you’ll have to do it once or twice more.  Too late and you’ll have a tortuous fight against a wall of ice.  Such is the New England winter.

      “There is clarity (and joy) in seeing what others can’t see, in finding grace and harmony in places others overlook.  Isn’t that far better than seeing the world as some dark place?” – Ryan Holiday
      The entire point of this blog is to document my observations and practice my writing skills and build daily writing habits in the process.  If you’re reading this you’re in a distinct minority, but let me take a moment to thank you for taking the time.  I hope I make the journey interesting enough to stick around.
      Outside I can hear the snowblower roar and grunt as one of my neighbors gets to work on their driveway.  I need to do the same soon.  The sleet indicates the changeover.  We aren’t going back to snow.  So it’s time to leave the warm comfort of the house for an hour or so and get to work.  I make that statement knowing full well how easy I have it compared to the linemen who will be restoring power across the region, or the people plowing all night and day as I slept and sipped my coffee.  We live in a world where people don’t look up from their phones or Netflix long enough to notice the world dancing around us.  Snow turns to sleet and then to freezing rain.  We in turn react to this changing state.  It’s all a chess match this New England life.  I need to step out and make my next move.

    • Cranberry Bogs

      Southeastern Massachusetts is dotted with cranberry bogs.  Looking at a Google satellite image of South Carver, Massachusetts shows just how extensive the cranberry farming is.  This area is known as the cranberry growing capital of the world.  And while the volume of cranberries grown in other places like Oregon may have surpassed this region, there’s still a strong association with this fruit and the place.

      Cranberries are grown on dry land that is flooded for harvest.  The berries float to the surface, making harvesting them much easier than picking them by hand.  Farmers use a rake to pull the cranberries off the plants.  Machines have largely taken over this process.

      In winter the cranberry bogs are transformed into acres of frozen ponds that quietly wait out the winter.  Flooding the bogs protects the plants from hard freezes.  To me the bogs are almost as interesting to watch as they march through the seasons as a stand of maple trees.  Each season brings a new face to the bog, and the transition from ice to brown to green to crimson is fascinating.