Let Me Be Your Ullr

The Flapjacket beginner's hill conveyor belt at Lutsen Mountain couldn't hold back

 the ski gods or goddesses (Carly) for long last week.  With a good ski plan in place, we started

her off on the bunniest of bunny hills right at the foot of the training hill on Ullr Mountain (named after the ancient Norse "ski" god),

and a two-hour ski lesson that prepared her for taking the ski lift up to the top of a real peak of a real mountain!

Skis firmly set to snowplow position, in a day's time Big Bunny looked like little Thumper.

Time for Ullr, the blue sign level instead of the green.  The hill starts slow but midway shoots down at a steep pitch which then lands at the bottom where a fairly quick stop near a built in safety fence waits.

Even though there were moments of "too fast," Carly dug her snowplow in, kept her balance all the way, and curved to the left at the bottom before the line of skiers at the chair lift, ready for more…."maybe tomorrow."

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The Return of Ta Henket 

A few years back we watched what looked like a very promising show on Discovery Channel called "Brewmasters." The first episode we saw followed the expedition of Dogfish Head Brewery (located in Milton Delaware) founder and president Sam Calagione (picture above) and Dr. Patrick E. Mcgovern,

called the "Indiana Jones of Ancient Ales, Wines, and Extreme Beverages," to Egypt.  Their mission was to

harvest an ancient yeast so to include it later back at home brew base for a new Ancient Ale – a series of intricately crafted obscure beers   The brewmaster, along for the ride in Egypt, set out a petri dish in an open field at the outskirts of Cairo in order to pick up free floating ancient yeast!  The yeast strain they caught to make the Ta Henket ale with was extracted from hieroglyphs, so the description goes, which was added to "an ancient form of wheat and loaves of hearth-baked bread and added chamomile, doum palm fruit and Middle Eastern herbs."  The microbrew revolution was now not only about perfecting the traditional craft, but about the experimentation itself and the mysterious possibilities of hop and additive combinations taken to another level. Beer lovers across America now recognize Dogfish Head as an ongoing pioneer. Beer drinkers world wide anxiously await bizarre new concoctions from this small brewery that puts "off-centered"

tastes and textures ahead of mass production and distribution.  The problem though with such limited editions and such fanfare, is that demand for Dogfish had way overcome supply.  Wisconsin lost its shipments for three years…until…this past month.  Calagione ramped-up production just enough for little four-packs to now line the Cheese State's beer cooler shelves. Folks can now sip tricky brews like Burton Baton,

an India Pale named after Burton England, the origin of the first India Pale, with cowboy art on the label created by an artist who is a member of a new age punk band.  In other words, the brewers are thinking about ways to make sipping, instead of guzzling, fun. For this particular style, two threads or batches of beer are combined: an English-style old ale and Imperial Ale.  "After fermenting the beers separately in our stainless tanks, they're transferred and blended together in one of our large tanks. Burton sits on the wood for about a month." It's kind of fun to think that the brew you are sipping was aged on oak (like wine) for a month, or might have once wafted through the same air as Pharaohs.

Churchill's Brother For an Hour

You learn a lot about Winston Churchill when you're sitting two feet away from him for a few hours.  A few things you learn are that Churchill, although obviously best known as a Prime Minister during WWII, was first and foremost a military man from a young age, following the British battle lines across the globe from India to Africa, – there, once escaping from a prison in Pretoria only to return by train to lead a charge to save other fellow prisoners.

Throughout his life he made money chiefly as a writer, not as a public servant, writing many articles as a war correspondent and political commentator.  Eventually, for his masterpiece volumes on WWII and the Invasion of Britain by Caesar, he won a Nobel Prize in Literature.  His father was a British dignitary (related to the royal Spencer family), and his mother, the vivacious Jennie Jerome,

was a New York socialite and notorious 'traveler' of many kinds.  Although Churchill hardly knew either parent, he was raised by his beloved nanny, a woman he affectionately called 'Old Woom,' and did have a brother who would be very close to Winston

up until middle-age heart disease took him.  It was at this last character, the brother John Strange Spencer-Churchill, that our Churchill impersonator, the extremely talented Randy Otto,

began his anecdote about the fateful months before the great stock market collapse of 1929, when Winston was himself traveling in America, had found a lucrative writing contract with famous publisher Randolph Hearst, and invested it in the stock market that fell only days later.  His brother, a professional financier, thankfully Otto said, as he walked directly over to me seated in a chair only feet away, grabbed both of my hands, looked in my eyes with sad thankful eyes (as if talking to his brother) and spoke with his smoky stiff lip that John was able to turn these family misfortunes around.  After the loss of his brother, Churchill would go on to uncountable different political positions, accepted by some, shunned by many others, until his career was nearly finished, only to quickly rise at the outset of WWII as an unlikely Prime Minister

whose refusal to surrender gained him rankings, generations later, as the greatest Brit that ever lived. I was later able to thank Otto for having me as his brother and that I would never forget it.

Yankee Doodle

Until the moment I read that American soldiers played "Yankee Doodle" at the surrender of nearly 6,000 Redcoats under British General Burgoyne at Saratoga in 1777, I thought, like I think many people, that 'doodles' were supposed to be something cute and curly like pasta macaroni.  I wasn't sure why people were sticking macaroni (feathers) in their caps, but hey, sing it and go with it – it's a cute Patriotic tune.  The levels of irony in this, though, are pretty interesting when considering the entire context of the Revolutionary War, and that "Yankee Doodle" was an original score by a Brit in America who was essentially mocking the peasant nature of the average rag-tag American citizen and soldier.

In the early years of the War, The Continental Army was thought of as a military joke to the well-trained, experienced, well-clothed

and 'controlled' British Army.  The Continentals, on the other hand, were a disparate crew, untrained, regional in their self-interests, often marching without any semblance of uniformity in look or strategic understanding, much of the time literally sock and shoe-less.  Redcoats scoffed at them. They could hardly believe that they were forced to engage an army that acted as though they were more in tune with the native culture than the model of a professional soldier – rifleman, for example, ducking and weaving behind trees or laying down in the dirt to take their fire then retreating back into the home-field advantage of the forest.  A 'Doodle,' then, in actuality was a mocking term used to describe certain country types that might aspire to be stylish by that era's terms.  Macaroni was slang for 'dandyish' (trying to be British).  


More broadly, the context of the American Revolutionary War effectively lasted the range of years 1775-1783, from the skirmishes at Lexington and Concord to the full-on Siege of Boston at Bunker Hill up until George Washington eventually returned to New York to a hero's welcome

after the Battle of Yorktown, which forced Britain's acknowledgement of the American claim of independence.  What happened to the 'Yankee Doodles' in between these years might very well be the most interesting historical secret generally kept from American students.  After Washington's famous crossing of the Delaware and following victories at Princeton

and Trenton, then the effective forage war during the winter of 1777, not only did the momentum of the war shift from a forgone conclusion that the Patriots were no match for those well-dressed British Regulars, but Washington and his generals began to understand that dictating momentum was absolutely critical.  This attitude, along with more experience and organization, paved the way for a turning point in the War at the Battle of Saratoga, NYwhere 6,000 Redcoats had to surrender – a gigantic number by the battle standards of the time.  Although only days later would another British force rally and take Philadelphia, the playing of "Yankee Doodle" would have been the bitterest of pills to swallow for the British Army and Crown.