This is a non-beer-related rant, so feel free to ignore.

Today's Wall Street Journal includes the latest in its "Cheapskate" series. This time, the reporter explains that he saves money by checking books out from the library.

Great! I LOVE libraries. I've had a library card for fifty years. Libraries are a fundamental component of civilization.

But then he goes on to say that in the few cases where he plunks down actual MONEY for book, he buys a used copy. Because, ya know, used copies are cheap and can be had for pennies and so why pay for a new copy?

AUGGGGHHHH. Augh.......... sob. snurfle. whimper. (Picture me banging my head on my desk and wailing.)

At no time does Mr. Cheapskate (aka Neal Templin, whom I'm SURE is a lovely man, a loving husband, and perfect father, son, and brother) mention the obvious and relevant point:

Writers make zero dollars from the sale of used books. That's right: when you buy a used book, the person who WROTE the book, the man or woman who created its content, gets nothing.

As in: Zip. Nada. Zero.

Yes, I know. Times are tough. Money is tight. Still -- writing is a cornerstone of human existence. It matters.

And that purchase is doable. Cut two Starbucks lattes each week from your budget (you could carry your coffe from home in a thermos). Take leftovers to work for lunch once a week, thereby eliminating a trip to a restaurant. Voila! You've "found" enough money to pay for a new book.

So, to cut this rant short because I could rant from now till midnight and then start again tomorrow: If you value the content of books, if you enjoy reading, if you like what your favorite authors produce, PLEASE, I beg you, BUY NEW BOOKS.

Because if no one buys new books, writers will earn nothing, and after awhile there won't be any books left to buy.

Thanks.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 04:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

In a June 28 blog entry titled "InBev/AB Deal = Brewing Industry Tipping Point?", I pondered the possibility that craft brewing could benefit from the nation's current economic upheaval, high gas prices, and an InBev deal.

I suggested that craft brewers launch a campaign urging Americans to "drink local" and thereby save gas, support local businesses, etc.**

I'm not the only person who is thinking this way. The Alstrom brothers, the energy behind beeradvocate.com and its print counterpart, Beeradvocate magazine, have taken a first step with their "A Buck for Beer Advocacy!" campaign. Members of the beeradvocate.com forum have posted comments seconding the motion and outlining their own variations. My pal Jay Brooks just posted a blog entry along the same lines. If I kept hunting around, I’m sure I'd find more online talk about promoting craft beer as local/green beer.

But a truly professional, nationwide, long-term media campaign requires money and lots of it. Ideally, the Brewers Association would step up; perhaps build a partnership with the Alstrom brothers. Maybe one of the bigger craft brewers could pony up some cash.

Or not. Money’s tight everywhere. The BA, for example, is a small operation; I doubt it’s got a lot of extra money to throw at this kind of campaign. (On the other hand, a “drink local” crusade gets right to the heart of what the BA is all about, right?)

Meanwhile, spread the word. When your friends talk about eating “local” or buying “green,” remind them that beer is food. And that going green begins with grassroots!

** If you enjoy drinking spirits, you can also drink local-and-green! To find a local micro-distiller near you, visit the American Distilling Institute, and click on "distilling directory."

(The ADI was founded, by the way, by Bill Owens. Back in the 1980s, he started one of the nation's first brewpubs.)

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 04:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is the kind of thing that makes me long for a nervous breakdown (because then I could retire to a darkened room with a cool cloth over my eyes and forehead):

According to this piece in the current issue of The Futurist, 70% of literary agents recommend that authors spend five hours a week blogging.

Okay. Sure. I’ll get right on it.

I’ll squeeze that in between the speaking gigs, interviews, op-ed pieces, TV news contributions, and the rest of the activity related to my work as an observer of the business of making and drinking beer;

and in between the job that consumes most of my time, namely the research and writing for my next book (a history of meat in America from 1870 to the present);

and after I’ve finished buying groceries, fixing dinner, doing the laundry, and spending time with my family in, ya know, my three-dimensional life. Oh, and after I get some sleep. (I’m not Buckminster Fuller or Thomas Edison; I NEED SLEEP.)

And after I expend mental energy worrying about the fact that the kind of book I write requires years of research and writing and according to the experts on the digital future of publishing, that makes me a dinosaur. (If anyone’s interested, the beer book took five years and four months of my life).

And after I contemplate the idea of the book not as a printed object, but as a digitized entity consisting of text, interactive images, and hyperlinks, but hey, first I’ve got to wait for my publisher to decide that, in fact, the printed book is dead, and then someone needs to come up with a functional device for reading the new, groovy, sexy, interactive version of my books and then I’ll have to re-think the notion of “publishing” and what it means to be a “writer.” **

Yes. I’ll get right on the five-hours-a-week-devoted-to-blogging thing.

Enough ranting. Seriously:
1. I ponder publishing’s (digital) future and my role as both reader and writer on a regular basis. I don’t have much choice. Publishing is changing. I have to change with it. The piece in The Futurist is worth reading.

2. I’m all over the idea of an e-reader. The pleasure I derive from reading is based on the content, not on the smell of the ink, paper, and glue. I want an e-reader and I want one now. (Mr. Jobs, are you listening???) The Kindle is a step that direction, but I gather it’s deeply flawed and that’s one reason that publishers are resisting a whole-hearted embrace of e-publishing.

3. To be fair, blogging has been good to me. Thanks to blogging, I’ve been contacted newspaper editors and television producers, and people who’ve hired me for speaking engagements, and of course, most important, readers.

Still, it’s a challenge. Every day, I scramble to come up with a substantive but brief, comment on (usually) beer. (Because I know rule number one about blogging: the blog needs to be focused and topic-specific. Yeah, I keep breaking that rule because, you know?, life is interesting! Rants happen!)

Anyway. I gotta go. Gotta write my next blog entry on my usual topic, beer.

Five hours a week? FIVE HOURS?

Later addition to this entry: check out this New York Times article about a new e-reader with a "flexible" screen.

** I rarely blog about the process of writing or the business of publishing. That’s the equivalent of Click and Clack devoting their radio program (or blog) to discussions about setting up the microphones and adjusting sound levels before each program, or to providing the minutes from the last meeting of the National Auto Mechanics Association. That’s NOT why we listen to them.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 04:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal ran this article about rising beer prices and the "smaller pint" (translation: instead of raising prices, many bar owners are pouring shorter glasses.) Jeff Alworth initially raised the issue at his blog, where he has also launched the "Honest Pint Project." (He has a post about this today. Then use his index for the original post. The HPP links are on the right side of his page.)

Anyway, today while working, which in my case means reading newspapers written a century ago, I ran across an article that appeared in the New York Times in October 1907.

The short piece informed readers that because of rising prices for barley and hops, St. Louis brewers would raise the price of a barrel of beer from six dollars to seven.

In response, retailers (which, back then, mostly meant saloon owners) announced that they would "reduce the size of the glass without raising the price 'per glass.'"**

Translation: less beer for the same money.

So: ain't nuthin' new under the sun.

** Source: "Beer Takes A Jump," New York Times, October 10, 1907, p. 14.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 08:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

As I've noted here before, I'm a bit of a fanatic when it comes to neo-temperance. I believe that the anti-alcohol people like those who belong to MADD aren't solving a problem. They ARE the problem. We Americans demonize alcohol and infantilize drinking. We have only ourselves to blame for "problems" like "underage drinking" and "binge drinking."

So I'm astounded that editors at a mainstream magazine like Time had the balls to run this article. Astounded.

Hey, maybe there's hope!

And in response to the question posed by the article's author: Yes. You SHOULD drink with your kids.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 09:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Today's New York Times contains what I can only describe as a snarky piece about the A-B/InBev deal. Snarky because of the reporter’s decision to travel the easy, but low, road. To judge August Busch IV now on his youthful past -- and find him wanting.

You can read the piece for yourself, but it mentions two of Four's encounters with the police more than two decades ago. Hints that, as a young man, Four was a bit, um, dissolute. Wild. Prone to making stupid decisions. Etc.

Hey, whaddya know! I’ve got something in common with August Busch IV!

I drank my way through my twenties, and when I wasn't drinking, I was ingesting every drug known to humankind. I've done every dumb thing a dumb kid can do (many of them illegal). By all rights, I shouldn’t even be here, because this was the kind of stupid shit that leaves less lucky people dead.

Surprised? Most people are. Because those who know me now know me as a totally average, upright citizen who works hard, obeys the law, and, ya know, lives an ordinary (read: dull) life.

Most people who know me judge me as I am, not as I was.

But back to this Times piece: According to the reporter, “it is perhaps not surprising” that A-B is "struggling" because of Four's "party-boy history."

It’s hard to get past the sheer stupidity of that causal chain: There’s not now and never will be a causal link between Four's youthful stupidity and the company’s stagnant/slumping stock price, which stems from corporate decisions made back in the 1990s and a fifteen-year-pattern of stagnant national beer consumption (thanks to birth rates and demographics) (over which, I’m certain, Four has no control...)

But hey, it makes better newspaper copy if you can paint a CEO as a scoundrel and wastrel and a human being incapable of change.

So here’s an idea: let’s take a little tour through A-B history, shall we?

Let’s start with August Busch, Sr. (1865-1934), son of Adolphus Busch and the man who steered the company through the nightmare of Prohibition.

As a young man “Gussie,” as many people called him, wasn’t much interested in the company business. Wanted to be a cowboy, he did. So after a wrangle with his father Adolphus, he headed west and worked on a ranch. Eventually grew tired of what was, he discovered, a very tough life, and returned to St. Louis, still less-than-interested in working for his imperious, willful father.

But then his older brother and the brewery’s heir apparent, Adolphus Busch, Jr. (1867-1898), died young and unexpectedly. The only other surviving brother, Peter (1869-1905), had dedicated himself to living the life of a ne’er-do-well playboy of the first order. (Father Adolphus, Sr. disowned him).

That left Gussie as the new, but reluctant, heir apparent.

And guess what? He shook off his youth and resistance and marched into the job. Grew up fast. Learned how to run one of the world’s largest breweries. He saved the company during Prohibition, and in the 1920s, reinvented it so that the brewery could survive the new demands of a changed consumer market once Prohibition ended. Not bad for a playboy with cowboy ambitions.

How about his son, Gus Busch, Jr. (1899-1989)? (Also known by some as Gussie.)

As a young man, Gus was a typical rich boy: Prone to play. Allergic to work. Fond of women and drink. Nominally he was the brewery manager in the ‘20s and 30s’, but he didn’t take the company or his job too seriously. He left the heavy lifting to his brother Adolphus III ((1891-1946).

But when brother Adolphus died unexpectedly in 1946, Gus ended up in the president’s office. By his own admission, it took him several years to grow up and into the job. To gain command of the company and its many problems. (And in the 1950s, there were problems galore, not least of which was the fact that national beer sales had plunged after WWII and showed no signs of going anywhere but deeper into a rut.)

He made mistakes. And apologized publicly for them to his employees and his shareholders.

But by god, he turned the lemon of the fifties into highly profitable lemonade in the sixties and beyond.

So before we all get carried away with our assumptions that the August Busch IV of age forty-four is the same man as he was at twenty-one. . . . well, how ‘bout we ponder this bit of company history.

And then let’s all stand in front of a mirror and think about the kind of people we were twenty years ago.

My guess is there'll be a whole lotta cringin' goin’ on.

And maybe a bit more compassion for a guy who has five* generations of family legacy sitting on his shoulders.

*He is the sixth generation to serve as head of the brewery; I'm including his maternal great-great-great grandfather, Eberhard Anheuser.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 04:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I don't usually get too bent out of shape about the deaths of people I don't know -- but I mourn the death of Tim Russert.

He was a guy who obviously loved what he did. The passion came through every time he appeared on television.

He was here in Iowa for the caucuses, of course, and I saw him at several of the political events I attended. He wore a khaki windbreaker and jeans or khakis, which rendered him nearly invisible in a crowd of people dressed more or less like him. He always stood off in the back or at the side, away from the other reporters and cameras. Never made a big deal out of his presence. (Sometimes the candidate would point him out, but it was clear Russert would prefer they not do so. But he was unfailingly polite to the fans who sought him out to shake his hand.)

And there he'd stand during the entire rally, hanging on every word from the candidate, every question from the audience.

He didn't have to go to Iowa. Didn't have to attend those rallies. He'd heard it all before. But it was clear from the look on his face that all of it still thrilled him to the bone. This was his lifeblood. This was the thing that got him out of bed every day. This was the place he wanted to be and the work he wanted to do.

He was a guy who loved his family, his religion (he was a devout Catholic), and his sports teams. He was smart, incredibly hard-working, and fearless in his determination to bring big egos back to earth.

I'm genuinely saddened by his death. I'll miss his shrewd commentary and all those politico-geek charts of his filled with the numbers and circles and arrows.

I'll miss his passion for life.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 09:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

... Your family's company, Anheuser-Busch, has embodied the American dream and proved a remarkable study in ambition, business savvy, and entrepreneurship. . . "

Okay. No, I won't be sending August Busch IV any such letter. And yes, that's a riff off the letter sent to him by the Carlos Brito of InBev.

And yeah, okay, it's all business and I'm a sentimental sap. And you can read all about InBev's proposed offer today just about any place on the web, including here at the New York Times.

But if I could say something to Four [and his father Three], I'd say: DON'T DO IT. (And if I could say something to the family members that want the deal, it would be: "Short-term gain isn't all it's cracked up to be. Just ask the Millers and Uihleins.")

But that's not how business works.

Sigh.

Anyway, for this first post-vacation blog entry, I had planned to mention that I'm back home after several weeks on the road and isn't it weird to be back and have access to a computer after being off-line for the better part of a month and I'm tired from traveling but also because I have pneumonia [the perfect vacation companion] . . . Blah, blah, blah.

But the hell with it. I'm home. I'm sick (and hoping that the antibiotics kick in soon...)

I'm just in time to watch The Deal Go Down.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 01:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today's Wall Street Journal contains a fascinating piece about the possible takeover at Anheuser-Busch. It's a marvel of reporting, if only because the reporter apparently persuaded August Busch IV to speak frankly about his family's history and his relationship to his father.

But it's also newsworthy because it reports on a second battle-in-progress: a behind-the-scenes struggle between a family faction that wants to sell and the group that wants to stand fast.

Wow. I pray that history does NOT repeat itself: intra-family factional struggles like those are what brought down Pabst Brewing in the 1950s and Schlitz Brewing in the 1970s. If InBev succeeds, it probably won't end up with much: Brewing's history has shown over and over again that when family leadership is destroyed, the brewery is, too.

(It's worth noting that when Miller bought Leinenkugel back in the 1980s, Miller left the Leinenkugel family in charge. It can't be an accident that twenty years into that purchase, Leinie is doin' just fine.)

This story is becoming more painful by the moment. But again, I'm a sap. I REALLY want the Busch family to remain company leaders and stewards.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 04:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Coming up briefly for air (although not much air; I am sick sick sick and wheezing like a broken accordion) to comment on a news wire item in the New York Times:

For months, rumors have wafted hither and yon that InBev and Anheuser-Busch would merge.

But -- it looks as though it may happen. Or that InBev hopes it happens. And that, again according to this wire report, A-B will resist.

Okay, so big deal, right? One big corporation tries to take over another. Happens all the time. Blah blah blah.

Except that -- it's A-B.

And having spent five years of my life living, at least mentally, with A-B and knowing that it's survived all these years with a Busch at the helm and yeah it's a huge corporation but it started life as a tiny, no-account, not-very-good brewery and its history embodies the immigrant experience and here it still is all these years later -- well........ you can hate the beer (I don't, by the way), but unless you're a soulless jerk, you've gotta admire the tenacity, smarts, and ambition of the family that made that company what it is.

And yes, I know they don't control the company, at least not on paper or in number of shares. But they are still its heart and soul.

So should this merger come to pass, I will feel as if the planet's axis has shifted. As if the cosmos has tilted just a wee bit.

Ridiculous to feel that way. But there ya go. I'm a sentimental sap.

(And no, for the five millionth time, A-B did not pay me to write the beer book. Indeed, as I've said many many times, the company was actively uncooperative.)

And now I'm taking my sick lungs and aching head and runny nose back to bed -- so I can rest up for the next round of travel. I'll be back in mid-June.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 08:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My neglect of the blog isn't intentional. It's just that, well, I'm not here.

I've been traveling more than usual (mostly research-related) and I don't own a "wired" device that I could or would use while on the road.

So for the moment -- a "moment" that will stretch into June -- I won't be home much, and therefore don't have access to a computer (or to much free time).

Translation: I won't be blogging until I'm back home.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 01:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

To be sung to the tune of "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair."

In the 1880s and 1890s, the prohibitionists attacked drinking in part by going after drinkers' wallets: raising tavern license fees, raising brewer' taxes, etc.

Today's prohibs are still at it.

A thoughtful look at a Wisconsin attempt to control/reduce drinking by raising taxes is here at Amy Mittelman's blog. Amy wrote about the late 19th century relationship between the alcohol industry and federal tax policy in a terrific dissertation titled "The Politics of Alcohol Production." She's also the author of a book titled Brewing Battles.

And that reminded me of Jay Brooks's blog on the subject of beer and taxes a few days back. As always, he's got much to say on the subject, he being one of the staunchest defenders of our right to drink. To read Jay's piece, scroll down to the entry for April 11.

Thanks and a tip 'o the mug to David Fahey for alerting me to Amy's blog.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 02:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, I could see this coming: people rising to defend Portland as America's "beer central."

A few days ago, my globally ethical (ethically global??) pal Matthew alerted me to an article in the current issue of Time magazine, touting Denver as the best place to tour breweries and drink beer.

"Hmmm," I thought. "Someone's bound to challenge that claim -- because surely Portland, Oregon, wins the prize with no contest at all."

Sure enough -- the Portland defenders are on the job. See Stan's blog, which also references a blog I didn't know, Beervana.

But the Time article got my attention for something entirely different: Its characterization of "artisanal" brewers as hippies and Grateful Dead addicts...

Huh?

I don't think so. (Well, okay, maybe craft brewing contains a disproportionate number of people who like the music of the Grateful Dead. But people stopped equating fondness for the Dead with being a hippie, oh, I dunno, maybe thirty years ago?)

Laid-back hippie-tude doesn't cut it in craft brewing. The work's too hard and the industry is too brutal. That's a lesson learned that, historically (and what is my perspective except historical?), every homebrewer who tries to turn pro learns reaaaaaaaaaaaaal fast.

Besides which -- long hair and a beard do not a hippie make. I'm so old that I was there the first time around and I oughta know.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 03:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I dislike blogging. I do it, but I don't particularly like it. It's a necessary evil, part of the writer's deal these days, blah blah blah.

I dislike because of the anxiety it provokes. This chronic unease that I must. post. something. TODAY.

Turns out, according to a recent piece in the New York Times, that I'm not imagining my blogging-induced anxiety.

Mind you, unlike the people mentioned in the article, I'm not trying to make the top ten on Technorati or earn money from blogging. Either goal would deposit me for all eternity in a pit of insanity and anxiety. I try to save my angst, anxiety, and neuroses for the books I write.

But still................

I often wonder if, in, say, another ten years, people who are in their 20s and 30s now will experience an epiphany along the lines of: the incessant flash, scroll, glare, ding, ping, and hum of their email, cellphones, blackberries, and whatever else they're chained to visually and aurally has permanently wired them for anxiety and they've lost the capacity for "calm."

Has left them, in short, about the same place as humans were 15,000 years ago when our species existed in a constant state of anxiety induced by the equally constant need to fight or flee.

Now THAT is a scary thought.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 03:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I'm on record as supporting the idea of parents teaching their children to drink at home. (See especially my blog entry for November 1, 2007, titled "Thinking About Drinking -- and Kids.")

My belief is that when we demonize alcohol, we teach kids to fear rather than respect it. And then we end up with an "underage drinking problem." We end up with, in other words, a drinking problem of our own making.

Anyway, there's a thoughtful piece about this topic by Eric Asimov in today's New York Times.

Instead of resorting to the usual kneejerk "booze is bad, period," he actually did some digging to find out if there's any evidence that kids' attitudes toward alcohol can be shaped by parents at home.

Worth reading.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 02:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm going to assume most people have at least a passing familiarity with the ideas of Thomas Malthus regarding human population and the planet's resources.

According to him, a society's population "adjusts" to accommodate the available supply of food and natural resources. People might learn how to raise more food more efficiently, but often the mechanisms of "adjustment" are things like war, disease, and famine.

That's a simplistic summary, but you get the drift. (If you want to learn more, the internet is actually a good place to start looking. Even Wikipedia, which I don't normally recommend, offers a good primer on Malthus.)

Anyway, unless you're living under a rock, you know that demand for food and water have risen to historic highs, thanks to rising population and global affluence.

Naturally that raises the question: How will Malthus' theory play out over the next few decades? Was he right? Completely off mark? Has technology altered his fundamental premise?

There's a fascinating article in this morning's Wall Street Journal about relevance, meaning, and importance of Malthusian economics in today's world. If you spend any time pondering stuff like, oh, high food prices, soaring costs for brewing materials, globalization, and other interesting-and-complicated-but-depressing topics, it's worth a look.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 02:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So the 75th anniversary of the return of legal beer has been on my mind lately. (Obviously, given that I've actually gotten off my ass to blog about it....)

But of course that means that the Great Depression has also been on my mind. The beer bill signed by FDR in March 1933 was, after all, intended as an economic stimulus package: breweries would get back in business and hire more workers. The Treasury would tax beer at five dollars a barrel, and that money would help pay for other back-to-work projects.

But the beer bill was just one part of the plan to repair the economy. On March 12, 1933, for example, FDR asked all banks to close for a brief "holiday." The goal was to stop the panic and the "bank runs" while Congress and the Federal Reserve shored up the nation's money supply. (If you've seen the movie "It's A Wonderful Life," you know what a bank run is.)

Anyway -- seventy-five years later, here we are approaching panic mode, with the Fed stepping in with moves and money designed to stop the panic and prevent full-blown economic disaster.

Will we end up where Americans were seventy-five years ago? Unemployment rates of one-third. Millions of foreclosures and bankruptcies? Homeless people on the road or camped out under bridges?

Back in 1933 and 1934, Congress created mechanisms to prevent a repeat of that disaster: federal home loan programs, the FDIC, Social Security (which originated as a way to keep paychecks flowing even when people couldn't work).

In theory, those programs, most of which still exist, were designed to protect the economy. Whether they will or not is a question no one can yet answer.

But we don't have one thing Americans had back then: leadership in the form of a strong, focused, inspiring president. In fact we've got a president who didn't know, until someone told him, that gasoline was inching toward four dollars a gallon. a president who thinks the war in Afghanistan is "romantic."

Right now, we all need to work together, avoid panic, and hang in there. But it's hard to do that when there's no one guiding the ship. So here we are all, seventy-five years after the worst economic depression in our history, once again afloat on a sea of uncertainty, fear, and near-panic. But there ain't no captain guiding this ship.

Hang on to your hats and your loved ones. This could get ugly.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 03:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

According to a recent study, the more beer a scientist drinks, the less productive he/she will be, at least as measured by the number of papers he/she publishes.

(Scientists, especially ones at universities, publish the results of their research in scientific journals. The more papers someone publishes, the better his/her professional reputation. In theory, at any rate.)

You can read about this, um, earth-shattering revelation here in the New York Times.

It's worth reading this, however, for a counter-view. Maybe the important conclusion is that beer isn't a brain enhancer?

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 02:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Oh, man, this surely must be the dumbass move of the week -- if not the month, year, and decade.

Remember the James Frey fake memoir? How Oprah touted him until she figured out he'd concocted the whole story? (I'm not gonna dignify Frey with a link to anything.)

Here we go again, only this time the fakery is on an even grander scale.

A woman named Margaret B. Jones (except that's not her real name...) wrote a memoir about her life in the gang world of South LA. About growing up mixed race, in poverty, being a single mother, blah blah blah.

A publishing house bought this miracle of brilliant prose and pulse-racing narrative.

So the book landed in bookstores this week, and Ms. "Jones" (her real name is Margaret Seltzer) sat down for an interview with a reporter from the New York Times. The resulting piece ran on February 28.

It's a looong article detailing her former life as a foster child, as a drug-dealing gang member. The reporter (and the subject) wax rhapsodic about her new life in Oregon, living in a nice house, working as a writer, cooking black-eye peas for the friends who stop by. On and on.

Lies, all of it. Well, okay, she's living in Oregon. That part's right. The rest? One fabricated detail after another.

Now I ask you: What kind of a dumbass is this woman? She'd managed to hoodwink the publisher (and shame on her editor at the publishing house). But did she really think that her real family (an ordinary middle-class group from a tony suburb of LA) wouldn't figure it out?

I mean, there's her photograph plastered all over the place.

Did she think her own mother and siblings weren't going to recognize her?

I figure this woman is either the most arrogant creature on the planet - or the dumbass of the week. Maybe both.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 03:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There's a comment from a reader regarding my previous post about the meat recall. He says my attitude is callous.

Perhaps I wasn't clear enough in my original post. I'm not advocating cruelty to animals. My first point was that there's nothing unusual about what happened at that meatpacking plant (which is apparently now closed).

My second point was that IF Americans want animals treated more humanely, they're going to have to adopt new methods of meat processing.

Right now, meatpacking houses are factory operations that prize efficiency and speed. If packinghouse employees are told to slow down, wait for the animals, move lame animals out of the way carefully rather than with forklifts-- well, that kind of humane operation is going to move more slowly than an inhumane one.

Packers won't be able to process as many animals in a day as they do using forklifts. The company won't make as much profit, in part because its labor costs will rise, and the owners will compensate for that by raising prices.

Think of a widget factory: one factory makes the widgets by hand. Workers carve each one, using hand lathes and planes, and plenty of human labor. The factory turns out one hundred widgets a day. The supply is relatively small, and consumers pay high prices for those "natural" hand-crafted widgets.

Now consider a second widget factory. The owners have mechanized the entire operation, eliminating all hand craftsmanship. The widgets are made entirely by machine, rather than by humans. The factory cranks out thousands of widgets a day, and the price of one widget is half the price of the widgets made by hand.

The analogy holds true at meatpacking plants: treat each animal with respect and dignity, and workers will turn out fewer carcasses in a day. The packinghouse owners will have to pay the workers more money per carcass. That price will be passed on to consumers.

Is that good or bad? Depends on what you value. If you don't like seeing images of lame cows being tossed around by forklifts, then you'd better be prepared to pay more for your meat.

If what you value, however, is hamburger that only costs two dollars a pound, then you have to accept that you live in a society where packinghouses use "inhumane' and "callous" practices.

Bottom line: Americans want something for nothing. They want "pure" meat and happy cows, but they don't want to pay the higher price necessary to make that happen.

We can't have it both ways.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So the US Department of Agriculture is recalling 143 million pounds of beef.

Why? Because of alleged "animal cruelty."

According to a report in the New York Times, the "Humane Society of the United States showed videotapes on January 30 showing workers at the plant using several abusive techniques to make animals stand up and pass a pre-slaughter inspection. These included ramming cattle with forklift blades and using a hose to simulate the feeling of drowning."

I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Does someone actually think this is new or unusual activity in American slaughterhouses?

Answer: it's not. I'm writing a book about meat in America since just after the Civil War, and this news report sound exactly like newspaper reports from the 1870s!

Folks, this is how you get affordable meat. This is it. This is business as usual in American meatpacking.

You want "humane" meat? Okay. Fine. Great and noble goal.

You prepared to pay, oh, $20.00 a pound for hamburger?

I didn't think so.

I don't have any great conclusions to draw here (except the questions I just posed). But before people get all excited and huffy and carried away ... well, a little perspective works wonders.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 10:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Not that I'm the most regular blogger in the world -- but entries will likely be more sparse than usual in the next week or so.

Tomorrow (Feb. 13), I'm going under again so that the surgeon can "manipulate" my arm.

This is doctor-speak for: "The surgery didn't quite work the way I had hoped, so I'm going to knock you out and pull, push, twist, and otherwise yank your arm into full range of motion."

All I have to say is: thank god for anesthesia. (When he told me this a few days back, he said "Well, I could do it right now here in the office, but the nurses object to the screaming." Ho. Ho. Ho.)

So.......... I won't be doing much typing the next week or so. If nothing else, because I'll be going to physical therapy every day for the next two weeks.

This is my last chance to regain full use of my arm. If it doesn't work --- well ..... I'm going to be like Scarlett and worry about that later.

Here's hoping.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 09:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I often think that someone could devote an entire blog to the topic of Stupid Liquor Laws, said laws being a good indicator of this country's screwball attitudes toward alcohol. (Well, okay, now that I think about it, Jay comes pretty close to doing just that.)

Anyway, file this under Stupid Liquor Laws:

Today's Wall Street Journal features a piece about a guy named Ralph Erenzo. (I can't provide a link to the piece because the WSJ doesn't provide free content.) Erenzo lives in upstate New York, a mostly rural area with a mostly depressed economy.

He's doing his bit for creating a locally based, "green" economy by operating a small distillery, where he makes vodka, bourbon, rye, rum, and other spirits. He hires local labor, and relies as much as possible on local crops.

So what's the problem? New York laws forbid him from selling his stuff directly to customers. So he can't operate a California-type tasting room where you can sip the goods and then buy a case. A hundred people a day might drive by during summer tourist season, but they can't buy his goods.

Erenzo and his business partner lobbied the state legislature to change the law, much as micro-brewers did in California twenty-five years ago so that they could operate brewpubs and sell their beer to consumers.

After four years of lobbying, the legislature finally passed and the governor finally signed a law that created a new category of liquor license.

So where's the dumbass part? The law requires such small distillers to use ONLY ingredients found in New York. Nothing else.

Sooooooooo, as the columnist at the Journal (Brendan Miniter) points out, that lets out rum (sugar cane doesn't grow in New York), and Erenzo uses Candian rye. Which means he can't sell the stuff direct to customers.

So here's a guy who's trying to revive New York agriculture and support the local economy -- stymied by yet another example of dumbass liquor laws.

There's no moral to this story. Just more head-shaking and eye-rolling on my part.

When when when are we Americans gonna grow up and stop infantilzing the making and consuming of alcohol?

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 07:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Catching up with Stan's blog: a few days ago, he commented on a recent wave of writing-about-women-and-beer (that's my abbreviated version of his content). Worth visiting to see his comments and links to others'.

I'll just add: ain't nuthin' new under the sun. Since beer came back 74.5 years ago (the 75th anniversary is coming up in April), brewers have wrestled with the women-and-beer problem:

Market to women-as-the-household's-main-shopper?
Market to women-as-women?
Market beer-with-food and thus to the people who do most of the household cooking?
Sell the beer in seven-ounce-cans? (Idea being that women have smaller stomachs...)
Sell the stuff in pink cartons? (One brewer tried that in the 1950s; the carton was shaped and designed like a small gift, complete with printed ribbons. So cute....)

Many brewers in the 1930s hosted cooking demonstrations and luncheons in department stores, hoping to persuade women that beer was dignified, wholesome, and fashionable. Others touted beer's virtues as a hair conditioner, hoping that women would buy one six-pack for the bathroom and one for the frig.

And of course the whole "low calorie" thing began life in the 1930s as a way to persuade women that beer was not fattening.

So the brewers really have been there, done that.

But mostly what they've done is market beer to (very) young men, and do so using tits and tanktops. And the reason they've done so is because Americans infantalize drinking.

And as long as that remains true, well, I doubt marketing -- for or to women or anyone else -- will change much.

But we can hope.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 09:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I don't watch much football (as far as I'm concerned, the game is a cure for insomnia). But my husband watches playoff games, and yesterday he watched the game in Green Bay. (Packers versus some other team. The other team won.)

I was in the room, but I was reading the Sunday newspapers and not paying much attention to the game.

Until an Anheuser-Busch commercial came on. "Hey," he said. "You need to watch this!"

I watched the commercial in question. And then I put down the newspaper and watched the rest of the game, waiting for more of the A-B ads to air.

I don't know the final score of the game, but I can tell you ALL about those Anheuser-Busch commercials.

The theme of this particular campaign (which A-B rolled out just a few weeks ago) is "The Great American Lager." It's a bit of a departure from the usual A-B ads in that it features a guy in a suit who does nothing but talk. No farting Clydesdales. No cute dogs or animated frogs. No babes in bathing suits. Just a guy talking about the company's oldest brand, Budweiser.

You can read some press coverage of this new ad campaign here and here. (And probably plenty of other places as well; just google.)

So what was the guy saying? If you've read my book Ambitious Brew, his words sounded, um, familiar.

The company pioneered the use of refrigerator cars. Check.
Lager's translucence leaves no room for error. Check.
Bud is a superb example of a national classic, the American-style lager. Check.

And so on. Large chunks of the script sounded like they'd been lifted straight out of the book. Sure, a few words had been changed here and there so that the text sounded more conversational -- but the gist of it is all there in chapter two.

In that chapter, which is based on substantive and original research, I argued that a handful of nineteenth-century brewers, most notably A-B and Pabst, developed a unique American style of lager. That Anheuser-Busch (and Pabst) was a prime mover in the shift away from Bavarian lagers and to American-style beers.

I also argue that Budweiser was, and is, a pioneering masterpiece of this particular style of beer. Even people who hate Bud (and A-B) have to admit that it's not easy to achieve the kind of consistency that A-B achieves with every batch of Bud.

I hasten to add that I'm NOT accusing A-B of stealing my work. It's not like the people there didn't know all of this already.

But it's almost as if the book, written by an outsider with no connection to the company, served as a kind of affirmation that freed them to promote Bud in this specific way, with this specific, coherent narrative that, well, comes right outta chapter two. Or maybe my narrative worked as a kind of light bulb: "Oh! We've now got this other story we can tell about Budweiser."

(And yes, for those of you who are wondering, many A-B executives have read the book. Carefully and thoroughly.)

Soooo.........for the first time in my life, I'm planning to watch the Super Bowl. I have no idea who's playing, but I can't wait to see the commercials.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 02:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, so much for all of that.

There were nearly 600 people at my caucus, well over the 200 or so who were there four years ago. Sadly, my guy (Biden) was not viable so I had to make an agonizing decision about what to do next.

My heart was with Obama, but my head knew this one fact: There is no dirt left for the Republicans to dig up on Hillary Clinton. But Obama? He’s still relatively unknown and they could, as one of my neighbors said last night, slice him into hash during a general election.

Plus, I’m worried that he’ll get elected and pull a Jimmy Carter “El Foldo.” That he won’t be up to the task. Whatever other complaints I have about Clinton, I KNOW she can do the job.

So I leaned toward Clinton, except for one other thing: The annoying precinct captain who was there working the floor on her behalf. I had three complaints:

1. her bullying tactics. The assumption at a caucus is that people arrive with a game plan in hand, and campaign representatives don’t start wooing people until after the first division. Then, if a candidate isn’t viable, candidate reps can start trying to persuade the non-viables to join their camp.

Not this woman. She was in people’s faces before they even got in the door. And she was loud. So loud, that I discovered, by over-hearing her hectoring a young kid.....

2. .... that she wasn’t even an Iowan! She was a New Yorker. Which means she shouldn’t have been serving as a precinct captain and she was supposed to leave the floor and stand in the observers’ corner.

3. She kept referring to “the Clintons.” In the plural. I got news for her: only one Clinton is running for office.

So thanks to this loud out-of-stater, I am wondering what kind of campaign Hillary Clinton is really running. Worrisome.

But in the end, my two fears (see above) won out and I stood for Clinton. Which, in the bright light of the sunny winter morning, I now regret. But whaddya gonna do?

I am also sad that a decent, honorable man like Joe Biden never stood a chance. It’s baffling. On the other hand, it was nice to know that there WERE so many great choices.

So it’s on to New Hampshire, and may John McCain win there. Seriously. Huckabee’s been scaring the shit out of me since he first moved on to my radar last July. With those dimples and doe-eyes, and “aw shucks” charm, he could easily win a general election.

Now THAT is a scary proposition!

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 02:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

....... politics are, well, what we're doing. Or at least what my house is doing. And talking. And thinking. And watching.

Random observations after spending the past month trying to make up my mind who I'll stand for on Thursday night:

1. The media are annoying. They spend all day, every day following candidates around, so, no surprise, they've heard the speech and the questions and they're bored. So they spend the events talking to each other or talking on their phones. If you're unlucky enough to be in the back where they are, lotsa luck trying to hear the candidates. I went to an Obama event Sunday, and mostly what I heard were two cameramen one-upping each other about their equipment.

2. Tim Russert is one of the exceptions to the above. He's so unassuming that he goes almost (but not quite) unnoticed. He leans against a wall and watches the candidate as if he, too, were trying desperately to make up his mind. Doesn't talk; doesn't check his cell or blackberry incessantly. Just watches and listens.

3. Andrea Mitchell doesn't stop talking.

4. The phone calls are maddening beyond words. On Friday, December 28, we got fifteen calls. On Saturday, December 29, we turned off each phone's ringer and turned the volume down on the answering machine. Relief. Should have done it a month ago.

5. The TV talking heads make caucusing sound so......... complicated. It's not. Plus they keep yammering on about how if your candidate isn't viable, one representative from each of the other groups will come and try to persuade you to join their.

I'm here to tell you: that doesn't happen. I've gone to every caucus since the first one in 1972. I've never supported a viable candidate, and I've never had someone from another group try to woo me. The assumption is that everyone has a second choice and they'll just wander over to that group on their own. Or, as I often do, the non-viables will sit out the proceedings.

6. The weather sucks and I wish we could do this in February or March.

7. Why why why do we have to do that on a weeknight? Why the HELL can't we do this on Saturday? (Yeah, okay, I know the answer: it's because the candidates want one last weekend in New Hampshire. Where the weather is no doubt just as shitty.)

8. It matters. And it's thrilling. I go to an event and see other ordinary people like myself listening and thinking as if it's the last chance we'll ever get in our lives. People ask great questions and the candidates (mostly) work hard to provide thoughtful answers.

9. We appreciate how hard these candidates work. And it IS hard work. They may appear at four or five events every day. They get up early , stay up late, and travel hundreds of miles each day. And did I mention how crappy the weather is?

10. Listen to the TV or read the paper and it sounds and reads as if only three Democrats are running. There are actually six. Two of whom (Dodd and Biden) deserve a hell of a lot more attention than they're getting. It's a bit heart-breaking to see such smart, dedicated, thoughtful men be so utterly ignored.

11. Don't believe the numbers. Accorrding to today's NY Times, 750 people showed up for Clinton event today here in Ames. I was there. There weren't that many people. 400, maybe. 750? No.

12. Bill Clinton could talk someone into believing in the Easter Bunny. He's smartand perhaps the finest public speaker I've ever heard. I suffered Hillary-passion for three days after hearing him. Happily, I'm old and cynical and eventually I came to my senses. (Don't get me wrong. She's also VERY smart and immensely capable and would make a great president. I just don't think she can win in November.)

13. Joe Biden is perhaps the most sincere politician I've ever heard. I get the distinct impression that he's decided that life is too short for bullshit, posturing, and posing.

14. And that's why on January 3rd, I will stand for Biden. He probably won't be viable, but in my heart I think he's the best person for the job.

I think ALL the Democrats would do a fine job, even a superb job (okay, maybe that's going a bit far). But Joe Biden has an incredible grasp on how things connect. He gets how soil chemistry, health care, nuclear power, the situation in Pakistan, and university research are all connected to each other. He gets it. He gets me on January 3rd.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 10:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Coming out of the cave for a moment to affirm my support for Mothers For Social Drinking. (Thanks to Jay Brooks for his blog about this. It's his entry for December 8, 2007.)

You can read about the group here and here.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 03:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've spent most of the past ten months researching my new book and now, finally finally finally, I've started writing it. Well, okay, I've started writing the first chapter.

I've plunged into what I call my Quiet Zone. Or maybe I should call it my Shutting Out the World Zone.

I'm concentrating my mental energy on this book. Shaping the narrative. Working and re-working the prose. And, most important and most difficult, trying to figure out what the research adds up to. What do all those facts MEAN? What's the connection between this fact, that idea, and this event?

I know it will all come together; it always does. But only if I shut out the rest of the world.

So if there aren't many or any new blog entries, that's why: Book in process. Writer at work.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 10:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Blogs filled with clutter but lacking essential information.

You know what I mean: the pages where you canNOT tell who owns the damn thing or what he/she does or is.

Blog pages where the blogger rambles on and on and on in loooooooooooooooooooong paragraphs, which of course are single-spaced so they're incredibly hard to read on a screen.

Plus there's usually fifty-five kinds of shit running down both sides: Links to other bloggers. Links to this. Links to that. Links to other sites.

None of which I give a rat's ass about because I don't know anything about the whys and wherefores of the blog itself!

Ugh. I cannot be bothered.

Not naming names, although I'd love to. But being a polite midwesterner, I'll keep my mouth shut. Plus, why generate traffic for ungainly, poorly designed and conceived bytes o' nuthin'?

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 09:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The New York Times is running a three-part series on living with chronic pain. (The link is to Part Two, and from there you can also get to Part One. The series concludes next week.)

It's fairly basic stuff, but it's nice to see this acknowledgment of the issues involved.

For the past fourteen months, I've "enjoyed" a crash course in chronic pain. Torn rotator cuffs, the doctor told me. "Not much we can do for it," he said.

Bad news. And depressing, too, I discovered as the months wore by.

Because that's the nightmare of chronic pain: The body hurts, but the spirit hurts more.

I can't speak for others, but in my case, the pain transformed daily life into drudgery, and the "future" into a burden. Every day, I was just a little less interested in the world around me, less willing to engage with friends, family, work.

This story has a happy ending. In September, a different doctor provided a different diagnosis: bone spurs. Those can be fixed. Last week he operated to remove bone spurs on my right shoulder. He'll "fix" the left shoulder as soon as the right one heals.

But for millions of people, there won't be a happy ending. Either the physical issues can't be resolved, or they lack the funds needed to pay for good medical care.

So today I raise my glass in celebration of modern medicine -- and pray for all those who wake each morning knowing that their's will be a day of pain rather than pleasure.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 05:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I had arthroscopy on my right shoulder on Wednesday and right now, a keyboard is NOT my friend, if you know what I mean.

So until the arm heals a bit (meaning: when I no longer have to use my left hand to move my right arm), I'm gonna lay low.

Thank god for good surgeons, modern medicine, and good drugs.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 05:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I support ANYONE who is willing to stand up to the lunacy of the neo-prohibitionists (who, in my opinion, aren't solving a problem. They ARE the problem.)

Problem is, few people are willing to, especially politicians. That's one of the most unnerving of the similarities between the anti-saloon campaign of a century ago and the prohibitionist crusade of today: Most Americans have been so brainwashed on the subject that they toss reason out the window and react with jerking knees instead of open minds.

As a result, it's tough for the voices of reason to be heard. I've written several op-ed pieces on the topic -- but none have made it to print. When I submitted one of them to the Des Moines Register's "Iowa View" column a few years back, the editors took a grand total of five minutes to reject it by email. Too incendiary - -or so I assume.

But hey, I've got this blog instead. And once in awhile, someone does break through the barricade of unreason. There's a terrific piece by David Harsanyi in this month's online issue of Reason Magazine.

Here's his website/blog. His new book is Nanny State: How Food Fascists, Teetotaling Do-Gooders, Priggish Moralists and Other Boneheaded Bureaucrats Are Turning America Into A Nation of Children.

Right on, brother, right on.

ADDENDUM (posted about an hour after the original entry): Yikes! Someone's webcrawler is busy. I'm already getting spam from the L*iber*tar*ians (to which I add asterisks only as a way to slow the google-crawl).

So just to clarify: I am not a L*iber*tar*ian. Indeed, I think government is one of the best ideas human beings have had since they learned to walk upright.

Laws are good. Taxes are fine. Dumbass ideas about "protecting" me from alcohol (and pate and butter and frency fries....) are not.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 08:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Okay, speaking of the marvels of the human brain (see previous post) -- I expended part of yesterday musing about "guilty pleasures."

You know. The stuff we wallow in, resishing every second of trashy delight -- and believe, in our guilty minds, to be a total waste of time.

For me it’s things like “Survivor." Anything by Penny Vincenzi (that's likely what prompted my musings: I'm in the thick of one of her novels right now).

What fascinates me about guilty pleasures is not that I’m apt to conceal them. (Of course! That’s the guilty part.)

What’s more interesting is what happens when I confess them. People who know me are visibly startled to learn that I’m a devoted, die-hard, watch-every-minute fan of "Survivor" (okay, "Top Chef," too). (Well, alright. You can add “Project Runway” to the list.)

Those things seems so .... not me. For reasons that are lost on me, other people see me as an agressive, brainiac intellectual who devotes hours to reading "The New York Review of Books," thinks great thoughts, and watches no TV at all (and when I do it's public television or nothing).

Wrong. All of it. If someone wants to know me, really KNOW me, they need to know that I watch "Survivor" and devour Vincenzi's tales of the rich and neurotic.

Put another way, guilty pleasures are a sparking-clean, uncurtained picture window into our personalities. They tell us and others more about "who we are" than our street faces.

Not, mind you, that I understand WHAT our GPs tell us about ourselves. Do they reveal our child selves, now buried in adult worries? Do they hint at how we’d spend our time if left to our own devices in a perfect world where food and shelter were provided worry-free?

I dunno. But I do know that if you want to know me, know my guilty pleasures first.

So. What's your guilty pleasure? And what does it tell me about you?

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 05:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Okay, in a million years I would not have thought of or about this. But now I have, and I must say: the human brain never ceases to amaze me.

Start here with W. Blake Gray's piece in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Then read Stan Hieronymus's take on the topic. I love knowing that Vinnie Cilurzo is a believer (and that his dad loved Sinatra).

It's, well, just too marvelous. Too marvelous for words. Etc.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 04:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The folks at The Splendid Table are conducting a survey of people's concerns about and interest in sustainable foods.

You may already have a strong opinion about this. You may not have any opinion. But the survey is worth taking if only because it forces the issue: by which I mean, you'll find out real fast just how much you do or don't care, and how much you're willing to to do buy and eat "sustainable" foods.

I was, um, a bit surprised by my responses.

Note: the survey does not ask about "liquid" foods such as beer or wine. Which is itself an interesting point.

Anyway, the survey is here and it's worth look.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 05:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I just learned (okay, I'm always waaaaaaay behind the rest of the world) that "The Bower Show" is no longer on Maxim radio.

I'm truly sad to hear this. I had the pleasure of appearing (if one "appears" on radio) twice to talk about beer and the beer book. Magic! Bower, Scooter, and Laura were chemistry in action: funny, irreverent, and, most important, smart. (Irreverence without intelligence equals crap. These three were smart.)

I'm not sure why the program was canceled, although I gather Laura is still producing for Maxim.

In any case, I'm sorry I won't get another chance to experience their particular form of verbal mayhem.

Near as I can tell. Bower is here (or at least he was at some point).

You can find Scooter here. (During my first stint on the program, he asked if I would adopt him. Wish I had, sob snurfle....)

And Laura is here.

My sincere best wishes to all of them. It was a blast!

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 05:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm a bit late in posting a link to this discussion (for some weird reason -- maybe the full moon? -- every time I tried, my "protection" software told me that Alan's blog was A VERY DANGEROUS SITE. It's not.)

Anyway, Stan, Lew, and Alan are smart guys. Definitely smarter than average. And they, and some other folks who've wandered by, are having a more-or-less beer-related discussion here.

Long, but worth reading.

And a rare example of blogging's potential for generating and sustaining substantive, civilized conversation.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 03:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There's an interesting piece in today's Wall Street Journal about "big" brewers taking on "craft" brewing. If nothing else, it offers a larger perspective on the much vaunted "double digit growth" of craft brewing.

Because I'm always just a weeeeeeee bit skeptical of the numbers tossed around.

I hasten to add that I don't doubt the sincerity or the dedication of the folks in Boulder. But what, precisely, are they counting in those press releases touting craft brewing as the industry's hottest "growth" segment?? Whose beer is "craft" beer?

This all reminds me of a newspaper piece I recently read that REALLY set me thinking about the relative meaning of "size." Thanks to David Fahey at the History of Drugs and Alcohol website for sending me the link.

In beer, as in life, perspective is everything.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 03:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In a comment on my previous blog entry, Stan Hieronymus of appellationbeer.com asks a good question: Will beer-based cookbooks and campaigns, like “Here’s to Beer,”* persuade Americans to re-think beer’s role in daily life?

I’m all for the focus on food and beer. But that is well-trod territory, one that post-Prohibition brewers worked as they struggled to promote beer to an indifferent public.

In the 1930s, for example, brewers hosted “ladies luncheons” in department stores, where hired chefs prepared food with beer. During the ‘40s and ‘50s, women’s magazines and the “women’s” section of daily newspapers routinely ran articles about how to cook with and serve beer. (I suspect those pieces were press releases submitted by breweries and their ad agencies.)

It didn’t have much impact then. Will it now? I’m not sure, although I hasten to add that I’m all in favor of ANYTHING brewers can do to promote beer as a sophisticated, complex beverage.

That won’t be easy. Like just about everything else in daily life, public relations, marketing, and media are in turmoil. I’m not sure anyone, in or out of brewing, understands what kinds of promotions work in an age of remote controls, Ipods, and internet.

But to get back to Stan’s question: In my opinion, until brewers persuade Americans to re-think their attitudes toward alcohol, cookbooks won’t do much good. The “Here’s to Beer” campaign won’t have much impact.

But they’ve got an uphill climb ahead of them, because the “other side” is far better organized and funded. Right now, MADD owns the subject of alcohol. It sets both the tone and the agenda in the crusade to demonize alcohol and to eliminate its manufacture, sale, and consumption in the United States.

What brewers need is an equally substantive, organized campaign to counteract the neo-Prohibitionists (eg, MADD and groups like it).

The operative word here is ORGANIZED. As in: Unified. United.

As in: they need to work together. Brewing’s great downfall c. 1915 was not the Prohibitionists per se. It was the prohibitionists’ unifed action and the brewers’ fragmented fractitiousness.

Yes, the Brewers Association works hard to promote beer. But its budget and resources are limited.

Yes, Jim Koch at Boston Beer Company uses his ad dollars to air commercials that challenge our old image of beer.

Yes, brewers’ website urge vistors to “drink responsibly.”

Yes, the “Here’s to Beer” campaign soldiers on.

But it’s not enough, and it’s too disjointed and fractured.

Brewers need to work hard TOGETHER. Not as competitors, but as partners in a larger battle. And yes, that means that the craft brewers need to reach out and accept the helping hand offered by That Big Giant that funds the “Here’s to Beer” campaign.

Because none of them can do it alone.

[Added after initial post: My pal Jay Brooks has weighed in on Oliver's piece as well. You can read his take -- as well as the rest of his great blog entries -- here.

* Full disclosure: I appeared in the “Here’s to Beer” documentary titled “The American Brew.” I was not paid for my time nor was I compensated for expenses incurred.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 04:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I’ve been mulling Garrett Oliver’s op-ed piece "Don't Fear Big Beer. It appeared in the New York Times on October 19. Something about it bugged me, but it took me awhile to figure out what it was.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s a fine piece, full of nice sentiments about the joys and wonders of American craft beer.

But I think Oliver veered down the wrong road when he asserted that “there is no future” in what he calls “industrial beer” (by which I assume he means anything made by Anheuser-Busch or Miller Brewing). He argues that just as Americans are drinking better coffee than they did ten years ago, so, too, they’re discovering fine craft beer.

Maybe. Maybe not.

Here’s another take on it: Something like 95% of the beer consumed in the U.S. is “industrial.” Only about 5% comes from “craft” brewers.

Moreover, that proportion -- 95% versus 5% -- has remained fairly constant for the past fifteen or so years.

So it seems to me that the more interesting question is: Why?

We’re twenty-five years into the “real” beer revolution. Why haven’t craft beermakers grabbed more of the market? Why do the vast majority of Americans prefer “industrial” beer?

I think it’s because we don’t take beer seriously. And we don’t take beer seriously because we don’t respect alcohol.

Instead, we Americans demonize alcohol. We teach children that it’s bad and evil, and so of course as teenagers, they want to be naughty. They learn to drink in their cars at midnight, rather than at home with their families. And when we’re not demonizing it, we’re infantilizing the act of drinking (slugging down shots, giggling at the notion of having a beer with lunch, cackling at our friends when they can’t stand upright).

Then they “grow up” and either stop drinking completely or save drinking for “special” occasions. And then they pass on the lessons learned to their kids, and the process starts all over again.

Lesson being: beer is something to slug down randomly rather than a fine beverage to consume with fine food.

Another lesson learned: beer’s not worth much money, certainly not worth as much as, say, good mayonnaise or a pair of shoes.

Craft beer is more expensive than its “industrial” counterpart; typically quite a bit more expensive. When Susan and Joe Consumer shop for beer, they’re shopping by price. Given the choice between splurging on beer or shoes, they’re gonna choose shoes.

Our only “grown-up” beverage is wine. We think of it as a fitting companion for fine dining.

I think that’s because, prior to about 1960, American wine production was about zilch and wine consumption was even lower. But then people began investing in vineyards and grapes in California and elsewhere. When it came time to marketing their wares, they were starting from scratch. Americans didn’t know much about wine.Vintners were smart: they promoted wine as a sophisticated beverage best consumed with food, rather than as an alternative to canned beer or martinis.

Post-Prohibition brewers and distillers, in contrast, rebuilt old industries. But they had to market their wares to an audience that had been taught to disrespect and fear both. Indeed, if there’s a single long-term impact of Prohibition (other than the “three-tier system” of beer distribution), it is that the Prohibitionists endowed alcohol with shame, and Americans have not been able to shake that inheritance.

Garrett Oliver asserts there’s no future in industrial beer. I say there’s not much future in craft beer until and unless we learn to respect alcohol in general and beer in particular. Only then will it seem normal to serve a fine stout with a fine roast beef.

If craft brewers want to own the future, then they need to address the deeper issue of Americans’ mistrust and misuse of alcohol.

Until then, BUD is likely to remain a good investment in “the future.”

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 11:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Okay. I can't resist. Yes, I know this Miller/Coors thing is a "collaboration," and not "merger." Or whatever.

But let's assume the two merged. What's a good name for the new entity?

Coiller?

Ciller? (With a hard "c" so it rhymes with "killer.")

Moors?

Millorc? (Sounds like something out of science fiction. Or maybe a long-lost creature from Middle Earth?)

Cooriller? (A new species of primate.)

Enough fun and games. Back to work, everyone!

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 09:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yeah, yeah, okay. I know blogs are supposed to be specific and targeted and mine rambles all over when it should stick to history or beer.

But.......... when a girl’s gotta rant, she’s gotta rant. And here’s a rantable subject if I ever came across one.

Deborah Solomon writes a column for the magazine section of the Sunday New York Times titled "Questions For," in which she poses questions to various "famous" people.

Or not.

In last Sunday’s opinion section, the newspaper's public editor revealed that Solomon routinely "reworks" her interviews after the fact. The column typically contains quotations taken out of context and questions that she never posed.

Worse yet, her bosses at the Times knew this, but failed to alert readers.

According to the magazine's editor Gerald Marzorati, that's okay because Solomon's column is intended as "entertainment."

Oh? That's news to me. I’ve always read Solomon’s column the way it was presented: as accurate representations of actual interviews.

On the surface, this feels like a rehash of the Jayson Blair episode of a few years ago: Blair was a Times reporter who regularly faked his sources, his quotes, and his reporting. When that story broke, his supervisors struggled to contain the damage. Heads, as they say, rolled.

The Blair affair came off as a case of bureaucratic bumbling induced, perhaps, by lethargy or incompetence.

The Solomon ugliness, however, feels more like arrogant indifference induced by -- a kind of smug condescension. As if various editors at the Times are trying to woo the snarky YouTube crowd: If you’re clever and hip, you knew Solomon was having fun at her interviewees' expense. If you took her text literally, well, you’re kinda stupid and definitely unhip.

Maybe I'm old (well, okay, I am. I've over fifty). But I ain't stupid. If Solomon couldn't figure out how to do good interviews without resorting to deceit, then she's simply a bad reporter.

I sure won’t read waste time reading anything else written by her.

Unless, of course, she turns to fiction. I’m always up for an escape into make-believe.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 09:38 PM | Permalink

I've had a few days to ponder the Miller/Coors merger (or "collaboration). Here's my outsider's long view ("long" as in the historical perspective).

This story won't have a happy ending. Plenty of beermakers have gone after number one -- and failed. Indeed, both Miller and Coors took a run at Anheuser-Busch in the 1970s. Neither succeeded in the goal of toppling A-B.

It's unlikely they'll succeed this time.

If I'd been running the joint, here's what I would have done: reinvented myself as a beermaker with deep roots in the nineteenth century (after all, there are only a handful of American breweries whose histories reach back that far) and in my region (in the case of Miller, the midwest; in the case of Coors, the far west).

At least then they'd have had an identity. As things stand, their only clear role/identity/image is as an also-ran.

Which is a shame. There are plenty of people at both companies who have worked so hard to make good beer. Let's hope they still can.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 09:32 PM | Permalink

One of the hot topics in the beer world these days is the soaring price of brewing materials: barley, hops, corn, rice, you-name-it.

Put another way, brewers are feeling the pressure of record-high demand -- and prices -- for all grains and for dairy products. As the price of corn, for example, soars, farmers have to make a choice. Should they grow barley, or cash in on the corn craze? Those who have the right experience and farming equipment will likely choose corn.

The result? A shortage, at least for now. of barley and other brewing stuff. When materials are in short supply, prices go up.

Eventually, of course, the supply-demand pendulum will swing the other way: Farmers will think, "Gee, prices for barley sure are high. Maybe I should grow that instead."

But before that happens, there will likely be a shake-out in the brewing industry.

The lshortage of brewing materials will squeeze the smallest brewers. Indeed, some of them already know that they can't buy enough brewing materials for 2008. They may be forced to close.

Or to seek an investor-partner in the form of a larger brewery. 2008 will likely be a year in which many breweries shut their doors, few new ones open -- and some well-established ones change hands.

But the more interesting question (at least in my mind) is: What's driving the demand for corn, wheat, and milk?

Some pressures are obvious: Right now there's lots of experimenting with corn-based fuel additives.

Others are not so obvious, but they are probably more important -- like the rising demand for meat and milk from the growing middle class in China and India.

Okay, so what's that all about? WHY are there suddenly so many more Indians and Chinese with more money to spend on food? For an answer, I'm urging everyone I know to read Thomas Friedman's book THE WORLD IS FLAT.

If you want to understand the challenges facing the United States now; if you want to know how and why computers and the internet have changed daily life; if you want to know why the two major political parties are in trouble -- read this book!

You will never see the world the same way.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 11:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)