Pirate News

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Analysis of ceramic remains from Barcadares, an 18th-century pirate camp in Belize, showed that more than 65 percent of it was delftware. Numerous pipes and few cups were found, suggesting popular images of buccaneers eating from decorated plates stolen off merchantmen, with a tobacco pipe in one hand and an open bottle in the other, aren’t that far from the truth.

North Carolina has officially confirmed the shipwreck near Beaufort is indeed Blackbeard’s Queen Anne’s Revenge — in part because the local maritime museum hopes to attract private funding to continue excavation and research.

I ♥ Vermont

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I love living in New England. I love the climate; I love the green of my marsh reeds in summer and the pumpkin orange of fall. I love the geography of crying seagulls and tolling buoys after hiking in the woods. And I love the cultural ideal of self-sufficiency and minding your own business coupled with tolerance and mutual aid. But very often, when I see the bloat and abuses of the six states and the scoundrels we elect to public office, I question whether my latter infatuation is nostalgia, a romantic pining for beliefs that certainly aren’t shared now, if they ever were.

Then I read stuff like this in Vermont:

When Irene washed out big chunks of Route 100 in Pittsfield, cutting this tiny town of about 425 people off, David Colton knew he couldn’t wait. At 9 a.m. the morning after the storm, Mr. Colton and about two dozen other Pittsfield residents revved up their bulldozers and backhoes and started carving their own way out. … [B]y Wednesday morning, the town had reconnected itself to Killington, eight miles to the south, where town volunteers in turn built some temporary roads of their own.

…

Outside Pittsfield’s town hall, a huge bulletin board is filled with 8 x 11 paper sign-up sheets. “I can offer power,” reads the top of one list, with several names below it. “I can offer medical supplies,” reads another.

“It’s been great—everyone has a different set of skills, and we’re all coming together,” said Patty Haskins, the town clerk, adding that if the volunteers hadn’t started digging, “we’d still be isolated.”

Irene

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In the marina at the storm’s crest. The gangway leads up.

The mouth of the Ash Creek. There are islands out there. Usually.

Afterwards.

Jennings Beach. The sign reads, “Designated smoking area.”

Plenty of downed trees and mud but no serious residential flooding. Well, except to five homes far out on a barrier beach, two of which collapsed.

The skateboard park is a saltwater pool.

Stop Snitching

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According to my town’s Patch site, southwestern Connecticut is Little Kandahar:

New York City and Boston receive millions of dollars in federal funding to help guard against terrorist attacks. Fairfield and other towns in the area simply don’t get that funding. That makes the corridor between the two cities more attractive to those who would do harm, Perez said.

So it’s no accident that in 2001, related to the attacks on the World Trade Towers, three of the 19 jet hijackers stayed in the Fairfield Motor Inn, or that in 2010 Faisal Shahzad, the so-called “Times Square Bomber”, lived undetected in neighboring Bridgeport, Perez said.

“As a result, we need to collectively be more observant,” [Lt. Jim] Perez said. “People are reluctant to call the police and that’s concerning to me. I would love to have a thousand Mrs. Kravitzes. Then we would never have a problem.”

…

Perez said he’s aware some Americans don’t want to give up certain freedoms. And he recognized that it seems Americans are being asked to cede certain civil liberties, whether it’s being screened at the airport, or having bags and purses searched upon entering museums, to name just a couple of instances.

To that regard, Perez asked, “Are they really giving up civil liberties or are we enhancing your longevity so you can complain about civil liberties?”

Sounds like Perez, who recently attended a Homeland Security conference, worked himself into a tizzy while hanging with his fellow Terror Warriors. Let’s see if two tablespoons of fisking tonic can soothe the officer’s frayed nerves.

Continue reading “Stop Snitching” →

Review: The Cocktail Collective

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The past year or so seems to have been critical for the careers of several writers with whom I’m acquainted; in addition to my own success, a number of them have published books as well. So to promote their work, I’m inaugurating a new feature I call Reviews of Books by People I Kinda Sorta Know.

The Cocktail Collective
Jacob Grier, editor
SK2R Publishing (100 pp, $10.94, 2010)

When I purchased this recipe collection, edited by top-shelf bartender and Portland, Oregon resident Jacob Grier, with its odd blue martini on the cover (with, what is that, black salt? some kind of caviar? or is it just the salt-rimmed glass of a red drink with the image colors inverted?), I was expecting a chichi handbook directed at Left Coast foodie hipsters: “As you swirl the Julia Butterfly Hill over your lip piercings, savor the subtle notes of Dennis Kucinich and eco-terrorism.”

Instead, The Cocktail Collective is an extremely serviceable collection of traditional drinks — Tom Collins, Manhattans, White Russians — along with whole new inventions. Or, if not original, at least beverages you won’t find in Mr. Boston: I was impressed that the Vesper, the drink concocted by James Bond in Casino Royale, is included.

The spiral-bound book lays flat on the countertop and is divided by main ingredients: brandy, gin, rum, etc. Further the recipes use a color-coded symbol system for the glassware, so at a glance you know which of the six glasses you should use to serve the cocktail. And while some of the species of syrups and liqueurs and bitters are a little esoteric for the average home bar, the utility of el boracho’s greatest hits between two covers — tiki drinks like the Fog Cutter and Mai Tai on pages 40-41; Bloody Mary on page 54 and Whiskey Sour on page 74 — outweighs any pretentiousness. Jacob also includes brief chapters on stocking and equipping your home bar and instructions for making basic ingredients like simple syrup and honey syrup.

The book actually retails at $6.95 but since Amazon.com seems to be the only place to purchase it — and you can’t use Super Saver Shipping — I had to pay $3.99 shipping on top. Yet even at $10.94, the price is peanuts for what I received. A few Christmases ago, I gave my brother-in-law a starter kit for the bar of his new house. If I was to repeat that this year, The Cocktail Collective would be the very first item in the box.