These are the words, images, and beers that inspired the GBH Collective this week. Drinking alone just got better, because now you’re drinking with all of us.
READ.// “They weren’t eating long-boiled puddings suited to stay-at-home wives tending a wood fire.” The authenticity of many supposedly classic New England dishes, including Boston brown bread and Indian pudding, gets exposed in this blog post by Meg Muckenhoupt, author of The Truth about Baked Beans: An Edible History of New England. Muckenhoupt addresses the “traditional” foods associated with colonial New England, and looks at how they were boosted as a marketing ploy dating from 1860 to the early 1900s. While I still have an affinity for baked beans, I have only eaten them from the can—a habit Muckenhoupt calls attention to.
LOOK.// What are you looking at? Learn about digital distraction and “The Attention Economy” in this animated short by Olga Makarchuk, based on a lecture by James Williams.
DRINK.// CO Cellars’ Electric Mayhem
Apple Season! Harvest Season! First week of fall! Having this carbonated, fruited wine-cider hybrid, made by ZAFA Wines and Shacksbury Cider with locally foraged apples and La Crescent grapes, was like drinking a bubbly Champagne taken from a melting cooler and then wrapped in a flannel shirt. A perfect offering for the changing of the seasons.
READ.// “Hockey has been trying to tamp down its violence for years. But during this year’s N.H.L. playoffs, the floodgates have opened again.” I don’t follow sports, but I do love competition—and if a game is on TV, I’m watching it. Because my boyfriend loves hockey, we’ve been watching the Stanley Cup together, but I cannot get past the frequent displays of aggression and the blasé attitude referees have towards players getting into brawls. It feels … wrong, but in a dated way? Like something should have been done about it already? This article by New York Times columnist Kurt Streeter confronts the violence problem in professional sports, and calls for an end to its glorification.
LOOK.// I’m unsure why there isn’t “Zillow, but just for haunted and weird houses” yet. As a person who scrolls through home listings for the fun of it, I’m always delighted when I stumble upon a house that makes absolutely no sense. Someone actively made the decision to decorate their entire home in blue and green ’70s prints. Some folks called this “The Flintstone House” but apparently Dick Clark had an even wilder house more befitting of the title, which he sold in 2014. The Winchester Mystery House is still my one true love, but there are certainly some out-there contenders for the weirdest and wackiest homes.
DRINK.// Ørkenoy’s Budgie Powderhorn Hoppy Appalachian Maize Ale
I can appreciate a beer descriptor that includes no details about the beer, but is about the perfect bunny friend for whom this beer is named. Because, let’s face it, that’s all I really care about.
READ.// “If you start shutting yourself off and not letting yourself live through the things that are coming through you, I think that's when people start getting old really fast, that's when they really age.” Last month my friend turned me onto “Homegrown,” Neil Young's long-lost album recorded in 1975. The record was supposed to follow the “Ditch Trilogy”—written after the jarring success of “Harvest”—but was archived due to being too personal. Hearing a shelved record, regardless of the artist, is the stuff of musical dreams, and it's led me down a weird Laurel Canyon rabbit hole of drug-fueled, Canadian-American sadness. But I've also had a hell of a time brushing up on my Neil history and giggling at this endearing fan blog bestowed on the internet in the early ’90s.
LOOK.// Haruko Hayakawa's watch styling in the newest New York Times Style Magazine stopped me in my tracks. A beautifully simple execution of a pretty complex idea. How the hell did she successfully pitch using aluminum anchovy cans in place of real product photography of $20,000+ wristwatches? Incredible.
DRINK.// Yoho Brewing's Yona Yona Pale Ale
I just picked this up because I was making noodles for dinner and I liked the can design. This was an easy drinker with a pleasant, citrusy aftertaste. And it was good! with! my! noodles! but some dude wrote a big review about it on BeerAdvocate starting with: "I’ve been getting really into esoteric foreign craft stuff, and some of what is happening in Asia right now is really fascinating me," and that's all I can think about now.
Curated by The GBH Collective
