Beer Review of the Week: Swamphead Brewery: My Thai

Swamphead Brewery, (Gainsville Florida): Found at the ABC Stores Growler Section.     

This week we stay in the state of Florida and travel over to Gainsville... and sampled Swamp Head Brewery's My Thai, A decent beer with some surprise as you let it warm up.

Aroma: Hard to tell definitely some pine, its a bit yeasty, but overall:l pleasant.

Appearance: Nice solid looking IPA. Not much head. Looks like Amber Honey.

Flavor: This beer tastes good around 50 degrees... the flavors come out and then whop there it is a tickle to the back of the throat from the Thai Chilis. Yum. The Kafir lime does coat the mouth well. And the Ginger adds just the right balance to give it more than a yum. This beer builds into a beautiful shenpa (the process of getting hooked), and then is savored the more. This beer deserves kindness and patience as the craftsmanship is truly present. Someone whom does not appreciate finesse will miss the beauty of the overall beer. It is a subtle beauty that in time was worth the patience.

Compared to the Jai Alai by Cigar City brewing it took more time to enjoy... but once I got that flavor... it truly is a memorable beer.   Served with a burrito from Chipolte.

2011-2012 Winter Short Story Festival 29:70

Zora Neale Hurston—novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist—was known during the Harlem Renaissance for her wit, irreverence, and folk writing style. She won second prize in the 1925 literary contest of the Urban League’s journal, Opportunity, for her short story “Spunk,” which also appeared in The New Negro.

Zora Neale Hurston tells it straight as she saw it in Spunk her first published short story.  Hurston was a master as mixing folklore, true-life, and mid-Florida scenery into one mean picture.  Did she write of the American experience, or the AfraAmerican Experience?  I believe she writes of people neither white nor black, of a certain place and time, and that she goes beyond the limitations of classification. Enjoy the story for the story that is told, and find the connections where you may.

“Ain’t cher? Well, night befo‘ las’ was the fust night Spunk an‘ Lena moved together an’ jus‘ as they was goin’ to bed, a big black bob-cat, black all over, you hear me, black, walked round and round that house and howled like forty, an‘ when Spunk got his gun an’ went to the winder to shoot it he says it stood right still an‘ looked him in the eye, an’ howled right at him. The thing got Spunk so nervoused up he couldn’t shoot. But Spunk says twan’t no bob-cat nohow. He says it was Joe done sneaked back from Hell! ”

Oakland: Colorado County

Don't Swim in Florida Lakes!

I drove my Honda Odyssey to visit my parents in Sarasota.  I decided to take a short cut.  I knew I needed to go north. But north had been cut off due to a bad accident between a motorcycle and a cement mixer.   The only way to go was south.  I found my way to the tip of Lake Okeechobee.   At the lake there was one lone fisherman who had not caught anything the whole day.   He asked me if there was any place around here to get some dynamite.   I shrugged the universal code that means “Not sure man!”   The sky started to turn a strange purpleblackblue and that’s when it happened.  The lake sucked up and from the lake emerged a giant red crablike thing.   It approached my Honda.  It grabbed the van with one of his red claws.  Then it opened a wide chasm (probably his mouth). It gulped the van down in one bite.  It burped a noxious smelling protoplasm.  Then it went back into the midst of the lake.   I was cut off from my home, and how was I going to get back now? 
I was to busy to notice, the silver UFO passing in the starry night.