Historian. Author. Ranter. Idea Junkie.
This a blog. Sort of. I rarely use it anymore.
A while back, I noted that Patrick Emerson, the Oregon Economics Blogger Par Excellence (and as you know, I'm all over the idea of scholars communicating with The Rest of Us) blogged about the economics of homebrewing. He's back with a decidedly cheery update. Read it here.
The "Proof" column in the New York Times mostly drives me nuts because it's mostly written by people hell-bent on explaining how horrible alcohol is. True, every once in awhile strays to the Dark Side and features something positive about alcohol. Proof (no pun intended)?
The most recent essay was penned by Steve McCarthy, the guy who founded Clear Creek Distillery in Portland, Oregon.
I LOVE Clear Creek pear brandy. Well, okay, I love everything CC puts out, but especially its pear brandy. Read and enjoy. And if you've got the dough and can find it, track down a bottle of Steve's pear brandy -- take a gorgeous sip . . . and enjoy more!
In no particular order:
--- Michelle, you seriously rock.
--- A sweet homage to Bob Lachky from Jeremiah McWilliams. (Jeremiah's probably saying "Sweet? Ewwww!" But I'm a girl; girls see "sweet" where boys see friendly shoulder-punch.)
--- Two weeks into my foray into Twitter, and I'm hooked, mainly because I'm getting such cool stuff from other people's tweets. Turns out that most people's tweets go way beyond "I'm in the frozen food section now."
--- The economic disaster affects real people. Read the farewell columns and blogs and watch the video at the (late) Rocky Mountain News website.
--- Re. the upcoming "Beer Wars": Lotsa people are wondering why it's a one-night release, as if that's a bad thing. These one-nighters are common. I've seen several operas beamed live (Fabulous!) (Well, it is if you're a fan of opera.) The documentary I.O.U.S.A. also originated as a satellite-delivered, one-night event. (It makes the move to television in, I believe, March.)
---- An op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal about corporate executives' salaries. Completely worth reading.
---- Been on a Willie Nelson jag the past few days, in part because of this hugely entertaining blog entry by Ann Ivins over at Scholars & Rogues. If you only have time for two, make them Across the Borderline and Teatro. Well, okay, include Red Headed Stranger. And don't forget Stardust. And . . . Oh, never mind.
"Oh, no," you groan. "Not ANOTHER series!" Yes, dear friends. Another series.
But this one is about what I do, about my work as a historian. As I mentioned a few weeks back, it's only gradually dawned on me (after a year of regular blogging) that I blog about this, that, the other thing, and everything in between. But I rarely discuss my work: that of a historian.
Yes, you've heard plenty about my view as a historian, but not about what it's like to do and write history. Frankly, I'm doing this for me: I don't often ruminate about what I do or how I do it, because, ya know, I'm too busy doing it.
But as I've noted about a zillion times here before, things are changing. I'm writing a new book, but by the time it's finished, well, the idea of the "book" may be some THING that I can't even imagine now.
So -- after about 25 years of working as a historian, and as I live through what I think is a pivotal era in our nation's and perhaps our planet's history, what the hell: I'm gonna document my work.
Part One --- Part Two --- Part Three --- Part Four --- Part Five Yes, I understand that life changes constantly. We can never step in the same stream twice, etc. And, yes, to a certain extent human beings are human beings and human nature doesn’t change.
But . . . What if this is a period of fundamental upheaval? What if the "digital revolution" and the subsequent "flat world" have fundamentally altered the way we define, organize, and manage, for example, "business"?
Many economic experts tell us that the current economic disaster marks the end of traditional global capitalism? Maybe so. But if that's the case, then we're also standing at the beginning of something else, right?
What if, for another example, the unraveling of capitalism and/or digital communications prod us to re-think our centuries-old concept of "nation"? What if we replace that concept with some new way of constructing political global relationships, one that we’ve not even imagined yet?
What if environmental concerns, to use a somewhat overworked example, fundamentally alter our daily behavior, so that we start thinking of walking from Point A to Point B as normal, and driving from A to B as, well, weird or abnormal? To do so, of course, we’d also have to re-think and re-build new kinds of living environments. We’d have to reimagine the "city."
What if, to use another example, people decide that, morally, it’s more important to drink local beer than to drink beer made 500 miles away? That our choice of beer involves a social/political/moral imperative other than traditional marketplace directives. (Meaning: capitalism favors efficiency, and it's efficient to produce beer on a huge scale. Marketplace efficiency is the major "imperative" that shapes the brewing industry.)
My point, such as it is, is that perhaps we're living in a moment when so many fundamentals have unraveled, when so many ordinary things have changed, that our ways of looking at and acting in and upon the world are changing, too.
More next time.
Part One --- Part Two --- Part Three --- Part Four --- Part Five Picking up where Part Two left off: I explained what seemed to be a contradiction this way: It feels to me, and has for several years, that life as we know it is undergoing a fundamental transformation. That the period from c. 1985 to 2020 may be as momentous, and as tumultuous and life-altering, as the period from c. 1870 to about 1900.
Between 1870 and 1900, Americans began using the telephone and the automobile. They saw their first movies, and electricity became a normal part of daily life. They began using motor-powered elevators and experienced the amazement of roller coasters and other amusement park delights. Cameras and photography became commonplace.
We're so used to those technologies that in 2009, it's a mental stretch to imagine what it felt like to encounter, say, the telephone for the first time. Or to experience electricity for the first time. Or to read newspapers filled with photographs of far-away people and places. Or to see a movie.
But thanks in part to those new technologies, people's conceptions of "normal" changed with astonishing speed. More important, people invented various technologies that altered the way that people experienced space and time and motion in new ways. And, in turn, changed the way that people interacted with each other and in and upon the world.
It's no accident that in the early 20th century, both Picasso and Einstein devoted their creative energy to exploring the relationship between time and space.
For the past few years, I've been wondering: Are we living through an era of similar tectonic change? And will our relationships to one another change, too? For example, consider this comment from a British researcher warning about the negative impact of internet use on the brains of young children (*1):
. . . [C]hildren's experiences on social networking sites "are devoid of cohesive narrative and long-term significance. As a consequence, the mid-21st century mind might almost be infantilised, characterised by short attention spans, sensationalism, inability to empathise and a shaky sense of identity".
Yes, I realize that the person interviewed in the Guardian sounds like a cranky old broad who wants the world to look and feel as it did fifty years ago. But -- she's not the only person making this argument.
Indeed, as discussions go, it's a hot topic. See, for example, this book by Mark Bauerlein, in which he details the studies behind the "our brains are changing" argument. There are plenty of others out there; google "digital natives" to get a sampling.
In any case, there's now enough substantive research out there that it's legitimate to ask: Are digital technologies altering our perceptions of time and space? And therefore our interactions with each other and with the world around us?
Are we, in effect, living through a moment of profound transformation, one that's (potentially) affecting the way our brains are wired, but the way we perceive the world?
Now to return to the question that the student asked me: How will the brewing industry look in, say, 40 years. The first answer I gave reflected my conventional, Ph.D-trained-historian’s "safe" answer based on reason and logic. There’s nothing new under the sun; today is just more of the same. Capitalism will unfold as it always has.
But another part of my brain says: What if that's not the case? What if -- we're living in a present where the "conventional" is in fact collapsing and we're creating a future that will be radically different than the present? More next time.
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*1: Tip o' the mug to Jacob Grier for bringing my attention to the Guardian article. (Which, ahem, he first mentioned in . . . you guessed it, a Twitter post.)
Website of Maureen Ogle, author and historian. Books include Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer; In Meat We Trust: An Unexpected History of Carnivore America; and Key West: History of An Island of Dreams.
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