MILD ALE
Batch 1

4 lbs light malt extract
8 oz. 40L Crystal malt
4 oz. Chocolate malt
1 oz. Fuggles hops

Steeped the specialty malt for about 20 minutes until the temperature in the brew pot reached 168F.  Boiled the malt extract and hops for 60 minutes.  Pitched a packet of Safale S-04 dry yeast to start fermentation.

Mild Ale is an historical beer style that is not nearly as popular these days as it used to be.  Back in the 19th century, mild was a low-strength beer drunk in great quantities by manual laborers in factories, mines, and other heavy industrial areas.  In the days before bottled water, pop, and other beverages, mild would be drunk for breakfast, on breaks (if any) and for lunch.  So it had to be refreshing and hydrating but not as intoxicating as regular brews.  Making a beer with only 3 or 4% alcohol that is also tasty can be a challenge.  Specialty malt like the Crystal and Chocolate add character and heft to the beer without adding sugar that can be fermented by the yeast (which is what produces alcohol).  Hops are usually kept to a minimum, adding just enough bitterness to offset the sweetness of the malt.

Mild is considered a niche drink these days and it’s hard to find good examples commercially.  I myself have only had one opportunity: a bottle of Gale’s Festival Mild that I ran across at the Brickskeller in Washington DC.  With less than 5% alcohol, it wasn’t going to impair me and tasted seriously good.  Mine will be ready to drink in about 6 weeks.

I think the author hit the nail on the head. I don’t think it would be good for the President to change his style, however. Public discourse in this country has become way too emotional and ignorant of facts. I really don’t want another President who will connect with me emotionally. I want one who is smart, focused, and intellectually rigorous. It’d be nice if more citizens were that way, too.

I feel that I’m in an alternative universe. For eight years some people called anyone who disagreed with the President’s foreign policy or war in Iraq unpatriotic. Then in the course of two weeks, those same people cheer when the United States does not get selected for the Olympics and boo when our President is the unanimous choice for the Nobel Peace Prize. Go figure.

Congratulations Mr. President for standing up to the scorn and derision of your opponents in the election when you firmly stood for the proposition that strength meant being willing to talk to your enemies, not just your allies. Thank you for the confidence and wisdom to say that a hand will be extended when their fist is unclenched. And thank you for understanding that our national security rests on our principles, the example we set for the world, and our alliances along with the excellence and strength of our military, rather than exclusively the latter. God Bless America.

This is one of the pictures from our Labor Day weekend trip to Como Zoo. Hanging out in the butterfly tent, Kaylee suddenly decides to let her inner hip hop star come out.

Seriously, I have no idea where this came from.

• disrupt town hall meetings on health care reform
• run around accusing the President of being a foriegner, terrorist, or worse
• throw out wacky and totally unsubstantiated claims like death panels

Democracy only works if we all chose to engage in a thoughtful, respectful manner.  If necessary, it’s OK to jettison the respectful part.  But citizens absolutely have to be thoughtful and informed.  And that’s not happening.  The idiots have taken over the discourse.

I don’t use that word, idiot, lightly.  Calling people idiots isn’t thoughtful or helpful; I will admit that.  There are people I like and respect who will read this and think I’m talking about them which makes me nervous about this post.  But I honestly don’t know what else to say about the wave of silliness that has engulfed our country.  It’s idiotic.

We often lament the lack of civic engagement in our country.  Kids don’t vote or seem to understand how government works.  The parents who are stopping schools from running the President’s message are contributing to this problem.  At one time, people taught their kids to respect officials like the President just because that’s just appropriate behavior.  Not any more.

Do you really think the President is going to give some political speech to the kids?  Or try to indoctrinate them into some socialistic cult of personality?  Do you really think that?  Really?

Get real!  He’s going to give a bland “work hard, stay in school, don’t use drugs” message just like Presidents and other celebrities have been doing for years.  Reagan and the first Bush did it.  So have others.  What’s the big deal?

I’m going to close with a video clip from yesterday’s Morning Joe program on MSNBC.  Joe Scarborough, host and former Republican Congressman, makes the argument against this insanity far better than I.

NOTE: MSNBC uses a frame for their video that is not supported in WordPress so I can’t embed the video in my post.  The link shown above will take you to the video.

It also makes me curious, however.  I think that we need more discussion (and less yelling) about this whole thing.  So I would really like to know what, exactly, makes him think I’m imbalanced.  Hell, I didn’t even discuss, let alone advocate, any of the proposals.  All I did was spell out why I think we have a problem.

So I would ask anyone who strongly disagrees with this post to tell me why.  Do you disagree with the studies and articles I cited?  If you sincerely believe that all those Harvard studies are just plain wrong, your position becomes more understandable.  Doesn’t mean I agree with you but understanding the sides of a debate is the first step towards having a rational, mature conversation.

So let’s hear it!  You can comment by clicking where it says Comments just under the title of this post, next to the date.

I guess the most the fundamental question is why we are going through this in the first place?  Why does the President want to push this at a time when we already have two wars (three if you count the war on terror outside of Afghanistan) and a nasty recession on our plate?  I cannot speak for the President.  But I can tell you why I think we need to tackle this issue now.

1)  People are going bankrupt in the US due to the cost of health care.  And I’m not just talking about poor people without insurance or people who made bad choices with their health and/or personal finances.  I’m talking about middle and upper class people who had health insurance and did everything you’re supposed to do but got nailed by a chronic health problem and were abandoned by their insurance company:

• February 03, 2005 – The journal Health Affairs reports that Harvard researchers found that half of all personal bankruptcies declared in 2001 were caused by illness and medical bills.  “Surprisingly, most of those bankrupted by illness had health insurance. More than three-quarters were insured at the start of the bankrupting illness. However, 38 percent had lost coverage at least temporarily by the time they filed for bankruptcy.  Most of the medical bankruptcy filers were middle class; 56 percent owned a home and the same number had attended college. In many cases, illness forced breadwinners to take time off from work — losing income and job-based health insurance precisely when families needed it most.”
• June 04, 2009 — BusinessWeek reports on a study in which Harvard and Univerisity of Ohio researchers found that 62% of all personal bankruptcies declared in 2007 were caused by health problems.  “Medical problems caused 62% of all personal bankruptcies filed in the U.S. in 2007, according to a study by Harvard researchers. And in a finding that surprised even the researchers, 78% of those filers had medical insurance at the start of their illness, including 60.3% who had private coverage, not Medicare or Medicaid.”

2)  The cost of employee health insurance in the US is getting harder to bear, especially for small businesses:

• January 28, 2009 — CNN and Fortune report that small businesses are struggling to provide employee health plans, particularly in a weak economy when they cannot pass the cost on to consumers while staying competitive.  “Premiums on group policies have soared by as much as 30%, on top of double-digit increases in each of the past five years. Coverage is shrinking. Thanks to insurer consolidation, policy choices are more limited than ever. And in a seller’s market for insurance, small business owners have little room to negotiate prices or terms.”
• March 04, 2009 — The Council on Foreign Relations reports that health care costs in the US are undermining the competitiveness of US businesses in the world marketplace.  “Factoring in costs borne by the government, the private sector, and individuals, the United States spends over $1.9 trillion annually on healthcare expenses, more than any other industrialized country. Researchers at Johns Hopkins Medical School estimate the United States spends 44 percent more per capita than Switzerland, the country with the second highest expenditures, and 134 percent more than the median for member states of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). These costs prompt fears that an increasing number of U.S. businesses will outsource jobs overseas or offshore business operations completely. U.S. economic woes have heightened the burden of healthcare costs both on individuals and businesses.”
• February 11, 2005 — General Motors CEO Richard Wagoner tells the Economic Club of Chicago that “Failing to address the health care crisis would be the worst kind of procrastination, the kind that places our children and our grandchildren at risk and threatens the health and global competitiveness of our nation’s economy.”

3) The insurance company is not your friend and cannot be trusted.  If this last point seems more emotional and less impartial than the others, that’s because it is.  Right around my first birthday (1968), my dad was diagnosed (at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester) with Multiple Sclerosis.  The disease moved fast; by my eighth birthday, he was paralyzed from the waist down and had lost the use of his right hand.  That year, 1975, he left the workforce and lost his health insurance benefit.  The plan allowed him to maintain his coverage but he had to assume the full cost of the premiums.

I guess the plan’s rules didn’t allow them to kick him out because of his disease.  There was nothing, however, to keep the insurance company from increasing the premium.  Which they did.  Every six months.  After a long, expensive progression of premium hikes, my folks had to give in and “voluntarily” withdraw from the plan.  Of course, getting another policy somewhere else was out of the question due to the now pre-existing condition.  For the last 10 or 12 years of Dad’s life, he was without any health insurance at all.  I remember very clearly heart-breaking discussions of what we could do should Dad need hospital care.  I was just getting old enough to understand what was happening and the possibilities were scary.  In the end, Dad never needed to go to the hospital and he quietly passed away in 1994.  We avoided financial armageddon.

The free market is supposed to use competition to get services to the most people for the lowest cost.  Insurance works by spreading risk out amongst as many people as possible to minimize it (risk) for everyone.  Neither of these principles is working in the American health insurance industry and something needs to change.  That’s why I think we can’t afford to do nothing.  Of course, that raises the question of what, exactly, we should do.  That’s another post.

Addendum:  Although I stand by my opinion of insurance companies, I have to say that I have known individual insurance agents who were good, honorable people.  I think the evil happens higher up at the corporate office.

In June, we went down to Missouri to visit my Mom for a few days.  It was a great visit, marred only by the 100 degree, 99% humidity weather.  The girls loved seeing “Grandma Lambright”, who was a bit of a mystery to them, in the flesh.  Rayna still is talking about wanting to go see Grandma Lambright again.  Other highlights of the visit included seeing my old friends Vince and Droid, along with their families, and a trip to see my Dad’s resting place in St. Joe.  The swans and fish were out in force at the cemetery’s pool and the girls had a wonderful time tossing bits of bread into the water to be devoured.

Shortly after we returned from Missouri, Nicole and I decided it was time for Rayna to make the transition to a full-sized bed.  She did really well in the hotel bed on the trip and there didn’t seem any reason to wait.  So, we went to the furniture store and got her a new bed.  We didn’t get a headboard; the side of her toddler bed was designed to function as a headboard when the child moves to a bigger bed.  We then went to Wal-Mart and let her pick her own bedding.  It was a close race and I thought for a minute that she was going to opt for Micky Mouse; in the end, however, it was the Princess gear that got the nod.  Rayna loves her big bed; even now she occasionally thanks me for putting it together.

Kaylee got a little grumpy at all this.  When it dawned on us that she was jealous, we went ahead and converted her crib to a toddler bed, which immediately brightened her mood.  She loves getting in and out of bed on her own. She can’t open the door yet but she’s trying and it’s just a matter of time.  It’s hard to believe how she’s grown.

Speaking of Kaylee, she continues to come into her own.  All her teeth seem to be in, save the four eyeteeth which still give her fits sometimes.  Her vocabulary has exploded this summer and it seems like she’s coming up with new words every day.  She really gets a kick out of saying Rayna’s name and uses it every chance she gets.  Some of her other favorites are “juice”, “Elmo”, and “naked”, which gets used a lot at bathtime.

This year marked Nicole and my fourth wedding anniversary, which doesn’t seem possible.  The time has really flown.  We treated ourselves to a day trip to the Twin Cities while the girls stayed home with a babysitter.  Nothing fancy, just a little shopping and lunch.  It’s just nice to get away by ourselves occasionally.

Speaking of Elmo, we all went to Sesame Street Live last weekend and had a great time.  Kaylee had never been to anything like this and she really likes Elmo so she spent the whole show entranced.  It was fun watching her try to figure out cotton candy.  First she tried chewing it, which didn’t really work.  Licking like a sucker was even less successful.  Finally, she figured out how to just let it dissolve in her mouth.  We got her an Elmo pendent which is up in her room.

We have a massive backlog of photos, which I need to organize, tag, and get loaded to our page on flickr.  I posted a bunch yesterday (including Christmas 2008) and will continue to work on that in the coming days.  Our photostream isn’t in strict chronological order anymore, which offends my sense of the linear, but it’s more important to get stuff up.  I’ll post here when the particularly choice bits go up.