Cocktail Expert

 I just got back from a historic preservation conference and because I had just finished the fourth of four deadlines, I ended up taking a session purely for fun: Cheers to Heritage: The Cultural Significance of Cocktails. The speaker, Frederic Yarm was a fantastic speaker.  Not an expert one, but a passionate and informed one. He's got a Harvard PhD in biochemistry and is a bartender and author.
He went over the history of craft cocktails through it's near demise during The Prohibition (it wasn't the fantasy we experience going to a speakeasy today) and its rebirth. He talked about the 1919 Great Molasses Flood and other writers like Charles H. Baker Jr and Dale DeGroff. He's been very generous and posted his slide deck on LinkedIn. I recommend checking it out!

If books are more your jam, he's written two books: 

Drink & Tell: A Boston Cocktail Book

Boston Cocktails: Drink & Told

During the happy hour "marketplace" (not coincidentally immediately after the session) Fred bartended and the line was long, but it was worth it. I got a Saratoga and while  I'm not a rye whiskey fan, I am when it's mixed with cognac, sweet vermouth, bitters, and Benedictine. It was delicious.

Hope you have gotten to enjoy yourself a little lately!

Taking Back My Social Media Presence

 Facebook was fine for a while (16 years this month, almost to the day!) but it has been taken over by "sponsored" stuff and ads I'm just done.  Done.

So, you can find me and anything short I want to say at bluesky here: @casaanana.bsky.social

And for anything more substantive, I'll post it here.  I thought about starting a new blog, but there's entertainment value in seeing ancient posts.

I'll also keep this short for now.  I tried to restart this blog back in 2022 and the draft was never posted because I tried to update readers on everything that's happened since the last post.  Not this time; no long screeds.  This time, I'm going to assume my readers are my friends and followed me elsewhere in intervening years.  If you have a question, let me know.

I think we are going to have to experiment with security and permissions, but we'll see how this goes.

Welcome back!