Failed attempt

Well, my first attempt at Root beer failed. Something must have gone wrong with my ginger bug, because when I went to stir the mix yesterday, there was mold growing along the sides. So I poured it out. I will say though, that the fermentation was working. The puddle foamed up very nicely on the ground. :( I've ordered some water kefir grains as well, so I'll be beginning again pretty soon. I already started another ginger bug. I want to keep this moving until I get something worth my time.

Here are a few pictures from the initial attempt.

Here are the bottle my wife bought me for this project.

Here is my first ginger bug. It was doing great in this picture, but something went wrong along the way. I'll have to keep my eye on it this time.

Here we are stirring in the various roots and herbs that make up the concentrate for the ro

ot beer.

Here are better pictures of the pit we made the concentrate in and them whole mixture being stirred together.

Update on Root Beer

All of my roots and barks came in yesterday from Monterey Bay Spice Co. This morning we opened everything up and began the process of steeping our Root Beer base. The kitchen smells awesome as we let the concoction steep. After four hours, it will be ready to strain out and into a 1 gallon jug with the ginger bug culture to ferment for about several days before we bottle it.

Making Root Beer

I have decided to make Root Beer. I did Ginger Ale a few weeks back and was pretty happy with the results. I am using a combination recipe from the Nourished Kitchen and the Learning Herbs websites. Basically, I am using the method from Learning Herbs and a modified recipe from Nourished Kitchen. My wife bought me the bottles to keep it in for Christmas, though we just picked them up today because they were on order. I am really excited about it. I love the taste of Root Beer and can't wait to try my own. It should be a more healthy version of the drink (sans high fructose corn sugar), using real ingredients and no artificial colors. I'll let keep up a running post on the progress and the results. It should take about a month from start to finish.

Death of Bryan

In researching Donald Davidson for my thesis, I came across lots of stuff I would otherwise not have known. A good deal of it was about my hometown and state, some of which can be read in previous blog entries. One thing I haven't noted much here is how much the Dayton Trial of John T. Scopes, known commonly as the Monkey Trial, was a part of Davidson's thinking. Much of his shift to Southern Agrarianism came after the Scopes Trial was concluded. In his second volume on the history of the Tennessee River, he devotes many pages to a discussion of the trial and its effects on the culture of Tennessee and the South.
In this second volume I discovered that William Jennings Bryan, the Great Commoner who served to assist the prosecution in the case, gave his last public address in Winchester, TN (my hometown) before dying unexpectedly on July 25, 1925 on his way back to Chattanooga. According to The Truth and Herald (July 30, 1925) between 6,000 and 7,000 people attended the public address given by Bryan in Winchester.
I doubt anything Bryan said there was substantially different from what he said at any other time, but it was interesting to me that my little hometown had even been visited by someone like William Jennings Bryan, not to mention that he gave his last public address there.

Christmas Break

It's that time of year again. It is that time when I am supposed to get to take a break from school and sit around a warm fireplace sipping spiced cider (or scotch, depending on my mood), smoking my pipe, and reading to refresh and relax. So how come that never happens? We've spent the last few days running around looking for Christmas presents we would normally already have bought. The van being broken down for three weeks did NOT help our present buying timeline. Consequently, I have spent very little time at home period. And not only that, we appear to be having some kind of heat wave in the Southeast. I am very appreciative of the rain, but it should not be 65 degrees in December unless you live on the equator.
Oh, the present buying is not working out so well either. By this point all the Lego sets under $50 have been bought (which isn't that many anyway), all the bikes under $80 are gone, and nothing is available online either. I don't think I'm going to like living in a depression, if it comes to that.
Hopefully things will look up though. We have most everything bought that we are going to buy. I plan to spend a good bit of tomorrow doing exactly what I want to. I really want to finish Ivanhoe.

Home ... where you least expect it

In researching the life and career of Donald Davidson and the Agrarians I have found many interesting notes about my own home, Middle Tennessee. For instance, Donald Davidson great-great-grandfather, Andrew Davidson put down roots near Shelbyville, TN after his first family was murdered by Shawnee Indians in Virginia. Donald's father spent some time in Winchester, TN (my hometown) at a teacher preparatory school I never knew existed.
Allen Tate's family often came down to Estill Springs for a family vacation. Apparently it used to be quite the wealthy Nashvillian hang out. Several of these men spent time in or around Sewanee and the University of the South. Tate edited the Sewanee Review for a while, as did Andrew Nelson Lytle. Lytle actually retired to Monteagle and died there in 1995.
This has been one of the interesting and exciting things about this research. It has given me a new glimpse of the home I grew up in and yet never really appreciated.

Hometown

I have lived in Greenville, SC for a little more than 8 years. Before that I lived in Chattanooga, TN for about 5 years. Yet for some reason, every time I go back to Winchester, TN to see my parents, I feel like I have come home. None of the places I have lived since high school have felt like home to me.
This gets even more interesting when I recognize that the overwhelming desire for many children that grow up in small towns (including myself) it to get out as fast as possible and as far away as possible. I remember the first time a student of mine here in Greenville told me he wanted to get out of this small town. I laughed at him and told him the population of the city of Greenville alone was greater than the entire county I grew up in. Yet, for some reason, I am trying to get back.
It may have something to do with the agrarian streak developing in me (I picked the topic for a reason, you know). It may simply be a product of my middle age (I am a thirty-something now). Whatever it is, I miss Skip's Grill. I miss the Oldham Theater. I miss the Blue Front Drug Store and the Creekside Market. I miss so much about that place that I don't want to leave once I have visited.
Yet this can't just turn into a trip down nostalgia lane. I have to do analysis, even on myself. While there last week I was saddened by how much Winchester looks like everywhere; which is another way of saying it looks like nowhere. James Kunstler's fascinating book The Geography of Nowhere, explains how this has happened all across America. This process has turned vital and regional communities into "developments" and places for "growth." I saw this with my own two eyes last week. Housing subdivisions have gone crazy in my hometown. This wouldn't be so bad if they had some character to them, but sadly they all look alike.
I can't for the life of me figure out why a vibrant community would want to approve a by-pass around their town. I guess on some level they figure it will keep very large trucks from barreling through the town. But it will also keep people who need to see Hammer's department store and the Winchester Speedway from ever setting their eyes on these places. Watch Cars for heaven's sake. I cried (and still cry) through parts of that movie because it reminded me so much of what is happening in our towns.
I will probably never move back to Winchester. One reason for this is the lack of community. Community it partly where you make it, but there must be some like-mindedness as well. We are very different from the folks we grew up with. Christianity is mostly a social religion in places like Winchester. I know there are many, very many, authentic Christians there. But for a gross amount of people, their is no life in their religion. We take our religion very seriously and have a church that does as well. There would be no place to worship there. There is also the problem of occupation and calling. I am a teacher, but am not state certified. I don't even have a education degree (for which I continue to be grateful). There are no private schools of the caliber I teach at in that part of Tennessee. There are some in more urban centers of Tennessee (like Franklin, Memphis, Knoxville, Murfreesboro, even Columbia). But in little ole Winchester there are no classical schools. It is very interesting to talk to people there about what I teach and how. They don't even have categories to put it in. "So do you teach history or literature?" "Well, both actually, and philsophy and art, with aesthetics and theology." (Insert puzzled face here)
After visiting my hometown, I have to work out the reasons I am grateful to live where I live and work where I work. I have to remind myself of what I would give up just to eat at Skip's once a week or so. I can't say I'd never do it if I had a real opporunity to, but it's not on the To Do list.

Snow Day!

There is nothing like a snow day. I don't remember getting one last year. I think we did, but it wasn't this pretty. It started last night and snowed until nearly midnight. Got some great pictures of the kids at play and the pretty scenery. I will confess I haven't done much today. Built a great fire. Tried to decide on my favorite snow poem for this post. Dickinson has some as does Robert Frost. Everyone knows "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening", but none of them really captured what I was looking for. That made me sad. It made me realize that I know so little poetry. I read it in college. I enjoy teaching the poetry that I teach in my Humanities classes, but I know so little beyond that.
Maybe that's what I'll do with some of my day. Read some poetry. That would be fitting.
I hope you enjoy the snow as much as our family did.
Here are a few pictures.