AUTUMNAL ROUNDUP

I went and gathered a few beers for late-autumn enjoyment as I wait to crack into my beer Advent calendar.

It's a mixture of old favorites and a few new beers to try.

Silver City Old Scrooge Ale.

Ommegang Three Philosophers Quardrupel.

Boulevard The Sixth Glass Quadrupel.

Reuben's Brews Holiday Gose.

Deschutes Jubelale.

Oskar Blues Old Chub Scotch Ale.

Breckenridge Nitro Chocolate Orange Stout.

Crux In the Pocket Barrel-Aged Rustic Saison.

7 Seas Boobytraps Cascadia Dark Ale (not pictured).

Iron Horse Cand Hannon IPA (not pictured).

I've already enjoyed a few of these beers the past couple of days and it's helping to keep the darkness of the seasonal changes at bay a bit.

KILLING ME SOFTLY

Autumn at sunrise. North Hill, Puyallup, Washington.

The shift to autumn is killing me softly. And slowly.

"Gaining" an hour by "falling back" from Daylight Saving Time to Standard Time once again has thrown off my circadian rhythm. The sun doesn't quite sit in the sky where it should, according to my mind and body. Not only that, but the sun's light is weaker and the sun's course in the sky is shorter and closer to horizon.

Not to be dramatic, but I can feel the dark weighing down my bones. I literally feel heavier. More sluggish.

And my insomnia is acting up, as well as I'm awake and up at 5:00 a.m. no matter how little sleep I've gotten the night prior.

I'm walking and running to keep endorphins flooding my system. I'm taking vitamin D. I'm taking melatonin before bed. I'm practicing mindfulness.

The only saving grace of the past few weeks has been brilliant fall foliage, made even more so by the richer amber sunlight.

Hopefully, I can get myself back to some sustainable pattern of wake-and-slumber before the fog and gray and dark set in for the next few months.

CH-CH-CHANGES

Three years ago, my favorite beer store, 99 Bottles, closed after ten years of business. It was a sad day when the doors were shut for good because they were relatively close to me, they carried beers I enjoyed, they really knew their beer, and they hosted some rather fun and imaginative beer tasting events. Their demise was partly fueled by "big box" beer stores moving into the region—BevMo and Total Wine—as well as a state that has a lot of regressive and/or convoluted laws when it comes to alcohol.

And I guess I've been in a state of mourning for the past three years.

In addition to my favorite beer store closing, there have been a lot of changes in the beer industry over the past three years. Some favorite longtime breweries have closed (Bridgeport) and others have come and gone within a few short years (Puyallup River Brewing). New beer stores have opened (CRFT Beers of Auburn, Pint Defiance of Tacoma) but they are quite the drive, especially when distance and amount of traffic is factored in. Craft breweries are selling out to industry giants like AB-InBev (Budweiser) and Heineken International; Elysian, Goose Island, and others have been swallowed up by the giant multinationals. Beer shelf space once dedicated to craft beers has been increasingly stolen and compromised by AB InBev due to their practice of flooding the same space with the brands they bought. New beer styles (such as Hazy IPAs) have likewise taken up space that would have gone to barleywines and sours and other styles of beers.

In other words, a lot of what brought me joy in the exploration of craft beers disappeared and died. To cope, my world shrunk down to mostly what I could still find on the shelves of my local Fred Meyer, with the occasional trip to The Red Hot or CaskCades to try something new. I tended to stick with a few favorites—Iron Horse's Cand Hannon, Bale Breaker's Top Cutter, and favorites from Deschutes and 7 Seas.

But recently, I started to once again build up the stock in my mostly depleted beer cellar. I discovered an Advent calendar of canned German beers that I am really looking forward to enjoying. I cleaned out bottle caps and beer coasters I had collected over the years and reminisced, while also letting go of some of those memories to make room for new ones.

So here is to some new adventures, explorations, and enjoyment of craft beer: Cheers!

BLOOD MERIDIAN

I've tried reading Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy three times before, but I never made it more than a third of the way through the book. Today, on my fourth attempt to finish this novel, I made it farther than I have in the past.

The main stumbling block for me has always been the brutal violence that undergirds the narrative, especially the encounter around an evening campfire between white Jackson and black Jackson in chapter eight. But I survived it and moved on.

I'm glad I did, because I encountered the brutality and beauty of chapter ten. In it, I hear echoes of Moby-Dick, especially the Judge as an off-kilter character and/or madman in an indirect lineage from Captain Ahab and a pissing scene (to add the final ingredient needed to make powder for their rifles) that reminds me of "A Squeeze of the Hand" (Chapter 94 of Moby-Dick). It's a strange and hallucinatory chapter that makes me feel as though I'm just as famished and suffering from heatstroke as the group of American soldiers and mercenaries who are fleeing from pursuing Apaches across the Mexican desert.

It's quite the wild adventure, so on I trudge with Glanton, the Judge, the Kid, Toadvine, and company!

INKTOPODES • TABLING EVENT

The Inktopodes of Inktober and their friends will be at the 5th Annual Maplewood Bazaar on Saturday, November 16, 2019 from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

www.facebook.com/events/895933014103462

This is the only tabling event at which the Inktopodes will appear in 2019, so come and visit them before they swim away!