Pumpkins

Back in October I brewed with my brother a spiced pumpkin ale, a recipe from Northern Brewer. For those of you who are unfamiliar, pumpkin ales are a popular seasonal beer made by many craft breweries across the country, with the original modern pumpkin ale being brewed by Buffalo Bills Brewery (which sadly earns only a C rating on BeerAdvocate). Most pumpkin ales are spiced with pumpkin pie spices and may or may not be made with pumpkin in the mash or boil. Our particular recipe had roasted, cubed pumpkin from our dear, sweet mother’s garden. But this post isn’t meant to be a lesson on beer, so let me continue, will ya?

            A couple weeks after making our beer, I decided to research pumpkin beers a little. This is a common behavior of mine to research something after I already should have. It turns out that pumpkin ales and pumpkins in general have been of significant importance since colonial times. It makes sense after all, when I think of pumpkins, the first two things that come to mind are Halloween and pilgrims. My internet research started with and focused mostly on the beer part of pumpkins.

            Pumpkin beers started as more of a wine than a beer, meaning they were not made with any addition of grains, but were made solely of pressed and fermented pumpkin juice, something which I really want to try making. These pumpkin beers were made out of necessity though, not out of some creative endeavor. The British had control over the import of barley malt and it was hard to get a hold of it in the Colonies before agriculture was established here. So colonists, including slave wooer Thomas Jefferson, used whatever fermentables they could get a hold of. And the only other alternative, not having beer, was not really an alternative back then. (History has always been on the side of beer)

            Unfortunately, recipes and information on how to make these old pumpkin beers/wines is hard to find. So after beer forums failed me, I asked the Library of Congress. Apparently you can simply e-mail them a question and an actual librarian will answer you, no automated e-mails. So a kind woman named Alison responded to my inquiry with some resources for me to look at. Most of them required me to actually go to a library and check out books, but one was a link to a page about pumpkins in colonial times, which I read as I drank a bottle of my pumpkin ale and ate a bowl of pumpkin soup. What I already knew was that pumpkins, and the squash family of which it is a member, are native to the Americas. But I never realized how much they meant to the early settlers who went on to exploit, rape, and ravage the continent and its native people. Pumpkins were not used as decorations or to replace a horseman’s head, but they were a staple food. They were undoubtedly shared at the first Thanksgiving and due to their long storage life, they got a lot of colonials through the harsh pre-global warming/Al Gore winters.

            While I consider myself no impassioned patriot, I do enjoy finding meaning in my heritage, whether it be ethnic, geographical, national, or anything else. When you identify yourself with a particular culture or other grouping, you really start to see how unique you are in terms of where you came from. Pumpkins are 100 percent American. They first grew here and they were what our historical idols ate, much more than you would think. Unfortunately the only real remnant we have of our country’s pompion-eating days is pumpkin pie. The big jack-o-lantern pumpkins that are most common nowadays were bred and popularized in the 70s.

            I am by no means saying you should stop carving pumpkins or feel bad that you don’t like pumpkin pie (Although I guess I kinda am). But this Thanksgiving I ask that you take a look at the pumpkin sitting proudly in the middle of your parents’ dinner table centerpiece and think about how such an overlooked thing has so much more significance than we typically give it. And think about why you may just assume a pumpkin has the role it has. Then look over at everything else on your table and think about its significance. I ask you to do this not because I think you will have some great epiphany, but because when you look at what little things mean to other people or other times, you will find there is a lot more to the seemingly boring world around you, and you will feel a little better. Maybe. I guess what I’m saying is that this Thanksgiving, instead of going through the motions, you should give a little thanks of your own.

Inspirational source of post: http://www.history.org/foundation/journal/autumn09/pumpkins.cfm

What is a hipster?

I’ve been thinking and observing lately, and trying to figure out exactly what one of these “hipsters” are. At first, when I was young and naïve, I thought hipsters were simply those who wore tight pants, had dreads, liked music too much, rode their bike everywhere, and alternately said “cool” and “awesome” after every sentence you said to them. I thought hipsters were ironic. But that’s just a lack of creativity. I also thought hipsters were characteristically pretentious, but that’s not it either, that’s another breed of asshole. It required me to dig deeper to find out what they are.

I moved to the Cities to go to school in 2009, and felt like an outsider. I had nothing in common with the people of the city. I liked my space, my car, and my isolation. But after spending more time here I fell in love with Minneapolis and St Paul (yes, both of them). Before I even realized it I was wearing flannel, wearing thick-framed glasses, listening to local music, avoiding chain stores, reading just for fun, and getting way into craft beer. At a certain point I realized I looked like a hipster, talked like a hipster, ate like a hipster, and was more and more often being labeled a hipster. 

 I don’t consider myself one, even though all hipsters deny they are one, but you will see why I place myself outside of this realm soon enough. Anyways, back to my personal journey to define these people, I realized at some point that that was the problem. They aren’t a people. There is no point where someone decides to be a hipster, and there are no certain criteria that qualify someone as a hipster. This is how I became a “hipster” without even realizing it.

I decided that there are no hipsters, there are only hip characteristics that a person can have. Are you a “locavore”? Are you a vegan? Do you listen to vinyl and college radio? Do you live in Uptown/Northeast/West Bank/Seward? Do you sport a scraggly beard? Do you go out of your way to ride your bike? The list of questions goes on.

I can answer yes to a lot of these questions. But am I hip? I still say no. I am urban. I live like a twenty-something college graduate in a large city. Lots of people do, and I happen to be one of them. This is who we are and this is what we do. We take advantage of the diverse offerings a large city has to offer. No offense to the little rural towns like the one I grew up in, but you just don’t have the population to support startup businesses, art districts, indie music venues, beer festivals, co-ops, and 2-in-1 bike shop/coffee shops. You do have something much more precious though. You have corn fields and open spaces where you can do some really stupid stuff in your youth. Something a life-long city-dweller will never have the chance to know.

But this isn’t about the contrast between urban and rural life, this is about hipsters. And hipsters do exist I have most recently concluded. But my point is that the difference is subtle between just a young city-dweller interested in culture and a true identityless hipster.

So what is it you’re asking? You can’t read much more without your attention span running out you say? Ok, hipsters are assholes, to put it briefly. What defines them is not material by any means, it is not their interests or their lifestyle or their dress. Hipsters and I both are urban, both enjoy culture, both like things that are unique or “edgy”. But hipsters are simply inauthentic assholes. That’s what it comes down to, an issue of authenticity. Many people who are mistaken for hipsters are often people who have a passion, and take it seriously enough where they don’t mind appearing weird or different for it. But hipsters just do things to be hip and to feel included, and they assume that everyone else views the world the same way. Hipsters take nothing seriously; they love to drink, party, bone, pretend to be in love, pretend to like art and generally do anything to live out the sentiment of “I am young, I should fuck around as much as I can before I am old.” Plenty of other kinds of people live like this, but hipsters do it with a sense of obligation, as if they are wasting a precious opportunity by not doing it. And they do it with their own hip style.

Hipsters have no authentic emotions. They don’t realize the world around them is real, so they don’t take it seriously. They think the world is there for them to judge. They are incapable of genuinely appreciating things they like, but they are fully capable of judging and insulting that which they don’t understand. Hipsters don’t want to identify with anything because they don’t want any of the responsibilities that go along with caring about something. So they steal the parts that make them feel hip and ignore the things that would make them less so.

If I have just described you, please stop and become a real person. You make me depressed.

-Travis