Silflay Hraka

If there’s a bandwagon, baby, I’m jumping on it.

It used to be the signature whiskey of the United States. George Washington distilled it. Men fought over it in the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794. Classic cocktails like the manhattan, the Sazerac and the Ward 8 were invented for it. Humphrey Bogart swigged it. But the rise of vodka, bourbon and single- malt scotch, along with the decline of the distilling industry in the Northeast, the stronghold of rye production, turned rye into a relic.

Now though, in a turnabout, the prospects for rye have brightened considerably. Fueled by the same sense of curiosity and geeky connoisseurship that gave birth to the microbrew industry, the single-malt avalanche and myriad small-batch bourbons, rye has been resurrected by whiskey lovers who want to preserve its singular, almost exotic essence.

The local ABC store here carries none of the brands mentioned in the article–not that I could afford them if it did–but there was a solitary bottle of Jim Beam Straight Rye on the shelf last time I was in, so I picked it up.

I have always had a sneaking admiration for this whiskey, and have long wondered why it is not more widely available. It is as though the Jim Beam family quietly accommodates its crazy cousin.

I’m not going to pretend to have anywhere near the nose of Mr. Jackson, but the spirit definitely seems to have a more brawny aspect to it than the single barrel bourbon I usually partake of–kind of a wild Scots-Irish mix as opposed to a Kentucky blueblood.

Step 1. Change my name to John Frum.

Step 2. Ship a crapload of material goods to the South Pacific.

Step 3. Profit.

This is February 15, John Frum Day, on the remote island of Tanna in the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu. On this holiest of days, devotees have descended on the village of Lamakara from all over the island to honor a ghostly American messiah, John Frum. “John promised he’ll bring planeloads and shiploads of cargo to us from America if we pray to him,” a village elder tells me as he salutes the Stars and Stripes. “Radios, TVs, trucks, boats, watches, iceboxes, medicine, Coca-Cola and many other wonderful things.”

My favorite college paper is still the one I wrote for Anth 101, arguing that cultures living in areas of great natural abundance were more likely to develop a cargo cult religion–which still seems to be the case.

…like many South Pacific coastal villages, it’s a place where coconuts drop by your side as you snooze. Yams, taro, and pineapples and other fruit thrive in the fertile volcanic soil, and plump pigs sniff around the village for scraps. Tasty fruit bats cling upside down in nearby trees.

As to why I was interested in cargo cults to begin with, credit Larry Niven.

We’re #8!

via AMCGLTD

How flawed thy art.

Nowadays it is all too common–and not only in Hollywood–to assume that conservative Christian belief and a commitment to social justice are incompatible. Wilberforce’s embrace of both suggests that this divide is a creation of our own time and, so to speak, sinfully wrong-headed. Unfortunately director Apted, as he recently told Christianity Today magazine, decided to play down Wilberforce’s religious convictions–that would be too “preachy,” he said–and instead turned his story into a yarn of political triumph. The film’s original screenwriter, Colin Welland, who wrote the screenplay for the acclaimed and unabashedly Christian “Chariots of Fire,” was replaced.

Movies are an inherently flawed when it comes to presenting history. There’s just not enough time to present all the aspects of a particular story, which is why producers can count on fans of any adapted work to complain about was .left out when they exit the showing.

But be that as it may, movies also excel in conveying large amounts of information in a relatively short period, so there’s no reason that Amazing Grace could not have concentrated more on the impact of Wilberforce’s faith when it came to his fight against slavery. It wouldn’t make the movie any more true in the history it would be portraying, as the addition of a religious theme would necessarily reduce the screen time of the other elements in the story, but given the increasingly niche-oriented marketing of movie, there’s no reason both versions couldn’t be released, one version for those interested in the impact of faith, (The God Cut) and one for everyone else. Assuming the scenes have been shot, it’s just a question of editing, and a studio then has two movies for slightly more than the cost of one.

Seems like a reasonable name for a third child to me.

The ship was an 87-foot trawler called the Lady Helen, the spoil some 100,000 pounds of croaker. And the plunderers - they were gulls and brown pelicans, dozens of them feeding on the losses of three commercial fishermen.

It was almost there, too, but struck bottom in Oregon Inlet, a waterway known for its quick currents and ever-shifting shoals. With holes ripped along its port side, the boat began taking on water.

Oregon Inlet will eventually close up, even if only because the Bonner bridge collapses into it after a storm. The economic impact of that closing might not actually be that bad, if we quit interfering with the creation of new inlets. New Hatteras would likely have seen trawler traffic inside a year if it had been allowed to develop naturally.

Sure, the village would become isolated, but so is Ocracoke, and I don’t see it wasting away.

The Albemarle and upper Pamlico sounds have to drain out somewhere, and to demand, Canute-like, that they drain in this one place and nowhere else will only end with those who depend on Oregon Inlet facing an even more wrenching change sometime in the future.

To head that off, we need to take a page from IT world and announce an end of support date for the Oregon Inlet–say August 2012. As of that date, maintenance on the inlet would cease, and trawlers could take their catches down to Beaufort, up to Virginia Beach, into Hatteras Village–where the Oregon Inlet Sport fishing fleet would likely relocate–or even into Cedar Island. There’s a perfectly good ferry channel from Ocracoke to there, after all. Mothball the (state subsidized) Wanchese seafood park, set up a ferry system to back up Highway 12, (new jobs there, for those thrown out of work by the industrial park closure) and wait. It’s not like many fishermen will be inconvenienced.

Few trawlers transit Oregon Inlet, the only passage between sound and ocean from Virginia to Hatteras Inlet. Most opt for Hampton Roads harbors, where waters are deeper.

About $7 million is spent on Oregon Inlet’s upkeep each year, but those whose livelihoods depend on it often say it isn’t enough.

Give it five years or so, and a new inlet will open, more likely sooner than later. Once that happens, reopen Wanchese, and let the trawlers come. In the long run, requiring businesses to be able to adapt to changing natural conditions will cost much less than increasingly futile attempts to bend large natural systems to our will.