“One of the deepest impulses in man is the impulse to record, to scratch a drawing on a tusk or keep a diary… The enduring value of the past is, one might say, the very basis of civilization.”
— John Jay Chapman, American author (1862-1933)
When I began the present position as F & D’s digital editor in 2019, among my first coherent decisions was to try to post food and drink news on a daily basis, weekends included.
After all, fundamental consistency matters when it comes to news, and previously we’d been a tad scattershot in our delivery. The key word in this instance is “try,” as I also resolved to borrow the title of my quarterly print column about beer and transfer it to digital slot, henceforth a weekly dose of “Hip Hops.”
In truth, I’d have preferred reverting to one of my previous identities: “The Potable Curmudgeon,” or maybe “Beers with a Socialist,” but in truth it didn’t matter all that much to me. Five years later, what I’ve learned is that even with sufficient time on my hands (there’s another story), it hasn’t always been easy to manage 52 yearly columns about beer —...Read more
