Bathtub beer

A 74th anniversary seems an odd thing to make a big to-do about, but 74 years ago today the federal prohibition on beer was repealed. The Elysian brewpub on Capitol Hill is celebrating by brewing some beer in an open clawfoot bathtub in the lower dining area. This looks to be a publicity stunt to get their name into the paper, and hey, it worked. The picture of Dick and Markus and Kevin was what caught my eye in the paper version of the SeaTimes yesterday. The talk of a "strong neo-prohibition movement" reeks of bullshit to me. But the interesting tidbit of news in this article (which is, after all, in the Business section) is that Red Hook posted its first annual profit in a decade.

Anyway, I'm going to try to get to the Elysian in the next few days to take a gander (and a sniff) at the bathtub of beer. As publicity gimmicks go, it's a cute one.

Lavender nightfall

The crimson radiance grew dim at the edge of the world. The purple hills had long been left behind. Now the slender stalks of ten thousand round-domed mushrooms lined the river-bank, and beneath them spread fungi of all colors, from the rawest red to palest blue, but all now fading slowly to a nonchromatic background in the growing dusk.

The buzzing, fluttering, and the flapping of the insects of the day died slowly down, while from a million hiding-places there crept out into the deep night soft and furry bodies of great moths, who preened themselves and smoothed their feathery antennae before taking to the air. The strong-limbed crickets set up their thunderous noise -- grown gravely bass with the increasing size of the organs by which the sound was made -- and then there began to gather on the water those slender spirals of tenuous mist that would presently blanket the stream in a mantle of thin fog.

Night fell. The clouds seemed to lower and grow dark. Gradually, now a drop and then a drop, now a drop and then a drop, the languid fall of large, warm raindrops that would drip from the moisture-laden skies all through the night began. The edge of the stream became a place where great disks of coolly glowing flame appeared.

-- Murray Leinster, "The Mad Planet" (1920)