188. Bale Breaker Brewery

There is a brewery in Moxee, Washington that I really appreciate. It’s on the edge of Yakima in the hop fields. It’s called Bale Breaker Brewery and it has a nice open, airy tasting area with lots of green space outside. There is no food served there but they frequently have food trucks so that you can have something to eat with your beer.

I had been aware of Bale Breaker IPA because you can buy it around here in stores. I had no idea that it was right off the road from where we frequently go when we go to Yakima to visit family. I’m an IPA guy so I appreciate all of the hoppy beers they have there, but they make a few wheat beers as well, so it’s not just a place for the people who like their beer a little on the bitter side.

I appreciate the atmosphere of Bale Breaker. You can just go into the bar section of the brewery and get some help ordering what would be an appropriate beer for your palate.

The atmosphere is pleasant with the windowed walls opening up onto the lawn in a kind of porch area. The Yakima Valley is desert and gets sunshine pretty much 300 days a year so your chances of hitting it right are high. If you go on a warm spring day or a hot summer’s afternoon with friends and family and order some nice cold beers you’ll be able to enjoy the cool of the lawn and the warmth of friendship along with a good beer. And, if you’re like me, you won’t be able to decide what kind of beer you want because there are too many good choices. The solution to that problem is to order a flight and give several beers a try. I have to say that that’s a thing I like to do when I’m at a brewery so that I can decide just what kind I want to take home to drink there and fondly reminisce of my time spent at Bale Breaker Brewery. 

187. Pulaski Trail

When I was living and teaching in Wallace I used to go for runs out Placer Creek toward Moon Pass. On that road about a mile up from town there was a sign in memory of firefighters in the Great Fire of 1910 and it told the story of Ed Pulaski and how he saved several men from being burnt to death in the fire by holing up in an abandoned mine shaft. The road is all uphill so I would sometimes just stop there to take a break and then run on up the hill.

Now, at the spot of that sign (I lived there in the mid-eighties), there is an interpretive trail that takes you right up to the abandoned mine shaft. I’ve been up there a few times over the past thirty years to hike the trail with friends. It’s a great spot to go and take a short hike and learn a little Idaho and American history. From where I live now it’s a couple hours drive and a beautiful one at that, so for a short adventure I’ve gone up there to do that short (maybe two hour) moderate hike, then gone to eat some place in Wallace. My favorite place, the Jameson Saloon and Hotel, is now closed, but it added another historical note to the trip. At any rate, I love three things about that trail: hiking, history, and the forest. So, it makes it a great place for me and it’s not so difficult that I have to take only the most ardent hikers. The first bit of the trail is even paved and wheel chair accessible, so I’ve taken my youngest son with me as well and regaled the poor guy with all my stories as a young teacher in Wallace.

There are lots of other hiking trails appropriate for various ability levels in Idaho that I enjoy, but the Pulaski Trail has a special place in my heart because it is where I first started teaching and it’s loaded with history of this area. I very much appreciate that trail because of how it encapsulates many of the things that I love.

 

186. American Service

In the US you typically get good service from friendly, helpful people. I appreciate the way Americans take charge of a task and don’t over compartmentalize. Here in the United States when you seek assistance in a department store, if you ask for help from someone but that isn’t their department or area of expertise you will quickly be directed to the right person, even if who you are speaking with doesn’t know who that is. They will take charge of the problem and find the right person for you.

When traveling abroad I have found this to not as typically be the case. I have even experienced requesting help and getting it in English but then the person who was helping me suddenly could not understand my English or Italian even when I said the same thing that they had just helped me with. Of course, I probably said a few choice words in English about that person that burnt any bridges I may have made, but fortunately that person couldn’t understand my German due to my heavy American accent. I realize that these were only single incidents and I cannot judge entire nations or people based on those, nor do I, because I love Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Austria and their people, but they are not as eager to be helpful as the people of the United States.

And I have other similar examples from English speaking countries where language was not a barrier. I believe that Americans are more used to questioning hierarchies while other countries are not quite so willing to push boundaries. So, our people are a little less offended when they are questioned or asked for help beyond the resources they might typically supply. They would do the same thing, so they have learned how to get the help or are very willing to do so. Americans also have this annoying desire to make everyone accountable for every tax penny spent, so we understand bureaucracy and the necessity to overcome that headache and because of that we help one another. I appreciate that.

 

185. American English

I spent the last 35 years teaching English and the last 58 studying it. It wasn’t until about 20 years ago that I really began appreciating my own version of the language: American English. There’s little doubt that I typically speak and write the standard variety of that version of English, but I’ve learned to be especially proud of it.

I think most people who speak any variety of English are at least vaguely, if not fully, aware that American English spellings are different than British English. We can thank Noah Webster, an early 19^th century American English teacher, grammarian, and lexicographer. He viewed some letters as excess since only one vowel sound seemed necessary to the pronunciation (most of these words were those that wandered into English from French), such as the u’s in the British colour and flavour that become color and flavor in American English. He also saw words with the silent gh as superfluous and tried his best to get rid of them and make words such as fight into fite but the American public would not go that far. He was, however, successful in changing the re in words like center and theater into the current American spelling instead of the British centre and theatre (interestingly enough, theatre or theater will not be corrected by American spell checks because both seem to be acceptable).

While Noah Webster was instrumental in changing the written variety of English, it has been the American people as a whole who have modified the language for our own continent. We have assimilated many new languages into our own, yet we carry on with the pronunciations of those words in the languages from whence they originated. A filet of fish is pronounced in the French way so that it sounds like fill-ay, not fill-it. In American the word garage does not rhyme with the word carriage as it would in England, but it has a second soft g so that it is a guh-razh, not a “garriage.”

In American English when we wash up, we wash our hands. In Britain when you wash up, you wash the dishes. In America we only mind a few things while watching others. In London, when stepping off the underground, you must Mind the Gap, the gap between the train and the platform. We mind our manners but our children are the ones who better mind us, not the other way around. Parents run the show in the states, but in the Isles, I was never quite certain of that. At any rate, after all these years I’m very appreciative of all the varieties of the English language, but I’m especially fond of the American dialect.

184. American Electoral Process

The American democratic election process is crazy and must be completely baffling to other democracies around the world. Right now, we have barely installed the 46^th president of the United States and already we are talking about the next presidential election in just four years. And, of course, there are the mid-term elections in just two short years and even less talked about are the yearly elections over things like school board members, city council members, and various taxing levies. The election cycle here is continuous and the politics can get as complicated, or more complicated, than a game of chess.

While I love the whole process and find myself getting sucked into it, I sometimes have to pull myself back so as not to let it get to me. We play with the vote a bit too much. We pass enfranchisement laws into the very fabric of our nation, the constitution, and then we look for ways to win the voters over to one side or the other. If that doesn’t work, we change the boundaries of voting districts to weaken voting blocks.

The election process in the United States is complicated mostly because of our size and because we have fifty separate states, territories, and the District of Columbia all with their own voting rules and regulations. This has also led to some congressmen questioning the legitimacy of certain states’ election processes, especially in hotly contested states that swing the entire presidential election. The electoral college was implemented to prevent populous states from overpowering the rural states, but now it sometimes gives an inordinate power to rural states that does sometimes bring our country into gridlock. While I don’t particularly care for those moments of grid lock, I am fascinated by the voting process. I am fascinated by the power plays that states make. I am fascinated by how the will of the people can be manipulated. The entire process is messy but interesting. I do not know how else such a diverse country could be closer to discerning the will of its people. So, I am grateful for the American electoral process.