Bad Beer at the LaConner Brewery

Bad Beer at the LaConner Brewery. I wasn’t just imagining when I tasted the IPA at the LaConner Brewery. It tasted flat, like dishwater. But I have it on authority from a well-known beer taster in these parts. LaConner Brewery is servicing too many outside accounts. They have cranked up the volume and lowered the quality. “They’re selling it green – before it’s ready,” said the local lady, sometimes known as the Dutch Bomber.

It’s worse in Zimbabwe. The news about Hurricane Katrina has distracted me from daily monitoring of the Zimbabwe news. But one thing is certain. I would easily choose spending five days in the Superdome in New Orleans over any length of time in Zimbabwe. In New Orleans they said it was like the Third World -- it was like the Third World, but only for five days. Life in Zimbabwe has been hell every day for several years. The gov't., not nature, destroyed the homes of 750,000 people -- knocked them down with bulldozers and left the people to sit in the rubble -- only because certain neighborhoods had voted the wrong way in the last election….. I’d rather be in New Orleans than in Zimbabwe.

Who Cooks for You? Life with Precious. When I met her in Zimbabwe at the Palace Hotel in Bulawayo. That first week together at Nellie’s house out by the Airport Road. She did my laundry and hung it to dry on the barbed wire fence. She brought her two aunties to meet me. Aunt Winnie and Aunt Janet. I bought lots of beer and chickens for the aunties. I rented a car and drove them around town – more beer and more chicken. The aunties decided I was a pretty good fellow.

Precious asked me where I lived and how I lived. I said that I lived by myself. Then she asked, “Who cooks for you?”