Show Notes - Week of July 27, 2020

Greetings from 53.5° north once again. It was a hot one this week, with temperatures far above my preferred range.

As far as blog-worthy commentary goes, this week was pretty thin. This is likely due to the push to wrap things up before I take some holiday time. Even with that however, I was still able to finish one book accompanied by a nice handful of words, found some new music worth commenting on, and had one new beer .
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Let's get on with it, shall we?

Reading Pile:
I read a  fair bit this week, and finished one book. Book #30 for 2020 was "The Secret World of Og", by Pierre Berton. Labeling this book a Canadian classic seems a bit of a stretch. It was definitely on the plus side of good, but it was hardly a classic. It was written by Berton though, who is of course one of the great Canadians, so maybe it is a classic just because of the author. One definite redeeming feature was the art in the edition I have was done by one of Berton's daughters, and clearly done at a young age. 

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Looking at the stats for the year, I am now on pace to finish 51 books in 2020. That pace makes me pretty happy. For my upcoming reads, I want to do a lot of reading in August as the month will hopefully be pretty laid back. I certainly have a lot of books to read right now; unfortunately, all of my holds from the library started arriving this week so I have nearly 1300 pages of books sitting on my desk, plus two ebooks clocking it at probably another 500 pages total. I will need a can-do attitude to get all of that done before I have to return everything. 

New Music:
I added a couple good albums to my Music Finds playlist for this week. All three came from this week's episode of Acoustic Tuesday with Tony Polecastro. Polecastro discussed ten albums that changed his life. The first one of his ten that I added to my playlist was "Fork in the Road" by The Infamous Stringdusters. My experience with this album was not the same as what he experienced. It was definitely okay and the playing was quite good, but I did not find myself really getting into it. 

Luckily the other two albums had much more impact. "Evening Machines" by Gregory Alan Isakov was a solid album, and I really enjoyed "Bullet Holes" and "Dark, Dark, Dark". The real highlight of the three though was "My Mother the Moon" by Dead Horses. I was already familiar with Dead Horses as their song "American Poor" appeared in my feed a few months ago. Added to that were "A Petal Here, a Petal There" and "On and On" as real standouts. I really find that singer Sarah Vos sounds like Carole King on "Tapestry", and that is pretty good company. I'm looking forward to digging into the album Dead Horses released in February in the upcoming week. 

New Beers:
When I was in high school, our school sports teams played against other schools from around Central Alberta, including the small town (as in even smaller than my hometown of Stettler) of Rimbey. Being 16 and in a competitive situation on the basketball court, we were quick with the insults to the town, the school, the girls, and pretty much anything else related to Rimbey. 

In the three-plus decades since, I have certainly moved beyond name calling for towns like Rimbey, but that is due to my maturity and not because something changed or improved. But now there has been a change in the town of Rimbey that I can be excited about, as the town is the proud home of Hawk Tail Brewery.

I was excited to grab a couple of their Amber Ale this week. The beer did not hold up to my level of excitement unfortunately. I thought the maltiness was pretty good, but I picked up too much burnt taste from the caramel. That does not mean this is bad brewery of course, and so I will check out others from Hawk Tail in the near future. 

Rimbey, where the men are men, and the .. men are now brewing beer. 

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New Words:
Quite a number of words this week, with some coming from Berton's Og but mainly from the other in-progress books.

breviary
[ˈbrēvēˌerē, ˈbrev-]
NOUN

1. a book containing the service for each day, to be recited by those in orders in the Roman Catholic Church.

gibbet
[ˈjibit]
NOUN

1. a gallows. 

VERB

1. hang up (a body) on a gibbet.

inveigle
[inˈvāɡəl]
VERB

1. persuade (someone) to do something by means of deception or flattery.

chthonic
[ˈTHänik]
ADJECTIVE

1. concerning, belonging to, or inhabiting the underworld.

buttery
[ˈbədərē]
NOUN

1. a pantry, or a room for storing wine and liquor.
2. (BRITISH) a room, especially in a college, where food is kept and sold to students.

pillock
[ˈpilək]
NOUN

1. (BRITISH) (informal) a stupid person.

intercessor
[ˈin(t)ərˌsesər]
NOUN

1. a person who intervenes on behalf of another, especially by prayer.