Think while you drink

...especially in the Athens of America.

Our keen-eyed correspondent Lee noted the following item in Sunday's Globe: basically, the Concord grapes (vitis labrusca) that make the Kosher wine you will be quaffing at your seder were developed as a nativist response to the encroachment of the foreign (ie "degenerate" and "Semitic") vitis vinifera:

"The story of America's only counter-Semitic grape, is told by Rutgers historian Philip J. Pauly in the January 2005 issue of Arnoldia, the quarterly journal of the Arnold Arboretum. It begins with Ephraim Wales Bull, a Boston goldleaf artisan and amateur farmer who relocated to rural Concord in 1836 at age 30. There, inspired by notions of a pure American civilization whose example would shame debauched Europe, Bull devoted himself to developing varieties of Vitis labrusca, the then-dominant North American grape species that would replace the morally degenerate European species, Vitis vinifera, as the source of American wine."

Read all about it here. Or  here , if you prefer not to register. I wonder if Daddy O knew about this when he dropped his "Like Welch's Grape, crushing suckers we hate" line in Stet Troop 88. Irregardless, a big Mazel Tov and L'Chaim to Ashkenaz and Sephardic Codstituents alike in this passover season, but especially this guy. Hope you found what you were looking for.  I do have some brisket suggestions coming up that I'd urge you to consider for 5766.
Meanwhile, we are shocked, shocked to learn that beer consumption is on the rise at Fenway Park. At $6 / cup of lite beer, you would think the only trouble would come when people cut in the bathroom line. It has always astonished me not that so many  people get so fucked up at Red Sox games, but that so many can afford to get so fucked up at Red Sox games.  Also, some math fun: at the article's estimated $4,000 per tap per game, the proceeds from three taps would just about cover the cost of one of Johnny Damon's at bats. I know that Theo and his lads are keen to extort maximize revenue. Perhaps some sort of  adopt-a-tap is the solution. Just a fan trying to help.