Pic(k) of the Week: O'zapft is!

O'zapft is! ^*

A refreshing draught pint of Oktoberfest lager is served in the beer patio at Odd Story Brewing, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA.

Oktoberfest/Marzen lager is a beer rich in malt with a balance of clean, hop bitterness, similar to the Vienna lager. Toasted bread or biscuit-like malt aroma and flavor is to be expected. Originating in Germany, this style was traditionally brewed in the spring (“Marzen” meaning “March”) and aged, or lagered, throughout the summer. A stronger version was served at early Oktoberfest celebrations and became known as Oktoberfest. Today, the festival’s version of an Oktoberfest is quite a bit lighter than what American craft brewers consider an Oktoberfest. 5.1-6% alcohol-by-volume (abv)

Craft Beer.com

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Oktoberfest in Munich

After a dry, two-year absence, the 'official' —and original— Oktoberfest returns today to Munich, the capital of the state of Bavaria in Germany. Since 1810 —when Bavarian Crown Prince Ludwig I organized the first Oktoberfest in Munich to celebrate his nuptials with Princess Teresa of the duchy of Saxe-Hildburghausen (now subsumed in the German state of Thuringia)— there only have been only twenty-six occasions on which the Oktoberfest festival has not been held. Of those, the most recent were last year and 2020, both cancellations due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Twice before that, disease also aborted Oktoberfest —in 1854 and 1874— but then because of cholera epidemics.

Munich's Oktoberfest —often referred to as the word's biggest party, with in excess of six million vistors expected— usually runs for sixteen days, counting backward from the first Sunday in October. Since the 1990s, however, if the sixteenth day falls before 3 October (which is the German Unity Day national holiday), the festival continues until and including the 3rd. Thus, this year, Oktoberfest comprises seventeen days: 17 September through 3 October.

Munich's name, by the way, is derived from the Old German term "Munichen," meaning "by the monks," referring to Benedictine monks who founded a monastery in what would later become the city. Trappist monks —a stricter, offshoot of the order— became known in 20th-century Belgium (and, in the 21st-century, elsewhere as well) for their eponymous wine-like ales.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Morning on the Tennessee

I was hiking the Tennessee Riverwalk, near the Veterans Memorial Bridge, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA, when I turned around and this: mist rising over the Tennessee River in early morning light. I may have missed deeper fog only thirty-minutes earlier but, with this view, I didn't mind.

10 October 2021.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Cannons on Tunnel Hill

On November 25, 1863, more than 50,000 Union soldiers stormed the Confederate defenses along Missionary Ridge east of Chattanooga. The attack stretched from the Rossville Gap at the Georgia border all the way up to Tunnel Hill at the northern end of Missionary Ridge. By the end of the day the Confederate Army of Tennessee was retreating towards Dalton, Georgia, and Chattanooga was firmly in Union hands. It was, as one Confederate officer later described it, 'The death knell of the Confederacy.'

— National Park Service.

Three decades later, in 1890, the Federal government 'reserved' the battle site of the Battle of Missionary Ridge as the nation's first national battlefield park (along with the Battle of Chickamauga, also in Tennessee). It named the Tunnel Hill site the Sherman Reservation Civil War National Military Park after William Tecumseh Sherman, the victorious Union general.

A century and a half later, at sunset, Confederate cannons, now quiescent and inert, still face west, down Tunnel Hill, aimed at downtown Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA.

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A beery aside

Beginning soon after the cessation of hostilities of the Civil War in 1865, and accelerating apace during the latter 19th-century, re-industrialization of the re-united nation would be fueled and refreshed (pun intended), in no small measure, by the development of large-scale breweries (particularly of lager beer). Many of these had begun as small-scale provisioners to the armies. Industrial innovation, including refrigeration, would both spur the growth of the breweries and result from it. But that's another story.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Life, what is it but a dream?

In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die;

Ever drifting down the stream
Lingering in the golden gleam
Life, what is it but a dream?
— Lewis Carroll

Pictured: raft put-in on the Ocoee River near Archville, Tennessee, USA, in the Cherokee National Forest.

Photo taken 8 September 2018.
Poem excerpt from 1871.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Third Man postern

The side stairs, gate, and door to Third Man Records, in Nashville, Tennessee. Photo taken 2 February 2018.

The southern digs of Detroit-based musician Jack White (of the White Stripes), Third Man Records serves as a

record store, novelties lounge, photo studio, live venue with direct-to-acetate recording capabilities, label offices, and distribution center.

...with quite the cool postern.

"I'm gonna fight 'em off.
A seven nation army couldn't hold me back.
They're gonna rip it off,
Taking their time right behind my back."

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Pic(k) of the Week: Pay here?

There's a sculpture in Chattanooga, Tennessee, called "Casey Standing." It's a bronze, nude, slightly larger than life-size figure of a woman, installed outside, in the Southside district of the city, in 2013.

The sculptor is Alan Lequire, a Nashville, Tennessee, native, who "specializes in work of great scale, usually large public commissions."

I snapped the photo in the rain, on the afternoon of 18 January 2020. The juxtaposition of art and mundane commerce caught my attention. Pay here?

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Pic(k) of the Week: Broken Windows

By documenting an unexpected (to the observer) element in a larger scene, a photographer can create a visually incongruous juxtaposition. One might call that photographic irony. One might also state that any irony presupposes a photographer's prejudices. (One might also scoff at all this pomposity!)

So ...

Broken windows, in Chattanooga (Southside Historic District), Tennessee, USA on 28 December 2018.

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