mom's hops. rick's beer.

 

 

Rick Nowak (below), my Uncle Bob Nowak's brother, has been into craft brewing for....two years now, I think. Won a silver medal at a recent competition for his Twisted Belgium. He's brewed maybe 6 or 7 beers and they're tasty. Especially his American Honey Wheat - the honey being supplied by Brother Jason's bees.

 

Didn't realize until recently that my mother had been growing hops in the front yard on a trellis for years. Rick grows his own hops but he'll never know the difference if we slip mom's in the batch.

 



 

Here is the beginning of my post. And here is the rest of it.

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"Struggle".

My theater mentor in Cedar Rapids, Artistic Director Richard Barker, retired this year after 26 years - directing. He directed me in the musicals "Starmites", "A Chorus Line", "Echoes" and a bit part in "The Manchurian Candidate" (funny, I just remembered that cameo role). I love him dearly. Everything he represents about the theater are qualities I would have no problem emulating. About 6 years ago he got into photography (a fact I just found out about this past May). The bulk of his work is manipulation of a photograph after it's been taken, forsaking the image as captured by the camera. Check out his website, ImageAfterImage.

I recently saw a friend's artwork and a couple of her pieces reminded me of this shot, one of my favorites of Richard's work, called, "Struggle". I've featured it in my self-published photography book, "Passion = Truth, a photographic essay of life's truths".

"(Struggle) began as a shot of grasses and small flowers. After working with it for a while I began to see people reaching and pulling instead."

- Richard Barker

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IRCINK = Scrounger Extraordinaire!

OK. You've got Timothy Hutton in The Green Berets, Jack Lemmon in Mr. Roberts and Tony Curtis in Operation Petticoat. But now there's Jeffrey James Ircink. I'm sort of a pack rat - tinker, traveller, whatever. The company I work for, PorchLight Entertainment is moving to a new location in Los Angeles and the talented Mr. Ircink got his grubby hands on other people's junk. Including:

1) An authentic rubbing of F. Scott Fitzgerald's tombstone - framed - which reads: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past" - The Great Gatsby.

2) A basic survival kit including food, water, medical supplies, blanket and flashlight - provisions to last moi three days (and Air Force approved).

3) Some decent picture frames - including some with mattes - that I can salvage for my own use.

4) Original color drawings from early production stages of a new children's series PorchLight is producing in conjunction with the BBC, called Animalia, inspired by the popular book by Graeme Base (sure to be a hit series).

5) Several books and CD's, including medieval chants and madrigals, Leonard Cohen, Homer, law dictionary, NYC street guide, and Faeries by Brian Froud.

6) A whiteboard.

7) An old VHS camcorder that's as big as closet which I ended up tossing.

And the sweet thing is...we're not done.

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