Reporter working on "Indiana Breweries"

My friend John Holl, late of The Star-Ledger and The New York Times Co., is working on a book about Indiana beers and is looking for some tips. Contact him at johnholl@gmail.com or www.facebook.com/john.holl if you want to help.

Here's John:


"Indiana Breweries" will join the Stackpole series pioneered by Lew Bryson.

I'm working on it with Nate Schweber of the New York Times (he's also the frontman of a band called the NewHeathens - www.newheathens.com).

It's scheduled to be published in June 2011. We'll spend the next few months reporting and writing from the Hoosier state. Indiana boasts more than 30 brewpubs and breweries and I'm really looking forward to revisiting many of them. This book is a bit of a homecoming for me. As you know I was a staff writer for the Indianapolis Star in 2003-2004 and spent a lot of time driving the state and visiting a lot of fine breweries. It will be also nice to reconnect with some friends and family who live in Indiana.

Indiana beer is often overlooked by people, who focus on beers from Missouri to the West and Michigan to the northeast, but the Hoosier state has some really great places. We're hopeful that this book will encourage people to hit the road and visit not only the breweries but the towns and attractions in the area.

I think there is such a diversity among the Indiana Brewers that even people with very particular tastes will be able to find what they want.

We already have the list of breweries and brewpubs in the state and are ready to hit the ground running. What we're looking for is suggestions for other great bars in Indianapolis, Ft. Wayne, Bloomington, Kokomo, Evansville, etc. That way, we can flesh out the guide a bit and give people some variety.

And, since books don't pay a lot we're looking to get Nate Schweber into some live music bars to he can play for a new audience. He's the frontman for a Roots Rock band called the New Heathens. Their second album will be released in the spring.

Here's what the village voice has to say about the band:

"Local root rockers the New Heathens make the best with keeping their music focused, but simple. They sound familiar at first listen, some Bruce, then a bit of Graham Parker and the Rumour creep in. You're getting jangle in your guitar and smarts in your lyrics, but that's why you love bands like this in the first place, right?"

Anyone with suggestions is welcome to contact me at johnholl@gmail.com or www.facebook.com/john.holl

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Internet mythology

People are increasingly weaving their own views of the world from strands of fact and fancy using email and the Web.

Thomas Friedman’s Nov. 28 column, “America vs. The Narrative,” gives a vivid example, based upon the reaction to the killing of 13 people at Fort Hood by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan.

Friedman notes Hasan’s support for Muslim suicide bombers, a seminar presentation he made entitled “Why the War on Terror Is a War on Islam,” and his contacts with a Yemeni cleric who supported jihad violence against America.

All that, Friedman writes, makes him believe “that Major Hasan was just another angry jihadist spurred to action by ‘The Narrative.’”

“The Narrative is the cocktail of half-truths, propaganda and outright lies about America that have taken hold in the Arab-Muslim world since 9/11. Propagated by jihadist Web sites, mosque preachers, Arab intellectuals, satellite news stations and books — and tacitly endorsed by some Arab regimes — this narrative posits that America has declared war on Islam, as part of a grand ‘American-Crusader-Zionist conspiracy’ to keep Muslims down.”

Friedman notes the persistence of this belief despite U.S. efforts on behalf of Muslims “in Bosnia, Darfur, Kuwait, Somalia, Lebanon, Kurdistan, post-earthquake Pakistan, post-tsunami Indonesia, Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Many Americans assume the jihadists are deluded, but carry their own persistent misconceptions. A favorite uncle has me on his email list for every crackpot chain-letter he gets.

I say “crackpot,” because nearly every claim I’ve checked from these – usually some lurid story about President Obama, Speaker Pelosi or some other liberal enemy of the conservatives, is wrong.

Here’s a typical chain-letter, titled “Pelosi’s jet,” which features a picture of a large military aircraft and this caption:

“This Jet is the USAF C-32, Boeing 757, that MADAME PELOSI uses. And the Democrats want to talk about Sarah's dress??? Conservatives! Are you out there? Madame Pelosi wasn't happy with the small jet USAF C-20B, Gulfstream III, that comes with the Speaker's job...no, Madame Pelosi was aggravated that this little jet had to stop to refuel, so she ordered a Big Fat 200-seat USAF C-32, Boeing 757 jet that could get her back to California without stopping!”

There’s much more, but most of it is false, according to Snopes.com, the authoritative fact-checker of Internet lore. Snopes reports that the House speaker, third in the line of succession to the president, has been assigned military transport since 9/11, and that the jet in question was not routinely used.

Another chain letter is simply titled, “NFL or NBA?” and recites the supposed list of crimes and personal problems of a group of people:

36 have been accused of spousal abuse
7 have been arrested for fraud
19 have been accused of writing bad checks
117 have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses
3 have done time for assault
… And so on.

The group that has achieved such low distinction turns out to be members of Congress, the email says – “The same group of Idiots that crank out hundreds of new laws each year designed to keep the rest of us in line.”

Snopes reports that the email dates to 1999 and is problematic because, since none of the people are identified by name, it’s impossible to verify the claims. It’s also odd that the email does not claim any of the lawmakers was actually convicted of anything – but only arrested. Criminal convictions are reported on all the time in the news. Why go to all the trouble to compile such a list, one might wonder, without adding the specifics necessary to make it believable?

Obama is the subject of numerous bogus Internet claims, including the contention that his birth certificate was forged and he should not legally have been allowed to take office. The latest turn in the story occurred in August when a Kenyan birth certificate was produced allegedly showing Obama was born in that country. The document was quickly proven to be a forgery.

What’s this mean? Rumors have always been part of politics, but never has a lie – or any other information – been able to take flight around the world with such speed. The real concern here might lie not in the existence and spread of these rumors, but the way in which some people who believe in them increasingly isolate themselves from fact-checked sources of information.

Newspapers are hardly perfect. But they adhere to standards of fairness and accuracy that require stories to be checked before they’re printed. But my good uncle and many others have given up on the “mainstream media” and instead get much of their information from talk radio, internet chain-letters and other unreliable sources that serve mostly to reaffirm their readers’ and listeners’ beliefs.

Country music's great lyrics

David Allen Coe

Working on a piece about "The Creative Spark of Country Music."

I once wanted to be a songwriter. I even ended up in Nashville as a news editor. I told our country music writer about my desire to one day write songs, and his reply was pretty deflating:

"Yeah, you and about 12 other people who got off the bus today."

He was right. But I still love a good lyrical hook - like the famous "mama" stanza from David Allan Coe's "You Never Even Called Me By My Name."

Coe gained fame as one of country's "outlaw" singers, and among other hits wrote the Johnny Paycheck anthem "Take This Job and Shove It."

Here's that memorable section from "You Never Even..."

Midway through the song, Coe starts talking...

"Well, a friend of mine named Steve Goodman wrote that song

"And he told me it was the perfect country-western song

"I wrote him back a letter and told him it was NOT the perfect country-western song because he hadn't said anything at all about
mama, or trains, or trucks, or prison, or gettin' drunk.

"Well, he sat down and wrote another verse to the song and he sent it to me

"And after reading it, I realized that my friend had written the perfect country-western song.

"And I felt obliged to include it on this album. The last verse goes like this here:

"Well, I was drunk the day my Ma got outta prison.
And I went to pick her up in the rain.
But, before I could get to the station in my pickup truck
She got runned over by a damned old train. "


That's a great lyric and a great story.

Here's a more recent picture of Coe in full outlaw style: