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Culture
I am proud, and ecstatic, to live in such a culturally diverse city as Los
Angeles. I am a much better-informed, tolerant and knowledgeable person because of the wide array of people, from different
backgrounds, I have had the pleasure of meeting, and with whom I have developed close associations and friendships.
PAGE CONTENTS:
Why is Friday the 13th Considered Unlucky?
Oktoberfest
Why is Friday the 13th considered unlucky?
One
of the most commonly held superstitions in our so-called civilized, educated society is that Friday the 13th is an unlucky
day, and since, in this equation, each is held to be unlucky, added together, their sum can only equal double trouble.
The modern basis for the aura that surrounds Friday the 13th stems from
Friday October the 13th, 1307. On this date, the Pope of the church in Rome in Conjunction with the King of France, carried
out a secret death warrant Against "the Knights Templar". The Templars were terminated as heretics, never again to hold the
power that they had held for so long. There Grand Master, Jacques DeMolay, was arrested and before he was killed, was tortured
and crucified.
Superstitions swirling around Friday as being lucky or unlucky have existed
since ancient times, beginning with the northern nations. Ancient Romans dedicated the sixth day of the week to their beautiful,
but vain, goddess Venus, so, when the Norsemen adopted the Roman method of naming days, they naturally adopted Venus as their
name for the sixth day of the week. Their closest translation for Venus, Frigg, or Freya, eventually evolved into Friday,
a day they considered to be the luckiest day of the week.
From a religious standpoint, Muslims tout Friday as the day Allah created
Adam, legend has it that Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, the apple, on a Friday, and later died on a Friday, and Christians
consider Friday as the day on which Christ was crucified by the Romans.
The Scandinavian belief that the number 13 signified bad luck sprang
from their mythological 12 demigods, who were joined by a 13th demigod, Loki, an evil cruel one, who brought upon humans great
misfortune. The number 13, in the Christian faith, is the number of parties at the Last Supper, with the 13th guest at the
table being the traitor, Judas. When Christians combine this day and number, the combination can only hold special significance.
Whether or not a person considers Friday the 13th as unlucky, he or she
must understand that this superstition, as well as others, merely stem from beliefs or practices man used, and continues to
use, to explain, and to protect himself, from events beyond his control in his complicated world. He worked, and works only
with the bag of knowledge he has on hand.
Only when factual, scientific bases for these beliefs are unearthed,
and people do not dispel the beliefs, but instead cling to them, the beliefs become superstitions. Today's beliefs may very
well be tomorrows superstitions. Until then, however, don't step on a crack!
Copyright © 1994-2004 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
Oktoberfest
Begun to celebrate a royal marriage in 1810, this Munich festival
has evolved into one of the world's largest parties. It started last Saturday, September 22, and continues till the first
Sunday in October.
Of course, every time the Lord Mayor of Munich commences
the Oktoberfest, we think of beer. No wonder: more than 6 million people revel, fueled by more than 14 million pints (almost
7 million liters). We can't go to Munich today, but we can drink in knowledge of that ancient concoction.
Beer drinking dates back at least 8,000 years, to ancient
Mesopotamia. Made from a simple recipe of fermented barley in water, ancient beer wasn't just popular--it was a dietary staple.
Some scholars have even suggested that beer predates bread.
Before long, trade routes spread the thirst for beer as
far as China and Egypt. From Egypt, the brewing knowledge flowed west to Greece and Rome. But the Romans preferred wine to
beer, and beer drinking soon became relegated to northern "barbarians" who couldn't grow good grapes.
During the Dark Ages, knowledge of brewing was largely
lost to the common people of Europe. But, as with so many other things, Christian monks preserved the knowledge in writing
and practice. In fact, they began to perfect the beer recipe, adding hops, of all things, to the mix. The flower clusters
of a perennial vine, hops added bitterness to the sweetness of malted barley and helped keep the good monks' beer fresh.
Before long, monastic breweries were brewing some of the
finest beer ever made. By 1516, beer was back on tap across Europe, and authorities moved to regulate it. Not consumption--production.
The world's oldest known law governing food production, the Reinheitsgebot, or German Purity Law of 1516, kept brewers honest:
"The only ingredients used for the brewing of beer
must be barley, hops, and water. Whosoever knowingly disregards or transgresses upon this ordinance shall be punished."
When you get down to it, a good beer needs only four ingredients:
barley, hops, water, and yeast. (In 1516, no one knew about yeast; it was just there.) Some beers add spices or fruits, while
others, particularly American mass-market brews, use replacements for barley, such as corn or rice. Some use wheat instead,
particularly in Bavaria and Belgium.
But the big four are responsible for beer's classic flavor.
The basic recipe is simple, too--and includes fun-to-say
words like "wort" and "trub." You start with malted barley. As grapes are to wine, so malted barley is to beer. To malt your
barley grains, you soak them in water to induce germination. That way, enzymes in the grains convert complex starches into
sugar, making them tasty food for yeast.
Then, days later, you halt germination by drying the grains
in a kiln. The temperature in your kiln can have a big effect on your malt--and, eventually, on the character of your beer.
Lightly kilned grains make for the clear pale gold of a lager. Dark roasted grains make for the rich deep black of a stout.
Once you've malted your barley, you can add it to a kettle
of hot water to make a thick, hot mixture called a mash. After a few hours, during a process called lautering, you strain
the mash to separate the solid barley from the barleyish liquid. The strained liquid, called a "wort," is what you need.
You bring the wort to a boil and add your hops. Then you
let it cool and seed it with yeast to begin fermentation--to slowly change the sugars in the wort into alcohol.
Different kinds of yeast make different kinds of beer.
Ale yeast leads to full-bodied, strong-flavored beer. Lager yeast imparts crisper, drier flavor. It also works more slowly
and at lower temperatures, so brewers traditionally used it in late fall to make beer that could be preserved till spring.
In fact, "lager" comes from the German lagern, meaning "to store."
Before brewers knew what yeast was, many simply called
the telltale signs of fermentation "God-Is-Good." Today we know the single-celled fungus's brewing secret.
During respiration, your body consumes oxygen and makes
carbon dioxide and water as by-products. Yeast can do that, too. But it can also function without the oxygen needed for respiration.
It just switches to fermentation, which consumes sugar and makes alcohol as a by-product instead of water.
Over the course of a week or a few months of yeast basically
eating sugar and peeing alcohol, sediments settle to the bottom of your brew. Unless you like chunky-style beer, you must
remove this "trub" in a process known as racking. But after that, and a bit of conditioning, you have a modern batch of beer,
on tap since 6000 BC.
--Christopher Call
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