Drinking

Vespers sometimes finds us at the neighborhood bar, a little place attached to the beautifully renovated historic theatre.  Here we pass the peace in the form of conversation or euchre, over a Michigan microbrew or a favorite bourbon or, on a very special occasion, a local whiskey with innumerable layers to its complex, north-woods personality.  As opposed to drinking to forget ourselves by drowning our worries in the cheapest anesthesia, at our best, we are drinking to remember: to remember the value of lifelong friendship, to remember the astounding creativity of human beings with such stuff of earth as hops and grapes, to remember what it feels like to be loved.

Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma"Drinking to remember" from catapult magazine