Today is the 80th anniversary of the passing of Prohibition — nothing to celebrate really — but without it, I wonder if we'd have developed the passion for producing beer we have in America today. Sometimes you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone.
Last year, my friend Max Wastler (pictured above) and I performed an historical re-enactment of my great great uncle Samuel Ellsworth Kiser's anti-prohibition speech that he gave to the National Bartender's Association in Ohio in 1912. Turns out, S.E. and I both left Pennsylvania for Chicago to pursue a career in poetry, and then used our way with words to fight the good fight for beer in America — all this without me knowing he even existed until I found an old family genealogy book with a note that read "poet" next to his scribbled name. Uncanny. Get the whole story here >>