I've gone on and off beer a few times, however not on moral grounds, so much as for health reasons (for going on, not just off). When I go off beer, I up other alcohol beverages, keeping it constant, more or less.
This is not health advice, and I'm no medical doctor. Call me a witch doctor if you like, but to me that just means I'm not hanging out a shingle, as one who wants to be persecuted for practicing voodoo or whatever shamanistic science (oxymoron alert!).
I'm just another Quaker who likes beer, and who takes pride in Quaker breweries, if the beer is any good.
Anyway, I was at one of my regular watering holes with a friend I'd not seen in a long time, on her way back to an important career, which had sent her here for a conference. I introduced myself casually to one of the bar customers, and started yakking with the bartender. My friend took up with the stranger and they talked on and on and on.
Well of course it turned out later that my friend had mistaken my casual introduction to a stranger, for a nod to a well-known friend. She thought in sharing her life with this guy, she was likewise filling me in, as he and I would be talking later. I doubt I'll ever see him again.
Another time on the same visit, my friend got my mother talking about her childhood and sharing stories I hardly ever, if ever, have heard. Not pleasant stories (about how her older brother was killed when he roamed out in a new neighborhood to explore a construction site) but also not often heard. However my friend assumed mom frequently told this story, and that I'd heard it many times before.
I think that's what old friendships, renewed much later in time, sometimes engender: new forms of misunderstanding that aren't necessarily damaging, more like instructive.
I mean, you're free to put a negative spin on just about anything uncomfortable, but if you're able to afford a positive spin, you'll be propelled into new fun adventures.
Or such is the PR.
This is not health advice, and I'm no medical doctor. Call me a witch doctor if you like, but to me that just means I'm not hanging out a shingle, as one who wants to be persecuted for practicing voodoo or whatever shamanistic science (oxymoron alert!).
I'm just another Quaker who likes beer, and who takes pride in Quaker breweries, if the beer is any good.
Anyway, I was at one of my regular watering holes with a friend I'd not seen in a long time, on her way back to an important career, which had sent her here for a conference. I introduced myself casually to one of the bar customers, and started yakking with the bartender. My friend took up with the stranger and they talked on and on and on.
Well of course it turned out later that my friend had mistaken my casual introduction to a stranger, for a nod to a well-known friend. She thought in sharing her life with this guy, she was likewise filling me in, as he and I would be talking later. I doubt I'll ever see him again.
Another time on the same visit, my friend got my mother talking about her childhood and sharing stories I hardly ever, if ever, have heard. Not pleasant stories (about how her older brother was killed when he roamed out in a new neighborhood to explore a construction site) but also not often heard. However my friend assumed mom frequently told this story, and that I'd heard it many times before.
I think that's what old friendships, renewed much later in time, sometimes engender: new forms of misunderstanding that aren't necessarily damaging, more like instructive.
I mean, you're free to put a negative spin on just about anything uncomfortable, but if you're able to afford a positive spin, you'll be propelled into new fun adventures.
Or such is the PR.
