Three Beautiful Things 12/05/12: Grades Done, Dead Memories, Mini-Mini Pub Crawl

1.  I submitted my grades and fall quarter is over for me.  Every student who completed WR 115 is ready to begin WR 121.  Each of them examined their own minds, experiences, ideas, and reasoning and did so both in relation to material they read and in relation to their own experience without the accompaniment of reading.   Of the thirty-four students enrolled at the end of the quarter, thirty completed the course.  That makes me happy.

2.  The coffee conversation between me and Michael, Jeff, and Margaret was free wheeling and we'd all read a recent New Yorker piece on the Grateful Dead and we all enjoyed it a lot and reading this piece and talking about it today took me back to December of 1987 when I went to my first Grateful Dead show on New Year's Eve and the days leading up to the show became one Grateful Dead seminar after another at Jay's flat, as Jeff played the Europe '72 cd for me with all of its variety and we listened to acoustic Dead shows and took a detour and listened to the Flatlanders and then as a small crowd of people staying at Jay's and sleeping on the floor came in and out they, too, prepped me for my first show and they were all very good to me and I remember how I enjoyed the show, even though I couldn't talk intelligently about it, but Jeff and Jay's friends could and I'll always remember that time in San Francisco for a Jerry Garcia Band tape Jeff made for me  that had Nicky Hopkins on it and the most beautiful version of "Mission in the Rain" I've ever heard.  I've since lost the tape. But not the memory.

3.  I went on a mini-mini pub crawl after coffee.  The Troxstar had recommended a farmhouse ale being served at the Beir Stien:  La Fin du Monde.  As the. server poured my beer, the keg blew before the glass was quite full and so it was on the house.  It was terrific.  So was the saison that replaced it:  Avec Les Bons Voeux.  I finished my beers and my beef on rye and chicken soup and strolled over to 16 Tons to see if another saison might be available.  Well, Gigantic's The Royale isn't strictly speaking a saison, but close enough.  It's a fruity Belgian Ale and it was a perfect cap to my mini-mini pub crawl.