humanizing the age of mass-production and consumption

Living out one's days in a highly mechanized, and increasingly digitize, uniformly mass produced - distributed - consumed cultural landscape tends to remove a person from the hand of those who made these things and made possible their availability and use in one's own livelihood and habits of thinking.

There are a few ways to restore some individual human presence in the infrastructure, furnishings, and elements we come to rely on, or at least to take for granted and regard as normal and unremarkable. One is to recite the series of steps from idea to final purchase or receipt of the product or service. For example, a car is invented and many varieties are designed for prototype before eventual production at full scale to fill widely scattered orders by builders, retailers and middle market (wholesalers). The mechanics of sourcing the ingredients and making machinery to stamp or pour or grind the product all involve individuals in this long chain of dependent steps. In auto making there are layers of subcontractors, for example. And each worker, manager, and artists has a social standing: name, family and friend networks, aspirations and histories. Some may have significant health challenges acute, chronic, just emerging, or now long past. Others may suffer financial burdens past, present or future. Beyond conceiving, designing, testing and making the thing, there are those who promote, deliver, and service the thing. So whether it touches the mind, the hands or the eyes of persons on the way to reaching the final consumer, there are many individual lives and biographical details that easily can be ignored or overlooked.

By contrast in the age of craftsmen and apprentices, the maker's hand or possibly mark, would be evident, and even when very nearly uniformly produced, no two are exactly the same to the degree that mass produced goods are today. And yet, even in our time, it is possible to imagine that objects comprising the daily cultural landscape all come from the minds and sweat of people. By restating the human touch, the things around us can again be given a human quality; a layer of anonymity can be stripped and living workers can be imagined present.

Microbrewery profusion around Grand Rapids, Michigan

a bit bleary view (for privacy) at main floor of Founders Brewery in downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan

Around 12:30 p.m. on a sunny and relatively mild January 2nd with memories of the New Year's Day (Friday) fresh in mind and now faced with the weekend and perhaps family or friends still on hand from the year end holidays, the microbrewery had all seats filled with a dozen people near the entrance waiting for a table. Since this one is the grand-daddy of downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan, established in 1997, and with a statewide distribution for its bottled beers alongside its local license to serve directly to retail customers, the reputation is wide and well established. But even at the other two city center locations on today's 4 hour beer tour later in the afternoon there seemed to be a steady steam of diners and drinkers coming and going, despite the slightly higher price (about $5) per ?16 oz. serving, compared to ordinary domestic nationwide brands available on tap or in bottles.
     Several questions came to mind which were answered in the course of the 4 hour tasting tour (3 sites, 2 production tours, 12 samples):
  1. Business climate: many of the 9 microbreweries in the city center date to the past 3-4 years. How do they get along: more cooperative than competitive, according to production guide at Harmony Hall. Each offers different foods to go with their somewhat overlapping beer varieties, both the main flavors and the seasonal 3-6 week availability and trial basis recipes. For example fancy soups and sandwiches; wood-fired (or brick kiln) pizzas; German sausages cuisine. Some feature live music nights; others have a happy hour. Interstate highway billboard in the Lansing area (70 miles east and south of Grand Rapids) says "Beer City" come and visit Grand Rapids. Less than 100 yards beyond this one is "River Cit" come and visit Grand Rapids, too.
  2. Production cycle in outline: prepare the mash (bath the roasted grains to extract the sugars and other flavors) and introduce the yeast (brewer's yeast versus peculiar varieties to bring specific flavoring of its own derivation). Pig farmer collects the spend grain for his animals to consume. Then monitor the conversion from grain sugars to alcohol. Refined sugar can be added as necessary to sustain the life of the yeast, but due to its difference to grain sugar, this added sugar is not converted. It merely sustains the yeast cells until the process is complete and hops (one or more of the 200+ commercial varieties) are added for flavor, filtering, and anti-bacterial effects. Now the long wait begins: about 3 weeks or more for lager, a shorter time for ales, and for sturdy stouts 4 more days than with lagers.
  3. Genesis of a microbrewery: siblings or friends or successful business person(s) fulfilling a hobby or dream get together to make business plan and secure a facility and equipment, financing and license. Then production needs testing and consistency with reserves readied for opening day. The whole thing from decision to commit to the creation of a brewing company open to the public could take 6 months or a year or more.
  4. Most risky or delicate stage in the recipe of brewing: home brewers using kits with malt extract rather than source grain or grains have fewer variables and smaller scale, so there is relatively less risk of contamination or ruining the beer. But commercial production has several steps that need consistent handling, uniform treatment and careful control (temperature, ingredients, timings).
  5. Experimenting: smaller equipment can be used to trial new recipes, then another location can do mainstream production at higher volumes (example: retail beer keg is equal to 1/2 barrel, experimental production line uses 3 barrel vessels for the warm work and then 7 barrel vessels of stainless steel for the cool process of maturing/finishing the process; but the production of tried and true varieties that are in constant demand uses 20 barrel vessels).
  6. Training to brew beer: some learn on the job (apprentice), others learn by experience (home brewing taken to vocational level of expertise), others specialize in the coursework and lab experience at colleges or university.
  7. Demographic profiles of customers and brewers: servers, production staff seem to be 22-45 for the most part. Customers on this Saturday afternoon included couples or groups of couples, in at least once case a couple included a little one in carseat/carrier. Then groups of female friends 20s-30s, and some male groups 20s-30s or 50s-60s. As for that day's tour group of 12 plus guide/driver/buyer consisted of couples in 20s, one couple in 50s, father - son.
  8. Speculating on microbrewery life cycles: Surely there is a limit to the number of establishments that can attract local and visiting customers in the city center, especially given the fact that other towns have one or more of their own, and the fact that the surrounding Kent County has at least 14 more. So it would seem that a strategy for a small place with high quality product in limited volumes would want to attract a base of regular, returning or subscribing customers (for example Beer of the Month club or "buy a mug and receive a discount") and then seek to attract newcomers who have reached drinking age, and to partner with surrounding restaurants to sell the beer there, too, if licensing allows this sale outside the production premises. In other words, rather than to expand infinitely and get into the world of bottling and distribution contracts, the nature of the beast is to cultivate steady customers who appreciate good beer.
  9. Range of flavors: all three sites seemed to showcase their IPA varieties - many seemed to seek to be more extreme than the previous, always ramping up the hoppiness to a point of excess possibly. All seemed to have made one or more variety of stout and/or porter, but not all were constantly in stock. Ordinary pilsner/lager seemed to be just one or two of the choices. The guide commented that Michigan is fifth in some regard: either per capita consumption or production of micro brewed beer, or number of enterprises. And he said that prominent use of hops is one characteristic of (Michigan?) microbrewed beer in USA. Naming of each brewer's creations and the accompanying sentence or two of adjectives lends itself to creative expression. Examples (Founders) include 'Dirty Bastard' and 'Old Curmudgeon'; or (Mitten Brewery) 'Triple Crown Brown' and 'Relief (session IPA)'; or (Harmony Hall) 'Erste Lager' and 'Los Conejos' (stout with cinnamon, chili, chocolate hints) available in regular (CO2) or Nitro (60% CO2, 40% nitrogen bubbles for silky texture on tongue).
 --see also http://experiencegr.com/brewsader [booklet with single page entries for each of Kent County's 23 establishments]

Upshot: Who are the people choosing to spend a sunny, mild Saturday at beer brewery to enjoy treats to eat and drink? Why do they come and not content themselves to bottles at home or with friends off site (a handful of big craft brewers bottle theirs: Bells, Founders, Shorts).

High fences and many towers

The collection of prisons to the west of Ionia, Michigan are partly viewable at 55 mph on State highway M-21. Other people have researched the rise in the incarceration rates and the disproportionate population profile centered on African-American men. Given the life chances in a person's home, neighborhood streets, classrooms and workplaces on the one hand, and given the culture of consumerism and available ways to earn and to give respect, the result has been more young men going before a judge for sentencing in places like these along the Blue Water Highway, as the road is known.
     All around the clock and through the changing seasons of one year to the next, the predominantly male populations live out their days of sentence behind cement and wire, recorded by cameras and watched by various paid professionals. And in the same way that schools teach habits and mindset, apart from class subjects covered, so too of prison life there are a number of assumptions, priorities, contextual frames for judging situations. Guards learn to behave like guards, prisoners learn to act like prisoners. When each side goes home - guards each night or morning, ex-offenders after a set number of months and years - then something of the prison culture sticks with them. Habits and routines are learned by repetition; learned by the body as well as the mind and one's heart.
     Passers by glimpse only the shiny razor wire and glassed in guard towers, or the brick signs with the name, Bellamy Creek or Richard Hanlon Correctional Facility. Those outward signs are only temporary. The mindset is more durable, even though it is not visible or material. How different the social contract before cities, laws and precedent: depending on the status of the offender and the offended the remedy might have differed. But it would not result in the vast and expensive institutional life that we see from the road at 55 mph.

So many cars - residents depend on wheels & internal combustion engines

Grand Rapids, Michigan on a Saturday after lunch mid-January this stream of north-bound cars on the Beltline ring road is steady and not unusual in volume. With a grid of roads well maintained, people who can drive enjoy a certain impression of freely moving from event to event, workplace, school or religious assembly. They can browse the things to buy from retailers and gather their choice of eatables to carry with ease in their motorized conveyance. Yet there are costs - money consumed in purchase and upkeep, and therefore money foregone from using in other ways. But there is also environmental impact (each gallon of fuel leaves behind 1 pound of carbon, 454 grams; or is it carbon dioxide?).