Beer and Holiness

Beer and Holiness Converge in the Life of This Entrepreneur
A Profile of Luis Gordon

Somewhere in the furthest branches of the family tree there might have been gin but the fashionable homes of England awakened to a taste for sherry and by the middle of the 18^th Century Arthur Gordon had moved to Spain to satisfy this thirst.  A prosperous business was handed from Gordon to Gordon but the talent wore off in the 19^th Century and the business collapsed leaving Juan Gordon, Luis’ father, to start over with very little.

Luis was born, the tenth of fifteen children, in Cadiz in August, 1898 but his father’s import business failed, perhaps due to some chicanery of a competitor. The family moved around Spain during Luis’ formative years, definitively settling in Madrid in 1915 when Luis was 17.

Nothing is known of his university education which, most likely, took place in Madrid and concentrated on Industrial Engineering. In September, 1922, Luis enrolled in a graduate program at Ecole de Brasserie, Nancy, France.  The most prestigious brew school outside of Germany, it had been founded in 1893 as a department of the University of Nancy and specialized in the low temperature fermentation of beer popular in Germany (in comparison to high temperature fermentation in Great Britain).

Ecole de Brasserie, Class of 1923. Luis is in the front standing row, third from the left

The Economist Offers Advice of a Torturer

Yesterday, The Economist send out a tweet quoting Francis Bacon with some advice about getting information out of people.  

Bacon was well experienced at this.  For instance, in April, 1597, he signed the report of the examining board at the Tower of London as a witness of the interrogation of Fr. John Gerard, a Jesuit who later wrote:

Floyd Dell on G.K. Chesterton (Part I)

One of Dorothy Day's friends in Greenwich Village was Floyd Dell who at the time had a well deserved, national reputation for his book reviews.  Floyd, a Socialist at age 16, became the editor of The Friday Review of Books in 1906 at the age of 23 and saw that he could contribute to setting the trajectory of American culture in the 20th Century through his book reviews and consciously promoted those books offering alternatives to the established American narrative.

An agnostic (if not a pagan), a big fan of women's emancipation ("A guy doesn't have to marry the girl") and a serial seducer, his most favorite socialist author was G.K. Chesterton despite his "peculiar religious prejudices."  Here are some abridged excerpts from his 1918 review of Chesterton's "A Short History of England":
 
G. K. Chesterton is one of the exponents of a mode of revolutionary thought which is older than Marxian socialism, which in all of its phases and sects numbers millions of adherents and which has made a profound impress upon revolutionary history.  Yet this mode of thought is not exclusively Anarchist or Syndicalist, or even extremist.  It is not a movement, but a philosophy, bearing a peculiar relationship to that which underlies scientific socialism.  It has been generally either hostile to or contemptuous of the aims and methods of the Socialist movement, and it still competes as formidably as ever with Marxian socialism for the soul of man.

It cannot be described in a phrase, except perhaps by saying that it really is revolutionary in its essence, which Marxian or scientific socialism is not.  It will be remembered that the Marxian theory was rooted in Hegelian evolutionism and is hence evolutionary in spirit.  But those two words have become so obscured by much use that the best way of indicating the very real and profound chasm which divides the energies of the movement to which we all belong, is perhaps to say that half of the vital intellects of this century, as of the last, do not, and cannot, and will not believe in economic determinism.  The refuse it credence, not because it is economic, but because it is determinism.  They can and must, and do believe in free-will.

Giving up INDIFFERENCE for Lent

In his 2015 Lenten Message, Pope Francis invites us to confront the "globalization of indifference."

My indifference is local, directed to specific people.  I suppose I best start shedding my indifference today, rather than waiting for Lent.

Let's get something like "I'm giving up indifference for Lent" to TREND on Ash Wednesday.

Here is the Pope's message.