| A sweet legacy: Retired engineer wants to pass on the art of maple ...
BYFIELD — Bernie Field has to move quickly or else he will miss his chance at perfection. Darting back and forth around a large maple sugar evaporator, he checks for foam, then heads back to the thermometer to make sure the syrup is progressing well. Every half hour or so he needs to throw more logs into the wood burner that keeps the sap boiling. Though Field is now in only his first real maple sugar season, the process of making syrup was learned almost by osmosis. "I tapped my first tree at 5 years old. I've been around it my whole life," said Field, 62. "But this is the first time I've done it all alone in my backyard." Field's foray into maple sugaring was only natural. His family has owned a maple sugar business in Amherst for almost 100 years. Growing up, Field remembers traveling from their home in Byfield to Amherst.
Allure of an energy drink is the high, not the flavor
If there's a time when anybody can be driven to Red Bull, it's the holidays.
It's the biggest travel time of the year, and chances are excellent that you're sharing the interstate and airport with your American equals: the hurried, the harried, the sleep-deprived.
And nothing announces your pledge to simply get through the next few hours like a Red Bull. Or Jones Energy, SoBe, Full Throttle or Rock Star.
What you want, of course, is that little pop of stamina and intense concentration that you used to get when you could routinely back a street-legal dose of Suphedrine with a 16-ounce cup of burner-crusted caffeine-concentrated coffee: Call it suburban meth, but it got you through the car pool.
But because most energy drinks are at least $1.50 a pop if you buy them in bulk, and at least $2 each from your convenience store cooler, you have to ask: How potent is this brew in a can?
We know that energy drinks are pervasive enough in our culture that the best kind of story - the Urban Legend - has sprung up around them.
Missoulians take icy plunge, raise $56,000 for Special Olympics
Trisha Hendricks, a reporter with KPAX television in Missoula, braved the cold water Saturday during the ninth annual Law Enforcement Torch Run Super Grizzly Dip, a fundraiser for Montana Special Olympics.
Photo by MICHAEL GALLACHER/Missoulian
Watch a video from Saturday's Grizzly Dip .
|
