TRAGIC:

Salt of the earth: The secret history of the pub peanut (Rob Crossan, October 28, 2024, Country Life)

If you wanted a salty snack in a British pub before 1872, then there really was no need to order anything other than a pint from the barman. Before the Licensing Act that became law that year, breweries would put salt in the beer itself, keeping — as was no doubt intended — their customers thirsty and masking the often appalling quality of the ale sold to drinkers.

A century and a half on and the issue of salt with your beer is once again coming out of its shell. This time, it’s due to the decline in sales of that most venerated of pint accompaniments: the humble bag of dry roasted or, more commonly, salted peanuts.

Market-research firm Kantar reports a 4.5% decline in the sale of peanuts between 2020–23, worth £29.4 million across the country’s supermarkets. As Dominic Durham, general manager of The Sheaf View in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, five-time winner of the CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale) Champion Pub of the city, elaborates, the change in habits has been noticed behind his bar counter, too.

‘There has been a definite decline in sales [of peanuts],’ reflects Mr Durham. ‘The main change in snacks is that the variety has increased — things such as poppadoms and pretzel pieces are available now, which obviously takes sales away from nuts. A lot of venues now offer more substantial snacks, including pork pies and Scotch eggs — we even sell onion bhajis that a local curry house provides us with at weekends.’

WHICH IS TO MISUNDERSTAND IT AS AN ADULT:

5 Bible Stories You Definitely Misunderstood as a Kid (Taylor Berry, Feb. 10th, 2025, Relevant)

3. The Tower of Babel Wasn’t Just About People Building Too High
   For some reason, this story always got distilled down to something about people trying to build a really tall tower, as if God’s issue was just an ancient version of zoning laws. The real issue? Human arrogance and a desire for self-sufficiency apart from God.

The people of Babel weren’t just ambitious architects; they wanted to create a society where they didn’t need God. The tower wasn’t just an impressive skyscraper—it was a declaration of independence from divine authority. God confusing their language wasn’t just some random punishment; it was a way of protecting them from their own pride.

Essentially, the story is less about construction mishaps and more about what happens when humanity tries to build something great while ignoring the One who made them great in the first place.

Nope. Just as when He banished us from Eden, the Tower is another example of God’s fear that we will become as Him:

And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

ABSOLUTION:

The Ledge: How the true story of three lives lost at sea in December 1956 became Maine’s most famous short story. (Edgar Allen Beem, December 2012, Down East)

On December 27, 1956, a hunting party of five set out from Ash Point in South Harpswell to go gunning for ducks between Eagle Island and West Brown Cow Island. Only two made it home alive.

Fisherman Lawrence C. Estes, Jr., known to one and all as Buster, skippered his boat the Amy E. with son Steven, 13, son Maurice, 12, nephew Harry Jewell, 16, and fellow fisherman Everett Gatchell on board. The thirty-seven-foot lobsterboat, named for Estes’ wife, towed a pair of skiffs.

Near Eagle Island, Estes dropped Gatchell and son Maurice off in one rowboat. They intended to row ashore and hunt from Eagle Island, but the rough winter seas made a landing too dangerous, so Gatchell and the boy spent a chilly day shooting from the skiff.

Buster Estes and the other two boys motored on out across Broad Sound, anchored the Amy E. near West Brown Cow, and rowed to the half-tide ledge known as Mink Rock. The seaweed-covered ledge is under four to five feet of water at high tide, but it makes an excellent perch for cormorants, seals, and duck hunters when exposed. After the fact, it became apparent that the Estes’ little skiff must somehow have drifted away, leaving him and the two boys marooned on the ledge as the freezing tide was coming in. All three perished.

No one knows what actually happened on Mink Rock that day, but the late author and Bowdoin professor Lawrence Sargent Hall built his literary career on his imaginings in his short story, “The Ledge,” one of the most famous stories in the annals of Maine writing. First published in the Hudson Review in 1959, “The Ledge” was selected as the best American short story of the year in Prize Stories 1960: The O.Henry Awards and has subsequently appeared in close to forty anthologies.