On a recent visit to Washington Island, I did what I’ve been doing for the past 30-plus years: I went to Nelsen’s Hall for a shot of bitters. Despite its location on an island in Lake Michigan with a year-round population of about 783, Nelsen’s is the largest purveyor of Angostura Bitters in the world. It’s also the oldest continuously operating tavern in Wisconsin (founded in 1899). During Prohibition, the owner got a pharmacist’s license so he could dispense medicinal alcohol – specifically, alcohol infused with botanical matter like barks, roots, spices, fruit peels, and other plant materials with a bitter flavor.
In Wisconsin, bitters may be best known as that dash of flavoring in the supper club favorite, a brandy old fashioned. But in many parts of the world, bitters are more than a cocktail ingredient. When taste receptors detect a bitter flavor, the body responds in ways that support the digestive system and help filter out waste products. Alcohol is effective in extracting some of those bitter flavors, and the resulting tinctures are widely used as aperitifs (taken before a meal) or digestifs (taken after).
Over the past few generations, much of the bitterness has been bred out of the things we eat or eliminated in the processing. Sweets that were once a rare treat are now often easier to come by than bitter greens, for example. And honestly, you can’t really blame people like my parents, who were raised in the Depression and World War II, for making the choice as adults to eat what they wanted and no thank you to dandelion greens. I’m pretty sure my late father would have been polite if I had served him a salad of arugula and radicchio. My mother would have just said, “Your dad will never eat that.”
We may be so far removed now from regularly including bitter flavors with our meals that the only way to bring back that healthy habit is by choosing to do so. Deliberately. Intentionally.
While we’re at it, maybe we want to choose to see a little bitterness as healthy for our rural communities, too.
For starters, it’s time to acknowledge that many of our neighbors felt, bitterly, that their concerns were of no importance to power brokers who are still baffled at how they vote. I may not agree with the choices they’ve made, but I can at least recognize they had and have valid concerns. At least they showed up to vote, which is more than you can say about a lot of people.
I’m plenty bitter myself at the huge contingent of people happy to label all my rural neighbors as racist, xenophobic, anti-immigrant, anti-gay, selfish, and too stupid to vote in their own interests. Sitting elbow to elbow in a Midwestern tavern sharing concerns over a shot of bitters might do more to eliminate that toxic attitude than burrowing into an echo chamber to share memes produced by outrage entrepreneurs.
But to be honest, I’m also plenty bitter at some of my neighbors, and it probably wouldn’t hurt to say so a bit more often. I’m working on how to phrase things in situations where, according to the way I was raised, you don’t talk politics. But since you brought it up, I hold you personally responsible for voting how you did is, sadly, not an option.
Except when I’m on the phone with my congressional representative’s office. During the shutdown, I might have earned a Bitter Woman label by asking staffers who took my calls to read back their notes and amend them to include points I felt were important to call Representative Tiffany’s attention to. I think we should all be bitter when Congress abdicates its authority under Article I of the Constitution. I’m sure they won’t be surprised when I call again to point out that they’ve had 15 years to come up with a better alternative to the Affordable Care Act and ask what they have to show for it now.
I’m still bitter about the exorbitant out-of-pocket premiums we paid for health insurance in the 1990s and 2000s, and the high deductibles and exclusions on pre-existing conditions we had to accept in order to be insured.
Last fall, when I got Covid again, some of that bitterness may have leaked out on a neighbor who is generally kindness incarnate. But this time, what he said to my husband was, Oh, you mean the fake virus. I can appreciate that he is still bitter about the impact the 2020 Covid shutdown had on his family. Nevertheless, reaching for a political talking point instead of something simple like, I hope she feels better soon was ill-chosen. Especially by someone who knows our history: Having been self-employed for most of our adult lives, a serious illness or injury for us has always carried the threat of financial ruin.
My mother would have counseled by saying “Let it go,” because at this point, we have surely learned there’s little chance of changing other people’s minds by telling them all the ways they’re wrong. And they weren’t wrong on everything. Many of them will suffer gravely when this house of cards collapses, and their loved ones are buried under medical debt or lose nutrition or disability benefits. Some of them are starting to see that, and I expect them to be plenty bitter at having been conned.
Our rural communities are filled with people trying to find their way in these murky times. We all might need to dig deep to find a little grace to bestow on each other.
Recently, I read this article on social friction, a term that describes problems or conflicts people experience in social networks, families, workplaces, and other relationships. Here’s what resonated with me:
“We humans can have a low tolerance for social friction, tension that may arise when people from different backgrounds, worldviews, or values interact.… When we can pick and choose whom we engage with, click by click, we become further sorted into weak tribes exploited by grievances that drive us apart. We lose the ability to wade through the muddy waters of forgiveness and repair, accountability, and justice. And when we are unable to navigate social friction, we lose our ability to function as a society and a democracy.”
That’s a chilling prospect. I don’t think that’s what my rural neighbors wanted when they entered the polling booth. It’s certainly not what I want.
And yet, under the right circumstances, there can be a healing power to social friction – just as there can be a healing power to botanically infused alcohol. Maybe sitting elbow to elbow at a tavern and raising a shot of bitters is just a Wisconsin thing. But we all can rub shoulders with our rural neighbors at local government meetings, where we won’t all agree on everything. We certainly won’t all leave feeling like “our side” won. But maybe we can leave feeling like all sides were heard.
Donna Kallner writes from Langlade County in rural northern Wisconsin. Lately she’s been humming this tune from Carole King’s 1972 “Rhymes & Reasons” album.
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