Moonshine

Under a row of pine trees in his yard, Karol Majewski brushes needles off green-tinted seven-gallon glass jugs filled with sweet cherries, apricots and fir shoots steeping in alcohol. Despite the setting, Majewski makes no mere backyard brew. This is your Polish grandma's moonshine gone luxury, and the latest trend in Poland's drinks industry: small-batch, expensive versions of traditional homemade fruit-infused vodka.

FRESH fruit is a glorious thing. But what do you do when the markets are overflowing with it and you bring home more fruit than you can possibly eat? Force it on your neighbors? Learn how to can? Turn it into compost? In Europe, berries, stone fruits and apples are often distilled into elegant fruit brandies called eaux de vie. There's also a tradition of home-distilled spirits in this country, but here we might call them by a more poetic-sounding name: moonshine.

Joseph Michalek makes liquor the old-fashioned way, slowly heating corn mash in a large copper still. As for the rest of his moonshine operation, he steers clear of Southern mountain traditions. A relative newcomer to the Appalachian foothills, Michalek, 38, does not haul sacks of grain or sugar to a creek, hunch down in mud to stoke wood, or cast a wary eye about for federal tax agents. Instead, the Northern entrepreneur with gelled hair, crisp blue jeans and polished Dr.

Augustinas Grevys' glory was short-lived. He bested three friends by being the last to pass out when each downed nearly a quart of moonshine. But he didn't get the chance to spend his $7 winnings -- enough to buy two more bottles of booze -- because the 34-year-old Lithuanian died within hours. His three friends were found comatose but eventually recovered.

Thank you for the Sept. 1 article regarding the 96% similarity of the genome between chimps and humans. I suppose this excuses some of our politicians and pundits for being so simple-minded. But what was most interesting was the fact that chimps do not suffer from Alzheimer's disease, cancer, malaria and other afflictions. I guess the intelligent designer was drinking moonshine, or maybe she just prefers chimpanzees. Please, let science have the last word, not the hand-waving of the uneducated.

Mark Shook says he's fighting a war in this mountain town -- complete with explosions, abandoned children and an enemy that won't give up. Shook is Watauga County's sheriff and, for the past year, he and others have tried to beat back the spread of methamphetamine through the hills and hollows of western North Carolina. "Meth is choking this town," Shook said recently, moments before taking a call about yet another raid on a possible meth lab. "We are fighting a war -- and it's going to spread.

I found it interesting that Fenton Johnson, in "Gold in Them Thar Hillbillies," his Jan. 26 Opinion piece critical of CBS reinventing "The Beverly Hillbillies," links his point with the injustice of the president's tax-break package. Yet he reviews how his family in Kentucky made whiskey illegally to get around the government. I guess it is OK for his family to make its livelihood with moonshine to avoid taxes but not for others to see legal relief because they are "privileged." Bruce Wendler Burbank Here's an idea for the would-be producers of the updated "The Beverly Hillbillies": A weekly series in which a poorly educated good ol' boy from a Southern state is suddenly elevated to the presidency.

Makers of homemade Thai rice whiskey once plied their craft in jungle hide-outs and farmyard shacks, concealed from the gaze of police officers threatening arrest and the seizure of their makeshift stills. But what was once a furtive -- and criminal -- enterprise has been legalized and even touted by the government as a source of revenue that could help lift Thailand from its economic doldrums and enrich poor villagers.