nerax 2026

The New England Real Ale eXhibition (NERAX) was held again at the Lithuanian Club in South Boston. I went twice again this year, on Wednesday and Friday nights, but unfortunately, I lost my Friday notes somewhere between NERAX, dinner, and the uber ride home. 2026 is the 27th year of the NERAX, and the program points out that NERAX is the longest running cask conditioned ale festival in North America.

As usual, after the cover or entrance fee ($10  this year) and a $5 deposit for a glass (you can keep the glass, if they can keep the deposit) you're in. We got there early on Wednesday, but not as early as on Friday. On Friday we got into the hall before they rang the bell for the tap opening. Picture one of the older volunteers running around the room with a hand bell, like schoolmarms used to ring at the end of recess.

Lets get to it, and at the end, I've tried to cobble together some memories of what I tried on Friday night after reviewing the program, scribbled with Wednesday's notes, and some photos of the individual menu boards my son took. [Good thinking, son!]

American casks are listed in Blue on the white boards above the bar, UK casks are in Red, and ciders are listed in Green. No cider for me this year., altho they did have a lager or two! Up first, I went to the shortest line, and picked the lowest ABV beer on the UK list. The plan was to try as many as I could without falling over, so I sampled quarter pints (Imperial) so that about 5 ounces per sample, which were $3 each.

I tried 6. Well, 7 after I gave the 6th one back (see below for why). Most were from the UK, which is usually my goal, given that my opportunities for UK cask conditioned ales are limited. 

WEDNESDAY NIGHT 

The Taps on Wednesday Night

Guardsman - Windsor & Eton Brewery, Berkshire, England (ABV 4.2%) - Best Bitter

Clear, deep honey, maple syrup color. Bright, fresh bread on the nose. The taste kept that brightness with a sharp bitterness with smooth, dry breads and pizza crust finish. It was a great start!

Haggis Hunter - Harviestoun Brewery, Alva, Clackmannshire, Scotland (ABV 4.3%) - Amber Ale

I was going to try one from Amory, but the line was too long, so the name caught my eye! Huge, thick, foamy head with an almost undetectable scent of floral and fruit, Beautiful golden yellow color, which sparkled in the setting sun. Smooth and refreshing, with a pleasing sour bitterness that reminded my of the Belgian beer taint (basement) on the first sip, but which evaporated by the second sip. Soft and tangy mouthfeel, and a long, long bitter astringent finish. {this one kicked partway thru Friday's session, with a visit from the reaper.}

Not Now, Chief - Amory's Tomb Brewing Co. /Clover Road Brewing Company, Hudson, MA, USA (ABV 4.6%) - Best Bitter

The line was shorter so it was time for the Amory/Clover joint. Loose, lacy head on a deep gold, brassy orange cloudiness with a bread on the nose and is that musk? A second opinion from my kids and they agreed that the scent was that of a wet (but clean) dog. I'm glad that wasn't what I smelled. Lingering tang, semi-sweet with mango tartness and a sharp, bitter finish. After a short chat, I had one last sip--had it warmed a little in my hand?--the scent on the last sip: soup. What a ride!

Rowan - Deciduous Brewing Company, Newmarket, NH, USA (ABV 5.5%) - Irish Stout

Black. No head (ring of micro bubbles around the glass) on thus long pour [Thanks Bro!] Creamy, melted snow and malty molasses on the nose. Clean, dark chocolate, the 93% kind! Lush, velvety mouthfeel with a soft sparkle. Where is that carbonation hiding? Dark fruit, boiled cherries and preserves.

Fen Skater - Papworth Brewery, Earith, Cambridgeshire, England (ABV 4.0%) - Pale Golden Ale

Honey color with a fine, cream colored head. Bright fruit, lemon and pithy citrus. Clean and crisp, with a dry cracker and jam finish, balanced with a pithy bitterness.

Shere Drop - Surrey Hills Brewery, Dorking, Surrey, England (ABV 4.2%) - Best Bitter

No review 

I don't know if it was me, but I brought this back after one sip. There was a strong sulfur taste to this. When I'm making wine, that sulfur smell means something has gone wrong. I was looking forward to this one, but unfortunately, things happen with real ales sometimes. No review.

Black Grouse - Loch Lomond Brewery, Dumbarton, Dunbartonshire, Scotland (ABV 4.0%) - Black Forest Mild

Deep brown-black with glints of rose in the light and a fine, white head. Burnt caramel on the nose. Barbecue sauce which fades to Pepsi on the first sip! What sorcery is this? [That taste profile/description was confirmed by all three others in my party after a sip.] Fruits, sauce, glaze, molasses, and malty goodness. Clingy, juicy mouth feel with a syrupy, sticky finish, which then disappears in frost and snow. What a way to end. It was like dessert before dinner. Magic.

 FRIDAY NIGHT 

After a look through the program, here's what I can remember trying. I know I had 6 samples again, but I don't recall the order, and whatever came to memory I put down here. Next time, I'll be prepared with a spot in my clothes to tuck the program away with my notes. It ended up hanging out of my back pocket, and was easily lost it seems. Again, mostly UK beers for me.

Moonshine - Abbeydale Brewery, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England (ABV 4.3%) - Pale Ale

Schiehallion - Harviestoun Brewery, Alva, Clackmannshire, Scotland (ABV 4.8%) - Lager

This was rich and deep colored, with a complex flavor that still had the bones of a nice lager.

Sneck Lifter - Jennings Brewery, Cockermouth, Cumbria, England (ABV 5.1%) - Dark Ale

Described as polished mahogany in color. Don't say that to a woodworker; it was maple syrup color at best. It was good, and we were sad when it kicked. My son more than I as he hadn't tried it yet.

Planet Caravan - Remnant Brewing, Somerville, MA, USA (ABV 5.5%) - Smoked Porter

Double Stout - Hook Norton Brewery, Hook Norton, Oxfordshire, England (ABV 4.8%) - Stout

Dark and chocolatey.

The People's Smoke - Idle Hands Craft Ales, Malden, MA, USA (ABV 5.9%) - Rauchbier

Something is on fire in Malden! More smoky than the Black Grouse from Wednesday night. Wet wood smoke flavors. It was wild, in a good way.

 

Don't Fear the Reaper!

We went to Capo to eat after BOTH nights. [Great idea, Alessia!] Its just across the street, and what a treat. Loud on Friday night however, when its more of a night club after 9 it seems, but the food was really good. On Wednesday night we sat at the back where it was quiet, near the stone fireplace, with a huge elk's head hanging there. The house made pasta alla Bolonese was great, as were the apps. The wine on Friday was also great. The chef there is just one degree of separation from my oldest, who went to school with his spouse, and knows them both. He wasn't in on Wednesday.

 

 

 

empire of gold

The last book of the Daevabad Trilogy is The Empire of Gold. I can always tell when a book, or in this case a trilogy, has me; I spend extra time reading. S.A. Chakraborty did a great job with this as a first time author. Since this trilogy was released, she's done some newer things--under her full name Shannon Chakraborty--and it was one of those newer books that turned me on to her writing.

Empire was a little longer (784 pages) than the first two books, and if I have any notes on this book its that it could have probably been edited down a little. Perhaps we could have had a little less of the travelogue. One of the things I liked about this book was the restraint in the romantic engagements. If you're looking for the bodice riper version of the Arabian Nights, you're in the wrong place.* The romance is more demure in this trilogy; think Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy. There is fair amount of wrist touching and shivers.**

I was impressed with Chakraborty's world building, and she has the politics and history nailed down, as well as how the existence of the djinn is folded into our own world in ways that you and i just can't see, which gives the existence of the djinn their mythical quality. Chakraborty has taken a cue from Tolkien's writing when writing about the djinn. Instead of them being the wispy figments we see in other tales, the djinn of Daevabad are real, like the elves of Middle Earth.

If you're a fan of fantasy, swords and sorcery, and similar types of speculative fiction, you'll really enjoy this one. 

Read this book. Read all three! 

 

* If you're a fan of Shahrazad, however, you won't be disappointed about the heroine in this story. 

** If, on the other hand, you ARE interested in bodice ripping,*** rumor has it that Netflix has acquired the rights to do a series, and I'm assuming it will be a little sexier, if that series actually happens.

*** For those of you offended by the use of the term bodice ripper, I'm using it here to refer to that more modern, scandalous type of romance novel where (consensual) sexy time takes center stage, and can get pretty graphic. The term does have some harder meanings when referring to older stories which seemed to celebrate more violent scenes, ravishment, or other code words for taking advantage of women. No means no. See what I'm talking about in this one minute read here.

 

 

 

in like a lion, a snow lion

Woof! Or should I say roar, March has been crazy this year. We had snow in the yard from the January 25-26 storm, that just melted out this week! Mostly, I still have snow on the curb that has THAT snow at the bottom. And this past Tuesday, the Dingo of March, it was 74 degrees F and sunny, and we all sat in the yard.

So I haven't had the heart to write this until it started looking up a little, so even tho we rolled out the new format last year, and we're calling this the planning guide, its nearly the Ides so planning for the first part of the month was presumably don't without this guide. Not sure how you all managed! all three of you who actually read this

Year of the Horse this year, the Fire Horse more precisely. So plans for a cookout on Sunday, the 22, the Horse of March? Just two days after the Equinox, seems like a great way to celebrate Spring! Sun sets at 6:58 PM in Boston, not bad!

Today is Friday the 13th, or the Bat of March. Yes, I believe that is fitting. 

Here it is...

MARCH 2025

March 1, Sunday - Lion: Snow lion?
March 2, Monday - Tiger: 7 different sub-species of panthera tigris
March 3, Tuesday - Bear: Polar bear this year 
March 4, Wednesday - Shark: Surprised the ocean wasn't frozen this year
March 5, Thursday - Wolf: Hunted near to extinction mainly because of their feeding on livestock
March 6, Friday - Bull: Long-horns can have a 6 to 8-foot horn span
March 7, Saturday - Moose: Moose antler can span 4 to 6 feet
March 8, Sunday - Eagle: Bald Eagle wing spans to over 7-feet. Wedge-Tail (Australia) to over 9-feet. Womens Day!
March 9, Monday - Scorpion: The little ones in Italy are jet black, and IN YOUR HOUSE
March 10, Tuesday - Dingo: Are they just feral strays? 74-DEGREES today!
March 11, Wednesday - Hawk: Smaller than eagles, not as slim or pointed as falcons
March 12, Thursday - Lynx: They have tufts of hairs on their ear tips to help fine tune hearing
March 13, Friday - Bat: flying mammals. Like dragons, but dragons are lizards, so... like nothing else?
March 14, Saturday - Monkey: Monkeys have tails, apes don't. HBD Coleen!
March 15, Sunday - Snake: Boas and Pythons still have vestigial pelvic bones.
March 16, Monday - Ox: The plural of Ox is Oxen
March 17, Tuesday - Elephant: According to my son, trunks come in left- and right-handedness
March 18, Wednesday - Raven: Largest of the passerines; perching birds
March 19, Thursday - Stag: Hart, or buck
March 20, Friday - Crab: They got 10 legs! Doesn't seem right. First day of spring! 
March 21, Saturday - Goat: Goat headed  Pagan or gnostic idol Baphomet is the origin of the goat-satan connection
March 22, Sunday - Horse: Part of the Equidae family, along with zebras and asses
March 23, Monday - Pig: The magical animal
March 24, Tuesday - Dog: There are about 200 different dog breeds
March 25, Wednesday - Dolphin: Flipper was a bottlenose dolphin, played on the TV show by 5 different animals
March 26, Thursday - Rooster: One rooster for every ten hens is the rule. Harem say what?
March 27, Friday - Turtle: Leatherback sea turtles can reach 8-feet and 1100 pounds, in metric that's a lot
March 28, Saturday - Toad: they spend more time on the ground but they do like the mud
March 29, Sunday - Robin:  American or Red Breasted Robin (orange!) is a thrush
March 30, Monday - Rabbit: SO much rabbit poop after the snow melted. So much. HBD Kelton!
March 31, Tuesday - Lamb: Easter is just 5 days away! Light the grill

kingdom of copper

This is book 2 of the Daevabad Trilogy by S. A. Chakraborty. I had taken this book out a few weeks ago by mistake, not knowing it was book 2, so I returned it and got the first one. By the time I read that one and returned it, this book was lent out, but through the magic of the inter-library loan program, I got an email a day later that this book had arrived from one of the other libraries in the North of Boston Library Exchange (NOBLE) network. if you haven't been to the library, then go--a few times--and see what they can do

Sometimes the second book in a trilogy feels like filler, or just a bridge between the intro in book 1 and the climax in book 3, but this one didn't feel like that, and I think that is especially nice given that this is the first work of this author, who now goes by her given name Shannon Chakraborty. 

Any great adventure story has something difficult for the protagonist(s) to overcome; the big baddie, the evil plot, the end of the world, and this one is no different. The Kingdom of Copper fleshes out the personalities of the main characters, tests their resolve, and uncovers parts of their personalities that didn't come to light, or at least not so clearly, in the first book. This volume also introduces the big problem. And its much bigger than we were lead to believe in the first book. 

This one ends in an almost literal cliffhanger, so while the idea is that each book in a trilogy can or could be read independent of the others, this one does leave you hanging. But I was also left looking forward to the last book in the trilogy (which I took out from the library at the same time, and I am currently reading!) 

city of brass

About a week and a half ago, I took an S. A. Chakraborty book out of the library, it ended up being book 2 of the Daevabad Trilogy, The Kingdom of Copper. I shouldn't take out books when I'm in a hurry I guess. So I returned it and took out this book, book 1: The City of Brass. I'll be going back to get book 2 again.

Once I started reading, the story and especially the characters, seemed familiar, but I haven't been diligent in keeping up this blog so I could only find one of  Chakraborty's more current books on the list here on the blog.* But after I finished this one, I think I did read something else a while ago, and after looking on Chakraborty's website, I think it must have been The River of Silver, which are "Tales from the Daevabad Trilogy," a book outside the trilogy, but including stories from that universe. If I remember correctly it included some stories that may contain spoilers for the trilogy, but it also contains stories that could have been, but weren't, part of the trilogy; alternative plot lines that may have originally been pursued while writing the trilogy and then abandoned or edited out.

Chakraborty says that she is a speculative fiction author, and who am I to disagree, but I'd say that this book falls into the fantasy group as well, and maybe more specifically the sword and sorcery sub-genre. The City of Brass exists in a concealed place where humans can't see or go, hidden in a world parallel to our own; similar to our culture of four or five hundred years ago, across lands that span from the northern and eastern coasts of Africa, across he Middle East to the Indian Subcontinent.** She's woven a pretty complex tale of the secret lives, cultures, and politics of the djinn culture. A people with races, homelands, languages, and abilities that may have all originated as one people, but have diverged over the centuries. Now these people are similar to men--who they do interact with--and have their own politics, religions, prejudices and wars.

Into this, drop our heroine, Nahri, who lives an orphaned, hand-to-mouth existence of cons and hustle on the streets of Cairo, and hopes for a better life, when she inadvertently becomes caught up in the djinn world. This was a fun one, and I found myself spending extra time reading it, and as I said, I'm looking forward to the next one.

 

* I speculated that The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi would have a follow-up, and it apparently does now--or will shortly. The Tapestry of Fate comes out in May.

** There is a map in the frontmatter of this book, and it wasn't until I finished that I discovered a glossary in the back, which would have been good to know as I was reading.

dark sacred night

I’m pretty sure this is a re-read... It’s possible I recognize the storyline from the TV show, but I’m not sure.* I haven’t been keeping up with my reviews or even recording which books I’ve read here on the blog, and preventing accidental purchases and re-reads is one of the main reasons I started keeping this blog.

Dark Sacred Night is a Harry Bosch novel is from 2018, and I may have read it in 2020 or '21, when I had some spotty record keeping on my reading, or even last year, when my record keeping bordered on nonexistent.

Michael Connelly has the Harry Bosch nailed down at this point, and this book may be our first introduction to Detective Renée Ballard, who teams up with Bosch to look at a cold case. There is a fair amount of Ballard own casework as well; a number of smaller cases that she works through at the same time the larger cold case arc is going on. This seems to me to help establish Ballard as a character readers (and Bosch) can relate to so that when she appears in future stories, we have a sense for who she is a little more quickly. Solving 2 or 3 other smaller cases builds her character’s résumé pretty quickly.**

Fans of Bosch books will probably like this one, although his overall personality story arc seems to be showing signs of stress in the form of a loosening of his moral code.

Because I’ve haven’t read the Bosch books in chronological order, it is harder to comment intelligently on the development of the Bosch character, but there it is!

 

* After some looking, this site says that Bosch season 6, is based on this book. Who would have thought that a site called Comic Book Resources, would be the site that has this info, altho I will say you need to dig for that name, as they seem to just go by CBR, and maybe that's why.

** Fans of Ballard may be pleased to hear that she has her own TV show, presumably a spinoff of the Bosch franchise. 

 

 

book marker collection

Click on the image to enlarge, as usual

I was visiting the Richard Salter Storrs Library in Longmeadow, Massachusetts this past week, and I was excited to find a collection of old bookmarks in a curio case, which serves at the coffee table for a small arrangement of wing-backed chairs and a few other seats by one of the many fireplaces in that handsome old building. 

The original building, designed by architects Smith & Bassette of Hartford, Connecticut, was opened in 1932, and then in 1992, it was renovated (carefully) and a large addition was added, which is sympathetic in design--at least on the exterior--to the original building. The addition was designed by King & Tuthill of Avon, Connecticut.*

This pretty little collection sits in one of the bright and well appointed reading rooms on the main floor of the old building. The fireplace had a fun, imitation log fire flickering away on the hearth. And the seats, were very comfortable. 

The bookmarks include paper, wood, leather, and metal designs. Some of the paper markers are cut; one looks like it was cut by hand! Others are painted, or printed with designs.  There is one made of fabric, in the form of a tiny doll, who's long swaddling clothed form the marker that fits between the pages. Fiber arts also include a cross stitch example, and an amazing tatted lace marker showing European buildings and a image of a tatter at work.

Lastly, there is a note in there describing the history and principals of the Foundazione Marcello Gori, which has been around since World War II, helping teach children hand crafts and history. They are apparently still around, and I assume that some of the markers represented are from there.

 

* King died in 2005 at 78.  Not sure about Tuthill but it seems as though the firm was renamed Tuthill and Wells at some point, altho I'm not sure if that was with the original Tuthill, or a descendant. They don't seem to be around any more.

 

 

 

unwanted guest

I picked up the paperback version of An Unwanted Guest at my library's book sale. I'll admit that I was in a hurry, but I'm not sure that a few more minutes with this book before taking it home would have helped. I'm not a big reader of mystery stories, but I've read a few. I'm thinking of The Best of Dr. Thorndyke Detective Stories, by R. Austin Freeman--which you can see in the column on the right of this page under the 'good' books heading--and of course, Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle, which I've written about in 4 separate reviews here on the blog. You won't find a bunch of Dame Agatha Christie books on this blog for instance, and if you use the word cloud on the right hand column to sort for 'mystery' you'd find a few, but most of those are detective stories or police procedurals, or more likely, have some mysterious happenings that aren't revealed until the end. An Unwanted Guest, by contrast, is more of a traditional whodunit, more like the Freeman, Conan-Doyle, or Christie examples I've given.

Shari Lapena* has written her mystery using a classic whodunit scenario, or trope, if you prefer: Bunch of people thrown together in an isolated place, with no contact with the world beyond. When the crap hits the fan, everyone starts to wonder whodunit, quickly followed by, am I next? Whats different here, is that Lapena tells a complex, woven story, with lots of different viewpoints from the various character, and in many cases describes both what they are doing, as well as what they are feeling and thinking, when they are together, but also when they are alone. 

By the time we're getting toward then end, we know quite a bit about each of them, from both their personal thoughts as well as their conversations, and I was pretty impressed that I hadn't yet figured out who, in fact, dunit. 

The reason for that was a surprise! And yes, I guess you could say that this is a spoiler, which I don't normally do, but I'm not sure I could spoil this book any worse. The reason is because Lapena never tells us how or why the guilty person did what they did. Or, in fact, gave us any clues at all, until the final chapters where the guilty party graces us with a complete exposé of their history, their motives, and how they did it. Again, ALL invisible to us as readers until this very point. AND no one figured that out, or was ever privy to the guilty person's thoughts, just us readers. They got nabbed based on one piece of evidence found two pages before, which may or may not be enough to get them convicted. Its circumstantial, at best.

So I'm left feeling like: why did you make me read all this if there was nothing in there that would help me understand or solve any of it, and you were just going to tell me about it in 4 pages at the end. did she just mansplain that to me? i feel kind of dirty It was like watching Dateline. That show is aggravating: They already know who did it, they're just making me watch this drama play out for an hour before they tell me who did it. The only benefit Dateline has over this book, is that at least they share some of the evidence with you as they go along.

Don't bother. 

 

* When looking up the link to Lapena's website, I went there and another of her books is featured on the front page, with the title: She Didn't See It Coming, which is followed by the tagline; "and neither will you..." Hilarious! If its anything like this one, I can guarantee you won't see it coming, because Lapena won't show you!**

** That title and tagline--from a completely different book!--is almost enough to get me to add this title to my 'stinks' list on the right hand column. don't act when you're aggravated, phil

 

 

 

navola

I was in the library to look for some things to read. I normally check out the used book sale, which may seem crazy considering I'm buying books from a place that is full of free ones, but I do it for two reasons: first, I'm a slow reader, so I'm unlikely to finish a book before its due,* never mind multiple books, and second, the small amount of money goes to support the library, especially given the fact that I return most of those books in the form of donations to the book sale. One of the reasons I started this blog was to keep track of the books I've bought so that I don't buy them again. yeah, that happens

Anyhoo, I found two books at the book sale, one of which my wife read in about 2 days, and the second I've just started today. The third book I found was in the new books section. I thought I'd take a look and see if any of my favorite authors had published anything new. Alpha-by-author got me to Bacigalupi, Paolo, which was a pleasant surprise. Once I found Navola, I stopped looking. Bacigalupi** has written a few novels for adults, and a few more for teens. I read the teens books, and they're pretty good, but I like his adult fiction/SF better. Navola was a treat.

Bacigalupi has developed a world based on Renaissance Europe, and is focused on the city-state of Navola, in the upper eastern part of a 'hook' shaped peninsula poking out into a sea with countries to the north, west, and south coastal regions. Its pretty clear that the 'hook' is based on the pre-Italian conglomeration of city-states, duchies, and kingdoms, and has French-like and German-like countries to the north, Turkish and further Asian countries to the east, and Arabic-type countries on the southern shores of the sea. Where there they have dragons, or they used to, at least.

Navola is a coming of age story, with political, social, and familial intrigues, romance, and violence,with glimpses at historical gods, and the believe systems that grew from them. Bacigalupi has created a world with depth and history, rife with monetary, cultural, and nobility clashes. Navola also appears to be the first is a series of books based on this world Bacigalupi has created. Maybe the good news is that this book actually came out in 2024, although I'm not sure why I haven't seen it until now or why its on the new books shelf at the library a year and a half later, but maybe that means the next installment isn't too far off?

  

* Yes, I know I can renew it. In fact my library now has automatic renewals and no late fees. 

** Bacigalupi is a fun name, and its Italian, which may have something to do with the inspiration for the fantasy setting of this story in a pre-Italian peninsula of city-states and other Euro-inspired surrounding countries, but a search for the origin of this surname led to differing, but interesting results:

One site has it listed, confoundingly as "unattensted verb bacigare ‘to hunt’ + lupo ‘wolf’" Unattensted apparently means: not existing in any documented form. Super helpful.

Wikipedia has this to say: "Bacigalupi (Ligurian: Bâçigalô) is an Italian surname from Liguria, literally translating to 'wolf-wounder' " Altho, its funny, when I translated bacigalo, it means 'kiss him,' but dialect is always funny.

Hunter, or wounder? And a few others besides, see below. So I used my dangerous level of Italian comprehension to search in Italian, and this site (thanks to google translate) says: "It derives from a nickname linked to the Genoese dialect word basigâ, "to swing/to tease," and lupi, meaning "the one who swings/teases the wolves." The nickname probably indicated a wolf hunter (who attached the skins to a stick to carry them, hence the swinging motion), or a wolf skin merchant." M'kay.

This guy, who maintains his own site, as a kind of commonplace book, thinks it's a: "compound surname derived from "bacia" (kiss) and "lupo" (wolf), thus literally meaning "kiss the wolf." I'm assuming that is a wild guess? I'll admit, I was under the impression it was baci [(you) kiss] + whatever galupi meant, but galupi meant nothing. Except...

The same guy has a page on the name origin of the surname Galuppi, which he says: "is derived from the nickname "galuppo," meaning "crest" or "tuft,". If that is the case, I'm not sure why he didn't assume that Bacigalupi means to 'kiss the crest' which certainly sounds like a thing... coat of arms, signet ring, to show respect, allegiance, etc. Well, to me anyway. 

The world may never know.