I believe the Brothers Barry are having a very good time.

These are my cousins.

To the left is Donald Barry, inspiration for NABC Beak's Best Bitter. To the right is Dennis Barry, founding member of the FOSSILS homebrewing club. Don has traveled to Europe countless times during his career as a professor of history. Denny is two weeks into his first trip to Europe, and this is their first meeting ever on European soil, at the train station in Munich, where Don and I first hoisted beers together in 1985 at the imbiss by track 16.

Those were the days when I crisscrossed the continent for three months and didn't phone home once. Now, in the social media age, friends of Denny's on Facebook have been able to follow his every move -- at least the ones he cares to transmit. In the realm of living vicariously through others, a major karmic shift is underway ... and it is a wonderful thing, indeed.