Why Hard Cider? By Barbara Stark-Nemon Several lifetimes ago, at the beginning of a career and the end of a marriage, I spent a year living in England. I worked at my first job as a speech and language therapist, and teacher of English as a Second Language at the American Community School in London. At 27 I had taught English for two years in America, then gone to graduate school. I had traveled to Europe several times, and even studied in Austria for a summer, but I’d never lived and worked outside the 50 mile radius of where I’d been born, grew up, attended university. I worked hard all week, but on weekends I explored London and then traveled farther afield. I loved the culture of pub life in big cities and small hamlets. Nothing ever seemed to taste as good as a ploughman’s lunch after a morning’s country walk. Thick slabs of local cheese slathered with chutney or mustard, piled with butter lettuce and tomato and sweet pickle on a crusty roll. I never tired o...