"42"

 In his famous set of books "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (available at your local bookstore...), Douglas Adams tells of the creation of the universe's largest computer, aptly named 'Deep Thought'.
 'Deep Thought' had but one reason for existence: to discover the answer to life, the universe and everything. It churned its jillions of microchips for decades and finally provided its creators with THE answer to life, the universe and everything: 42.
 Ok, we all know you have to be careful what you wish for because you may get your wish. If '42' is the answer, then what is the question? Naturally yet another colossal computer had to be created to find out what the question was...
 Exactly one year ago our publisher (bless him!) asked us if we could do a weekly 'thing' about coffee for his paper. Did we have enough information on The Bean to keep going for a year or so? Did we know enough about coffee to deliver a weekly bit of info? Was he being careful of what he was wishing for? Nope.
 And (of course) we said, " You betcha."
 So he handed us over to the Food Editor (yay!) and only then did we find out that what WE thought was gonna be a little blurb about our fav bev was actually supposed to be a COLUMN... two pages, 1 1/2 spaces typed. Yoikes!
 Thus was "Buzz Words" born and in a very (very!) short time we knew we had the answer (42) but didn't know the question.
 In the past year we have chatted about coffee's history, its heroes and heroines, ecclesiastical brewing problems (the 'bad coffee in church' column is still getting us in trouble!), the heresies of the past ( 'instant coffee' of which there is no such thing, trust us...) and heresies of the future (coffee stunts your growth, kid... but Coke doesn't???)
 A new 'computer' had to be built to handle "the question" to life, the universe, and everything. Fate stepped into the 'computer design' in the form of our current editor (yay Tim!).
 We got moved out of 'Food' and over to 'Weekend' on December 16th, which was a good thing cuz we were rapidly running out of ideas for the food section! (Sorry, Kathy, but you've forgotten more about food than we will ever ever know.. We can make a great cuppa 'Joe' but there is a reason that we run a coffee shoppe and not a restaurant!)
 In our new newspaper digs, our new editor (yay Tim!) let us have our heads and write about pretty much anything we wanted as long as it had some tenuous, fleeting, minuscule connection to coffee.
 And we obliged. We have talked about poetry, puppies, Papa, and percolators. The weird thing is that people have read it, apparently regularly. Tim (of 'yay Tim!') posts Buzz Words on www.pall-times.com every week and we get fan mail!
 Fan mail! Can you believe it? Folks, its just COFFEE, fer cryin' out loud! Some weeks have been in the 200 email range! Get a life!!! heh...
 Every week, people stop us and comment on our commentary, for good or ill, but mostly for good (isn't *that* nice...). When we began, a writer told us that we had to gear our writing to a 5th grade level in order to be widely read.
 We didn't do that. Aside from the obvious grammatical problems that we are accused of (of which we are accused... sheesh) we have shared the tales of 'The Bean' and the fables and foibles of 'The Friends Of The Bean' as intelligent people talking (ok, writing) to intelligent people.
 Face it. Without a strong intelligence, no one could ever piece our fractured sentence structure together to adequately figure out what we are talking (ok, writing) about (about which we are talking (ok, writing... lemme be))...
 Surely without the three little dots, our stream of consciousness style of writing would be lost. We have made a working campaign to include the three dots into the punctuational lexicon.
 One of our fans (yes, fans!) once remarked that Buzz Words is a little like "Seinfeld" in that it isn't really about anything at all... Excuse us? It's about coffee! Isn't it?
 We do this for fun. So far our publisher (bless him!) and our erstwhile editor (yay Tim!) haven't figured out how to turn this into a profitable venture (we remain hopeful... heh) but that doesn't mean that we don't get paid for our efforts. In fact, the pay we do get is better than anything the good folks at the paper could devise.
 Friends. Many of them we have yet to meet, but they write us or email us or call us at the shoppe. We get stopped in the grocery store or the bookstore and people tell us how much they like Buzz Words. Friends.
 The question we've been asked most in the past year is, "Are the stories true? Did that really happen?"
 And the answer is, "Yep!" True stories, aside from being stranger than fiction, are easier to recount (and we do seems to excel at story-telling, don't we...).
 So here we are, celebrating Buzz Word's first year. We would sing "Happy Birthday" but ASCAP owns the rights to that famous tune and would surely pop us into jail if they got wind of our abuse of it. (The American Society of Composers, Artists, and Performers equates the words 'use' and 'abuse')
 But rather than wallow in such self-serving mush, and having (probably) wasted another 2 pages of 1 1/2 spaced typewritten prose, and undoubtedly driving our eternally patient editor nuts yet again (yay Tim!), we choose to close by sharing with you a 'thank you note' that we got this past week.
 It's true, unedited, and unsigned (although' it is initialed) and is the best birthday present Buzz Words could have ever received. As follows:
 "Dear Baristas: I am an 80 year old terminally ill cancer patient
 doing my best to stay alive one more day and I must tell you
 I look forward to your column every weekend in the Pall-Times.
 It really keeps me going and I thought you should know."

 42, indeed...
 

MAKE CAPPUCCINO, NOT WAR (All We Are Saying Is Give Beans A Chance)

       He walked into the shoppe a few weeks ago, a child of a child of the 60's in a fake tie-dyed shirt and Nike sandals with the 'Whosssh' (whatever) carefully scraped off.
        His shirt proclaimed MAKE LOVE - NOT WAR although it seemed obvious he was not old enough to have likely done either. Daily shaving was not an issue in his life yet.
   "Hi. What's the 'Joe du Jour' for today?", he said in repetitive redundancy.
    "Zimbabwe AA", I calmly replied (well, as calmly as four mugs of it in the last hour would allow...)
    "Oh. Bummer. Can't drink that. Zimbabwe is involved in a cross-border altercation with The Congo. I sure as heck can't drink anything that would support Robert Mugabe's regime." His intensity was only as great as his innocence - which was pretty great.
    "Well, I can do a French Press of another kind of coffee if you prefer." The customer, being always right, always deserves options.
     "Really? Cool. What's good?"
    The Zimbabwe, I thought, but apparently it's tainted...
 "How about a Celebes Kalosi? We don't get it in all that often, but it is one of the best in the world - nice, rich, kinda syrupy." Should I tell him that legend has it Celebes Kalosi is hand-picked by virgins? Hmmm...
      "Wow. That sounds great. Where is it actually from?"
    "Indonesia... the home of Sumatran Mandheling and Java Estate. Absolutely finest-kind coffee," I replied, knowing that any true coffee connoisseur would never pass up a great Indonesian brew.
 "You gotta be kidding!" His eyes went buggy. "Indonesia has, like, the worst human rights record is the whole freakin' world, nearly. Uh-uh... I'm not paying my money to a pawn of Indonesian tyranny just for a cup of coffee."
       I began to sweat. I had never thought of myself as a pawn of anything more than our customers' demands for extended hours. A tyranny of sorts, but definitely not the kind this kid was worried about (about which this kid was worried...sheesh...).
   Quickly I raced through my mind trying to think of a coffee that WASN'T tied in to oppressive or tyrannical or warlord countries. A trickle of sweat ran down the middle of my back. I felt like an unprepared junior high student (oops... make that 'middle school' - showing my age...) standing in front of the teacher with not a clue in the world of the right answer.
   There was no chance I was gonna raise my hand. I was most assuredly NOT sure.
   A small gambit opened in my mind... not a certain one, but it had to be played. "Well, how does a cup of Colombian Supremo sound?"
      "Awful," he retorted. "Drug Lords and Crack House. Nope." He said 'crack house' like it was some sort of national fast food chain, but he had me stumped. "C'mon," he finally railed. "You are THE authority about coffee around here, aren't you? Ya gotta be able to come up with something that I can drink that is socially acceptable."
    Socially acceptable coffee. Sigh. I could think of perhaps two, and it was just my luck that we don't carry either one... Sigh...
       And then it hit me. Hard. Coffee grows in the most troubled spots on the globe. Nearly all the great African coffees are from countries whose names and borders have changed a dozen times in my own lifetime.
  And he's right about Indonesia. Famous for its Port of Java from whence cometh the divine java, but equally famous for its crimes against humanity.
     Mexico? Well, NAFTA notwithstanding, the ruling political party has been in power for nearly ever and there are some substantial problems in Chiopas.
       Brazil??? I put it to him. His answer was textbook and correct: they destroy thousands of acres of rainforest each day in their bid to move to the position of a first world country. Interestingly enough, coffee grows in the rainforst. Lose the rainforest, lose the coffee, lose the economy you are trying to build.
       It was then that we began to bond: I, the aging child of the 60's and this young kid who would bring the naive hopes of the sixties into a new millennium,  as we realized that, glory be to the goddess, NO place that grows coffee is currently socially acceptable.
       Coffee is the future hope of dozens of geographical areas, all of which lie in the tropics and all of which are struggling with politics and economics that have yet to materialize into a world we would be proud to live in (in which we would be proud to live... that's two...)
     It would be the usual routine of your humble baristas to blame any bad state of affairs on bad coffee, or not enough of it or something equally obvious. But that is decidedly not the case here. These are the places that  grow The Bean.
     So what is our response? Not drink coffee? Unthinkable.
 Drink only Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee? Jamaica seems to be socially acceptable to our limited world view but, frankly, we don't want to look too closely. And at $50 a pound for the stuff I have a hard time picturing the never-ending coffee cup at the local micro-mart lasting very long.
       Hawaii's Royal Kona? Well the price is better... only about $25 a pound. But as we (the kid and I) discussed the Hawaiian connection he reminded me of the destruction of the eco-systems on the island and the colonization of the native peoples there. OK. No Kona.
       The final chapter is yet to be writ. As a species, we have some sad shortcomings
and tainted economic and political and social policies seem unable to bring us up to snuff.
     Makes you wish they could grow The Bean in Vermont, doesn't it.
 
 

THE FINISHING TOUCHES ON UNFINISHED BUSINESS

 Given the inclusive (some would call them 'random') topics that  we, your humble baristas, tend to cover on these sacred pages, there comes a time periodically when we need to follow up on some of the important stories we share - just to keep the record up-to-date.
 This whole "Buzz Words" thingy started out as just a little chat about coffee almost a year ago. And, in reality, it still is... kinda. But there is, like a greater columnist states, the rest of the story.
 Par exemplum: one of the "Buzz Words" that got us into a whole heap of trouble was an honest (we thought...) assessment of the ubiquitous Church Coffee Hour with it's nearly universally bad coffee. At that time we said that no one at our church read our column anyway, so we wouldn't get into too much trouble.
 We were wrong. Oh, on the Q.T., all our church-going coffee drinking friends told us we were right... But it would seem the only thing more sacred than the service itself is the coffee hour afterwards.
 And then it began... One church choir (the whole choir!) decided to serve 'the good stuff' on just one Sunday as a test. More coffee was consumed than ever before - refills were needed... what usually wound up as left over cups half full of Maxwell House were empties... bone dry!. And it was a simple Brazilian bean that fostered that particular miracle.
 We recently got an email from a church goer who requested anonymity, which is fine with us - the seal of the coffeehouse is rather like the seal of the confessional.
 She served a fine Indonesian at her church's fellowship hour with the same miraculous results.  The comment she got was that people didn't think coffee could taste that good. (Isn't it SUPPOSED to be bitter?)
 It reminded us of the old ad campaign for Folgers where they substituted Folgers for the "fine coffee served in fine restaurants". Remember that? The only flaw was that everyone knows great restaurants traditionally have horrid coffee! So substituting Folgers , well, who is gonna even notice???
 Next item on the agenda is the overwhelming flood of emails about our decaffeinated gifts to David Letterman following his octuple coronary bypass (or something like that...) Feeling generous and sorry for our late night hero's post-surgical decaffeinated state, we shipped him a pound of Sumatran Mandheling Decaf (our best, arguably...) along with a single cup French Press.
 Something went horribly wrong. Dave never called... Not a comment on the show...No thank you note... nada... nothing. We suspect that some poor soul at CBS got one look at the beautiful gift basket we sent (it really was nice... if we do say so) and (gasp!) TOOK it before the lord of late night could revel in a decent cuppa neutered Java.
 That is all we can figure, at least. We have seen Dave's Mom and know (beyond any doubt) that she taught her son to write thank you notes promptly and sincerely. So, it seems that our generosity was a bust. But our thanks to the two readers for asking...
 Then there is the ongoing saga of "Sleeping in Seattle" who has enlisted our aid in getting her partner to enjoy coffee. She loves it... and she loves him. He loves her (we assume... he hasn't actually written us) but just cannot seem to acquire the taste for The Bean.
 Again, wretched and dismal failure on our part.  Even our suggestion that interesting things might emerge from the creative use of cocoa and whipped cream along with the coffee failed to sway his vote.
 We don't get it... Whipped cream and chocolate are invariably successful. You don't suppose that she tried to get away with Cool Whip, do you?
 Then there was the column about Starbucks' ad campaign to reinvent itself as, not a coffee seller, but the "Third Space" in people's lives. We kinda thought that this was a dorky marketing strategy ourselves, but lo and behold a marketing student in the great non-state of Washington, D.C., after reading our column decided this was worthy of a research project (no foolin!) and applied for grants to study the "Third Space" concept.
 He got the grants (proving that there is expendable money out there somewhere...) and is traveling to coffee houses (coffee homes?) along the Eastern Seaboard to see about this idea. Without knowing us, save from our column, and with no ties to Oswego whatsoever, he is coming sometime in July to spend a couple days at our shoppe (read: loiter) for 'research'.
 I.e., he is being PAID to hang out at a coffee shoppe.  Now we know we are absolutely in the wrong business.
 Finally the apex of our columnar writing surely was the unforgettable commentary back in May, on how to judge good Java (good taste, good smell, stuff like that... very scientific).
 No one commented on that.

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IN SEARCH OF: A NEAR-LIFE EXPERIENCE (pt B)

 He was born in 1910, the tenth child of eleven, to a poor farming family in the mid-west. To this day no one is absolutely certain of his middle name. He says it's 'Wilber' but his birth certificate says it is 'Wilmer'
 His home life was rough - Today we would label his father physically abusive, but then it was just called rough. Which is why he ran away from home as soon as seemed practical. He ran away to go to school, contrary to why many leave home now. And one of those very special and all too rare teachers made sure he had the opportunity to attend and finish high school and go on to a technical school to become an accountant.
 He swam against Johnny Weismuller (Tarzan) in water polo. He said that he looked at Weismuller and "He just didn't seem that big..." But the legendary Tarzan of the movies swam over him like he wasn't even there. He lost. (But he DID swim against Weismuller!)
 He went from General Manager of the Syracuse YMCA to a marriage with the former Jean Krebs (of the Skaneatles Krebs' family) and became Division Auditor and Personnel Director of Black Clawson. His mother-in-law, a formidable woman in her own right, nick-named him 'Steve' simply because there were way way too many "Frank's" in their lives already and, according to her he looked like a big Swede! A successful businessman, by anyone's standards.
 December 13, 1941, he became proud father to his first born... a son.
 December 13, 1942, he became proud father to his next born... a daughter.
 March 13, 1943, he took a room at the YMCA' just in case lightning might strike the same place three times... (do the math...)
 At the age of 47, when many are looking toward an early retirement, he decided to make yet another career change and, with a wife, two high school kids and a seven year old, he gave up a lucrative business position to go back to school to study for the ministry. And he took a nearly 80% pay cut to do it.
 Sitting in the car in front of his first church, his family remembers him saying, "If I can't preach, I can at least balance their books." He did... Both.
 Preachers have favorite texts and the one he will be best remembered for is one from the Old Testament about Moses' spies in Canaan. The majority of the spies thought the inhabitants of the promised land were giants and they felt like grasshoppers looking at these strong men. The minority report said that, yeah, they were big enough but that the children of Israel could easily overcome them.
 The majority report held sway and as a result the Israelites spent another 40 years in the desert.
 He believed in listening to the minority.
 Five successful pastorates later, he retired. As a businessman/pastor he lifted a 135 year old church off of its foundation (very carefully) and built a much needed Christian Education and general purpose hall underneath it. He balanced their books.
 At the next parish he finished a long overdue brick facing on a church that had run out of building funds, then built a new parsonage for them. He balanced their books.
 He took churches from debt to life, preached about giants and grasshoppers, built outstanding youth programs, and balanced their books.
 At the age of 57 he learned to downhill ski with his youngest son.
 In his 60's he motorcycled through England and Europe with his older son. He rode his beloved Triumph 650 until hanging up his helmet some 10 years later.
 Two years after retirement he contracted a disease that left him in a full coma for 6 months and on full life support. He lost 80 pounds and had to learn to feed himself and walk and do all those things we take for granted from scratch. Two years later, with no feeling in his legs as a result of the disease, he went on a solo pilgrimage to Israel.
 At age 79 he joined his youngest son and the son's partner and sailed a 30 foot Catalina from Oswego to Edenton, North Carolina. He met hurricanes Gabrielle, Hugo, Iris, and Jerry head on... and won. He wept openly on reaching Elizabeth City, NC, because he missed his wife of nearly 50 years so much. She was waiting for him back in Syracuse. He still had no feeling in his legs.
 He spent his 80th birthday and 50th anniversary sailing in the Bahamas and learning to SCUBA dive. He thought the water was beautiful. He was right.
 At 84 he decided to fly to Alaska with his older son... in a single engine Piper Cherokee, making about 400 miles a day and camping out under the wings at night. Above the clouds and above the Arctic Circle, he reveled in the beauty of creation and the simple pleasure of sharing it with someone he loved.
 At 87 he helped his younger son and the son's partner start a small, fun, unique coffee shoppe. His financial backing was important, but the reminder of his own career change at the age of 47 was the real support that the nervous newly hatched baristas needed.
 In a few days he will be 90. A well lived and loving life now resides in a nursing home, mostly blind, mostly deaf, unable to say more than a few fumbling words; he can no longer walk more than some hesitant steps.
 But at each visit, he asks about the coffee shoppe (which he misses...) and loves to have the puppies come see him. Kenya enjoys sitting next to him, letting the weakening hands pet and knead the heavy fur. Djimah does her best 10 month old puppy act and climbs on his chair to lick his face.
 He laughs and smiles and hugs the puppies tightly, no longer able to say their names, no longer able to watch them run or hear their deep barking, and with never a complaint. Never. Never.
 An extraordinary life that was chock full of 'near-life' experiences, he never slowed down except to enjoy the ride and never lived so fast as to miss the details. Now the enjoyment and the details are memories that, if there is a god, keep him company as he trades in all those near-life experiences for a nearing-death experience.
 We watch his life with this world fade, his remaining attachments to it consisting of visits from loving family, a real fondness for chocolate Labrador pups, and three core memories that he repeats over and over: Alaska, Bahamas, coffee shoppe.
 There is no longer anything that we can get him for Father's Day that would mean a thing. But we can tell our wonderful readers about this wonderful man... A man who's near-life experiences are not only worth remembering, but worth emulating.
 We all love you so much. Happy Father's Day, Dad.

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IN SEARCH OF: A NEAR-LIFE EXPERIENCE (pt 1)

 There are two phrases that we hear in the coffee shoppe with (probably) more regularity than any others:
 1- I need a life...
 B- Not enough hours in the day...
 Now, you have to assume that the folks uttering these impossible-to-reconcile words are all existing on the same planet (thoâ in all honesty some seem not to be...).
 As with nearly everything else, you can ultimately boil down (or brew down, as it were) people into two categories: The haves and the wanna-beâs.
 There are those folk who populate the inner recesses of our little emporium who watch ÎFriendsâ on TV...
 And then there are those who actually have friends in real life...
 Our esteemed editor of WEEKEND (yay Tim!) once gently chastised some of the good folk who are our readership, reminding them that those who think there isnât anything to do in Oswego just arenât looking very hard!
 Case in point: your humble baristas are currently in the editorâs dog house (actually not a bad place to be... we love pups!) because the column you are reading AS WE SPEAK is late... a day late. Eek!
 Two major concerts in two days to conduct... An organ recital to play... The usual musical stuff on the weekend at the church... two Îimportantâ meetings (meetings are not a life)... running around for the shoppe... hauling risers and sound equipment all over creation... Entertaining friends from Vermont (jeez, I hope they didnât feel slighted!)... Help a friend move... Write ãBuzz Wordsä.
 Well, most of it got done (sorry Tim...) And most of it was done fairly well, but:
 ãThere arenât enough hours in the day!ä
 Some wag just walked thru the door of the shoppe and playfully commented to one of our regular patrons: You need a life.
 She replied without missing a beat: This IS my life.
 She is a writer. Often published and much of her work has been produced consuming our caffeine. Cool...
 Two other patrons were here earlier. They are dating... serious dating! You can tell (they smile a lot) and you can hear it (they giggle a lot) and you can sense it (they smooch a lot). They met on the internet.
 For all of its maligned babble by congressional types who would save us from the common cold (if only they could legislate it) the internet has provided yet another means of having a life... Like anything, it can be overdone. It is possible (tho hardly likely) to spend TOO much time in a coffeehouse. It is equally possible to spend too much time on the Înet.
 But real people find life in real ways and then it is up to them to live it. Really!
 So what IS a life? People have Îem, mostly - Groups have lives (ask any musician!) - Corporations do, sometimes. And sometimes people, groups, and corporations just suck life OUT of you trying to get a life for themselves.
 For our needs, the definition of having a life is simple: if you are having a good time, you have a life.
 People: I met a gal the other day (at the shoppe) who is paralyzed from the waist down... complaining about Înot enough hoursâ (yada yada..) Seems she works with kids groups teaching about poetry. Too many bookings for her seminars currently, but that is what she considers fun! Being overbooked!
 And she gardens and writes and travels and lives off of her publishing income. Definitely a life.
 Years ago we met a sailor with no legs. Vietnam vet. Sailing solo. He was en route from Toronto to Oswego to take his boat and himself down the Canal System to the Atlantic and from there, no plans, except to see the parts of the world to which he could sail. maybe some writing about it, he said, but mostly just to see what was out there.
 One of the happiest people we know has no Îhomeâ - not that he is homeless, and rumor has it he has an apartment somewhere, tho we doubt the rumor is true. He lives (mostly) in his (very cool) van and travels the country being Shakespeare. Not Îdoingâ Shakespere, mind you, but BEING the Bard.
 He sets up shop in places where loitering is a way of life (coffeehouses, for example) and weaves a life around recreating the life of one of the worldâs greatest writers. What Hal Holbrook does with Mark Twain, he does with Shakespeare. Surely a life.
 Hillary has a life. Have you watched her? You donât have to agree with her or support her in any way to see that she sure seems to be having a good time campaigning in her own right.
 But, so far, Mr. Lazio seems to be whooping it up, too. Good for them! Someone has to do it.
 Groups: Bill Shigley had a life, and we mourn its passing. Taking a little tiny NPR radio station from a couple of weak watts 30 some years ago and transforming it into one of the best known and most highly regarded of the NPR stations across the country took someone who not only had a life but was willing to give oceans of it out to others in order to see his dream come true for WRVO. (and now for WRVJ and WRVN and WSUC and WRVD and... and... is there no end to the life of WRVO now???)
 Corporations: The U.S. Bureau of Engraving has no life. After years of boring money they decide to issue NEW money. And what do their corporate brains come up with? Dead men with big heads on more boring money.
 The U. S. Mint has a life. Witness the new issues of quarters that everyone seems to be collecting and the very cool gold dollars that are now circulating.
 O.K. we know money ALWAYS looks good (when you actually have it!) But your humble baristas and lots of other folks who have traveled the world know that other countries have paper money that is not only worth spending but worth LOOKING at... (Columbusâ ships are hidden in the water mark of Bahamian money.)
 People who open bookstores or frame shops or little boutique yarn & weaving shoppes, folks who try their skills at their dreams definitely have a life. Experimenting with the time you have on this earth is a great example of living.
 If it works, you win. If it doesnât, you win for having tried.
 Not trying is not a life.
 So the next time you think you donât have a life, donât go to Wal-Mart to drown your blues in shopping. (Sam Wahl has too much of a life...)
 Go downtown and visit the people who are living their lives in a way of their own design. Hit the little deli places, a used bookshop (itâs coming, by the way), or a new bookstore (isnât it cool that SOMEone finally decided to get a life this way!) or the wonderful myriad of tiny specialty restaurants springing up.
 Go to the Music Hall on a Saturday evening this fall. Attend a theater production in town. Pick up any of the concerts, recitals or shows at the college or high school or by community groups at various venues. Watch people enjoying their lives!
 Then get out there and GET one!
 Because there are NOT enough hours...

JUST GIMME A LARGE HIGH TEST... TO GO...

 The phrase that strikes terror into the heart of any barista. It is
the caffeine equivalent of walking into a fine wine shoppe and ordering
"the cheapest Pink Catawba you got..."
            If you have had any contact with the specialty coffee market,
chances are you've come across something like: "...yielding a sharply
acidic coffee with an intense flavor, very fragrant and floral."
 Whether you're buying from the local supermarket, or you're
purchasing green beans from a broker - this is how people "talk" about
coffee. Sure, the words are familiar but, unless you've also had some
experience in wine tasting, their use might be a little weird.
 Fortunately, this foreign language is based on something we all
have in common: senses. Not all coffees are created equal. We run about 18
different unflavored regular coffees in our shoppe. People sometimes boggle
at the choices, but they are all uniquely different and, thus, more fun to
choose from.
 Spicy, chocolaty, grassy, we all have had some experience with
these tastes. Ok, so maybe you haven't eaten freshly mown grass recently,
but you have probably smelled it. And, because so much of what we taste is
based on how it smells, what you smell is often what you taste.

 Some coffees have really similar tastes and it becomes a real art
form to be able to tell the subtle differences. Add to the problem that
many folks don't make their coffee the same way each time and you can get a
real variety in the flavor of the same cup o Joe!
 But part of the fun is learning to taste the differences and to do
that, you can approach The Bean from two ways:
 1- Where is it from? African beans tend to have a deeper, richer,
mellow, winey or earthy taste. Central and South Americans tend to be
lighter, more acidic and spicier. Indonesians are syrupy and have a very
special flavor of their own.
 B- What does it taste like? Bright? sparkly? thick? The first
impression you get of coffee is usually the most accurate - like wine you
sniff it and look at it - If you do your Joe in a clear mug you will know
that coffee is never actually black. It is various shades of brown.
 Someone once told us that if you could see thru the coffee, it
wasn't strong enough. We simply send him to McDonalds drive thru. You can
see thru coffee... It isn't supposed to look like (or, goddess forbid,
taste like) tar.  Dark roasts are darker (amazing!) and if your coffee has
a head, it means the beans are fresh roasted!
 The most misunderstood word in the coffee world is acidity. Both
high acidity and low acidity are fine. It doesn't have anything to do with
your ulcers. It is the brisk bright taste that you tend to experience at
the first sip. High acid coffees are simply not mellow. One of our best
sellers is a blend of Peruvian beans considered highly acidic; we haven't
had to serve Mylanta with it yet!
 Next in importance is the aftertaste which is just an indication of
what you taste after you have swallowed your brew. The coffee might be
carbony to chocolaty, spicy to turpeny. We don't know who came up with the
terms, but hanging is likely too good for him.
 Aroma. Well, hey! (insert dope slap here). What is the sense of
drinking a coffee that doesn't smell good? The sensation of gases released
from brewed coffee might be anything from fruity to herbal (and, yes, there
is an herbal coffee... just like herbal tea it hasn't a thing to do with
its namesake)
  Caramelly? Chocolaty? Delicate? See?! It *IS* like wine tasting,
only cheaper and with better terminology (wines aren't chocolaty)
 Bad smells indicate bad coffee... who would have thought? Coffee
can get musty or moldy, but the worst happens when you put it in the
fridge... If you have leftover Canale garlic pizza then you have just
produced garlic coffee. The Bean works like baking soda and sucks up all
the aromas around it!
           Mouthfeel. Mouthfeel? Yeah, Mouthfeel. OK this isn't one of the
better terms. Wine tasters have a better one. Palate. It's how the brew
feels in your mouth... aside from taste, The Bean might be earthy, syrupy,
muddy, clear, light, watery... you get the idea.
 Finish. Like wine (good and bad) coffee has a finish... a sensation
of taste, palate, aroma and acidity at the very point when you swallow it.
Here is where you really depart from supermarket coffee when you start
drinking the good stuff.
 Supermarket coffee, even the supposedly good ones, are old. and
they are mishandled by clerks and stockpersons who have a lot of work to do
and aren't gonna be too careful about that ubiquitous one-way valve on the
coffee bag.
 But old is old. It may still smell good (old coffee is a great room
or car deodorizer!) but it will taste (palate) stale and boring; it will
have a lack of body and the finish is finished... gone... kaput. Nada.
 In this here world, you get what you pay for. Now we're not opposed
to a really cheap pink catawba on occasion. Slumming it with wines is not
so bad. But given the chance to have a Merlot, what choice is there? You
CAN drink Folgers, it's a free country. But with a fresh roasted Venezuelan
Blue available why would you?
 Pass the spittoon, please!

IT'S A SINE (sic) OF THE TIMES

 Ah! Vacation! A time to get away from the espresso maker and ignore
the potential local candidates for the "Darwin Award".
 We were off (there is little doubt of that...) for a well deserved
(to our way of thinking) break and found ourselves ensconced in the best
kept secret of all of New York (no no no , not Lazio's candidacy). That
would be, of course, the Adirondack Mountains. Our esteemed editor (yay
Tim!) and our publisher (bless him!) loosed the ties that bind us and ran a
rerun Buzz Words last week.
 But our vacation doesn't mean that the rest of the caffeinated
world was on vacation, too. We arrived back to a hand painted sign along Rt
104 in our fair city that read:
 "Vote No on the School Bugget" (sic)
 Hello?
 Now, for those of you that aren't of a literary turn of mind, 'sic'
means that neither your humble baristas nor their esteemed editor goofed.
 'Sic' means that the poor soul that wrote the sign didn't know how
to spell what s/he was voting against. A true sign of the times.
 We arrived back from the pristine beauty of the High Peaks around
Keene, NY, to discover that NIKE, in a deft maneuver into third millennia
jargon,  no longer advertises themselves as manufacturers of sports wear
but now tout their company as "A Conceptual Means of Athletic Achievement".
Huh?
 To add to our post-vacation puzzlement, it seems that our beloved
post-modern STARBUCKS whom we fondly refer to as *$'s, is no longer a
company that sells coffee. Oh, to be sure, they still DO that, but they now
think of themselves corporately as "The Third Space". It would seem that
their corporate wisdom thinks of 'first space' as home, 'second space' as
the office, so the brethren at *$'s wish us to think of them as our third
most important place. Excuse me?
 Now, to be sure, we have a regular clientele who most assuredly DO
think of our little shoppe as their home away from home. You know that you
too frequently frequent your local coffee emporium when people looking for
you call your barista before calling your home.
 And we have said before (and are likely to say again...) that
coffee shoppes are the best places to discuss the 'Forbidden Three' topics
of sex, religion and politics.
 But lately no one seems to be talking about sex which, on the
surface seems strange since it is usually the primary topic of choice. But
we figure that either everyone is satisfied or they have simply given up.
 And, while religion surfaces with unseemly regularity, politics
appears to be the current focus of caffeinated crowd's conversation. Maybe
it's in the water. Maybe we need to boil the coffee 20 minutes before
drinking it... eeewww!
 The bulk of the political spectrum of late would make you think
that the entire world has become an 'X-File".
 The politics of the Senate Race come to mind... and then just as
abruptly fade. The mayor who blithely bulldozed a neighborhood garden in
his fair city into oblivion without so much as a 'fare-thee-well' to the
community is no longer in the political climactic changes. Thus the
destruction of Esperanto Community Park will not be avenged in the current
race. Kinda too bad, but...
 Then there is the reelection of the epically omniscient Charleton
Heston to an unprecedented third term as president of the NRA. We don't
know if his campaign slogan was 'speak biblically and carry a big rifle' or
'Tippecanoe and Howitzers too' but it was reassuring to note that the
inaugural ceremony attacked those opposed to the NRA's various stands as
'minions of Hollywood's publicity-seeking star system", something with
which Mr. Heston might surely be familiar.
 We watch with awe a Republican presidential candidate bending ever
so carefully as far left as he can without endangering his right leaning
following. And simultaneously watch the Democratic counterpart trying to
figure out how to bend at all.
 Or who can forget... um... nevermind. We forgot.
 Now, it's true that one can usually look at the 'outside' world
(south of Minetto) and see bizarre events all the time. Yet it is unnerving
when it comes so amazingly close to home. It might appear that an entire
community lost its rational self by voting down free money for the school
system... The only saving grace is that it wasn't defeated unanimously. One
wonders what those who voted NO on a no-cost $300,000.00+ school issue
would do if they found that same 1/3 of a million bucks lying by the side
of the road...
 Probably grab their rifle and shoot it.
 So, when it comes 'round again, be sure and "Vote No on the School
Bugget" (sic).
 As the unremembered Petulia Clark would say, "It's a sin of the
times". Oops, sorry... make that 'sign'.

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