Monday, August 04, 2003


regional coffee cultures, part viii

i can't make this stuff up. it's not to good to be true.

drinking even 1 cup of coffee around the time you exercise apparently helps your body perform better and burn more fat.

australian researchers find that caffeine triggers the muscles to start using fat as an energy source rather than carbohydrate sugars.

and here's another one for the regional coffee culture files: it's a tiny, nearly dying, town in north dakota. yet the people love the community feeling formed by drinking coffee together so much that after the local coffeehouse closed, they organized their own free-form coffee-drinking gathering at the local firehall.

which is actually abandoned and unmanned. these people are one with the hartwell coffee club.

they missed their coffee, and their time together; now they hold their own coffee party. how to decide who covers the cost? they throw dice among themselves. . .

these people are the true coffee lovers. they probably have never had a perfectly made espresso in their lives.

i doubt they own anything but a battered cheap chinese-made drip machine. and yet they perfectly embody everything that is beautiful about our favorite social and intellectual beverage.

we here at bccy adore you, coffee-loving residents of niagara, north dakota! our loves goes out to you this day.

do we upscale caffénauts with our commercial espresso machines, rare ultra-premium specialty coffees, commercial grinders, and exquisite taste actually deserve to nurse a simple mug o' joe at the same table with these lovely folks? i wonder. . .

on a more somber note, a nice analysis of the state of the coffee market. . .the roots of the world-price depression known as the coffee crisis are revealed.

i've heard of rain dances, but who knows a frost dance? the problem with articles like this is that they seldom explain the depths of human suffering the crisis causes. . .for that info, and how to help, you have to go to coffeekids.

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