"Feining" a poem by Joe Lucarelli

Coffee, wake up
Grab a quick cup.
Cream, sugar, sweet and low
Or just a cup of joe-
Black and strong.
Buzzing along
Caffiene fix
To you lips
Comes the speed
That you need
Bright eyed and bushey-tailed
This fix won't fail.

Visit www.poetry.com and search for Joe Lucarelli for more original poetry.

Update on China Trip

We are packed and ready to go. Now we will unpack one more time and decide on which items we can really do without. I keep saying, "pack light" and my wife says, "I need choices." If I don't start smoking during this trip to China I never will.

We go to Beijing first and see the sights for three days. Then we go to Xi'an to get our daughter. We will be there for about six days, meeting with Chinese officials and completing the Chinese part of the adoption. We then go to Guangzhou to complete the U.S. part. Lots of officials and lots of paperwork.

I will post as often as possible while I am in China to report our progress.

RABBI PLISKIN'S DAILY LIFT

Daily Lift #141 Feel the Benefit of Kindness

What if you don't spontaneously feel joy for doing acts of kindness? Be aware of how you are elevating yourself and becoming a better person.

Imagine the good feelings you would have if someone helped you in the way you are helping others. By entering his world and feeling what he is feeling, you gain a greater appreciation for what you are doing.

You may find this technique difficult, but as you begin to experience it, you increase your ability to do so.

(From Rabbi Pliskin's book Kindness)

Freshroast Home Roasters are in stock

These are great machines if you are interested in something with a higher degree of repeatability and a more "hands off" approach than a stovetop roaster but without investing a lot in gadgetry. Its the perfect size for producing enough roasted coffee for one or two people.

Some of you have seen this roaster in our TV commercial! This roaster is 6" in diameter and about 12" tall. It's the best of all worlds as a place to start roasting at home. It's fully automatic, and don't worry, finding green coffee is a lot easier than you might think

The Coffee Project

Coffee has grown in popularity over the last decade

By Roxana Orellana/Austin Daily Herald

Coffee in the 1990s took on a more significant and relevant role in everyday life. The coffee house craze has spread throughout the country and become contemporary, making coffee an essential component of social gatherings. Vendors have more to offer than just the good old, decaffeinated and regular, and coffee drinking seems to have shed its past notion of being an older person's drink.

More...

Coffee Debate Perks Up

Seattle’s heated over a proposition to tax cups of espresso

By Dana Calvo
LOS ANGELES TIMES. The Los Angeles Times is a Tribune Co. newspaper.

November 29, 2002

Seattle - The idea came at the end of a long, frustrating, brown-bag session at a public-policy think tank here.

The challenge was to save the city's child-care programs. Staring into his empty coffee cup, the meeting coordinator's mind landed on an unlikely solution: Put a tax - just a "benign" dime a shot - on espresso.

That idea led to a petition signed by more than 20,000 Seattle residents, and next year voters will decide whether the tax becomes law, one that taps right into Seattle's legendary addiction to coffee.

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Squeezed To the Last Drop

Coffee farmers deserve fair trade, not famine.

By Bianca Jagger
Saturday, November 30, 2002; Page A23

When I was growing up in Nicaragua, I used to spend my summer vacations in the beautiful mountains of Matagalpa and Jinotega, an area with some of the best coffee plantations in the country. My father would say with pride, "Coffee produced in this region is among the finest in the world."

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Coffee Prices Shoot Up Once More

New Vision (Kampala)

November 27, 2002
Posted to the web November 30, 2002

Vision Reporter
Kampala

This is a Christmas gift Ugandan farmers deserve. The news coming out of the coffee industry indicates that the price of coffee in all the international markets has shot up after tumbling for almost three years.

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Coffee cultures clash in Miami's cafes

By ANDREA ELLIOTT

To the east: soft jazz and an eggnog latte. To the west: loud salsa and a cortadito. Only Meridian Avenue sits between Starbucks and David's Cafe II in South Beach, but the two-lane street marks the gulf between Miami's clashing coffee cultures - a chatty, inexpensive, sidewalk communion and a more pricey, syrupy, serene scene.

The Cuban-rooted experience and the mainstream American one - a coffee competition seen almost nowhere else in the United States due to Miami's high concentration of Latin Americans and a coffee consuming tradition that predates the U.S. coffee craze by five decades.

"This is our roots," said taxi driver Raul Gomez, 43, as he cradled his colada, a tar-brown shot of pure espresso. "Starbucks - that's water."

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