Dude, It´s Only Coffee! 11

 I remember the first time I heard someone wax all precious and ridiculous over cappuccino, and that was when I really knew we were headed for trouble.  I never got to know her, she was the fianceé of rather an annoying yuppie who attended the Mennonite house church I was visiting back in 1979.  She herself was of the privileged class.  A tall, attractive young blond woman ready to graduate from medical school.  And oh so charmingly feminine and girly and everyone was eating out of her left hand.  Except me.  I found her cloying, annoying, even nauseating.  

One day, a Sunday, following our little church service, little miss annoying chirped on and on about the wonders of a good cappuccino.  That was back in the day when espresso coffee was still in its infancy in Vancouver, and gourmet coffee was yet a glint in its daddy's eye.  Personally I didn't care a rat's ass about cappuccino, or any fancy espresso drinks.  Espresso straight up, okay, as long as it got me going, but coffee is coffee is coffee, and really, what's the big deal, except for young bourgeois women to get all smarmy about something fancy and delicate, I suppose.  

And her yuppie boyfriend, who actually was okay, would smile on her like an indulgent daddy.  Especially when she said how much she also loved Italian ice cream..  Maybe he liked the way she licked his cone.  

But, snide remarks aside, I was really beginning to notice, in 1979, just how much my purported generation had already begun to sell out on the great ideals of the sixties and early seventies, and how so many of us were already turning into mindless consumers and ethically challenged sybarites as well as materialistic hedonists.  I did not like at all what I was seeing.  Coffee, in its new, evolving and mutating forms, seemed somehow to symbolise this horrid slide into decadence.

Yes, decadence.  I recall Oscar Wilde's great quip (one of his many) upon his tour of the United States of America, that they appeared to be the only country on earth that had somehow gone from barbarism to decadence without any in between stage of civilization.  and Canada, like any younger and minor sibling, naturally was going to mimic our big fat stinking brother to the south.   Decadence was already becoming one of the real buzzwords as global capitalism and mass consumerism were already getting ready to totally swallow us in their maw.  

Then coffee really began to hit the scene, and not simply as that famous bitter swill whose job was to wake us up in the morning, keep us awake all day and, if you happened to be a shiftworker or a student cramming for midterms, keep us awake throughout all those nights every bit as dark black and bitter as the brew we happened to be swilling.  As espresso and cappuccino were already beginning to wear out their welcome, along came locally and regionally sourced beans (arabica, of course) and suddenly, the consumer palette was getting educated about the differences between light roast, medium and dark roast.  And it had to be Sumatran.  Or Kenyan. Or from Guatemala, or Colombia, or one of those countries.  And not only from those countries, but from particular estates that provided the perfect settings of terroir, sun, volcanic soil, rain, altitude and shade.  And if the beans had been shat out of a cat's ass, or even better, an elephant's ass, so much the better.

Yes, you did read that correctly.  There is a species of civet, not really a cat, but thought of as a cat, that eats coffee cherries and poops out the beans after it's been digested.  Elephants too!  The beans are carefully selected, cleaned off (one would hope), dried, roasted and ground to perfection.  and of course there was that trend for a few years of flavoured coffee, grand marnier coffee, vanilla coffee, mocha coffee, hazelnut coffee, or just add cinnamon or whatever mix of spices and enjoy your cuppa.  

Then came Starbuck's and all their imitators.  Suddenly, no one was ordering coffee any longer.  It was dark roast, light roast, medium roast. Sumatran, Ethiopian, Colombian, Costa Rican, and it was espresso, americano, latte, cappuccino and then came the ultimate insult to the every day coffee swiller:  the frappuccino and all it's precious variants.  And pumpkin spice lattes.  

More tomorrow, ducks!

Dude, It's Only Coffee! 10

 Another word about decaf.  It's pretty darn good these days.  I mentioned my very pleasant surprise when "Jaume" was distributing free samples outside his coffee shop.  It wasn't always this way.  Remember Sanka?  Okay, I'll give all of you exactly one minute to stop gagging.... Better now, Gentle Reader?   I don't want to make you ill now.  

Sanka is that famous brand of instant coffee that first hit the market over a hundred years ago, decaffeinated in order to help grandpa and grandma get a good night's sleep.  The makers were a wealthy and powerful corporation, sponsoring various TV shows, I Love Lucy and the Twilight Zone among them (go figure!)

Here is the straight brew about the process of getting the caffeine out of green coffee beans before drying and roasting them...

There are several ways to decaffeinate coffee but the most prevalent is to soak them in a solvent – usually methylene chloride or ethyl acetate. Methylene chloride can be used as a paint stripper and a degreaser as well an agent to remove caffeine.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180917-how-do-you-decaffeinate-coffee#:~:text=There%20are%20several%20ways%20to,methylene%20chloride%20or%20ethyl%20acetate.&text=The%20beans%20are%20first%20soaked,drawn%20out%20by%20the%20solvent.

There are of course, some derogatory nicknames for decaffeinated coffee, such as brown water, or, Why bother, or my fave, maiden's water.

Sanka is something I never touch.  The idea of putting those chemicals in my mouth,however miniscule their amounts is enough to make me want to drink regular coffee late into the night, then lie awake till the small hours of dawn.  I have on occasion tried Postum and Inka, two coffee substitute made from roasted cereals (how about a coffee substitute made from Fruit Loops or Cap'n Crunch.  Cocoa Puffs, anyone?)   They're okay if you actually like them and aren't expecting coffee, and naturally they are not going to keep you awake, but honestly I had the same can of Inka that festered in my cupboard for over a decade before I drew enough courage to throw it in the garbage..  It was first developed in Poland in the sixties and is made from roasted wheat, barley, chicory and sugar beet. Yum!

Then there is the Swiss water method, which involves repeatedly flushing water through the green coffee beans till at least 95 percent of the caffeine is removed.  It's more expensive, but I think safer and the coffee usually tastes a lot more like...well...like coffee.

The litmus test occurred for me when around fifteen years ago, I invited a tenant in my building, a Colombian for a cup of coffee one evening.  I warned him at first that it was decaf and, being very health conscious, he was going to turn it down.  However, I persuaded him, and to his surprise he loved it.  Being reassured that it didn't contain trace amounts of formaldehyde or dry cleaning chemical was also for him a boost.  And it was fair trade.

To this day, I buy French Colombian decaf, which appears to be fairly traded, according to my coffee broker and it is good.  I usually alternate or mix it with a full flavoured dark roast, these days from Guatemala, also fair trade.  But as much as I enjoy the sybaritic luxury of savouring fine coffee early in the morning, it is, after all, only coffee, and the beans are picked by human hands, often of underpaid and exploited workers, which is why I still try to opt as much as possible for fair trade, or similar.  It is the very least I can do.  And yes, fair trade tastes better.  It always tastes better.  Even when it's awful, Gentle Reader!

Dude, It's Only Coffee! 9

 I have written elsewhere on these pages about the first Starbucks in Vancouver.  Back in the day.  1987, I think it was.  March.  Their first ever international coffee shop.  It was a novelty.  And the coffee was good.  No, it was great.  Remember, even though I was aware that there were human rights abuses throughout the agriculture of coffee beans, I still knew nothing about fair trade, and I continued anyway to enjoy the bitter brew.  The baristas were all nice, kind young college dudes, and they seemed to really enjoy what they were doing, as well as liking their regulars.  At least they seemed to like me.  It was a very convenient stop for me after work, because it was right inside the Waterfront Skytrain Station, former train station, where I liked to pass through on my way to and from work in the Downtown Eastside.

Starbucks, back then, was a pleasant novelty.  I never bought their beans, but it was generally a pleasure sitting for an after work brew and a chat with the servers.  Of course, they quickly became the gift that went on giving, and I began to make sense of the sinister shadow side that I intuitively discerned about them as they rapidly took over our city, and other cities and soon after, the world.  It was a few years later that reports began to come out about the less than ethical sources for their coffee beans.  There is this that I just picked up on the internet, from last year:

STARBUCKS COFFEE ON THE “DIRTY LIST”

unsplash.com/@briansuman

How do we even know that this is happening? The Brazilian government has taken steps to address forced labor throughout their farming and manufacturing sectors. One of those steps is publishing an annual “Dirty List” of those found in violation of Brazilian law and what they have defined as modern slavery: forced labor, debt bondage, dangerous and degrading conditions, and debilitating work days.

In the fall of 2018, local labor inspectors published reports tying Starbucks to a plantation where workers were forced to work live and work in filthy conditions. Workers reported dead bats and mice in their food, no sanitation systems, and work days that stretched from 6AM to 11PM. Workers reported that the payment system was rigged and the coffee they picked disappeared before it could be tallied. Deductions to cash their checks meant that workers had barely any take-home pay.  While the plantation carried Starbucks’ C.A.F.E. Practices certification, Starbucks denied buying from the farm in recent years (C.A.F.E. Practices allow for inspections to happen as infrequently as 2-3 years, depending on several factors including previous inspection scores).

In the more recent case, labor inspectors found workers in similarly dire conditions on another plantation certified to Starbucks’ standards. Overall, the Brazilian labor ministry reports that workers toiling in slavery-like working conditions was at a 15-year high in 2018.

Clearly, there’s a problem. And Starbucks’ C.A.F.E. Practices program is not equal to solving it—or even to bringing the problem to light.  It is not their own transparency efforts but those of the Brazilian state that revealed the issues on these farms.

Here is the link if you want to read the entire article.

https://fairworldproject.org/starbucks-has-a-slave-labor-problem/

Naturally, Starbucks soon became the place to go for coffee.  They would open up on almost every street corner, rapidly pushing out of business smaller, independent and less wealthy or powerful coffee establishments.  They were ruthless and unstoppable.  Very quickly I began to boycott Starbucks, because of what they were doing to the business climate of my city, how they were erasing much of our local street culture, how they had come to so emblemize the bland, boring, and mundane.  And because I was already suspicious of their human rights practices.  

As much as possible I have come to support independent coffee places and only small local chains, especially with an emphasis on buying fair trade wherever possible.  In recent years, I do go to Starbucks but on a very limited basis.  It has to be based on my work with clients, and it has to be the only viable option for going out for coffee together.  Otherwise, we try to go elsewhere.  

Starbucks and their huge popularity with the middle class is really symptomatic of a much bigger problem in society.  This has to do with consumerism.  People for the most part are interested only in whatever gratifies their immediate cravings and desires.  No consideration is given to the potential fallout.  I have many times tried to talk to people like that about fair trade.  In most cases, their eyes would simply glaze over and they would change the subject.  Rather like trying to explain calculus to a cat.  (Don't even try to explain calculus to me, Gentle Reader!)

Dude, It's Only Coffee! 8

 Some years ago, just after they invented the wheel, or maybe it wasn't quite that long ago, some very well-meaning friends tried to cure me of my coffee addiction.  Now, yes, I was hooked on it, but nowadays I am not doing so  badly.  I have gone the entire day today without caffeine, having started early this morning with French Colombian Decaf, and, outside of not being quite as energetic as usual, haven't been feeling terribly different today.  Perhaps dragging my ass a little bit, but no headaches or grumpiness, and yes, I could go tomorrow without it as well, but we'll have to see.

Both my friends, two women of a certain age, were sure that my surly disposition was the direct cause of that dreadful vice of caffeine addiction.  It was an awful chore to have to explain to them that they were the real problem.  We were living together at the time as an intentional Christian community, and both my lovely little old ladies, especially the younger one, were driving me absolutely nuts.  That they would simply take it upon themselves to  not try to reform me of my addiction, rather than paying attention to how much their control and manipulation was hurting our friendship?  Well, maybe one day pigs will fly.

We did eventually each go our separate ways, as generally befalls incompatible housemates who have lived to tell often do.  I had a birthday.  Guess what one of my dear little old grannies gave me?  A lovely little bag of cheap commercial brand decaffeinated coffee.  Yes, she did, Gentle Reader, and it tasted awful!

Of course, decaffeinated coffee is a contradiction in terms.  In some parts of Mexico, Costa Rica and Colombia, three prominent coffee producers and exporters, especially the latter two, people have never even heard of decaf, nor could even conceive that such an oddity could exist.  I myself could not believe that they would come up with a variety of decaf that had not been chemically treated with something very nasty, and left with a dreadful residue on the palette, not until sometime in 1992.  A local coffeehouse where they also served good gelato had opened, only to be replaced just a couple of years later with a Starbucks (I will write more about THEM, in a future post)

The owners of said coffeehouse were a young gay male couple, one a young Catalan Spaniard from Barcelona, and his partner had the same name as me (back in those days I was still known as Greg Greenlaw)  When the young Catalan was standing on the sidewalk offering free samples of decaf Americano, I tried, tasted and sipped and savoured and I was won.  The first decaf that tasted not only tolerable but excellent.  Had he not told me, I would not have known that was decaf.  On that basis, in that establishment anyway, I began to cheerfully and voluntarily order decaf.   

The young Catalan was himself rather interesting.  Then, in his early twenties, we never became close friends, though he seemed very attracted to me, and also a shameless flirt.  Over the next couple of years, he left his partner and began working in another, very hip establishment where I was also a regular.  That was when I was in the process of changing my name, legally, and he still called me Greg.  I reminded him one evening in the café that my name was now Aaron.  He chimed musically, oh but you look like a Greg to me.  I replied drily, well, you were only married to one long enough and he shouted "SHUT UP!!!!"  Of course I laughed.  And when I remember this, I still laugh.  During that time, Jaume (that is the name I am giving my Catalan friend) took up with another young man, a skater punk who also seemed attracted to me.  I was at that time an emerging artist and they were taking interest in what I was doing.  Then one day they both offered to model nude for me.  I wasn't about to take them up on it.  And, they never bought one of my paintings.  

The last time I saw Jaume, was in Yaletown on Davie Street.  He would already be in his forties.  He was pedalling around in circles on a busy sidewalk on Davie street, talking on his phone, his pet pit bull dog leashed to his mountain bike.  I could only roll my eyes.  He did remind me of a character from a film by Pedro Alomdóvar, but I still haven't figured out which one.

I will write more about decaf tomorrow, Gentle Reader...

Dude, It's Only Coffee! 7

 This post is dedicated to all the spoiled rich kids in Vancouver with the ultra delicate spoilt rich kid palettes so that they must have their coffee, oh, just so!  The right blend, the right roast, the right subtleties of discreet undertones and flora, and oh I could go on, but like you, Gentle Reader, I really don't feel like throwing up right now.  But first, let's deconstruct this a little, shall we?

I remember the days, when coffee was coffee was coffee.  That's what you ordered...And that's what you got.  Coffee, and nothing but coffee.   Black and bitter, it usually tasted gross.  But it was cheap, affordable and strong.  It did the job.  I remember the cheap stale brew that passed as coffee in the Langara College cafeteria back in the day.  I was twenty-two.  What year was it?  Don't ask, don't tell.  The coffee was legendary.  It generally tasted awful.  But it was strong.  It kept us awake through midterms.  It did the job.  Cream and sugar were freely available.  Only the very stupid or only the very brave would drink it black.   I drank it black. So, shut up, eh!

Refuels, or should I say, refills, were often free.  Then sometime in the early seventies, coffee shop owners started to get stingy, or greedy, or both.  A thirty cent cup of coffee would also set you back fifteen cents per refill.    In the eighties the price climbed up to fifty cents, twenty-five cents a refill.  I was regular, in those days, in a place on Davie Street called Chino's.  Now, if you are particularly politically correct and squeamish about it, then this is where you are going to end reading this blog post.  Otherwise, do soldier on.  

In this coffee shop, Chino's, the ownership was taken over by a family from Hong Kong.  A mature gentleman and his somewhat younger wife, Nancy.  Nancy and I got on well.  She was friendly and professional.  And strict about refuels, or refills, which is to say, no one got a free lunch, or coffee.  She also had a number of younger sisters who all worked there, and I came to call them all the Nancy Sisters, since she was clearly the Sister in Charge.  And they all had a rather endearing way of saying to their customers when offering refills, "Mo coffee fo yo?  It was cute, but I couldn't help but notice underlying (and sometimes more evident) racism and contempt in some of the comments others made about them, so I tried to distance myself, and fortunately all the sisters and I got on rather well, and I never expected a free refill, knowing I was not going to get one, but also out of respect.  The coffee was pretty awful by the way.

It wasn't till ten years or so later, when various coffee chains and independent operations were opening everywhere, that it became evident that coffee, that lowly brew, was taking on snob appeal.   I first became aware of this shift in the late 90's.  I was seated in a fairly new coffee shop, and casually eavesdropped as the owner waxed on to someone about the importance of terroir, quality of sun, air, altitude, climate, just to ripen the bean to such perfection as to give it such and such a bouquet of flavours and notes.  That's right.  He was going on just like a wine snob, only it was about coffee.  

Even now, all I can do is laugh...

Dude, It ´s Only Coffee! 6

 Coffee of course is the world's most popular vector of that wonder drug, caffeine.  Ah, caffeine, but the world would be a quieter and more dismal and less productive place without it.  and everyone knows that caffeine and capitalism go together just like...just like...a contract job and reduced paycheque?  Here is a link to an article in the Atlantic (Yes, THAT Atlantic) for those who want to read more. 

Rehttps://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/04/michael-pollan-coffee/606805/

 In fact, clicking that link is mandatory.  This is required reading, and Gentle Reader, I am going to be training my shotgun on every last one of you just to make sure that you read that article! (and no, my squeamish politically correct little bunnies, I am not making any death threats here.  Never heard of hyperbole?  No, that is not the name for a nuclear collider.  Sense of humour, anyone?)

Natch, caffeine is what makes the world go round.  Most of us can't get out of bed without that little morning buzz.  And they say it makes us better, more efficient and more energetic little workers.  And you know something else, Gentle Reader?  It is what is known as a psychoactive substance.  A highly addictive psychoactive substance.  And that is why they've got us by the short and curlies (even you creepy aesthetic urban types who like to manscape or get bikini waxes, or Brazilians, and here I am not referring to slave labour on coffee plantations, though that is certainly another very Brazilian concern.

In other words, darlings, caffeine might get you started, and even help you get going, but you only keep drinking coffee because you have to.  That tiredness and those headaches you get when you haven't had your morning little Java jolt?  That is also called withdrawal, or in Spanish, penas de abstinencia, or literally, the pains from abstinence.   And that you need coffee to wake up?  That is addiction.  You pathetic little junkies, you!

I like coffee.  I even like decaf, but because I actually like the way it tastes. For this reason, some mornings I will have only decaf, or I will blend it with Guatemalan dark roast, fair trade of course.    But what if it was all decaf?  Oh, what would we do, how would we cope?  Caffeine, that natural insect repellent that keeps the coffee bush free from unwanted pests has become the very elixir of frenzied capitalism.  And we are hooked, and business is still booming and will go on booming since we remain haplessly and pathetically addicted to that little wonder drug, caffeine.

About thirteen years ago, I broke my caffeine addiction.  it wasn't that hard, just a bit of a...Grind?  I still wonder if I should just give it up altogether, or just buy fair trade (the decaf I get is not fair trade).  I know that I was in trouble when I began to feel like a junky trying to source his habit.  But I also like coffee. The fragrance, the flavour, and the buzz is rather nice.  Perhaps if I just stick to fair trade.  So what if this means I can help send a kid in Guatemala to university, even though there was no one here in Canada to do the same for me.

Dude, It's Only Coffee! 5

 But... Why coffee?  There are so many other things we could be drinking and have been drinking.  But most of those things contain varying proportions of alcohol.  I did read an interesting article some time ago that suggested that we have coffee to thank for the Enlightenment.  Or, caffeine, anyway.   The reasoning?  That it was alcohol that kept the folks through the Dark Ages dumb, stupid and compliant, since they seemed to drink nothing but beer, ale, or wine.  But that was also because drinking water was generally unsafe, and the brewing and fermenting process for alcoholic beverages also killed off harmful pathogens.  And the chronic, daily dose of alcohol for almost everyone did keep them a little bit stupid, unlikely to think things through, and disinclined to imagine a better life.   Which could also be the reason why the Church encouraged the imbibing of alcoholic beverages, but for a while tried to ban coffee as the devil's brew.

There are various apocryphal legends and myths about the discovery of coffee, including shepherds and goatherds in Ethiopia, its country of origin, seeing unusually happy birds or happy goats eating the fruit of the coffee bush, while fluttering, skipping and dancing all over the place.  It was already being widely used as a beverage in various Muslim countries of the Middle East and North Africa by the fourteenth century, and Sufis often used it as part of their worship and prayer rites, especially for helping them stay awake during all night vigils of prayer.

Coffee came to Europe via Malta in the sixteenth century and spread like a slow sly virus throughout Europe.  Over the next two hundred years.  Suddenly, people began to think, openly, clearly, cheerfully and rebelliously.  Coffeehouses became in England known as Penny Universities, where people gathered regularly to chat, sip, discuss, sip, collude, sip, connive, sip, inspire, sip, and outrage, sip, and in two hundred short years Western Civilization was reformed, transformed and reborn, toppling sacred cows and reforming, challenging and changing everything known and unknown in religion, government, science, literature and art.  

The addictive properties of caffeine haven't seemed to do anything to hurt the industry either, making the coffee bean the gift that goes on giving, fattening national economies while transforming the denizens of the developed world into craven junkies, madly standing in line every morning in their local safe sipping site for their morning caffeine fix, getting them ready again to do their part for making the world safe for capitalism.  

Dude, It's Only Coffee, 4!

 I remember my first cup of coffee, more or less.  I think I was still twelve, or maybe just gone thirteen.  Mom decided that I had finally come of age.  I was old enough to participate in this most adult, yet very innocent, ritual, of savouring that morning cup of coffee.  Mom had a Corningware percolator.  She bought it, I think, when I was eight or nine years old.  In the mornings I would wake up to the sound of the rhythmic musical rattle of that special coffeepot and the aromatic and intense beauty that can only be the fragrance of freshly brewed coffee, filling the house and filling me with it's heady and multi-layered beauty.  

Enjoying that first cup of coffee, that rite of initiation into adulthood with Mom was something very special indeed.  I think it was a Sunday morning.   Naturally I had mine with cream and sugar, since my young palette still wasn't ready to appreciate the bitter.  But, sweetened and creamed, it was delightful, and by the time I was fourteen, I was a regular in coffee shops.   But I never made it myself.  Mom, yes.  The staff in cafes, natch.  Likewise my adult friends if I happened to be visiting them in their homes.   To me, there was some hidden magic involved in making a good cup of coffee and I was sure that I probably didn't possess it.  

As I morphed into a teenage Jesus Freak, my attention turned more towards herbal teas.  Caffeine was declared verboten, an evil toxin connected to all kinds of maladies, cancer among them.   Gradually, in my early twenties, I began to experiment again with coffee, but only in coffee shops, or only as a guest in other people's homes and, of course, during the coffee time following church services.  I could not imagine making anything special without somehow ruining it.  In fact, so low was my self-confidence when I was young, I didn't think I could be trusted to make anything without somehow wrecking it.  Except for one little detail.  Already in my late teens, I was an excellent cook, and among my various circles my dinner parties became kind of a local legend.  

I was twenty.four when Mom gave me her now old Corningware coffee percolator.  Like Mom, I began to buy MJB coffee in the green can.  There was something especially special, almost sexy about MJB coffee, and no, ducks, this is not a product endorsement.  So, I began brewing it every morning and it was heavenly.  I also found that I actually preferred my coffee black and bitter, which worked well for me, since I was too lazy to bother with cream or sugar, maybe milk sometimes.  But in coffee shops, I was still a cream and sugar guy.  And my mom had always preferred her coffee black and bitter and so I naturally came to imitate her.

The percolator had only a couple of years left in it, and when it finally perished, I bought a glass coffee pot, filter cone and paper filters.  I had a kettle with a whistle, so that was how I made my coffee, until when I was twenty-nine Mom gave me my first ever coffee maker.  By that time, I was still buying MJB, but also buying a special brand of espresso to mix it with, inspired by the Anglicans I was hanging out with at St. James.  Living in the Commercial Drive area, or Little Italy, I was also starting to buy fresh roasted beans of various provenances from one of the local coffee roasters, Italian of course.  

I was, by then,  a true addict.  No one was yet talking about fair trade, and I shudder to think of how many slave and underpaid indentured labourers in Ethiopia or in Brazil whose lives I was helping to make truly miserable from my indulgence.  And I was hooked.  If I went but one single day without my java fix, I was miserable.  A junkie in full withdrawal.  More tomorrow, Gentle Reader....

Dude, It's Only Coffee! 3

 It was a bit of a jolt finally discovering that I am not one of the chosen ones.  It was as though the scales were falling from my eyes and finally I was seeing myself in the clear and unforgiving light of day.   It turns out that  I am not a member of that reasonably well-off contingent of progressive folk who want the rest of the world to enjoy at least half the privilege that we all take as entitlement.  Rather, I am part of that very obscure, overlooked minority: well-educated, informed, progressive and dirt-poor!  People like me are not expected to be able to shop fair trade, because we don't have any money.  We are not even expected to know about fair trade. It is widely assumed, if unconsciously, that we are going to be stupid and ignorant as well as poor because how could we possibly afford to go to university?  um... no one has ever heard of books?  Networking?  If higher education really makes people smart then how do we explain the preponderance of imbeciles in high ranking positions of academia?  And how could this blog, quite well and intelligently written, sometimes anyway, possibly be explained and rationalized out of existence, except for one little detail?  When people make assumptions, they basically blank out of existence all evidences that would challenge their assumptions.  Therefore, because I do not match popular assumptions, being poor, without university education but nonetheless extremely intelligent, well-read,well-spoken and well-travelled, I do not, and could not ever possibly, exist. and neither does this blog, and you did not just happen to read any of this paragraph, Gentle Reader, because it doesn't exist.   People like me are not supposed to write like this.  It simply cannot be made to fit on our resume, which is only to be written to fit us into some crummy low-paid contract or service industry job.  

But we are talking about coffee, not higher education.  Still, I find it a bit rich that here I was anguishing about not wanting to fund third world exploitation while such generosity was not being expected of me in the first place because I occupy one of the lowest castes in our society.  Having not completed my postsecondary education, and assumed to be dumb and poor (that is how the assumption trees grow!), no one in their right mind would even imagine that I would be able to travel much further than to the welfare office or the food bank.  But I have been to Costa Rica  no less than seven times, Colombia three times and five times to Mexico, plus having spent a couple of months in Europe.  How could I?  That is one of my many secrets that I am not yet to reveal to any of you, my Gentle Reader.   That's right, it's for me to know and you to find out.  (Never mind about my offshore investments in Lichtenstein and Grand Cayman.  But you didn't just read that.)   But, on my second trip to Costa Rica in 2008, I was befriended by a local coffee grower who at the time also was proprietor of a coffee shop in the Monteverde region, where I always return to.   I think my fluency in Spanish, along with his desire to have someone to practice English with (he was also pretty fluent) helped encourage the friendship.  But, it is not popularly assumed that someone without a university education can speak properly even his mother tongue, much less to be able to incoherently babble a few phrases in another language, and certainly not, as in my case, to become fully fluent in another language.  (And no, I don't have offshore investments in Lichtenstein or in Grand Cayman-  And that's all I 'm not telling you!)

He took me on a tour of his plantation, but when I asked him about the workers he employs, that's when he became a little bit evasive.  He had departed from the fair trade network that seems to connect a lot of coffee growers in Costa Rica, citing too many complications and problems.  He would not elucidate.  But as I came to know this individual, it also occurred to me that despite his many vocalizations about being a faithful Catholic, this guy really seemed to love money, more than almost even coffee itself.  This man appears to have disappeared from Monteverde.  In the last four years or so I have seen nor heard nothing of him.  I would imagine that there might have been some incompatibility there?

The rest of the coffee grown in that region appears to be all part of the same cooperative, and my impression is that fair trade practices are clearly respected and enshrined.    But coffee, being one of the world's great cash crops, if not the greatest and most lucrative, there are always going to be problems with corporate greed and less than honest or transparent business practices.  

I just did a quick Google search.  Brazil, the world's largest coffee exporter, is rife with coffee barons that prosper on the backs of slave labourers.   In Costa Rica, where the industry is strictly regulated, there are no reports of abuses.  It looks like my friend probably found himself increasingly unwelcome.  

Dude, It's only Coffee! 2

  In the nineties, when fair trade became more of a thing, I really began to pay attention, 

I was becoming pretty idealistic about a lot of things, even though I was already hitting my forties, when for most people, cynical conservatism, or should I say, conservative cynicism, are supposed to really begin to start setting in.  Some famous wag, I believe it was Winston Churchill, once said that when you are twenty, if you are not idealistic, then you don't have a heart, but when you are forty, if you are not conservative, then you don't have a brain.  Or something like that.  But I have always tended to do things backwards.  Even though I have always voted for progressive parties, I really became increasingly radical as I aged.  In my twenties I was involved in quite a lot of social activism, especially for world peace and nuclear disarmament.  After spending my thirties much more intensely focused on persons and individuals, I reemerged in my early forties in anti-globalization and other movements, then in my fifties and ever since, I have been particularly preoccupied with antipoverty and homelessness activism.  

But fair trade simply made sense, especially for a luxury like coffee...Yes, Gentle Reader, you heard me right!  Coffee is a luxury.  It is not a necessity.  We can live without it.  Unlike food and water and clean air.   When I started to purchase fair trade, as it became more available, boy did I suddenly start to feel good about myself.  You know, virtue signalling.  Telling the whole darn world how good we are!

But there was also something inherently satisfying, knowing that my modest purchase of coffee at a slightly higher than normal price, would also be contributing to better working and living conditions for the workers who picked and processed the beans.  Easy peasy.  Then, I had two little wake up calls.  The first occurred when I read on the package of my fairly traded purchase that thanks to my generously spent First World dollars, a farm family in Peru could now send their kid to university.  I felt all warm, and good and damp inside until I considered one glaring little truth.  I myself was unable to complete my own post secondary education, because I could not afford to.  That's right, here in the First World.  In Canada, you say?  The True North Strong And Free Canada?  That Canada? 

 And no one was funding any of the low wage survival work I was doing in order to see that I would have the option of finishing university, getting my degree, and entering into a decently paid profession.  That's right, Gentle Reader!  Here in Canada, the Great Northern Paradise!  The Great Global Envy.  One of the richest per capita nations on earth, where everyone wants to immigrate to and live for their own slice of our big fat prosperity pie.  But I, born and raised in this vast and wondrous country, have had only humble pie to eat.  And here I was, so obliviously and so virtuously shoving out a little extra cash per bag of coffee, so that a poor agricultural family in Peru could send their kid to college.  I who have never been able to do the same for myself, neither were there sufficient programs and supports available for me.  Canada is after all a meritocracy.  No free lunch.  Education and housing are not considered human rights in this country. And no one in other rich countries is about to shell out for us because we are, well, one of those rich countries!

The other little wake up call came from a worker in the same fair trade store where I was buying the coffee, when she mentioned to me, when I commented on the high price of the also fairly traded cocoa that I was purchasing, that fair trade is aimed at a niche market.  Which is to say that I was really punching above my weight.   That's right.  I am on a low income.  People like me are not expected to shop fair trade.  People like me, because we are poor, are assumed to be too stupid to know anything at all about fair trade, or about anything else that matters in the world.  because higher education is still the purview of the middle class and the wealthy.   Silly me!  Well, Gentle Reader, I will comment further on this tomorrow!

Dude, It´s Only Coffee! 1

 That's what I said to my friend a couple of days ago.  We ran into each other in the local yuppie mart, also known as Choices supermarket, where the healthy and well-incomed like to shop.  Well, I am healthy, but not well-incomed, and sometimes I do like to buy myself a treat, and the milk is finally reasonably priced in that legendarily pricey market.  I also purchased some reasonably priced fancy chocolate cookies (more reasonably priced in other stores) as a treat.  First a little background on our random chat.

A couple of days earlier I was going to enjoy a coffee in a really nice café near where I live.  The staff and the owners are really lovely people.  If I have one criticism it is simply that almost no one there speaks English as their first language, for which reason, there can be miscommunications.  The young man serving me, a very pleasant and friendly Korean, accidentally poured me light roast instead of the musky and heady dark roasts to which my palette has been long accustomed.  

There is a history here.  I first became aware of the darker roasts when I was just 26 or so.  Another tenant in my house invited me to share a pot of coffee with her.  I had never tasted anything so good, so strong, dark and, dare I say, sexy?  I inquired and she said it was French dark roast, so that  soon turned into my favourite for coffee (still is!)  Did I also mention here that I almost never have anything in my coffee, just black and bitter, just like life, the blacker, the bitter!  But even if the light roasts taste like they were roasted for sissies, the dark roasts actually contain less caffeine, since it tends to get evaporated with extra heat.  

I don't think anyone was yet thinking much about fair trade during those days in the eighties.  I do recall the opening scene from Malcolm McDowell's film, Oh Lucky Man, featuring a coffee plantation worker somewhere in Central America about to get his hands chopped off, for whatever.  I did a little research after and it was confirmed to me that the workers on said plantations, that provide us with our morning kickstart here in the First World, have long been exploited, underpaid, overworked and treated sometimes worse than livestock.  

The following year I found a job as a telephone market research interviewer.   For just a little bit above minimum wage, five hours a day, I would be phoning random households to ask them questions about a whole variety of products and services.   I remember our two last contracts before I finally quit my job there.  The last one was about international banking.  The penultimate survey was about coffee.  Shortly afterward I had a nightmare.  I was going to work in the phone room and all the phone stalls were covered and dripping with blood.  I began to lose my voice.  With my doctor's permission, who diagnosed a strained larynx, I resigned and went back on pogey.  I am sure now, as I was then, back in the day, that it was a psychosomatic reaction, and that I was being impacted by continuing to participate in a job that caused me to enable bodies that ran against my ethics, and in my next post, I will write more about ethical coffee, among other things...

Mexico City, 2013, 14

 Sent: Saturday, March 30, 2013 7:07:43 AM

Subject: Last Post

This will be my final entry before I fly home at dawn tomorow.  I don´t expect that I´ll have anything more to report since I´m not going very far  today so I can retire at the ungodly hour of 7 pm.  My flight leaves at 5:45 and I don´t want to come home feeling too exhausted.  The hotel has been okay, my room quiet and comfortable if kind of spartan looking.  I watched a lot of TV in Spanish while here, mostly the National Geographic Channel.  The restaurant in this hotel is a joke and I think this is the main reason why I would not consider staying in this hotel again.  Not everyone wants to watch the soccer game with their breakfast or soap operas or whatever but this is Mexico where like in Canada they think we are children who need to be constantly entertained.  I took my breakfast into the neighbouring computer and sitting room where it is quiet and looked out the window as I ate and observed people at their work.  There was one street sweeper busy with his humongous home made broom.  It looks just like a Halloweén witches broom, a bundle of tree branches tied to a pole and they are everywhere here sweeping the pavement of litter and fallen leaves and debris. Then I watched four young garbagemen at work sorting out the recyclables from the trash containers and putting it in the truck.  My guess is they probably don´t make a lot more than ten dollars a day for an eleven hour shift, six days a week.

This might be the last of my long holidays for a while but I still don´t know.  I do think I need to take a break from Mexico.  Has it all been worth it?  Yes!!!  Every day, hour, minute, second and nanosecond, it has been more than worth it.  I have absolutely no regret about having come here.  I´ve enjoyed myself tremendously, and now it´s time to turn the page.

Mexico City, 2013, 13

 

Fri., Mar. 29, 2013 at 2:58 a.m.

It is la madrugada as we call it in Spanish, the dark hours after midnight before the dawn.  I went to bed shortly past eight last night and will try to retire earlier tonight in preparation for my early flight home in la madrugada of Easter Sunday.  So far so good.  This has been for me an intense, deeply meaningful and I hope life-transforming Lent while away here in Mexico City.  Some of you have commented or expressed concern of what a difficult vacation I have been having.  For me this has been only part of a necessary life-training and formation in my life of discipleship.  You see, I believe strongly now as I did when I booked my flight last fall that God was calling me here. Partly it was to improve my Spanish, partly for time to rest, take long walks, spend time reading and in my art work in cafes, but primarily to pray, think, reflect, contemplate and accept the challenges of a still unfamiliar environment as part of my own formation of my life into the character of Christ.  The risks, to my health and personal safety, have been miniscule compared to what I feel I have learned from my time here and I deeply hope that I can present to all of you when I have returned Easter Sunday and after a further transformed and renewed Aaron and I hope a more Christ-like and more loving Aaron.

 

I intend to visit the cathedral here today to witness in part the observances of Good Friday.  I am intrigued by the intense Catholic heritage of Mexico.  I also find it puzzling and somewhat bedevilling.  It has long, and remains still, my view that Mexico and Latin America in general, has been subjected to a particularly degraded and corrupt form of Christianity, the Catholicism of the Spanish Inquisition, and the absolute pillage and destruction of entire peoples and cultures that resulted have absolutely nothing to do with the One who still hangs on the cross in their churches and everything to do with those who nailed him there.  I have previously expresssed here my discomfort with being in the neighbourhood of the cathedral and the historic centre for this reason, and that for me the cries for vindication of the blood of the victims of the Aztec sacrifices are mingled together with the cries of the slaughtered victims of Spaniard soldiers and priests and their howl of outrage still sounds in the silence of this dawn of Good Friday.  It will be interesting to see what, if any steps, the church and the Mexican government will take to express repentance and offer reparation to the damage that still festers here.

Sent: Friday, March 29, 2013 4:09:18 PM
Subject: Catedral Metropolitana

Yesterday at Chapultepec Park I went into the botanical garden which is always a quiet area (who wants to look at a bunch of plants anyway?). The two resident egrets were there in the waterways.  Many of the local people seem fond and very proud of the egrets often stopping to look at or photograph them and they are very tame-seeming.  Then three young women, European tourists I think, probably Dutch or German and very tall, came striding in and walked through apparently oblivious to the egret that was standing there next to them.  Or perhaps they thought it to be a lawn ornament, or they don´t care for birds and really they´re only interested in shopping? Well, who only knows?  I almost tried to alert them to the egrets as I often do if I see something beautiful or unusual like a rainbow or what have you and the person standing or sitting nearby doesn´t seem to notice.  But it only felt like it would have been wasted on them.  They looked like wax dolls or mannequins (the three European women, I mean) and had they not been in motion I might have wondered if they were alive.

Also yesterday an American looking man asked me in North American accented Spanish where Insurgentes was so also in Spanish, without even thinking of lapsing into English I told him.

Today I had an early start and following a walk on Reforma (very quiet since this is Good Friday) I sat in one of my regular cafes to work on drawing number ten (an egret).  There was this obnoxious Brazilian I think, young man in his twenties, totally Caucasian so likely very well off, yelling again on his cell phone in Portuguese just as yesterday.  His voice filled the cafe and drowned almost everything else out.  Yesterday I put in my ear plugs to cope (I call them my orange little friends and often they are friends in need around here!) Today I noticed another couple expressing visible discomfort at his behaviour, we exchanged glances and I commented, ¨malcriado¨or very rude.  Then he began to scream at whomever he was on the phone with.  The couple quickly left and suddenly I confronted him. It was just like dealing with a client at work with challenging behaviours.  I said to him in Spanish that he is in a public place and that he should calm down.  Following a dirty look at me he became a lot quieter.

I walked to the Metropolitan Cathedral in the Historic Centre to see how they were observing Good Friday.  Thousands of other people in Mexico City had the same idea and there was a constant flow of people pouring in and pouring out.  I have mentioned before that the catherdral here is huge roughly four times the size of Christ Church in Vancouver.  To my surprise there were no services on, just people wandering around or seated in pews.  Many of the soaring columns were wrapped in dark purple velvet with silver fluting.  To a side they were sellig bunches of hierba manzanilla or chamomile as a symbol for purity.

On the way back I noticed a Hotel Canada with Canadian, Mexican, and European Union (? !) flags flying outside.

Mexico City, 2013 12

 Wed., Mar. 27, 2013 at 5:14 a.m.

Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2013 5:13:59 AM
Subject: short and sweet with a touch of bitter

I tried to send this out yesterday but something either went wrong with the computer or with the person (me) operating it.  Then later in the evening I wanted to resend it but only two of the computers were functional and one was occupied by two women and the other by this guy who wanted to see the soccer game on it.  It somehow didn´t occur to the selfish twit that the game was being broadcast on all three of the big plasma screens in the hotel restaurant.  After forty minutes or so of trying to get the other barely functioning machine to work one of the hotel staff and I decided to give up the ghost when the brilliant idea struck him to kindly ask the selfish twit to get his heinie away from the machine so that I could perform one short and simple task on it, and reluctantly and very grudgingly the stupid young jock permited me to use HIS computer (he had already been on it for well over an hour!)  Anyway, that´s when I found out the e-mail was lost, tried to retype and resend it a couple of times, no success, and in the meantime stupid young jock was impatiently hovering around waiting for me to get off  HIS computer.  I think I must have been on it for five to seven minutes max.

Anyway yesterdays report was short and sweet, beautifully coloured houses in a new (for me) corner of Coyoacan and of course lots of bougainvillea.

 

Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2013 2:38:11 PM
Subject: wrapping up

 I had a strong intuition-leading to go to the laundromat today instead of tomorrow and good thing.  It turns out theyre closed tomorrow till Monday and I am due home Sunday so it is a good thing I heard the ínner voice again.  Now I have clean clothes and except for a few books and toiletries I´m already packed and ready to leave.  I always like to get an early start on these things, especially when I feel eager to go, which by now I do.  I am still not going to make the mstake of vowing not to return to Mexico City.  God, as he often does, just might have other ideas for me so it´s wait and see, but I still hope to have a rest of at least a couple of years if not longer from this madness.  The problem for me here is that so much beauty is interlaced with so much ugly and I really have to take it all together. 

I did a walk in Chapultepec Park today in the quiet area.  It´s almost like a weekend here because many people are off work and out of school for Holy Week.  In one of the lakes I noticed that one of the egrets has returned.  So beautiful and I think this will be the subject of my final drawing while I am in Mexico City.

I had a lovely pause in the audiorama today that grotto where you can relax while listening to music.  Today they were playing Beethoven´s Emperor Piano Concerto (ask Uncle Google if you must!) and one of the gorgeous bright yellow butterflies here seemed to be fluttering to the music.  When I left, further off on a parallel calzada was a mob of around twenty or thirty soldiers jogging and singing martial songs which was rather strange to hear after hearing Beethoven.  Then I remembered that young soldier who helped me find my way out of the restricted area where I got lost a couple of weeks ago, of how courteous and kind he was and reflected on the huge contrast between humans in groups and us as individuals.

 Thu., Mar. 28, 2013 at 5:10 p.m.

Mexicans generally take all or most of Holy Week off and today the streets have been absolutely tranquil and largely traffic free.  The air feels better too.  Sitting in different cafes I noticed a lot of families out enjoying the day together.  It is good seeing people look more relaxed here today and enjoying themselves and each other.  I have mentioned how tight the family unit is here in Mexico, so tight as to be impermeable.  It´s as if these people are all covered in thick coats of teflon.  Family, life-time friends and work and nothing else seems to exist for them.  This is still in many ways a very conserative society and almost everyone works or studies six days a week for ten hours or longer so they are not going to have a lot of time or energy left for anything else, such as working actively to change their society especially given all the guns that are pointed at them.  Too much work and risk so they hang together, cope and enjoy life.  At the gate of Chapultepec Park I asked a short little indigenous guard, about my age, for the time in impeccable Spanish.  He insisted after I asked several times that he did not understand me and doesn´t speak English.  Then three women standing behind almost in chorus told me ¨a la una y cuarta¨(1:15) I suspect the guard simply does not like talking to outsiders and there could be some racism there but it´s hard to say.

Even though this hotel has been okay to stay in I am not at all going to miss this place.  The public areas areas are always noisy and none of the guests talk to each other and seem otherwise quite unfriendly.  The staff are all great by the way.

Mexico City, 2013, 11

 Sat., Mar. 23, 2013 at 6:47 p.m.

I spent the afternoon in Coyoacan with a friend.  I ended up showing him areas he didn´t know which is ironic given that I don´t live here, but I understand why this can happen in a place like Mexico City. This place is so vast and sprawling that one can spend one´s entire life here and still kow less than one-tenth of this place.  While we were sitting in the Frida Khalo Park a teen-age girl in a salmon pink strapless evening gown with vuluminous skirt and silver gloves that went past her elbows was being photographed in front of the statue of Frida with her young consorts, likely brothers or cousins dressed in matching grey tuxedos and salmon pink ties.Whe was celebrating her Quinciera or her fifteenth birthday which is a huge thing in Mexico and I believe in other parts of Latin America.  It´s kind of like a fertility ritual sanatized by tradition and family values.

Later after my friend went home I wandered into another corner that I´d like to show him where there is a large green plaza with benches and a fountain.  After sitting for a while I resumed my walk along calle Francisco Sosa and heard a couple behind me speaking English.  Quite a rarity here so we chatted for a while.  They are visiting from Ohio.  I was helping them find their way to the Metro but when I warned them that they are going to have quite an education there about life in Mexico City they thought that maybe they might take a cab instead.

Sun., Mar. 24, 2013 at 6:27 p.m.

The hotel was packed this morning which made breakfast noisy and very unpleasant so I bolted down my food and bolted out of here.   I have to admit I´m getting bored with the food here and kind of anxous to get home though I still feel entranced by the haunting beauty and sheer scale of Mexico City.  I didn´t go far, just did a coffee shop hop throughout the day working on drawing number eight.  Much of Reforma was closed for bikes and pedestrians today and the book fair was incredibly busy.  Everyone reads in this city, it seems, and I don´t mean Kindle.  In the parks in Condesa all the yuppies were out with their little and big dogs (all pure bred of course).  In the two parks there are dog training schools with as many as sixty or seventy pooches lying around ready to be taught to behave.  For me, not being a dog-lover, it´s hard to understand why people would pour out so much fuss and love (not to mention money which I think could be better spent) over an animal, especially given the absolute inconvenience of having a dog in a densely populated city.  It reminds me of Vancouver where there is this constant tension between dog people and no-dog people and I try to stay neutral except when it comes to vicious animals and dog shit on the sidewalk.But I still like friendly dogs and I will always stop to pet a dog that wants to be petted. There were bagpipe players in Parque Mexico today.  Two men with bagpipes and a woman and two men with drums.  No mariachi or merengue rhythms here and not even cumbia (hmmm..bagpipe cumbia, now there is a concept), just pure Scottish Highlands.  They were not wearing kilts.

Monday, March 25, 2013 6:33 PM
Subject: various observations

 

I really feel ready to go home now.  More than ready.  The noise, the traffic, the overcrowding, the rudeness of people are really staining my experience these days and the food, water, and thin polluted air as well as living in a hotel and eating in restaurants all the time are taking a toll on my health, but I think I´m done with Mexico City and maybe with travel itself for a while, though time alone will tell.  It seems I made this resolution last year and look where I ended up again.  On la Reforma, around the Angel de la Independencia (google Angel de la Independencia, Mexico City and you´ll see what I´m referring to) there was a huge demonstration with people waving big black and red flags. I have not been able to obtain any more information, neither from the crowd nor Google but the cause seemed decidedly left-wing progressive.  There is a lot more freedom of speech in this country than in years past and although nothing is really changing here at least people are allowed to publicly protest, which I think can also begin the slow process of change.  Later, while working on drawing number nine I viewed the protesters as they marched, thousands of them and the red and black flags were quite a spectacle as they walked in the direction of the Zocalo.

I sometimes see people living on the street here.  They are in much worse shape than our own street people in Vancouver , often filthy and reeking of urine and feces.  I´m sure they are all mentally ill and I wonder what they must do to survive and what kind of human contact they might have, if any.  It is frightening to see that the most vulnerable here are so at risk with no one to care for them. I also think that some of my clients that I work with might have ended up in the same kind of condition had they lived in Mexico and not in Canada .

There is a young man who works as a doorman in front of the cafe where I was sitting today.  I always see him there, standing.  I asked him how many hours he works per shift.  Twelve! Six days a week for a very low wage, likely and probably has a family to support to.  This is very typical here in Mexico City .  Yet almost everyone seems well dressed, well groomed and generally happy but this might be partly because their families for better or worse are so tight, which they of course have to be if they are going to survive.

I was thinking today what a tragedy that in this the world´s largest city, capital and administrative centre of one of the major emerging world economies that there is no access to clean potable water.  If Carlos Slim would part with even one billion doolars of his wealth to fix and make drinkable the public water in Mexico City he would still have around seventy billion to hoard and play with but it seems that greed knows no bounds with some people.

Mexico City, 2013, 10

 March 20, 2013 9:19:49 PM

Subject: Electrolytes



I had to cut short my visit to Parque Chapultepec today because I was showing symptoms of electrolyte imbalance and in danger of fainting so I walked back to my hotel where I have been resting but for an excursion for dinner (very little appetite right now) then came back to rest some more. Not quite as bad as my last trip here when I fainted in the hotel restaurant in San Cristobal, but I have to acknowledge I have been really busy and active and often overwhelmed by things (mostly positively) here. It is quite making me dizzy. Time will tell if I stop taking these trips but the evidence is mounting up that perhaps I´m not getting any younger. I had a little contact with beggars today, ¨mothers¨with children, positive I´d say. I really wish I could learn more about their situation though I don´t know how I could help them. Still, as they say, knowledge is power.

Sent: Thursday, March 21, 2013 6:29:02 PM
Subject: more random observations

I seem to be recovering well from yesterday´s illness. My appetite is back in full but my walking is still a bit wobbly.  Yesterday the  only thing I could eat without wanting to gag was Hershey´s chocolate almond kisses.  I try to maintain a steady supply of them in my hotel room and every night I purchase from the bartender a tall glass of cold (hopefully, sometimes it´s luke warm or room temperature) milk which I take up to my room to enjoy with the chocolate.  He must find this very amusing but I did mention to him that I just don´t like alcohol.  No problem with it.  I would just not rather drink it.  And this helps me save truckloads of money.  Actually I´m not sure if I´ve shared this with any of you but my real epiphany revelation about booze must have occurred around twelve years ago when I was super poor and relatively fresh from being homeless.  I was walking through downtown Vancouver to a favourite cafe-bar of mine to buy a beer, one glass of brown ale, a rare treat which for a change I could afford.  Then a young man approached me and asked me if I would buy him a slice of pizza.  So, I bought him two slices of pizza, then proceeded to the cafe-bar where I had a coffee instead.   I didn´t go very far, just spent the afternoon in Condesa.  Cumulatively I must have spent five hours spread out in three different cafes where I started drawing number seven.  It´s a beautiful area, I used to stay in this neighbourhood until my financial situation and the lack of generosity of the bed and breakfast owners where I stayed made it necessary for me to go elsewhere. But it smells like sewage, but so does most of Mexico City. In Parque Mexico, which is in Condesa, they put up a sign which translates as ¨Please, we beg you to use the benches appropriately.¨  I wonder what they might be referring to... On Reforma, on the south boulevard there is an enormous book fair stretching for almost six blocks.  I bought a small volume of tales of terror.  Just the thing to put me to sleep in Spanish. Sent: Friday, March 22, 2013 6:31:56 PM Subject: Chilango Follies Today I officially morphed into a tourist.  I have never thought of myself as someone who buys a bunch of useless stuff  on a trip while taking photos everywhere and simply looking ridiculous in his Tilly Endurables (never worn ém, never will).  My style of travel always has and hopefully always will be from the ground.  I don´t even spend a lot of time visiting museums since I often find them time-consuming and exhausting when I´d rather be out on the street in the open air seeing and interacting with the people who live here.  This is not to dis museums by the way.  They are great education tools and I have nothing but good to say about the Museum of Anthropology here in Mexico City.  I might even nerve up for another visit before I leave this fabled city.  So what suddenly makes me a tourist?  I bought something pretty, useful but not hugely necessary and that is bound to remind me fondly of Mexico City whenever I look at it.  That´s right, I bought a cocoa pot and it is lovely and I´m looking forward to using it when I get it home.  I also bought another book at the book fair on Reforma, a thick novel about the Knights Templar in medieval Barcelona for the equivalent of eight bucks Canadian.  In Chapters I might get it for twenty minimum.  I also mentioned to the booksellers the tragedy of the many closing bookstores in Vancouver thanks to Amazon and e-readers, especially given how integral bookstores are to the cultural character of a city. All night long I was bitten by mosquitoes.  I must have woken up with a dozen bites or more on my body.  Mosquitoes aren´t quite so dangerous here in Mexico City where there is no problem of dengue fever or malaria.  So I don´t feel worried, just taken advantage of!  Isabel the cleaning lady (whom it turns out is 67 and not 77 as I erroneously reported, left a can of Raid in my room but I haven´t used it much because I´m afraid of inhaling the chemicals as I sleep but I´m going to start using it regularly till the end of my stay.  Better than being a buffet.  Which reminds me of a Joan Rivers joke.  Remember her? The Queen of Mean.  She´s eighty this year but thanks to her tens of thousads worth of plastic surgery could pass for a surgically enhanced sixty-three.  She was particularly famous for her Liz Taylor fat jokes, such as ¨You´d never catch Liz Taylor in a nudist colony because after one look at her all the mosquitoes would yell BUFFET !!!!´  While sipping an americano and working on drawing number seven in a cafe on La Reforma I watched as a thief got chased down and apprehended by a couple of bystanders who held him until the police, who were quite reasonable in their treatment of him, arrived.  Among the observers was a man on a bicycle with his little girl seated just behind him.  It was touching seeing him soothe her after seeing this spectacle. I have forgotten to mention here that free community bikes are ridden everywhere here.  Unfortunately this doesn´t seem to have lessened the volume of traffic any, and the cyclists are every bit as reckless and clueless as the drivers are here. Especially the cab drivers. Almost as bad as cyclists in Vancouver! Speaking of cab drivers, today I saw one cab where the head lights were adorned with giant false eye lashes. A bit later I saw a huge cloud of rainbow hued bubbles drifting towards me from the street (Reforma) then watched as two young men worked their way in and out of the stalled traffic, one with the bubble machine going and the other holding a sign.  When they returned to the sidewalk I tried to read as much of the sign as possible but his arms were covering most of it and I assumed it would say something about turning off your cell phone while drivig.  On my way back from Chapultepec Park and Polanco I saw them again and one of them let me read the sign.  It was an offer of charging drivers´ cell phones for a fee while waiting in traffic and he was carrying in his hand a whole cluster of chargers.  They both kind of gave me the creeps, like scrawny reform school dropouts that would gladly stick a knife in you for a couple of easy pesos. Speaking of traffic there are a few crosswalks near Chapultepec with images of stick man pedestrians wearing crowns on their heads.  Ha! As if!  And free tortillas for everyone!