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Friday, July 18, 2008

  • Buy Local, Be Local, Brew Local




    What will sustain us through the winter?
    Where did last year's lessons go?
    Walk me out into the rain and snow.
    I dream a highway back to you.

    -Gillian Welch

    What will sustain us through the summer?  Where will this year's lessons go?  We are a nation that enjoys a tremendous, bland convenience.  Give us the red, unbruised tomato, even if it tastes not unlike the packing material that cradled it along thousands of miles of highway from field to brightly lit display cooler.  Give us the new bestseller on our doorstep at forty percent savings, even if it means sticking it on a diesel-guzzling truck for three days.  Give us omelette on a stick.

    Or...

    Join me for breakfast at the Farmers Market, Saturday, July 19th.  We'll feature Cup of Excellence coffees from small family farms in Colombia and Costa Rica and Fair Trade Organic coffee from Bolivia.  Listen to live music and enjoy the wares of local artisans.  Dream a highway back to Blacksburg and then walk or pedal your way to a simpler life.  Sustainability begins right here, right now.

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

  • Continuance


    "Nothing can ever happen twice.
    In consequence, the sorry fact is
    that we arrive here improvised
    and leave without the chance to practice."

    Mark your calendars, cancel all appointments.  Limber up that arm.  Arrive.  Improvise.  Nothing ever happens twice.  A gathering such as this will not happen again soon.

    August 15-17, 2008.

    Bury the television in the yard.  Find a babysitter, dog sitter, gold fish sitter.  Dismember your cell phone.  If you have been yearning for a weekend in the New River Valley, a chance to catch up with friends and breathe mountain air, or you just want to drink good beer and throw round objects at other round objects...this is your chance.  We'll feed you.

    We have a few roster spots open for Operation Overboard, a ten mile canoe trip down the New and a ten mile hike along the AT to our Clover Hollow home.  Details will be forwarded if you email me at operationoverboard@blacksburgreads.com or call the Easy Chair Coffee Shop.  You know how to find us.

    Don't feel like subjecting yourself to the will of the whitewater, the punishment of the rocky trail?  Chop, grind, grill or fry your favorite ingredients into a dish.  Cover.  Transport.  Serve with a bottle of something from Blacksburg's Vintage Cellar (buy local, be local).  Plan to drink the greater portion of that bottle yourself?  Then plan to sleep in a tent.  Acreage we have.  Bail money we do not.

    August 15-17.  Be.  There.


         

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

  • Together we burn, together we burn away.

    The Mid-Atlantic Regional Roasters Group rolls into Blacksburg town on Friday.  The weather greeting this circus befits a gathering of people who play with fire: lightning, heat and sun.  More heat when the grills are fired and the mustards are served at Kathi Z's flavor dynamics class.  Black lightning when the chocolate is sampled and espresso shots are pulled.  Poor Mountain is no longer burning but there will be smoke.  Roast smoke.  Pig smoke.  Tobacco smoke as only Joe Nazare can present it.  We'll cool things with a water quality class delivered by Skip Finley of Cirqua.  Need a break from the sensory overload?  Play with the roast analyzer on loan from Javalytics.

    When we sat down to work on recipes for the beer banquet (Did I forget to tell you about that?) planned for Friday night, we quickly diverged into stories of previous MARRG meetings.  Stashed bottles of Port, oyster roasts until dawn, bonfires visible from space.  I asked The Rev to read the roster of the people heading our way.  Because of coffee, we have friends from Virginia's Eastern Shore, Clearwater, Zimbabwe, Matagalpa, New Orleans, Green-vul, Portland, Seattle, Atlanta, St. Paul.  We wish we could devote more time to those friendships.  We neglect them.  But here they come, spending their own dough to get here.  For one weekend in the summer, for the third straight year, Blacksburg is the center of the Mid-Atlantic Coffee Universe.  And we are going to enjoy ourselves.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

  • We do what we do.

    "when it is truly time,
    and if you have been chosen,
    it will do it by itself
    and it will keep on doing it
    until you die or it dies in you.

    there is no other way.

    and there never was."

    A later poem by the later Charles Bukowski.  A poem about being a writer.  Or a soldier.  A bookseller.  Until you die or it dies in you.  Adventurers, loggers, miners, maybe a few athletes and musicians.  Especially poets, pushing the ink-drenched mass up the landscape only to have it roll back and blacken you into the background.

    If you have been chosen, it will do it by itself.  It is a shitty poem, mostly.  But it is pure Bukowski, and eventually it hits a sweet spot.  Do what you will do.  Be good at it.  Work at it.  Get dirty.  Either things will fall your way or they will not.

    For three years we sold books.  We built not one, but two great bookstores.  First at 101 South Main and then under the same roof as the Easy Chair Coffee Shop.  We got dirty.  We worked at it.  We were good at it.  We did what we could do.  Things did not fall our way.

    So, we return to our roots.


Tuesday, June 10, 2008

  • Transition

    Xanga wants to know if I am keeping my site.  The one I paid for to have for life.  Just like an old car, it might not be pretty, but it's paid for.  So, yes.

    Major updates coming soon.  Bookstore news, coffee roasting news, big changes around the Easy Chair, and the MARRG army is coming to the Burg.  Stay tuned.

coffeeslinger

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