Over at Treppenwitz’s hacienda, six year old Yonah is experiencing his first childish steps into coffee. Just a splash, with sugar and lots of milk. He’s enjoying it – the long slog to adulthood is made lighter by a nice beverage.
"I just love a cup of coffee in the morning, don't you?"
------Yonah Bogner
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I've promised that when he turns fourteen, I will buy him his first pipe. He will probably have discovered Conan Doyle, Kipling, Simenon, and Nabokov by then. Teenage boys need a ton of help with smoking decisions, but their natural intelligence will reasonably guide them as regards literature.
Oh, and girls too. Well brought up girls should avoid cigarettes, as such things are vulgar, and belong in the realm of sailors, barkers, bouncers, and guitar players - civilized young ladies do not indulge in such things. Pipes or cigars only!
A phase of Barbara Cartland or sleazy romance novels, however, is okay. We don't expect fully mature tastes until you're grown-up.
Coffee and books - the essentials of civilized life.
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8 comments:
Phhht. Tea, my good man, tea. Coffee is horrid stuff, unless it tastes like coffee ice cream. Mmm...
Actually, Tzipporah, I like both.
One cup of strong coffee when waking up. Another when heading into the bathroom. Strong tea while dressing before heading off to work. Two cups of tea before lunch. Coffee after lunch. Two more cups of tea. Maybe another one.
Either a cocktail or a cup of tea after work. Or perhaps a pastry at a Chinatown bakery along with a cup of coffee.
Then another cup of tea, or a shot of Turkish coffee (murra, with extra cardamom), after arriving home.
Forward, not backward, and upward, not forward, and always twirling twirling twirling – towards freedom!
I have a very nice collection of I-Hsing teapots. Some very nice round bamboo motif exemplars, a miniature pumpkin with vines forming the handle, and a rice-weight shaped pot with raised seal script. Also some nice incised calligraphy pots. Altogether about thirty pots, of which the vast majority were made post-revolution.
But most of the time I simply make the tea in the white porcelain pot on the kitchen counter, or in the lidded teabowl (茶盅) next to it.
I was a coffee drinker for over 40 years. And I drank it black, thanks to my scoutmaster, who didn't want the boys spilling sugar and milk all over the campground. Then I got diagnosed with acid reflux, and the doc says that caffeine is one of the things that exacerbates it. So I went cold turkey, as of a year ago. (Well, I might make a cup of decaf "botz" once a week or so.) While Roastaroma and rooibos tea are only a partially satisfying substitute, I will say that Yom Kippur this past fall was a breeze because I didn't have to deal with caffeine withdrawal.
Oh, yes, and pipe smoking was another thing I learned in the Boy Scouts. Our scoutmaster, an ex-Marine who smoked unfiltered Camels, wouldn't let us near cigarettes, but let us smoke pipes. I continued after graduating high school (My year in Israel was torture because of the lousy pipe tobacco available there in the early 1970's, fortunately my Mom sent me a care package of something decent.) Then when I was about 35, the doc found a spot on my lung during a routine chest x-ray. This led to a big scare, and a bronchoscopy, which suggested that the lesion was left over from a histoplasmosis infection I got from visiting a poultry operation. I've head no problems with it since, but I've pretty much given up on the tobacco. Having a kid with asthma also tends to reduce the opportunity for smoking, too. Occasionally, when I'm traveling on business by myself, I'll buy a decent cigar and go to a cigar bar, if I can find one where I'm traveling.
I love coffe the stronger the better. But I had to quit the cigarettes, my middle son was becoming much too interested. He would watch me like a hawk and then offer to put it out for me when it got down to the end. I sure do miss smoking.
Kevin
I used to have a mild form of acid reflux – simply watching what I ate (no double-grease deepfried lard clusters anymore), taking the time to eat, and thoroughly chewing the food, pretty much cleared that up.
As for cigar bars, if you ever visit San Francisco, there’s the Occidental Cigar Club - HERE.
It's an easy walk from the Montgomery BART Station, edge of financial district, near Chinatown. Indoor smoking.
BoTH - you are seriously caffeinated. Wow.
I generally have to stop after 2 cups of tea (or one third cup of real coffee) or risk not sleeping that night.
... or risk not sleeping that night.
That's why the last drop of caffeine enters the system BEFORE the last pipe of the day is lit.
Or, if later in the week, at the same time as.
The last pipe is usually at around nine o'clock. Though sometimes, after she has had a stressful day, as late as ten or eleven.
A quite smoke in the kitchen, with a book and maybe a half-shot of whiskey...... just the cheeping of the nesting birds in the airwell (I believe they're wood doves, one or two pairs). It's the most peaceful part of the day.
Once a large moth sat on the window sill staring at me. Possibly a Saturnid of some type. Each wing was about five inches across. It was considerably larger than the little bats that live in the gaps between the buildings.
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