Spring into a better Planet - on Earth Day 2009 · Wednesday April 22, 2009 by colin newell
Originally conceived in the Fall of 1969 at an event in Seattle, Washington – it was declared that the first Earth Day would be in April of 1970 and every year after that.
Personally, I do not think I was aware of Earth Day til the eighties – Here are some random thoughts from yours truly from Earth day’s past… of how I would have thought about those days if I was actually paying attention to anything…
- April 1970 Are the Beatles really breaking up? How will this effect the Planet?
- April 1971 TV show Dark Shadows goes off the air – the Planet has been saved from Barnabas Collins. You really need to be older than 35 to get this.
- April 1972 Rolling Stones release Exile on Main Street – dang these Stones are old and they look old doing what they are doing. They should have retired when the Beatles retired.
- April 1973 Skylab is launched releasing tons of shit into the atmosphere… not so good.
- April 1974 148 tornadoes affecting 13 states and 1 Canadian province in 18 hours, the biggest tornado outbreak in recorded history – The death toll is 315, with nearly 5,500 injured. Earth angry
- April 1976 Apple Computer Company is formed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Earth is soon to be turned to plastic and silicon.
- April 1981 Space Shuttle Columbia passes flight tests dumping millions of pounds of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
There are an estimated 6.7 billion humans on the Planet. That is 4 times the number a mere 100 years ago. This is serious. For this reason (and other reasons) I will not be having children – and I encourage as many people as possible to, at least, limit their number of offspring to 1… if that. Better yet: Get a dog or a cat. They are less messy.
Happy Earth Day!
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Spring into inactvity - our new generation of lazy kewl · Monday April 20, 2009 by colin newell
One of my favorite phrases is Hip to be square…
When I turned 40 (more than a few years back…) I was worried that I would become entirely invisible to all those young people around me…
click on photo at left for the latest Corner Drip cartoon
And considering that I work at a very popular Canadian University populated largely by 20-somethings, that would have been a whole lot of invisibility.
I mean, everyone wants to be, even slightly, relevant.
But I was wrong. And I am still sorta cool. In a grand illusion kind of way… But for the most part, for reasons just outside of my grasp.
And I really do not think it has anything to do what what I am doing…
It has more to do with what everyone else (in the young’n age bracket) are not doing.
I figure I am just out there living the dream… burning the candle with a flame-thrower… drinking 5 cups of coffee at a time so I can keep up with my own timetable.
And it is not like I am that busy. I work for 7 hours, taking about an hours worth of breaks a day – come home and make a gourmet dinner with my wife – put in about 2 or 3 hours on writing projects and web site obligations… shower, rinse and repeat.
Seems like that would have been considered a normal day… in 1974…
A movie making student friend of mine describes me as the coolest guys he knows…
I look behind myself every time I hear stuff like that. Surely I am not the calendar boy for Good as it gets. Dang, I was expecting to be a geezer by now… wearing tattered polyester pants and a weedy Nike golf shirt from Value Village… smelling vaguely like a combination of Canadian blended whiskey, Aqua Velva and sketchy personal hygiene.
But no…
Instead, life on campus has forced me into Gap-ville. I wear Levi’s, Fluevog shoes, cotton monochrome banana republic t-shirts… and I (gasp) shower every morning and shampoo with an all-in-one volume enriching organic formulation…
What have I become? Is this the future for the middle aged? Retro-chic into our golden years? Who is going be rad if the young folks won’t come up to the plate? Sigh… guess it’s gonna be me and my similarly aged hunky stud dudes.
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Spring into humor - introducing The Corner Drip comic · Saturday April 18, 2009 by colin newell
From the pen and ink of Dea Jenmorri and the madness of writer Colin Newell – comes the new cafe comic strip Corner Drip. Fans of the Coffeecrew website have been exposed in the past to the odd bit of artistic output. Now we are at it again. From time to time we will lighten up the blog a bit with episodes of Corner Drip featuring Jess, the 30-something / 40-something slacker and his cohort cast of odd-balls that hang out at the local coffee joint.
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Spring coffee style chapter 3 french press it · Saturday April 18, 2009 by colin newell
In the photo below – the “Barista Action Figure” pole dances on a 25 year old Melior coffee press. I know – the behavior is in bad taste for the action figure… but the coffee tastes great!
In my kitchen, the French press (or Bodum or Melior) coffee maker is king. And so it would seem – that this way of making coffee is catching on in the cafe as well.
During a recent visit to one of my favorite cafes in Victoria B.C. Canada – Khona Coffee… I discovered that they do coffee a lot of different ways.
One of them, the Aeropress, came as something of a surprise to me.I mean, where else can you order a cup of coffee brewed French Press, or Single origin espresso or French press or good old drip? Well – there are a few places in Victoria. Victoria is one of the few places in Canada that has every imaginable method of brewed coffee on the menu.
Getting coffee your way seems to be the motto around these parts.
Back to my modest kitchen for a moment. I use a press pot almost 90% of the time now. There was a time that I had a resident espresso machine. No more. I do have an ESE Pod machine (more on that in a future blog).
Anyway. My recipe. I use a family sized Bodum. Probably holds about 24 fluid ounces of water. I tend to put in 18 fluid ounces (I will measure next time I promise…) About 1 heaping tablespoon of ground coffee per 6 – 8 fluid ounces of water. Water just off the boil. And I steep it for 3 minutes sharp after stirring or agitating for 10s – and then press the plunger down.
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