December 18, 2011

Meade's mud.

Meade declares that he has arrived at a great new method of making coffee. This isn't how he made it for me, but something he did for himself this morning.



"That's what they call 'mud,'" I say, getting my camera out. As I'm blogging the photographs, he wants to put the instructions his way: "Step 1: Buy the best coffee beans you can afford. Step 2: Grind as fine as possible. Step 3: Put ground coffee in a mug, pour hot water over it, stir. Step 4: Allow 1 minute for grounds to settle — for mud to settle — to the bottom. Step 5: Profit! Enjoy! Salut!"



I'm all excited because mud is a theme here on the blog lately. Writing yesterday about The House of Fallen Timbers, I was thinking  about Henry David Thoreau, who built his cabin in the woods. I dug out an old quote about that, and got quite absorbed in a passing reference to Thoreau's concern with "how to get my living honestly, with freedom left for my proper pursuits." What are these "proper pursuits" that are not getting your living, and how much do you try to make time — to make freedom — for the things that are not living-getting? Do you even think in those terms? Perhaps you see getting your living as your proper pursuit, and it involves no loss of freedom. But then why do you see it that way? If you did not see it that way, what would you see? What would be your proper pursuit if it was not doing your job for the purpose of making a living? Perhaps there is another way to make coffee.

But Meade's mud took me back to the comments on the "Fallen Timbers" post. In the comments over there, Milwaukee said:
Henry David Thoreau is much more impressive if one doesn't learn that his mum wondered [sic] out once a week to collect, and drop off, laundry. But he did give us some things to think about, and I have a few favorite quotes, attributable to him, which I mangle. Specifically, the one about 'want to live, so as when I came to die, find that I had not lived.' and the different drummer thang.
Ah, it hurt me to see him diminished like that, because Thoreau had a big effect on me as a teenager, when I was thinking about how I wanted to live — what my proper pursuit was. There was one quote in particular, not any of the ones Milwaukee mangled. It was something with a distinctive word — mud — which made it easy to Google.  I found it and wrote this in the comments on the "Fallen Timbers" post:
I was assigned to give the "invocation" at my high school graduation, and I based it on a Thoreau quote. Afterwards, some people — including a nun — criticized me for not making a more conventional prayer.

Now, I teach Religion and the Constitution in law school, including the case where the Supreme Court nixed all graduation prayers.

My rights were soooo violated, and I was only trying to share a Thoreau quote that impressed me.

And now I share Thoreau quotes with all the world.

This was the quote:
"Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe, through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, through Church and State, through poetry and philosophy and religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality, and say, This is, and no mistake; and then begin, having a point d'appui, below freshet and frost and fire, a place where you might found a wall or a state, or set a lamp-post safely, or perhaps a gauge, not a Nilometer, but a Realometer, that future ages might know how deep a freshet of shams and appearances had gathered from time to time. If you stand right fronting and face to face to a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on both its surfaces, as if it were a cimeter, and feel its sweet edge dividing you through the heart and marrow, and so you will happily conclude your mortal career. Be it life or death, we crave only reality. If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our business."
Are you going about your business?

82 comments:

Rockeye said...

I thought step three was always "profit."

Joe Schmoe said...

Meade's mud looks more like merde.

Jason (the commenter) said...

Is Meade Chinese? Because that sounds like something they would do.

Ah Pooh said...

Step 6. Drink with eyes closed.

edutcher said...

Thoreau was the original Occupier. He squatted out in the woods in a miserable shack and wouldn't pay his taxes for the Mexican War.

For which he was tossed in jail.

The good old days.

Rockeye said...

I thought step three was always "profit."

I think that's, "Prosit", not, "profit", in Step 5.

Kylos said...

I think getting your living is an inextricable part of one's proper pursuit, but isn't the sum of that pursuit.

PaulV said...

Turkish coffee?

Ann Althouse said...

"Is Meade Chinese? Because that sounds like something they would do."

That's completely the opposite of what Meade did. A coffee bag is closer to making coffee with one of the filter methods.

Meade's going filter free.

Ann Althouse said...

A coffee bag is really the problem of too much filter, not enough circulation of the water around the grounds. So, clearly, that's the opposite. Meade's method is the most filter-phobic possible.

Ann Althouse said...

"Clearly" is the wrong word.

Muddily.

themightypuck said...

The Melitta filter has not been beated.

Rick67 said...

I once attended a conference with a linguistics professor who *also* served many years as a Wycliffe Bible translator in Mexico. He made coffee by putting grounds in pot (saucepan), boiling, then letting grounds settle. He called it "missionary coffee" - what I guess missionaries make in the field without the usual filters or other equipment.

I've made coffee a few times that way too. It helps to tap on the side of the pot/pan/cup to encourage grounds to settle.

Michael said...

Cowboy coffee. Not invented by Meade.

Freeman Hunt said...

That's how they do coffee tastings, isn't it?

chuck said...

When I was in first and second grade Roland Robbins, the archaeologist who rediscovered the site of Thoreau's cabin, lived two houses down. Those were the days when one could swim in Walden pond, sadly long gone. It's now dead and sanctified.

Craig said...

I, too, saw God through mud—
The mud that cracked on cheeks when wretches smiled.
War brought more glory to their eyes than blood,
And gave their laughs more glee than shakes a child.

Wilfred Owen

traditionalguy said...

Emerson was a beautiful expositor of the individual's right to rest.

The deliverance that Moses started, and we Judeo-Christians get in on is the Day of Rest (18& of the week that), that proves we are no longer slaves with quotas imposed by Pharoah on penalty of starving to death.

The Egyptian tradition represents the world's soulish system.

Meanwhile back at the Enemy Headquarters 9!600 Pennsylvania Avenue), the costs of food are being sent out of sight by the ethanol scam and the open attempt to starve our farmers of cheap Oil energy for their machinery and transportation with which they have fed the world since 1900.

Kirk Parker said...

Actual step 6: Drink, while filtering through moustache (which is why Althouse will never drink it brewed that way.)

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Barf.

T J Sawyer said...

I think my dad learned this technique in a CCC camp. He would make it when we went camping or, especially, hunting. (Mom wasn't a fan.)

Still available in the middle east when you order coffee and don't specify "American Coffee."

Wikipedia reveals the technological secrets: "Boiling was the main method used for brewing coffee until the 1930s and is still used in some Nordic and Middle Eastern countries. The aromatic oils in coffee are released at 96C (205F), which is just below boiling, while the bitter acids are released when the water has reached boiling point."

Meade said...

PaulV said...
"Turkish coffee?"

Close. The difference between Turkish coffee, cowboy coffee, and Meade's mud is Meade's mud doesn't involve boiling the coffee.

Meade said...

Dust Bunny Queen said...
"Barf."

No. No barf is involved in brewing Meade's mud. Just good Wisconsin water and finely ground roasted Intelligentsia beans from Chicago.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

At least you have some good fodder for your compost heap.

:-D

wildswan said...

Speaking of getting down through mud and slush, I like reading those old books on travel or small wars from about 1900 that Google has made available. Because they have a lot of descriptions which you can compare and contrast with what is said about the same places now. Very little changes. It is absolutely creepy to read about how Egypt is modernizing in England in Egypt by Alfred Milner (1899). Fire and Sword in the Sudan and With Hicks Pasha in the Sudan and books by Edith Durham (The Burden of the Balkans) are others showing how little changes in some areas. Walter Harris is more fun but still Yemen hasn't changed much. See, the geography can't change nor can their past.

Freeman Hunt said...

Intelligentsia

Ha ha. I've wanted to order beans from them, but I haven't been able to get past the name. Is it worth it?

Ann Althouse said...

"I've wanted to order beans from them, but I haven't been able to get past the name. Is it worth it?"

It's what we buy all the time. We love it.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

"Step 1: Buy the best coffee beans you can afford.

Step 2: Grind as fine as possible.

Step 3: Put ground coffee in a mug, pour hot water over it, stir. Step "

Forget Step #3. Put your ground coffee in the gold filter basket of this Cuisinart Coffee Maker Available through the Amazon link on this blog. **

By far the best coffee maker I have ever owned. We are on our second machine after 10 years on the first one...and bought an extra for back up.

Buy one TODAY!! Seriously.

4: Turn on the machine. Wait for the beep.(Or program the night before and wake up to the wonderful smell of coffee.)

Step 5: Throw the grounds into the compost pail. No pesky paper filters.

** See----> I'm here to help support the revenue stream of this blog.

edutcher said...

traditionalguy said...

Meanwhile back at the Enemy Headquarters (1600 (FIFY, BTW)) Pennsylvania Avenue), the costs of food are being sent out of sight by the ethanol scam and the open attempt to starve our farmers of cheap Oil energy for their machinery and transportation with which they have fed the world since 1900.

And that's the reason the 47% aren't as sure a vote for GodZero as many a pundit thinks.

Things like bread and pasta are up (pasta way up) and inconsequential things like a little Hot Wheels car have gone to $1.07 after being at $.99 for a couple of years (The Blonde's oldest great-nephew figures you can't have too many cool cars).

It will hit the 47% harder than the 1 %.

Fr Martin Fox said...

To our genial hostess & host:

How did it taste? As compared with other good ways of making coffee?

Isn't this more or less the "french press" method, without the press?

Would you recommend doing this with a pot of water, as opposed to a cup?

Manfred said...

How were your rights "sooo" violated? You got to read a piece of literature instead of delivering the requested invocation. You rightly were criticized for that transgression.

Your story highlights that your skin has been transparently thin for over 40 years.

Anne said...

I prefer using a french press. Keeps the mud contained. Although getting coffee grounds stuck to your front teeth would provide a nice "Jethro" moment.

Ann Althouse said...

My favored coffeemaker is the Aeropress.

Craig said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Jason (the commenter) said...

Ann Althouse: Meade's method is the most filter-phobic possible

What's so bad about filters? They exist for a reason.

Chip Ahoy said...

The word alluvion is much more poetic and transcendent than the word accession innit.

The sweet edge of a scimitar would divide you through heart and marrow a lot more effeciently than a kitchen cimeter.

And what advantage would a Realometer have over a Nilometer? I'm asking. I'm not getting why Thoreau would trivialize the importance of measuring the effect of the annual inundation and to no small extent predicting it. Statistically, ain't it a bitch, one out of five years the Nile flood would be either disastrously low or high so understanding it along its length was vital.

I would ask Thoreau to be a little more thorough *winces* about explaining this Realometer of his apparent invention. Whose reality is measured there? Objective reality? Not transcendental reality? All of us take the readings? Do priesthoods form around interpreting the measurements of the Realometer as happened back in the day with the Nilometers, even though the Nilometers, the stairs and the poles, were there that anyone can see them?

So what's with all the meters anyway, cimeter, Realometer, Nilometer? Transcendentaland must be on the metric system.

Wince said...

Althouse: "What are these "proper pursuits" that are not getting your living, and how much do you try to make time — to make freedom — for the things that are not living-getting? Do you even think in those terms?"


Life During Wartime

This ain't no party,

this ain't no disco,

this ain't no fooling around

This ain't no mudd club,

or C. B. G. B.,

I ain't got time for that now

Ann Althouse said...

"How were your rights "sooo" violated? You got to read a piece of literature instead of delivering the requested invocation. You rightly were criticized for that transgression."

I was assigned, as a reward for the highest grades, to give an "invocation." I could either walk away from my prize or submit to the coercion of delivering a prayer. I wanted the honor, and I took the opportunity to speak honestly, as I saw it at the time. That is, my rights were violated, but I made it into something that worked for me anyway. I accepted the imposed invocation form.

My invocation was also a violation of the Establishment Clause for everyone who was there, but it would have been worse if I'd given a conventional prayer.

No school official tried to stop me from doing the invocation they way I did. Anyone else was free, of course, to criticize me in the local press.

I just think it's interesting, with the perspective I have now, that people, including nuns, criticized me for taking possession of the speechmaking assignment rather than accepting greater coercion.

BTW, what are you calling a "transgression"? What does "invocation" mean to you? The lines that I spoke fit the assignment I was given. I used the quote in the form of an invocation.

Ann Althouse said...

"Anyone else was free, of course, to criticize me in the local press."

Of course, they were free to criticize me in other places too, but I mean to say that I actually was criticized in the local press, including by some people who dragged in some other speech that I did somewhere else, which I'd done as a public service, and somebody didn't like an ad lib acknowledgment of an accidental double entendre I made... like that was related to the invocation.

Imagine adults, including a nun, using the local press like that to criticize an 18-year-old!

Oh, how I wish there'd been blogs back then!

HT said...

No. I'm going about YOUR business.

Your pack is losing.

Anonymous said...

"What's so bad about filters? They exist for a reason."

This is a excellent point!

also - the press part of the French press works well.


I was much less impressed when I found out Thoreau was camped out in Emerson's backyard. But whatdayou expect from a bunch of flakey transcendentalists?

Not surprised he couldn't figure out how to do his own laundry.

Petunia said...

Ah, coffee grounds. If someone produces something that looks like that from either end of their digestive tract, it's a good indication that they are bleeding somewhere in their small intestine.

Just FYI.

caplight45 said...

Well, I hit him hard right between the eyes
And hea went down, but to my surprise,
He come up with a knife and cut off a piece of my ear.
But I busted a chair right across his teeth
And we crashed through the wall and into the street
Kicking and a' gouging in the mud and the blood and the beer.

From "A Boy Named Sue" written by Shel Silverstein and performed by Johnny Cash

caplight45 said...

Some people say a man is made outta mud
A poor man's made outta muscle and blood
Muscle and blood and skin and bones
A mind that's a-weak and a back that's strong

From Sixteen Tons

Paco Wové said...

I'll join the french press chorus. Spouse got one a few months ago to replace the drip coffee maker. In effect, Meade's technique is french press -- in your cup -- with no press-out-the-grounds step.

It makes very good coffee, and I suspect Meade's technique does too, but I kinda like not getting a mouthful of grounds.

caplight45 said...

So they are growing coffee in Chicago now. Who'da thunk?

Chiefs 19 Packers 7 4:00 in the 4th

james conrad said...

lol, uhhhhh, noooooo @ the mud coffee dealio. First off i drink 12 cups every morning so thats ALOT of mud & two, whats wrong with a gold wire mesh filter, no bags, no paper no off taste imparted to the coffee.
With Meade's method & the amount of coffee i drink, i'd be picking mud from my teeth all day long, ICKY! lol

Ann Althouse said...

Ugh... football game....

caplight45 said...

Invocation

1.
the act of invoking or calling upon a deity, spirit, etc., for aid, protection, inspiration, or the like; supplication.
2.
any petitioning or supplication for help or aid.
3.
a form of prayer invoking God's presence, especially one said at the beginning of a religious service or public ceremony.
4.
an entreaty for aid and guidance from a Muse, deity, etc., at the beginning of an epic or epiclike poem.
5.
the act of calling upon a spirit by incantation.

I do not believe that what you delivered that day was an invocation.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Imagine adults, including a nun, using the local press like that to criticize an 18-year-old!

At 18 you are an adult.

What doesn't kill you makes you strong. Except possibly, Meade's coffee.

Chip Ahoy said...

I was waiting in a nursing home lobby that had a large silver coffee pot percolating and filled the whole room blub with its comforting blub coffee shop aroma.

As I sat there waiting, alternating between Game Boy and turning the knobs on my Etch A Sketch, the thing blub really got going and people blub blub came up to the table and picked off a styrofoam cup from the styrofoam cup towers and carefully selected from cane sugar, raw sugar, Splenda, Equal, or Sweet 'N Low, fussed with the packages, and then over to a jar of cream substitution powder and then picked off a little plastic stick and stirred it all around and blub blub blub then left and then came back, and then left and came back again, and came back, and came back again to the coffee pot. The coffee pot table was the center blub blub blub of morning nursing home lobby activity. The percolation increased, the aroma intensified, the visits blub to the table more regular and the whole time I was sitting there thinking, "They're drinking that shit," and my stomach growled a little bit as a blub blub warning to not even consider it. And the aroma blub overtook all other aromas like a thing that is growing blub blub instead of diminishing even though people were draining it, even when the double blub blub doors opened to let wheelchairs go through, the smell was so aggressive that my stomach tied off a proper knot to assure no coffee got in, and the blub blub blub blub buildup in coffee aroma increased even as the blub blub blub liquid portion was drained so that finally there was all coffee aroma and no liquid coffee and the intertwining of the odor particles in between the fibers of the curtains, the upholstery, the carpets, the people, was so complete that it emanated from them. That's when my stomach changed the locks and filed for divorce, and the coffee pot sensed it was empty and turned itself off.

HT said...

Ann Althouse said...

Ugh... football game....

12/18/11 3:12 PM


Ann, do you not want people commenting on football on an entry that does not explicitly reference football? If so, just say so. I for one am happy to comply. I can see how it would be annoying if you are just not into football though.

chuck said...

Chip channels Joyce and the end of Ulysses: Home at Last, is the better for it.

caplight45 said...

Ann said:
"Ugh... football game...."

Well, I'm not gonna go all spinelli on you. Just a mother lion cuffing her cub.

And it wasn't an invocation.

Tyrone Slothrop said...

My Dad used to quote the following piece of Missouri humor. If you say it with the proper pomposity, it sounds like you are speaking Latin, which,of course, is the joke:

In fir tar is,
In oak none is.
In mud eels are,
In clay none are.

Hagar said...

Sheepherder coffee.

And a couple pieces of dried cod stomach lining will make the mud settle out.

Tyrone Slothrop said...

The skipper of a purse seiner I worked on made coffe by dumping the grounds in an enamel coffee pot full of boiling water, throwing in an eggshell to settle the grounds, and then adding a pinch of salt. Not for the gourmet, but always welcome in Kodiak waters.

Henry said...

Mead invented the French Press without the press.

One of my favorite Thoreau quotes is this:

The life in us is like the water in the river. It may rise this year higher than man has ever known it, and flood the parched uplands; even this may be the eventful year, which will drown out all our muskrats. It was not always dry land where we dwell.

This means different things to different people, as I've found out. For me, I especially like the last sentence, the one often left out, the one that conjoins natural history -- and thus a sense of mortality and fatalism -- to the transcendalist paen.

rhhardin said...

Cavell on Thoreau

To write standing face to face to a fact, as if it were a scimitar whose sweet edge divides you, is to seek not a style of writing but a justness of it, its happy injuries, ecstasies of exactness.

The Senses of Walden p.44

kjbe said...

My favored coffeemaker is the Aeropress.

I bought from thru your site, last year and love the coffee I get from it. As for what Meade's doing...no thank you.

CJ said...

try cracking an egg in the dry grounds before boiling. Mix up thoroughly and boil. The egg helpssettle thegrounds and takes the edge off the bitterness.

Karl said...

Thinking that the hipsters at Intelligentsia are fucking appalled by Mead's methodology.

Now that's funny.

Just guessing Mead is doing it this way to be "difficult".

Astro said...

French Press. A great way to make coffee, and a fun way to play co-ed basketball.

jamboree said...

Thoreau also relied heavily on his mother for support as well as the Emersons. Emerson understood, no doubt as he also was quite close to his own mother. Thoreau was released from prison after exactly one night when his aunt paid his taxes.

That makes Paris Hilton comparatively hardcore.

Just saying. Tender little boho guys are tender little boho guys throughout the ages.

He probably survived on falafels his girlfriend procured for him. ;-)

Ann Althouse said...

"Ann, do you not want people commenting on football on an entry that does not explicitly reference football?"

My "ugh... football" referred to my being upset that the Packers were losing/lost.

Ann Althouse said...

It seems to me that Thoreau had some writing to do, and it's great that he had people in his life who helped facilitate that enterprise.

These people who criticize him for the support he accepted/received... somehow you'd like him better if he was a modern American off-the-grid kind of guy? Why?

Michael said...

Isn't there something about dropping egg shells in coffee to settle the grounds? No idea why it would work.

Carol_Herman said...

CHEMEX !

I buy the paper filters at Amazon.

I have the smallest size. It makes my morning brew. I have an old Kitchen Aid grinder. It is NOT a burr grinder! It holds about a pound of beans on top. And, I think I have it on the course setting. I buy my beans at Marshall's. And, I keep bags of beans in the freezer.

Nothing brews better than a Chemex!

I heat my water in an electric pot. And, I also heat a small pot with water, to boil. That way, as soon as I start pouring in my hot water ... I put the Chemex container into it's "water bath." And, I also heat my cup.

Instead of mud, which I hate. I get the absolutely clearest cup of coffee! No grinds! How strong? I control this. But the grinder doesn't have a "counter." It just comes out into a glass cup.

I've had the Kitchen Aid grinder at least 20 years. And, I only broke one glass beaker in all that time. My glass beaker even has a handle.

Ralph L said...

Somehow, I managed to miss Thoreau in high school, and I'm so glad.

Such a hippie chic you were in 1968.

chuck said...

It seems to me that Thoreau had some writing to do..

I believe he also more or less took care of Emerson, Emerson was pretty useless except as an intellectual. Thoreau also played a role in the development of the pencil. Reminds me a bit of Muir, who was quite the mechanical inventor and made machines for planting the fruit trees in his orchard.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Had I been here when this post came up I would have posted My Cousin Vinny "mud in your tires" video.. and then deleted upon remembering that I had already posted before.

I see/read no reference to political mud..

Must be because of the Obama skin color effect.. this election will also be relatively mud free.

Ann Althouse said...

"I do not believe that what you delivered that day was an invocation."

I don't have the text of what I said, but it was based on that quote, not a simple reading of the quote.

Ann Althouse said...

In the Supreme Court case of Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe, "invocation" was defined in a footnote with a dictionary reverence: " See, e.g., Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 1190 (1993) (defining “invocation” as “a prayer of entreaty that is usu[ally] a call for the divine presence and is offered at the beginning of a meeting or service of worship”)"

Roy Lofquist said...

Cowboy coffee is made by taking a fistful of regular grind coffee and adding it to a cast iron pot of boiling water. Boil to taste then add some egg shell to settle the grounds. Least ways that's how we did it in the 50s.

Turkish coffee uses the finest grind possible in a small porcelain straight sided cup to which boiling water is added. The trick is to sip and stop just before you get to the mud. This I know from spending two years in Turkey in the early 60s.

Joe Schmoe said...

Somehow, I managed to miss Thoreau in high school, and I'm so glad.

Amen. I read Thoreau; no, scratch that--tried to read Thoreau, but I never made it very far into a couple of his efforts. He could've used a good editor.

I do admire that he tramped around some extremely remote parts of Maine in the mid 1800's. That could not have been easy or pleasant.

caplight45 said...

"I don't have the text of what I said, but it was based on that quote, not a simple reading of the quote."

I thought the quote you posted was your invocation. I stand corrected.

jono39 said...

Buy a can of LaVazza Gold Espresso. Pour boiling water over a heaping teaspoon of this superb coffee, stir vriskly, let it settle and you will have a superb cup of what in Israel is called "mud" which has literally nothing to do with any of the primordial images the photos conjure. Most American coffee is simply dreadful which is why I ALWAYS drink "blackeyes", 2 shots of Espresso in a cup of what passes for coffee in the USA, including Starbucks and the other overrated chain.

jono39 said...

Buy a can of LaVazza Gold Espresso. Pour boiling water over a heaping teaspoon of this superb coffee, stir briskly, let it settle and you will have a superb cup of what in Israel is called "mud" which has literally nothing to do with any of the primordial images the photos conjure. Most American coffee is simply dreadful which is why I ALWAYS drink "blackeyes", 2 shots of Espresso in a cup of what passes for coffee in the USA, including Starbucks and the other overrated chain.

Perezoso said...

Bad faith?--a teabugger posting Thoreau, on a site moderated by a right-wing moron

Paddy O said...

Here's one of my favorites from Thoreau:

"My desire for knowledge is intermittent; but my desire to commune with the spirit of the universe, to be intoxicated even with the fumes, call it, of that divine nectar, to bear my head through atmospheres and over heights unknown to my feet, is perennial and constant."

Pretty much describes my intellectual and spiritual life over the last fifteen years. And explains a lot of my life decisions during that time too. Some people go into academics to get the knowledge, it's just part of the path. I get bored with the topics at time, but whenever I once again get whiff of that nectar... ah, I'm on my way once more.

That's the trouble with so much theology in the West, it has been over intellectualized and divorced from mysticism. Probably why I resonate a lot with Thoreau (even moving to the mountains to write) and some theologians from the Eastern Orthodox traditions who mingle the mystical with the intellectual.

It's a dance.

Herb said...

you need to get him a french press coffee maker for Christmas, I've seen individual sized ones.

SGT Ted said...

That's not a new way to make coffee. Middle Easterners make it that way. I think Rssians make it that way too.

The Mess Sergeant used to make coffee that way on a much bigger scale out in the field. He called it "cowboy coffee".

Tarzan said...

Middle Easterners have also been known to wipe with their hands.

Exotic? Yes.

A great leap forward? Something I really want to try at home?

No.