To Tea, or Not to Tea

This morning I made myself a cup of Earl Grey tea. Haven't had a cup of tea in the morning for years, maybe decades. Tea is a night time drink before bed. Maureen makes some for each of us as we watch TV. As I steeped the tea I stated thinking of when I used to drink tea exclusively, no coffee. You could tie this in with the usual winter go into hibernation feeling I get this time of year, but this time there was some nostalgia and the experience of me as a young man learning something new.

College was one new experience after another. I went from a small provincial town to the local county seat to a larger college town 300 miles away at the almost other end of the state. I met many people along the way and some became roommates and lifelong friends. It was within this setting that I was introduced to tea and Red Zinger was the gateway tea.

First off it was red. Not the brown of Grandma's tea. It also didn't have the acidic bite that something like an Earl Grey or a common Lipton's. After that initial introduction to Red Zinger I discovered that the maker, Celestial Seasonings, had many other offerings in so many other flavors and colors. It was a mind blowing experience for this small town young man. I learned much and enjoyed much. I think from time to time about that friend and roommate, GS, that taught me of tea, Midwestern tea with cream and sugar, bagels and cream cheese and all sorts of life rearranging food items.

The tea changed after I met a young woman that changed me in other ways. She and her family were coffee drinkers, and that began another part of my life that continues today. But she also drinks tea, and that makes all the difference.

Presidential History

The last post reminded me of a story regarding Bess Truman, the wife of President Harry Truman. President Truman was from the "Show Me" state of Missouri and had the habit of using the word manure. One day a woman happened to have a chance to meet with Mrs. Truman and asked for a favor. This woman said she didn't like the fact that the president used the word manure, and would Mrs. Truman kindly ask the president to quit using the word.

Mrs. Truman thanked the lady and replied, "As course as the word manure sounded, it was much better to the word the president used to use."

Manure vs. Compost

I've been thinking about a few of my daily tasks and how parts of them are different. We have some cats, a few dogs, some laying hens and even a friendly duck. The duck has it's own friend, our disabled hen and they wander separately from the other laying hens. As you might guess with so many animals we have to deal with the issue of manure. Generally I deal with the manure and what happens with it. It certainly is no fun to walk out into the back yard and step in a pile or slip on a gooey mess from the duck and chicken friendship.

I was pondering the differences between the manure from each of the different animals, and how I handle each. It hit me that this task is like life. The cats mostly use a litter box and the dogs use a few areas outside. We dispose of them in the trash. The chickens and duck go in areas within their runs and that gets raked up or shoveled and put into the compost pile to decompose. One is waste and the other is fertilizer. One is a problem and one helps grow food. Kind of like life, you have to learn to separate the good from the not so good.

A Couple of Books

After finishing Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard I started back in to The Way of Ignorance by Wendell Berry. Haven't finished Ignorance yet, but I have been struck by how the two books dovetail in many ways.

Chouinard told tales of how he climbed and created a business, but he hammered away most about the responsibility we have to the world we live in, both individually and corporately. He gave details how Patagonia has been shaped as a company to minimize its footprint and damage to the world. He admits there is damage, but effort must be made to have as little impact as possible.

This is one of the first Berry books I have read and it is a collection of essays and talks he has given. The theme of localism comes through loud and clear, but the idea is localism builds whereas the opposite, globalism, has no one being responsible for what happens. Soil and water and people are materials to be used, not built. The end result is we all die somewhere in the future.

As Chouinard says, "The problem is like [environmentalist] David Brower said, there’s no business to be done on a dead planet."