HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1996-02-07, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1996 PAGE 5.
Arthur Black
The coffee craze
As near as anyone can figure, it's all the
fault of an Ethiopian goatherd by the name
of Kaldi who watched his flocks about 1150
years ago. Each day Kaldi took his goats out
to pasture. Then, Kaldi got to squat on his
haunches all day looking out for wolves.
Kaldi had a lot of time on his hands and
not much to do, what with books not being
invented yet and Geraldo! still almost a
millennium away. Kaldi reached for a
nearby plant and plucked some berries off a
branch. He popped them in his mouth and
began to chew.
Ka-bam! Kaldi felt a jolt. His heart began
to hammer. His eyes grew wide as drink
coasters. He felt good!
Kaldi had discovered coffee.
Okay...coffee beans. They weren't
roasted, smoked or percolated, but they did
the trick. Kaldi spread the word and for the
next 400 years or so, people in the Near and
Middle East got their wake-up calls by
chewing coffee beans.
Around about 1300 AD somebody
accidentally dropped some coffee beans in a
pot of boiling water, liked the smell, and
sipped the resultant brew. Ka-bam! Coffee
tasted even better when it was boiled! For
A tale of 2 weddings
Dawn Johnston and Grazyna (Grace)
Czyzewski do not know each other but they
do have something in common; they both
became brides last fall, Dawn in Brussels,
Ont. and Grace in a small village near Lodz,
Poland.
If they had been able to get together to
compare notes on what happened between
the time they became engaged and the day
they walked out of the church a married
woman, they would have discovered both
similarities and differences. It is possible
they might have envied each other in some
respects.
Both would have agreed that it was no
easy task getting ready for the event, but
Dawn probably had the harder time of the
two. While the communities in which they
live are about the same size, Grace could
count on the residents of the village doing
most of the work. A wedding in a small
Polish village is, after all, a communal affair
whereas that in Canada is more likely to
revolve around the family.
Certainly once engaged, Dawn wasted
little time in starting to get ready for the
wedding day and admitted that she got many
of the preparations out of the way early. •
Grace, however, took a more leisurely
approach; there were, to be sure, the helping
hands of the village.
The two girls did have the job of deciding
what to wear and making sure that, once
minds had been made up, everything fit and
matched. Last minute glitches are to be
avoided at all cost.
Dawn was married in a Protestant church,
Grace in a Catholic one and, given that
Polish Catholics have been in the wedding
business considerably longer than Canadian
the next 500 years or so, people drank their
coffee instead of eating it.
But it was still pretty bitter. That lasted
until yet another pioneer discovered that you
could take the edge off boiled coffee by
straining it through a jerkin, a dirndl, a
saddle blanket or any other piece of cloth
that happened to be hanging around.
By 1800, coffee was getting almost
pleasant.
We have come a long way since then. If
you ever doubt it, take a stroll down the
streets of Vancouver and let your head
swivel from side to side, counting the
plethora of coffee shops that abound.
Vancouver is coffee crazy.
You can't just go into a Vancouver coffee
shop and order a cup of java. No, you have
to choose from Espressos, Lattes, Mochas,
Cappuccinos. Then you have to specify if
you want a small, medium or "grande".
And will that be with skim, two per cent,
homo or whipped cream?
It gets more complicated. Caffeine addicts
can now opt for something called the
Frappucino. What's in it? Search me. I hear
that it's ice-cold, contains only 300 calories
and looks something like a Slurpee.
One thing you can count on — it's packed
with caffeine.
I'm waiting for the first shipment of
something called Kopi Luwak coffee. This
Y414.. B ........ ... ...
Protestants, the Polish wedding was the
more ornate of the two. It took Grace an
hour to get through her ceremony; Dawn
was surprised at the length and admitted that
the 15-20 minutes that elapsed from the time
she came into the church until she walked
out a married woman was long enough for
her.
Both were governed by tradition. Grace
accepted willingly the wearing of myrtle
while Dawn conformed to the something
old, new, borrowed, blue, not to mention the
usual garter. Grace knelt before her parents
to ask for their blessing while Dawn and her
husband Bruce took the candles that their
parents had lit and united the two flames into
a single one.
While an organ is sufficient for most
Canadian weddings, and Dawn's was no
exception, a small orchestra is an integral
part of most Polish ones, and not only does it
play during the wedding; it stays on to
perform for the reception. Since the village
was responsible for organizing the event,
most of the residents were at the reception
and, if Grace had any worries about how she
was going to pay for the event, they were
totally dispelled at the moment of
"oczepiny" when she took off her veil and
placed it in front of her at the head table. As
the orchestra played, each guest came up,
put some money in the veil and received in
turn a piece of the wedding cake and a drink
of vodka. By the time the last guest had been
served, over $10,000 was resting in the veil.
Oh yes, guests had to reach once more for
their wallets. There is another collection
plate for the orchestra.
Dawn and her family did their own
decorating in the reception hall and the
reception was catered by a local
organization.
Both brides professed to be nothing short
of amazed at how the other did it. They did,
however, share one tradition. During the
stuff sells, if you can believe it, for $110 a
pound U.S. in San Francisco.
What's so special about Kopi Luwak
coffee? Well, it has to do with the way that
it's ... processed.
You see, in Indonesia, where Kopi Luwak
originates, there exists a small tree-dwelling
marsupial called a paradoxorus which likes
to feed on coffee beans.
Are you beginning to get the pictuse?
The paradoxorus cats the coffee beans
which it later excretes, fairly intact. Then
some poor slob has to poke through
paradoxorus doo doo gathering "processed"
beans.
Makes you wonder if the human craze for
coffee hasn't gone about as far as it can go.
Perhaps it has. Care.to hear about the
latest product of a Colorado based
conglomerate called Allegro Coffee?
Tea. Allegro is offering a whole new line
of teas including Earl Grey and Orange
Pekoe knockoffs. The company is merely
responding to a trend. In the past five years,
tea sales in the United States have grown by
almost 17 per cent.
"Tea is quieter than coffee" says an
Allegro rep. "Tea is a Sunday drive in the
country. Coffee is Monday morning on the
freeway."
Yeah. And you never know where those
coffee beans have been.
reception, guests would klink glasses to get
the bridal couple to kiss. Some things, it
seems, transcend national borders.
The Polish guests, since most of them
have had something to do with the
preparations, are not prepared to stop just
because the bride and groom leave. In a
Polish village the celebrations go on for
several days and you might assume that the
couple is long gone on their honeymoon.
You would be wrong! While Dawn and
Bruce could look forward to the traditional
trip, Grace and her husband Tadeuz had no
such luck. They would have to be content to
going to the place that had been chosen for
them to live and, given the shortage of
suitable housing in Poland, they were quite
happy to do just that.
When asked how they felt about the
wedding, each had a different sentiment.
Dawn admitted to feeling like a princess
while Grace confessed to being in a dream
from which she knew she was going to
wake. Both girls do have videos to remind
them of their moments and exhilaration.
Dawn got to travel to both Toronto and
Niagara Falls; Grace simply went to Lodz
the following week without her husband to
do some shopping with one of her
bridesmaids. Dawn, however, wondered for
a short while whether she was actually going
to reach their destination since, shortly after
they left Brussels, they had transmission
problems and had to call on their family for
help.
Whether you go to a wedding in Poland or
one in Canada, there is one inescapable
conclusion. It is the day when the spotlight
falls on the bride. There is a traditional song
Here comes the Bride which may or may not
be played at the beginning. I have yet to hear
of anything which gives the groom equal
billing. Perhaps it is just as well; I doubt that
there is anything that we could do on our
wedding day-to equal that of a radian bride.
The
Short
of it
By Bonnie Gropp
A slice better than none
Doesn't it seem sometimes as if "we could
have had it all?
Remember the 60s when we really
believed we were making a difference?
Remember the 70s when the economy
boomed and the mood was frivilous?
Remember the 80s when, even though times
were getting harder for a few, these were
interspersed with moments of revitalization
and rejuvenation?
Which brings us to the 90s. Well, I think
it's safe to say, that times have not produced
what we had expected. For many today there
has been a quick and surprising plummet
from the top, leaving us scrambling
uncertainly to get a grip on something
tangible, on something to give us back a
sense of security, a sense of solid footing, a
sense of once again having some control.
Unfortunately having the turf ripped out
from under us, being awakened from the
comfort we had come to accept as our right,
doesn't always bring out the best in people.
In the 90s, concern for job security, less pay,
higher taxes, and less services have
admittedly made us a little desperate,
perhaps even a little whiny. But when you
think about it, it's not easy to take less,
especially when it seems as it does these
days that there is no "common sense" behind
the taking.
After all, I'm sure I was promised the
whole pie; now they say there has to be cuts
and simply having a slice is a little hard for
me to swallow.
What I think we need to focus on in these
difficult times, is the fact that situations such
as this, winning some and losing some, can
bring out admirable traits in people. This
past weekend I had the opportunity to speak
to an aquaintance who knows about coming
close. A talented musician, this man, after
over a decade of perseverance and hard
work, had clawed so close to the top he
could see over it. He never let up, working to
improve himself vocally and physically.
Then changing lifestyles and musical trends
became obstacles to further progress. The
downslide was gradual, but inevitable,
taking him back to where he had started.
Yet, though he continues to perform the
heavy metal music that brought him his first
success, he found another way to use his
talent and rebuild, as a classically trained
singer and vocal teacher. He doesn't feel
sorry for himself, even having the ability to
find the humour in his story. In speaking
with him I was impressed by this, as well as
his refusal to accept defeat. He does not live
in 'what ifs' and 'why me's', but rather in "It
was me. Now what do I do about it?"
As we face the challenges of this decade it
would be best to confront them with strength
and attitude. It's not good enough to feel
sorry for ourselves, we must look objectively
at what is asked of us, and if it is truly
unfair, take a stand and make a difference.
Call it idealism, or just having had the
opportunity to see it at work, but I believe
that being positive, having convictions
founded on just and unjust and the power to
not wallow in self-pity but take control of
our own lives are what will help to get us
through.
Remember having a piece of that pie is
better than nothing, as long as everyone is
getting their fair share.
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