New website is up...see what you think! Please be patient because it takes a LONG time to load (up to 4 minutes). Go eat a pop tart, read a book, read some blogs, check some email and then you will hear the music start :-)

www.radicalacts.com

Thinking "outside of the box" seems to be such a popular paradigm. I have recently had a conversation that has led me to believe that there is something much more powerful. What we if we really work at thinking INSIDE THE BOX. The reality is that we all have some type of "box" or boundaries. How amazing would it be if what we did is considered the reality of the situation and moved to live life in creative, transparent, and intentional ways? Isn't it true that this would be a much better measure of creativity? I have heard it said, by a much beloved director, that real creativity does not happen until we run out of options.

Morning Specter
By Jari Thymian

These coffee beans,
crushed to small flecks,

forgot their former shape and texture,
but rise at daybreak to the glass observatory

seeing flashes of light
in geysers of hot water,

percolating, rising lively,
saying, "Wait, wait," wanting

to float in the spectrum,
stretch the wavelengths

before sinking, pulled by undertows,
to the filter for rejuvenation,

where color and character
sweep through porous membrane,

flavoring the warm ocean,
where they willingly surrender
to new vessels.

This poem previously appeared in Buckle & magazine. Jari Thymian’s poetry has appeared in Open Windows 2005, Buckle &, The Christian Science Monitor, Ekphrasis, Wild Plum, The Pedestal Magazine, and in various anthologies. Poems are forthcoming in The Progenitor and Poetry Motel. She is a life coach and teacher in Aurora, CO.

Time

Time is such an interesting concept. It seems that sometimes we act as if we have control over it. We will do things such as set the clocks up an hour or "fall back" depending on the time of year. With the unexpected passing of my wife's grandfather I am really reminded of the fact that we may act like we have some kind of say--but in the end time belongs only to the One that is greater than all space and time.

I must tell you---I love to sit in the café and talk with those around. It is such an amazing thing to be part of a conversation that will roll on for hours. In Lisboa that conversation can be had for as little as .50 or so! There are other times, however, that I really do not want to join the conversation. I suppose that is my overwhelming feeling this week. Sometimes it is much more enjoyable to simply be still. There are times that watching and listening can be so rewarding. Everyone in the café seems to handle the time issue differently. There are those that stand at the bar and quickly down the bica so that they can rush off to the next appointment, there are those sitting for hours as if time is not an issue, there are those soaking up conversation as if it may be their last opportunity, and then there are those that watch to see what everyone else is doing.

The café is wonderful. The "feel"--The "smell"--The "look"--The way that time can be a non-issue....even if just for a little bit :-)

Well, I must hurry back to work now. Have a great week everyone.

Brilliant Coffee Quotes



"Drinking coffee is kinda my major hobby... the great benefit of being an actor is you have all this spare time. My ideal is just hanging out with people - I think I am innately lazy" - Craig Parker (Haldir in the Lord Of The Rings movies)

"I packed coffee once when I lived in Australia, and I just remember going around every day with coffee up my nose and in my ears." - Hugo Weaving, Actor ('The Matrix', 'Lord Of The Rings')

"The powers of a man's mind are directly proportioned to the quantity of coffee he drinks" - Sir James Mackintosh

"Decaffeinated Coffee. It's useless warm brown water." Heard on David Letterman

"Ah! How sweet coffee tastes! Lovelier than a thousand kisses, sweeter far than muscatel wine!" -"Coffee Cantata" -J.S. Bach

"Give a frontiersman coffee and tobacco, and he will endure any privation, suffer any hardship, but let him be without these two necessaries of the woods, and he becomes irresolute and murmuring." U.S. Army Lt. William Whiting, 1849

Nancy Astor: "If I were your wife, I would put poison in your coffee."
Sir Winston Churchill: "And if I were your husband, I would drink it."

"Another head - and a black alpaca jacket and a serviette this time - to tell us coffee is ready. Not before it is time, too." D. H. Lawrence, Sea and Sardinia.

"Black as the devil, hot as hell, pure as an angel, sweet as love. - Talleyrand

Coffee has two virtues. It is wet and it is warm. - Old Dutch saying.

"Coffee is the common man's gold, and like gold, it brings to every person the feeling of luxury and nobility." - Sheik Abd-al-Kadir

"Coffee is real good when you drink it it gives you time to think. It's a lot more than just a drink; it's something happening. Not as in hip, but like an event, a place to be, but not like a location, but like somewhere within yourself. It gives you time, but not actual hours or minutes, but a chance to be, like be yourself, and have a second cup. " Gertrude Stein

"Last comes the beverage of the Orient shore, Mocha, far off, the fragrant berries bore. Taste the dark fluid with a dainty lip, Digestion waits on pleasure as you sip." - Pope Leo XII

"A very good drink they call Chaube that is almost as black as ink and very good in illness, especially of the stomach. This they drink in the morning early in the open places before everybody, without any fear or regard, out of clay or China cups, as hot as they can, sipping it a little at a time." - Leonhard Rauwolf

"The little campfires, rapidly increasing to hundreds in number, would shoot up along the hills and plains, and as if by magic, acres of territory would be illuminous with them. Soon they would be surrounded by the soldiers, who made it an inevitable rule to cook their coffee first." John D. Bilings

"Only Irish coffee provides in a single glass all four essential food groups: alcohol, caffeine, sugar, and fat." Alex Levine

"Strong coffee, much strong coffee, is what awakens me. Coffee gives me warmth, waking, an unusual force and a pain that is not without very great pleasure." Napoleon Bonaparte

"I would rather suffer with coffee than be senseless." Napoleon Bonaparte

"I do much of my creative thinking while golfing. If people know you're working at home they think nothing of walking in for a cup of coffee, but wouldn't dream of interrupting on the golf course." Harper Lee

"If you want to improve your understanding, drink coffee; it is the intelligent beverage." Sydney Smith

"Wine is for aging, not coffee." Ken Hutchinson, Starsky and Hutch

"I have measured out my life with coffee spoons." T. S. Elliot

"After a few months' acquaintance with European 'coffee' one's mind weakens, and his faith with it, and he begins to wonder if the rich beverage of home, with it's clotted layer of yellow cream on top of it, is not a mere dream after all, and a thing which never existed." Mark Twain

"The morning cup of coffee has an exhilaration about it which the cheering influence of the afternoon or evening cup of tea cannot be expected to reproduce." Oliver Wendall Holmes, Sr.

"Make my coffee like I like my men: hot, black, and strong." - Willona Wood, Good Times

"Never drink black coffee at lunch; it will keep you awake in the afternoon." - Jilly Cooper

"Coffee, according to the women of Denmark, is to the body what the Word of the Lord is to the soul." - Isak Dinesen

"Coffee: we can get it anywhere, and get as loaded as we like on it, until such teeth-chattering, eye-bulging, nonsense-gibbering time as we may be classified unable to operate heavy machinery." - Joan Frank, 1991

"Many people are like instant coffee: the minute they get in hot water they dissolve."

"The discovery of coffee has enlarged the realm of illusion and given more promise to hope." Isidore Bourdon

"If it wasn't for coffee, I'd have no discernible personality at all." David Letterman

"You make good coffee . . . You're a slob, but you make good coffee." Cher, in Moonstruck

"See how special you are? I serve you coffee in the parlor." Anthony Quinn

"Why don't you have a cup of coffee at least? I, um, I'm a little low in sugar and I don't have any cream, but it's real coffee." Barbara Streisand

"I never laugh until I've had my coffee." Clark Gable

"Thank you for your coffee, seignor. I shall miss that when we leave Casablanca." Ingrid Bergman

"The first cup is for the guest, the second for enjoyment, the third for the sword." An old Arabic saying.

"People are kind of like zombies in Hong Kong nowadays. You don't see that glow anymore. In terms of colour Hong Kong looks a bit grey. To counter that, I think we should give out free espresso samples to give people more caffeine; triple espresso with Irish cream syrup, iced! People just need to get a bit more wired." David Wu

"Compared to Clinton, I feel like a loser. I can't even get the intern to make me coffee!" - David Letterman

"If you want to improve your understanding, drink coffee." - Sydney Smith, 1771-1845

"Coffee should be black as Hell, strong as death, and sweet as love." - Turkish Proverb

"Nescafé es no café" - Juan Valdez

Coffee History



Historians tend to agree that Coffee first came into vogue as a popular drink after being endorsed by the mufti of Aden, Sheik Gemaleddin Abou Muhammad Bensaid, around 1454. It appears that the drink was prepared in two ways during its early history. One form of the beverage was made from the skin and pulp surrounding the bean, and the other from the bean itself. Strong evidence suggests that early followers of Muhammad were seeking an alternative for the wine forbidden to them by the Koran. By 1510, the beverage was being drunk in Cairo. In 1554, coffee was introduced in Constantinople, where it quickly became the popular "in" drink. The Turks were each drinking as many as twelve cups of very strong coffee a day in the hundreds of coffee houses that had sprung up. The popularity of coffee drinking spread throughout the Muslim world during the sixteenth century and was then introduced into Christian Western Europe around 1615 by Venetian traders. Responding to complaints concerning "Satan's Drink", Pope Clement VIII is said to have sampled coffee and found it so delicious that he solved the dilemma by baptizing it and making it a truly Christian beverage. The use of coffee spread rapidly across western Europe. The coffee houses of London (2,000 of them by 1715) started out as gathering places for the commoners. Soon, however, they became highly elite social clubs for the aristocracy and intellectuals.
It remained for America to become the world's centre of coffee drinking. The first man to bring the knowledge of coffee to North America was Captain John Smith, leader of the first permanent European settlement, located in the colony of Virginia. Captain Smith had become familiar with coffee during his earlier travels in Turkey. By the early years of the eighteenth century Boston, New York and Philadelphia had popular coffee houses. By mid-nineteenth century, Norfolk, Chicago, St. Louis and New Orleans also had coffee houses that were centers of social and intellectual life. Nevertheless, the colonists were primarily tea drinkers until King George III instituted the Stamp Act in 1766. In 1773, the colonists carried out the Boston Tea Party in retaliation against a new tax on tea and other commodities. Tea immediately became an unpatriotic drink.

Karaoke and Pasta

It's been an interesting last few days for the blogging crew. Brittany's been sick, so the last couple of days have been the Adventures of Team Testoterone. But before these adventures, while Captain Cook was still with us, we met some skaters at Rossio. They set up a grind rail and were doing crazy tricks on and off of it. We found out that some of them were sponsored...we could tell who they were from their skill level. We asked if they skated there often, and the answer was no...they go where ever they want.

Yesterday was a really good day. It's too bad Brittany missed it. After hanging out with our friend Pedro for a couple of hours, Team Testoterone, along with fellow OBU students Owen, Tana, and Leah, headed to an apartment full of Italians, Brazilians, Germans, and such for a wonderful home-cooked Italian meal. There was a pot full o' some awesome shrimp pasta stuff and one full of some pea and sauce pasta (they've got cool Italian names that I can't recall). One of the guys dropped a metal ball-type thing from the top of a pepper shaker into the pea pot, and I was the lucky chap who found it. It was the same size as the peas, and I was a bite away from loosing a tooth. Our new Brazilian friends made some sort of half-melted fudge for dessert, and it was quite scrumpous. We met up with our friends a little later for some karaoke action at a local bar. It was quite the night.