Friday, August 10, 2012

Our newest...


So, while by no means a hater, my boss, Emilio, dislikes Coldplay. Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, and all the other classics, he is into, but just don't think about mentioning Chris Martin in the car, without expecting to see his face go sour, followed by some remark to get serious about your taste in music. So when he denied me permission to use a Sufjan Stevens song in this video, saying not to take it personally, I chose to even the score by selecting none other than a poppy Coldplay song, for the final video of a class he will be teaching in Portland next week Saturday. While I do enjoy the song, we both gathered around the computer this morning to see what I had concocted over the previous couple of hours, he rubbing his  hands together, and me holding in a smirk, that would become laughter as the artist of the song was revealed in the opening notes. 

I suppose anything was better than Sufjan's Chicago, as Emilio noted that he liked the video, and that it would work; which now means that I will more assuredly select something out of the classic rock genre for my next video, to again grant myself some leeway for these alternative ears.  Until then, the song is Hurts like Heaven, and accompanies video I shot in May of our machinery at the hulling station. Hope you like. 

One of our newest (shot over the course of this passed harvest)



RP207 - Basics of Coffee Processing (class toward completion of Roaster Guild Certification)

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

it's your right, but sincerely, why not hunger ... (and waffle fries)

i spoke to my brother, and he said, "don't let these things get to you," but it got to me, and so I wrote three pages, but i'll promise to drop them, along with my criticism, each into the fire i just started, so long as we promise to both look up from the flames and ask a few questions: 


why not hunger?  


in the first day and age, when the world produces more food than every human would need in a day, and yet somehow one dies every seven seconds because we don't. 


why not hunger? 


can we get outraged by social injustice, or something that actually matters, and wait in hours of lines to give our money away; to light up our inner souls with hopes of feeding every mouth, instead of social networks with images of us filling ours? 


why not hunger? 


christian church, turn your cheeks to what you perceive to be blows, and your eyes to the faces of the ones who didn't eat today. i've got no reputation of feeding the hungry, but i swear i'll dive head first into the church that convinces me they care more about that, than the offenses to corporate millionaires and political agendas.


true religion is not at the bottom of your sweet tea; but it is somewhere in James 1:27. 


and i close out of a favorite book of mine...


"There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God, as if Ultimate Reality, as if the sustaining frame of existence, were something weak and helpless. These people walk by a widow deformed by leprosy begging for a few paise, walk by children dressed in rags living in the street, and they think, "Business as usual." But if they perceive a slight against God, it is a different story. Their faces go red, their chests heave mightily, they sputter angry words. The degree of their indignation is astonishing. Their resolve is frightening. 

These people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside. They should direct their anger at themselves. For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart. Meanwhile, the lot of widows and homeless children is very hard, and it is to their defense, not God's, that the self-righteous should rush.”
 



- Yann Martel 'Life of Pi'