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In historic diners on the East Coast (often modeled from or after railway dining cars) mugs are still the coffee-delivery system. On the West Coast one tends to find that cups and saucers are the norm in coffee shops. The diner mugs are pure Americana, but I got to thinking, what is the genesis of the classic bell shaped diner mug?
Oil Painting by Michael Naples. michaelnaples.blogspot.com
In 1930s, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was already long established as the epicenter of American scientific research. M.I.T. graduates were running industrial giants like General Motors, General Electric, and Eastman Kodak. Fortune Magazine ran glammy pieces on subjects like the university’s gargantuan six-million-volt Van de Graaff generator. Who would’ve imagined that a young Samuel Prescott, Dean of Science, was then ensconced in a three-year quest to realize the perfect cup of coffee. At M.I.T., no one paid any attention to the slander about coffee being “slow poison” or inducing moral promiscuity. Just as wine’s never been just wine in France, in America, coffee’s never been just coffee.
The Pour Over Method. Image by Cafe Volan.
Image by Helmut Newton. Château d’Aunoy, 1978.
How I dream of walking down the stairs from the apartment building where I live, and into a wooded backyard for some good quality exercise with a purpose. Alas, I live in Brooklyn, and everywhere a car is taking up the place of a tree, and there are no well-padded spots tucked down near the edge of the woods where lumber piles are waiting to be turned into firewood.
I didn’t used to feel that way about splitting wood. A person is not just born loving (and yearning!) to mutilate logs, nor do they just know the proper way to do it. They have to learn, by first becoming disgusted with it.
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Less than 150 years after trees were first commercially used to make paper, many seem to have forgotten that paper can be made out of anything else.
Image by Lyla and Blue
The crisp, white sheets we feed into our printers and scratch our grocery lists onto generally comes from virgin pulp. In the US, much of that pulp comes from trees that have been harvested from tree farms, and while that helps a bit to lessen the burden on our decreasing old growth forests, the cyclical planting and harvesting of monoculture forests leaves little room for natural biodiversity of plant and animal life.
“Gill’s prints remind us that every biological form possesses a unique footprint.” – Verlyn Klinkenborg
Red Ash, 82 years printed
Conservationist Aldo Leopold once discussed the two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One, he said, is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery. The other, that heat comes from the furnace. To avoid the first, he said, a person should plant a garden. To avoid the second, he should lay a split of good oak on the andirons and let it warm his shins during a blizzard in February.
Advice from America's Only Copper Cookware Manufacturer
A Rebuttal for the Naysayers
What Makes A Great One
Plastic Bags
When they first hit supermarkets in 1977, check-out clerks and baggers everywhere were stopped, tapped on the shoulder, or accosted by their bosses. The new, lightweight plastic bags had arrived, and were about to change a lot more than just how we carried our groceries.
Alternative Plastic Bag Recycling. Image by Jim Olive. US National Archives. Fort Smith, 1972
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