Considering the iPad as a Kindle Replacement

February 1, 2010

Image Copyright 2010 Apple Inc.You’ve seen the new toy. You’ve seen the experts debate: Will the Apple iPad “save” newspapers, journalism, book publishing? Will it kill the Amazon Kindle? Is this the death of the laptop, and the PC as we know it? Has Apple just signaled the death of the ultraportable MacBook Air? Will it replace smartphones like the iPhone or Nexus One? Has Apple just pwned another media marketplace — sorry Amazon, Google, Microsoft? Goodbye, netbooks? Farewell, computers?

Blah, blah, blah. Nobody knows the future, so such pronouncements are justifiably viewed as so much hype.
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Fazenda Sertaozinho, Minas Gerais, Brazil!

January 30, 2010

I’ve been neglecting the blog for quite a while. It’s so much easier to Twitter, or post Facebook updates, or check in with Foursquare, that it’s hard to work up the head of steam it takes to write about coffees that have only mildly impressed me, or books that I haven’t managed to finish, or what have you. It’s the doldrums of winter, the eve of February, the shortest month on paper and the longest in the northeastern mind.
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Catching Up on Coffee: Helsar de Zarcero

December 20, 2009

I was too busy for blogging these many weeks, but I was drinking coffee, and so my record here will have a gap. There was a roast from Verve that was quite tasty but is no longer available, and I made it through a couple of rough weeks with the delicious Peet’s Holiday Blend, which my wife carried back from Los Angeles.
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N.Y.U. Poetry Reading in East Village

November 15, 2009

Time for some more plugs. My wife, Jane Rosenberg LaForge, will be joining New York University professors and students at the Liberal Studies Program’s Fall Faculty/Student Reading from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 3, at the Telephone Bar and Grill, 149 Second Avenue (between 9th and 10th Streets) in the East Village.

Also, Jane’s “After Voices” poetry chapbook — published last month by Burning River of Cleveland — is now available at the McNally Jackson Book Store in SoHo, one of the few remaining interesting indie bookstores left in Manhattan.


A Guatemalan Roast From Grumpy

November 15, 2009

IMG_0204Interesting things seem to be happening at one of my favorite New York coffee haunts, Café Grumpy. For one thing, the shop’s official blog is looking flashier and busier. And Grumpy — which turned me on to many of the best roasters in the country (Intelligentsia, Verve, Barismo, and Ritual) — is now roasting selected coffees of its own at its Brooklyn location.
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Direct From Panama Carmen Estate

October 25, 2009

IMG_0184I haven’t had much time to find new coffees lately. It has been a rather busy few weeks, with a trip to Cleveland related to “After Voices,” my wife’s new poetry chapbook from Burning River, a local press. We’ve also had illness in her family, grim news in the journalism world, birthday gatherings and more happenings than I can count. On the Cleveland trip, we hit the highlights, with readings and a visit to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. We also stopped in at the local indie coffee chain, Phoenix Coffee, which also roasts its own beans. I’m kicking myself for not picking some up on the way out of town. Luckily, I still had this (shrinking) bag of beans from Stumptown.
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Poetry and Silence: ‘After Voices’

October 25, 2009

IMG_0185Updated, Nov. 15. Time for a plug. I’m pleased to announce that “After Voices,” a poetry chapbook by my wife, Jane Rosenberg LaForge, was released last week by Burning River of Cleveland. Jane has been laboring over these poems for a couple of years. Some people have asked, what is a chapbook? One definition: a short booklet containing poems, ballads or stories. Jane’s chapbook includes 12 poems and an essay arranged around the theme of her father’s deafness. (He is already disputing some of the facts. Fun times!)

Jane plans to read some of the poems at a New York University faculty-student reading in the East Village in December.

A hard copy of the chapbook can be ordered online for $6 a copy from Burning River. A PDF version can be downloaded for free (it includes a bonus poem not in the print edition). It will eventually be available as a digital book in epub format from Project Gutenberg. You can also buy a copy at Visible Voice Books in Cleveland, Housing Works Bookstore Cafe in SoHo, and the McNally-Jackson Bookstore, also in SoHo.
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A Return to Guatemala via Stumptown

October 11, 2009

IMG_0132I’ve enjoyed a number of Guatemalan coffees — the Finca La Folie from Ritual Roasters, Itzamna from Intelligentsia, the Nimac Kapeh and the Soma blend from Barismo — so I picked up these beans on another side trip to Stumptown’s Manhattan location at the Ace Hotel in the 20s. As always, the service was fast and pleasant, and I received a complimentary coffee because I was buying beans. (I was also playing around with Foursquare and its iPhone app, and discovered that there’s a fierce battle to become “mayor” of this location.)
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An Opinion About Blue Batak

September 28, 2009

IMG_0116It is a little known fact that coffee improves your objectivity as a journalist. O.K., I’m kidding.

I don’t believe in “objectivity” and usually avoid the word. It sounds like an impossible God-like standard. Most people who use that term are setting up a strawman. I prefer terms like balance, neutrality, fairness. And conventional newspaper journalism can certainly reach conclusions, so long as they are supported by evidence, and qualified.

This just happens to be a topic on my mind and in my Twitter stream. The fairness/objectivity debate is in the air.

I work for a news organization that promises fairness and ethics. Like Buddhist enlightenment and perfection in general, they may not be attainable. The value to the reader comes from aiming for the worthy goal, without fear or favor, bias or prejudice. Even the best newspapers print corrections every day, but they still set accuracy as the standard. We don’t give up because perfect accuracy is unattainable.
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Sweet on Finca La Folie

September 19, 2009

I found myself on a fool’s errand tryingIMG_0104 to research this coffee, suggesting that it has already sold out. And, as so often happens, I got distracted wandering the Internet. The seller, Ritual Roasters has a great video tutorial about espresso, using a French press, the Clover and other topics. I was hooked after the first one, in which the barista explains the wide variety in espresso flavors, even with the same beans, and he compares the intensity of espresso to the slap in the face of whiskey. I never thought I’d have this much fun watching videos of coffee geeks do their thing.
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Coming Back Around to the Flor Azul

September 13, 2009

IMG_0103This direct-trade variety from Nicaragua was one of the earliest culinary coffees I wrote about on this blog, back in November 2008, when I first started to systematically evaluate the beans I was trying.

Back then, I thought I knew a fair amount about coffee, but I really didn’t know anything. My knowledge was limited to some basic presumptions I had about the geographic origins of various coffees. I didn’t know much about individual growers or roasters. That level of detail was not readily available on the Web or on packaging until this third-wave era of coffee geekery with its focus on elevations, how beans are grown, dried and roasted, and the precise temperature settings on super-expensive coffee-making equipment.
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A Side Trip to Stumptown, Manhattan

September 12, 2009

IMG_0084People I know who have spent time in the Portland area have raved about Stumptown Coffee for years. They roast the beans right in the store! Nothing on the East Coast compares! So after the second-day-of-school parents’ breakfast on Friday, my wife and I tagged along through the rain when another parent suggested we walk over to the new Stumptown outlet in the Ace Hotel in an area that some people are trying to call SoMa (for “South of Macy’s”) in the high 20s off Broadway.
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