UWP Lecturers Coffee-house Update

[Deborah Willis]

Three cheers for Carole, and many thanks!  But I can't resist putting in a plug for 
tea as well as coffee:

I received a small brick of tea,
And sipping it, felt cool; I can do with the wind as I will.
Why should I need paradise?
My whole body is floating among white clouds.
--Gido Shushin (14th century)

Or, for the real fanatics, a poem called "Tea-Drinking":

The first cup moistens my lips and throat.
The second cup breaks my loneliness.
The third cup searches my barren entrails to find some thousand volumes of odd   
ideographs.
The fourth cup raises a slight perspiration: all the wrongs of life pass out 
through my pores.
At the fifth cup, I am purified;
The sixth cup calls me to the realms of the immortals.
The seventh cup -- I feel the breath of the cool wind in my sleeves.
Where is Mount Penglai?  I shall ride the gentle breeze to the mountain top of 
the eternal ones.   
    --Lu Tong (Tang Dynasty)
 


Deborah Willis
Associate Professor
Dept. of English
University of California
Riverside, CA 92521

email: dwill at ucr.edu
office phone: 951-827-1939

---- Original message ----
>Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 11:52:14 -0700
>From: steven.axelrod at gmail.com (on behalf of Steven Axelrod 
<steven.axelrod at ucr.edu>)
>Subject: Re: Coffee-house Update  
>To: Carole Fabricant <cf7516 at gmail.com>
>Cc: adriana.craciun at ucr.edu, Andrea.Denny-Brown at ucr.edu, 
carole.fabricant at ucr.edu, Caroleanne.tyler at ucr.edu, Deborah.Willis at ucr.edu, 
erica.edwards at ucr.edu, George.Haggerty at ucr.edu, 
heidi.braymanhackel at ucr.edu, jamestobias at mindspring.com, 
James.Tobias at ucr.edu, jennifer.doyle at ucr.edu, John.Briggs at ucr.edu, 
John.Ganim at ucr.edu, joseph.childers at ucr.edu, katherine.kinney at ucr.edu, 
keith.harris at ucr.edu, devlinucr at earthlink.net, michelle.raheja at ucr.edu, 
rise.axelrod at ucr.edu, rob.latham at ucr.edu, Stanley.Stewart at ucr.edu, 
susan.zieger at ucr.edu, Tiffany.Lopez at ucr.edu, Traise.Yamamoto at ucr.edu, 
Vorris.Nunley at ucr.edu, susan.brown at ucr.edu, englecturers at listserv.ucr.edu, 
linda.nellany at ucr.edu, tina.feldmann at ucr.edu, cindyred at ucr.edu, 
kathleen.carter at ucr.edu, gsa-english at lists.ucr.edu
>
>   Congrats, Carole.
>    
>   We'll think of you everytime we have a cup of
>   something there. It will indeed by a campus
>   "amenity," one of my favorite words and concepts.
>    
>   Too bad there won't be hasty pudding to go with the
>   java:
>    
>   I sing the sweets I know, the charms I feel,
>   My morning incense, and my evening meal--
>   The sweets of Hasty Pudding. Come, dear bowl,
>   Glide o'er my palate, and inspire my soul.
>   The milk beside thee, smoking from the kine,
>   Its substance mingled, married in with thine,
>   Shall cool and temper thy superior heat,
>   And save the pains of blowing while I eat.
>    
>   --Joel Barlow, "The Hasty Pudding"
>    
>   Clearly, hasty pudding should be the next big thing.
>    
>   Cheers,
>    
>   Steve
>
>   On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 4:27 AM, Carole Fabricant
>   <cf7516 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>     Hi folks,
>      
>     I've been meaning to send an email out for the
>     past several weeks but have been overwhelmed with
>     other stuff.  I still am but did want to take out
>     a moment to let you know that (tantara) there WILL
>     be a coffee-house on campus starting in the fall
>     quarter.  It will be a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf
>     outlet.  Over the past weeks I've been in phone
>     contact with Cheryl Garner, the new Director of
>     Dining Services, and she assures me that it's
>     slated to open no later than the end of September
>     (though she's hoping for an opening earlier,
>     around Sept. 10).  Mind you, my last conversation
>     with her predated the latest round of financial
>     threats by our Great Governator (especially aimed
>     at matters related to education) following the
>     defeat of his budgetary proposals.  But it sounds
>     like the coffee-house is pretty much a done deal
>     and that they'll be working on it all summer.
>      
>     The good news is that it's been relocated to a
>     much better (i.e., larger) venue (a building that
>     stands by itself in the Hub) than the one
>     originally planned (the cramped space that was
>     once used as the Printing and Repro Office), and
>     that it will remain open until late into the
>     evening.  I spoke to Ms. Garner about the need
>     for a proper setting and ambience (which includes
>     the right kind of seating, lighting, and music). 
>     She told me there will be some comfortable
>     (couch-like) seating and that the idea is to
>     have two separate 'environments', each with
>     different features -- one for undergraduates
>     (wanting a place to study, check out YouTube and
>     play with their high-tech gadgets, etc.) and the
>     other for us (ahem) older folks, interested in a
>     place to stretch out and indulge our caffeine
>     habit while quietly reading a
>     book or conversing with friends and
>     colleagues.  In theory that sounds pretty good
>     -- but we're all well aware of the often yawning
>     gap between theory and practice so I remain more
>     than a little skeptical about how all this will
>     work out. I guess we'll just have to wait and
>     see. 
>      
>     I made a few other suggestions -- about the need
>     for EDIBLE pastries and sandwiches, for an oven to
>     heat stuff up in, and for the sale of the New
>     York Times on a daily basis (having to read a rag
>     sheet like the Riverside Enterprise or, these
>     days, even the LA Times doesn't exactly enhance
>     one's coffee-house experience).  I also stressed
>     the need for real as well as paper cups
>     (definitely more civilized --  and even makes the
>     coffee taste better).  If you have any additional
>     suggestions or ideas, do let me know and I'll pass
>     them along to Garner. 
>      
>     Not that she'll necessary be responsive to them --
>     this whole venture is being run by corporate and
>     marketing types for whom a coffee-house is simply
>     a source of profit (or a place to be closed if
>     unprofitable) and not, as I and I hope all of you
>     view it, an essential campus 'institution'
>     that functions as a complement and extension of
>     the classroom and lecture hall.  So I'm really
>     hoping all of you will make a point of patronizing
>     the coffee-house once it opens, even if you don't
>     drink coffee (it will of course also offer tea and
>     other beverages), and that you spread the word to
>     friends and acquaintances in other departments. 
>     It's absolutely mindboggling that a campus of
>     17,000 students has gone this long without a
>     coffee-house (and without much of anything else,
>     as far as I can tell -- no pub, no faculty club,
>     the list is endless), and we should do what we can
>     to support its existence once it does open.
>      
>     Just a quick postscript here:  Because the
>     coffee-house is part of a corporate chain there's
>     unfortunately no possibility of naming it after
>     Lindon, as I'd suggested in my last email.  What
>     planet was I on when I was envisioning
>     a coffee-house that would be a unique and
>     individual place, a kind of funky venue that
>     would allow for personal touches like that?! 
>     I'm hoping (and assuming) that during the past
>     weeks of my sabbatical, members of the department
>     have come up with other ways of paying tribute to
>     Lindon's memory.
>      
>     A parting thought:  "Ah, how sweet the coffee
>     tastes,/More delicious than a thousand
>     kisses,/Mellower than muscatel wine./Coffee,
>     coffee I must have,/And if someone wishes to give
>     me pleasure,/Ah, then pour me out some coffee!" 
>     (J.S. Bach, "The Coffee Cantata")
>      
>     Cheers,
>     Carole
>      
>