UWP Lecturers Coffee-house Update

Sat May 30 01:50:25 PDT 2009

Yes, but you can only measure out your life in coffee spoons. Cheers, Steve

On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 11:23 PM, Deborah Willis <deborah.willis at ucr.edu>wrote:

> 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
> >
> >
>
>

-- 
Steven Gould Axelrod
President, The Robert Lowell Society
Co-editor, The New Anthology of American Poetry, Vols. 1-3
Professor of English
University of California
Riverside, CA 92521
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