coffee coffee coffee the most perfect drug...

How many times have you done the same thing day after day after day, and just not wanted to get up and do it all again, but then you drank the magic potion, of coffee and decided that it was all worth it?  Can you hear my music, its either love potion number nine... or its Veronica by Elvis Costello, or its just the Coffee House channel on Serius Sat Radio...   I know some of you, don't drink coffee, and that is great, you can drink something else, tea, water those things are great too, and very similar to coffee, except, well for the color and the smell and the feeling of caffeine rushing through your veins and then to your brain giving you the feeling that you could probably bike the empire state building!  Now you know I have had my coffee today, because I can talk on any good day, but give me a cup of coffee and I am motivational speaker!  I am a Happy CAMPER, I am halarious-- and I can clean house all day, and write and work and do art, and sell you stuff-- oh how the day is good--, almost as good as carrot juice, but that is another story-- today I have to blog about my friend, and love-- COFFEE, that I dont even mind -- if other people love it, its the love we share.....     To be sure-- I am a coffee snob, I admit it, I don't just fiend for coffee and settle for instant Sanka with the freeze dried milk and sweeteners...not for me!  I don't even like--the majority of coffee houses, including the successful Starbucks.  I grew up in Berkeley, and we have PEETS coffee!  Peet taught the Starbucks guy, what coffee was, and how to do it! but he's strayed since.  When I moved from Berkeley to Marin, it was like coffee heaven, you might not think that three or four different types of coffee houses could exist ron the same street, but they do.  Loyal customers will continue to shop where they like the best its about--atmosphere and taste. I remember a great place in Mill Valley and in San Anselmo, called the Coffee Roaster's, it was a beautifully build store, with JUST COFFEE BEANS, no food what so ever! NONE!  They just sold every kind of bean imaginable--for prices that reflected the quality and the time it took to get it there. Carbon footprints were no object!  You just bought a cup of coffee or beans thats it, if you were hungry-- go somewhere else!  BUT, They had this quaint outside patio hidden just out back , with chairs and tables and it looked like a cobble stone road anywhere in paradise, and people sat silently and drank coffee and literally did not have any outside disruptions.  It was so relaxing, no loud music, no distracting displays, no gaudy wall murals depicting how great they were, just ivy and trees.  Nothing was more intriguing to me than this, how does this work, a quiet coffee house....   You cant find that coffee here in Redding, your lucky to have good coffee at all!  I search for it on days like today, because, well, I get so tired of the same old dishes, laundry and dirt, I cant do it one more day! without a little help from my friend-- coffee.   Thankfully, I am a Lutheran, and unabashed coffee lover and people lover too!  You might know that Lutheran World Relief, was the funding to create awareness of coffee growing and selling, and between--pubic awareness, and human rights advocates-- they-made it a crime to use children as young as six- as coffee pickers, or  "slave children" as farm workers.  Thank to this group of concerned people, awareness has almost stopped a world market, of exploiting children for pennies a day on big bucks coffee.  Out of this came, "FAIR TRADE COFFEE" and it means that, people will be paid a fair wage, work a fair amount of hours, and not one underage child will be used.  In many places such as Columbia, children are the only hope of drug addicted parents, and the beans are not just for-- coffee drinks, they are breakfast lunch and dinner.  Literally roasted on a BBQ daily, and then ground and eaten, from stolen the beans pocketed by the farm-workers on their shift.  They have no food, they eat coffee beans.  Not unlike the cocaine leaves they chew...AHEM, yea!  This is a real drug folks, and it begins to dawn on you when you don't have it.  Can you imagine if they outlawed it?  There would be no revolution, we'd all be home with a headache, and too dull to get up!  Entire companies would go out of business, and I am guessing the New York alone would have to make a world time change to get up after California....dont ask..   That's enough ruin any coffee buzz...which makes me worry?  Is coffee such a powerful drug that one day, science will outlaw it?  Its a commodity, traded on the open market, the biggest in the world, and its multi- million dollar pull makes it fodder for drug lords all over the place.  Will it eventually go onto the list of the bad drugs because of the people it supports?  Not likely as long as the good American business people keep their hands in every ones pockets,...basically, we help them make this product and we have some input in the way they grow the most popular beans,  Shade grown, means less water, organic means no pesticides, fair trade, these are terms you must agree too, or our little brown potion will be outlaw juice.   LOVE potion number 1 : COFFEE! KEEP IT LEGAL, stay informed,  SOON I am opening my own  coffee house, please come on in and enjoy!  Please search and find your favorite coffee and enjoy the day!   Yes I am going to open my own coffee house, with real good coffee!~  the PEETS way, and with a lot of perky extras!!   Donations excepted, stock on sale today-- send payment to: Pandawishes, c/o Liz  Masloff  2284 Saturn Skyway Redding CA 96002     LOVE YOU   LIZ         Thank You From Panda Publishing http://artislifeupgraded.blogspot.com/