Photo via The U.S. National Archives

Hi, I’m Stacey, and I’m a single twenty-something who has been living abroad for the past six years. I can hear you now. Wow, you say, six years! You’ve been travelling for six years!? That’s so amazing, you say. I’m so jealous. I see you there, reading this in a sneaky hidden tab in your browser window while you should be working, beginning to daydream about this idyllic life. Life abroad. The overseas adventure. You know the one – waking up each morning in a hotel overlooking the Seine, in a king-size bed with crisp white sheets, wandering downstairs for an espresso at 10am, served by a handsome man who greets you by name and winks as he hands you your change.

I love the romantic idea you have of life abroad. It’s what motivates you to quit that boring job, to buy that plane ticket, to pack your bags, and to GO. When you’re daydreaming from behind your computer screen, you don’t want the truth. The truth is this. Some days, i am your mirror image, bleakly staring into the computer screen wishing my workday was over. The truth is that this morning I hit the snooze button eight times before prying myself out of the single bed with the broken springs that barely fits in my exorbitantly expensive room in a dingy flat that I share with an eccentric Venezuelan ESOL student called Hector. The truth is that I am currently staring back at you into that computer screen, but instead of daydreaming about overseas adventures, I’m daydreaming about tomorrow’s lunch, which, as tomorrow is payday, is guaranteed to be an improvement on today’s stale bread and nutella ‘sandwich’.

This is life abroad, and it is everything you hope it will be and more.

You see, there is a difference between living abroad and going on holiday. When you’re on holiday, you’re escaping reality. Money is high, hotels are nice, you have saved up enough cash to be served each meal, and your cell phone is most certainly off.

Now don’t get me wrong here. I’m making it sound like living abroad is a nightmare, but it’s not. It is an amazing, life-changing experience.

It’s not a holiday, it’s life.

Life, with all of its ups and downs, hiccups and hilarity, and when it’s lived in a culture completely different from your own there are added challenges. And unexpected joys. This life requires sacrifices, but is punctuated with moments and experiences and beauty and relationships that take your breath away, instances that make you stop and close your eyes and whisper ‘thank you,’ knowing that you’ve just lived a moment that is now painted indelibly on the canvas of your memory. You’ll admire the masterpiece for the rest of your days, marvelling at how dull and blank it might have been, had you not chased that daydream of life abroad. It may not always be glamorous, but I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt: it’s worth it.

Photo: Hamed Saber

A couple years ago a group of christian families got together and felt they needed to walk out the things they believed, instead of just talking about it. So they spent time every month getting together and praying. Praying led to action. Soon one of those actions was to bring a hundred dollars or more per family and pool it up. From there they looked for those who needed help. Time and time again they helped out people who needed rent, car payments, groceries, etc. All the while they remained completely anonymous.

As the months rolled on an idea was birthed. That idea was Beacon Hill. Within months Beacon Hill was a reality. (One of the amazing parts of this story is the fact that they never looked for property. They had an investor approach them, out of the blue.) Soon they were accepting applicants to come and shortly after, those accepted were moving in. Beacon Hill had started. Homeless women and children were coming in off the streets and being rescued from sleeping in their cars.

These women and children are being shown love and taught life skills they need. They are being pointed to the right community resources and helped back on their feet. In their first year, Beacon Hill had a greater than 75% success rate.

I believe a lot of people think it’s okay to live off the system or indefinitely accept assistance the government can provide, as though entitled to the help. While the programs the government provides are beneficial they are only meant to be temporary (in my opinion). Beacon Hill realized they were only enabling their tenants to be dependent on those systems.

So, for Beacon Hill 2012 brings changes to how they provide assistance. As the year progresses they will take their tenants from a place of receiving assistance from these programs, which breed dependency and only make it harder and harder to survive, to one of complete independence. Freedom in the true sense of the word.

As I talked with one of the founders I was amazed to find out Beacon Hill is an independently funded program. It receives NO assistance or funding from the government. They maintain the program on money given to them by businesses or individual people who want to help. Because of this they are not limited to what they can teach or how they can teach it.

I know I’ve only touched the surface of what Beacon Hill is and what it offers, but the main point is this: a group of families got together and decided that they were no longer going to just talk about what they believed in. They put action to that belief even when they felt they were in over their heads and doing something way out of their league. They stepped out and are participating in an adventure that is creatively and indefinitely changing the city of Anchorage, Alaska; and more importantly the lives of the women and children they help.

Photo: Mr. Kris

If I ever win the lottery, the very first thing I’m doing is buying an international iPhone and then calling my wife’s job from it. I will ask her to nicely pack her things and tell the powers that be how she will not be returning tomorrow or the next day or the next day or ever. I would then rent 6 limos and pay 6 friends to ride in them to the lottery office. This will deter news cameras while I roll in the back lot with my Toyota Echo. I will then collect my winnings, buy 3 first-class, one-way tickets to Naples, Italy and call my dad. My dad is very understanding and would ask the minimal amount of questions.

On the way to the airport, I will call a little bed ‘n breakfast in Conca De Marini named Amalfi Residence and book their ‘sunflower suite’ for 1 month. I will tell the owner, Luigi, to secure us a limousine ride from Naples.

Of course my in-laws and immediate family will be a little worried and I will tell them to not worry because when I return I will pay off all their mortgages. And I will explain it all to them later.

When my wife and son and I get to Italy we will do no work. No work at all. We will dream up fantastic day trips and taste all the different meats from local shops. We will only buy what we need for the day and we will only buy from the people in our neighborhood. We will take time to savor. We will take time to drink and time to laugh. We will look at our son and each other as rare gifts. Gifts not everyone can enjoy. We will go home at 1 for siesta and take a nap after a meal. We will get a tan and lose the bags under our eyes. We will learn the language and the culture and we will appreciate it with infinite respect. We will make friends with our neighbors and respect their property as ours. We will never litter or lose regard for even the sidewalks as they are a part of our lives and our lives are to be lived with robust adventure and desire for flavorful fellowship. We will never get take-out or use a drive thru. We will never use a microwave. We will sit. We will enjoy. We won’t be hell-bent on safety. We will watch others smoke next to us in a restaurant. We will not complain or tell them to stop because we would not want them to tell us to stop doing something we enjoyed.

We will do that for a month. Then we’ll return home and hook up all the details of our new-found fortune. We will pay off our parents’ debts and our siblings’ debts. We will teach ways to properly handle money. We will put enough away so we never have to worry again and put the rest toward giving.

I wasn’t a tourist or even a visitor. I was a resident. I lived there. It becomes a subjective experience. It’s mine. I invested and ingested Tokyo. I began to realize I brought baggage I didn’t intend to and began to pick up some new baggage along the way. Identity issues. There is constant learning and becoming. It’s not like taking a class where learning is compartmentalized. I was in learning mode all the time, learning about self. Live there and it becomes your life. When you have to deal with your own issues a place becomes home. That may conjure up all sorts of gushy happy feelings of home cookin’ but take another look. There is some curdling milk in the fridge and dishes in the sink.

Less like wanderlust more like marriage. Visiting for one to two years? Fine, the honeymoon, its magic. After the honeymoon it gets critical, then balance comes, hopefully, and you are at peace with it. If nothing else it is real not romantic. It’s much like the difference between the patriotic feelings when singing the national anthem and going to war. Most people travel to get away, from it all, including themselves. Although place becomes a part of you by living there, you do become someone else through the experience, I know that it is not possible to get away from your self.

I cannot speak of living abroad in general terms or clever anecdotes or leisure like a travel book. It would seem academic, general, quaint but wrong for me to do so. I wasn’t a tourist or even a visitor. I lived there. I could give you the two cent tour but I lived there. I didn’t live in Tokyo. I lived in Suginami ward of Tokyo. Not only that, I lived in between Asagaya, a writer’s haven, and Koenji, the birthplace of punk in Tokyo and home to a hundred used clothing stores. It’s personal. Stuff happened there, to me. I lived there.

Photo via Brooklyn Museum

via State Library and Archives of Florida (flickr.com/photos/floridamemory/3983331817)

I believe in the power of a good mission statement to help a person or group to focus on what’s really important to them. But we all know most mission statements are completely worthless. Nancy Lublin of Fast Company wrote about this a couple years ago in an article called, ‘How to Write a Mission Statement That Isn’t Dumb.’

Sometimes defining your mission can wreck your whole view of how you currently live your life and force you to rebuild your decision-making process from scratch. Like a good massage, it hurts while it’s happening but you’ll feel great when it’s over. I highly recommend checking out the article and taking Ms. Lublin’s advice.

But we have to tackle vision statements, too. Most of those are also dumb. And the right vision statement can be just as explosive as the right mission statement, maybe even more so. Writing a vision statement involves imagining the future you want and putting it into words. And Ari Weinzweig will you tell you exactly how to do that in his article, ’8 Steps to Creating a Great Vision.’

Here’s what I came away with for OCSPLORA’s mission after reading those articles.

There are three main things I am attempting with OCSPLORA: one, to tell fantastic stories (99 new stories each year, at least one gaining international recognition each month); two, to connect creative revolutionaries with people and ideas that resonate (99 positive responses each week from our audience); and three, to point out opportunities for adventure, creativity and generosity (99 messages each quarter from people who took action based on opportunities we reported).

What do you think? Let me know your thoughts on those two articles, mission and vision statements in general, your mission and vision for life or OCSPLORA’s mission (and help us meet the goal for part two).

Photo by Ting W. Chang ( flickr.com/photos/ssdctw/2260263714/ )

Exotic food. Food for the soul? A creative’s daily bread? Exotic foods might be hard to find in this global food market. Is anything rare, unusual, fresh? What are the things that are hard to find for creatives that they need and would seem exotic or strange to others? A lot of Americans don’t like exotic foods. They find comfort in the predictable. My father still eats the same crappy white bread he did when I was a kid, as stale as it is.

My wife keeps a stash of ‘exotic/special’ Japanese foods in the closet for when she gets the craving. My daughter’s favorite snack is dried salted small fish which makes most people gag just thinking about it. Is it an exotic food? Not in Japan. It’s a matter of perspective. To the people near us they may not be exotic but to those far off whether in geographical distance or world view they may be. What are the cravings of creatives? What ‘exotic foods’ could we or do we keep on hand or go and buy when we need a design fix? For me it is thrift store finds and lately tobacco barn viewings.

In our culture of culture vultures we have a bad habit of consuming art, culture and design so fast it creates an environment where we tend not to enjoy it. Our consumerism has spilled over into the things we love. Instead of adopting a Slow Food Movement attitude we just want more. The Romans loved eating so much they would eat for hours, then purge themselves and continue eating while reclining in the triclinium. Are we much different? Do we binge and purge on exotic food for creatives instead of simply partaking?

I feel like I am constantly being sucked in by the current of culture around me. I have this urge to consume and gorge myself. When I feel that way I try to slow it down and partake of one of my ‘exotic foods’. This is why I like building things. It’s different than flipping through a magazine, surfing TV channels or websites. Building is in your face. It’s deliberate. There are no rabbit holes or webs of distraction. It involves all the senses. Digital media has taken on many of the characteristics of the fast food industry. Craft is in and it is one of my exotic foods.

‘Small Iced Mocha Biancha!’ The appeal of ‘exotic food’ should not be in the freshness or just to be unique or contrary. On the contrary it should be about the lasting inherent qualities they possess. What are your ‘exotic foods’, the foods that stir you from stagnation? I believe it is our duty to find those real and savory morsels that enrich our lives, enjoy them and share them as a genuine extension of ourselves. In this way they become active and change our world with meaning. Meaning? There’s an exotic food.

'Harvest Nation Sculpture Project' on Terra Furna Public Art

The guys over at Terra Furna Public Art posted on their site back in May of last year about a very cool sculpture project they were working on.

The concept comes from the ancient text “They shall forge their swords into ploughshares”. Our thought is that Canada has been a nation of peacekeepers for decades, and our influence has had a significant part in many nations’ histories. From Korea to Bosnia to the more recent Afghanistan, our soldiers can be found doing their best to encourage the world to put down their arms.

Our idea was to get our hands on a Howitzer gun barrel, or tank barrel, and forge that into a plough as a modern interpretation of the text. Our idea has developed into a larger, more ambitious idea with the inclusion of other elements that reinforce the message of peacekeeping.

The Harvest Nation Sculpture Project on terrafurna.com. Lots more photos.

via State Library of Queensland, Australia

… where the theme is Exotic Foods here on OCSPLORA.com.

Coloured illustrations of meat and poultry piled onto elaborate silver serving stands, 1901

Shot at a playground in New York City by Eric Corpus.

Shot by Mark Hill outside a church in western Massachusetts. ‘Which is the life part and which is the edge? Depends on your perspective. Are they both fighting for their lives? Or living on the edge of each other in harmony?’

'James Cameron: Before Avatar ... a curious boy' on TED.com

If you are into big films, sci-fi stories, oceanography, or biographies of creative people, check out this TED Talk. James Cameron talks about growing up, making films, changing career tracks mid-life, deep ocean exploration, leadership, and of course, Avatar.

James Cameron: Before Avatar … a curious boy

‘Congo Rebel: Looking a killer in the eyes’. Shot in Goma, Congo (DRC) by Steve Evans.

Shot in Iceland by Kalina Cloutier.

'Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing creativity', TED.com

Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing creativity

‘An adventure is defined as an exciting or unusual experience; it may also be a bold, usually risky undertaking, with an uncertain outcome. The term is often used to refer to activities with some potential for physical danger, such as skydiving, mountain climbing and or participating in extreme sports. The term also broadly refers to any enterprise that is potentially fraught with physical, financial or psychological risk, such as a business venture, a love affair, or other major life undertakings.’
(‘Adventure’, Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

When I think adventure, I think khaki. I think Indiana Jones. I think old double prop sea planes.

But when I try to define it, I think of adventure as what happens to you when you pursue a course of action that puts you at risk, especially when it is outside the normal routine of your everyday life. I don’t just mean physical risk. I mean the risk of embarrassment, the risk of getting dirty, the risk of being laughed at, the risk of being stranded, the risk of creating an awkward situation, the risk of failure, the risk of rejection.

Last year, I made it one of my goals to go on a personal adventure once a month. Go mountain bike trails I haven’t biked before, or walk around part of the city I’m not familiar with, or rescue my wife from an evil voodoo priest who is about to pull her still-beating heart out of her chest.

I haven’t made that a goal this year, but having worked that philosophy into my life a little, I was more quick to say yes, or click yes, to the opportunity to go see an old friend who I really don’t know all that well, in a city I’ve never been to, in a country who may not send a plane for me if the entire civilization breaks down around me, by a train I’m not familiar with, for an amount of money that seems ridiculously prohibitive, without my wife who keeps me from doing things like forgetting my immigration form on the train or arriving at the customs line three minutes before they close it.

And – if you are good at guessing endings then you already know – it was epic.

Allen Gathman, flickr.com/photos/agathman/4895653801/

I was in my chiropractor’s chiropracting room not long ago and he was telling me about his finances. I like to think my wife and I have a very special relationship with our chiropractor, but I’ve known him long enough, and sat in his waiting room enough time, to know most of his patients feel this way.

He is that rare breed of modern healthcare worker who you could easily see meeting up with at the local tavern at the end of the day to shoot the breeze over a few beers before heading home to your farm or blacksmithery for the night. You know, the old country doctors who went around to people’s homes and could prescribe remedies for  everything from arthritis to indigestion. And I’m pretty sure he would prescribe remedies for both of those, too, if you asked him.

He was telling me how much he pays in school loans every year, how it was enough to pay a mortgage or his kid’s college fund, and how he’ll be working for the next twenty years just to be free of that burden and actually keep the money he makes. I said, ‘Just like indentured servitude.’ He replied, ‘Yeah, it is. Exactly like indentured servitude.’

Indentured servitude refers to the historical practice of contracting to work for a fixed period of time, typically three to seven years, in exchange for transportation, food, clothing, lodging and other necessities during the term of indenture. Wikipedia

Europeans were so eager to get to America, the land of possibility, they were willing to trade in years of their lives to get there, just for the chance at a better future than the one they saw for themselves in their homelands.

For Americans, the ticket to the promised land is now a college degree, usually more than one. Now it is an education which represents the greatest opportunity and the greatest threat to our futures. Without a college degree we have only waiting tables, answering phones, or cleaning bathrooms to look forward to for the rest of our days. With a college degree, we have the chance to do something we love, to make great money, to be successful.

My chiropractor loves his job. He is incredibly passionate about helping people live better, healthier lives and he is convinced chiropractic is the best way he can do that. He could probably never have become a chiropractor without taking those loans, so for him mortgaging away part of his future income on doing something that mattered made sense. It made sense again when he had to get a loan to start his own practice, which added more debt to his family’s plate. For him it was worth it to take his future into his own hands.

What about you? Is it worth it to get a bachelor’s or master’s degree if it means paying it off for the next ten years?

Feel free to quote that.

Or put it on a t-shirt.

First off, Grain & Gram is beautiful. The site design, the layout, the photography. Even if you’re not interested in the articles, check it out and just appreciate the talent and discipline that went into the finished look and feel of the site.

Second, I think the creators of Grain & Gram have tapped into a really powerful current of thought, feeling, and desire that runs under the surface of twentysomething (and older… and younger) men. Despite the almost universal move away from manual labor and away from hands-on craftsmanship, men, or at least the guys I know, love an excuse to work with their hands, and to learn the skills and tools used in making real things in the real world.

We were interested in showcasing and writing about guys who were doing great old world things with purpose and quality, in an age where things are growing increasingly digital and standardized. (Furfur Rusland)

Grain & Gram: The New Gentleman’s Journal

John Hardy: My green school dream

When you first see or hear about Kickstarter, your immediate reaction is, ‘That’s so cool!’ Your second reaction, once you find out how they make their money – by taking 5% off the top of every donation – is, ‘How did I not think of that?’ And who knows, maybe you did. But it’s not just the idea – a website to help people raise funds for their creative projects – that makes Kickstarter great. The whole thing has been amazingly well executed.

And that includes their ‘2011: The Year in Kickstarter,’ which is a beautifully designed web page linking to several blog posts which celebrate and document Kickstarter’s achievements in 2011. I especially like the Replacing the “N-word” with “Robot” in Huck Finn video, the first one on the 2011: The Videos blog post.

2011: The Year in Kickstarter

If you have a moniker, it’s thanks to a small group of travelers in Ireland known, logically enough, as Travelers. They are like the people called Romani elsewhere in Europe and North America (and commonly known as Gypsies), keeping to themselves, living in vans, moving from place to place, and living on odd jobs and trades such as barn painting and selling linoleum. But the Irish Travelers are Irish.

Like the Romani, Irish Travelers have their own secret language or cant. Theirs is called Gammon or Shelta. Its origins are uncertain and disputed, but to some degree it derives from the Irish language, which belongs to the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family. From Irish ainm developed Shelta munik, meaning “name,” and somehow speakers of English managed to decipher that word and adopt it as moniker. It had spread to London as an English slang word for “name” by 1851.

In Ireland’s present-day population of three and a half million, there are about 20,000 Travelers. A recent estimate is that 6,000 of them speak Shelta. That language, along with the Irish Travelers who speak it, has spread to the rest of the British Isles, where it is spoken by an additional 30,000, and to the United States, where there are an estimated 50,000 speakers of Shelta.

Here is the first line of the Lord’s Prayer translated into a modern version of Shelta: “Our gathra, who cradgies in the manyak-norch, we turry kerrath about your moniker.”

“moniker.” The World in So Many Words. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1999. Answers.com 22 Jul. 2009. http://www.answers.com/topic/moniker

OCSPLORA (ox-PLOR-a) began at Scatterseed Media Lab and continues as Scatterseed’s flagship project.

The goal is to connect creative revolutionaries with the people, stories, and ideas of the creative revolution. What’s the creative revolution? It’s a an idea that represents a movement away from comfort, consumerism, and selfishness towards adventure, creativity, and generosity.

Creative revolutionaries are changing the world, in big and small ways, for the better. We want to be a part of that movement and we want to show you what it looks like.

Claudio Matsuoka (flickr.com/photos/cmatsuoka/3518394738/)

The Right Camera

I am a fan of Canon SLR cameras. I like their controls and the fact they can use virtually any manufacturer’s lenses including Nikon. Some people like Nikon’s controls better and feel more comfortable with them. The two companies compete so heavily there are practically head-to-head matches in all equipment. I’ll focus on Canon where I have more experience and will only reference Nikon equivalents occasionally.

My recommendation for anyone interested in buying a digital SLR (single-lens reflex) camera for the first time is to go with the Canon EOS Rebel XSi (450D) body for around $560. If you are interested in Nikon, the equivalent camera body is the D3000. The camera body is basically a small computer and will become obsolete roughly as fast. Spend your money on timeless lens technology, not rapidly evolving electronic technology.

The 450D used to be the base model within Canon’s digital SLR lineup. They have now added a couple models that are priced below the 450D as entry level options which have had some of their performance compromised for the sake of a lower price. For example, the Rebel XS (1000D) has an auto focus that is slower than the 450D. This means a noticeably higher number of action shots come out blurry.

As you move up through the Canon SLR lineup, there isn’t a major jump in quality or performance until you get to the baseline full frame camera, the Canon EOS 5D Mark II which currently costs $2,500. Unless you become a professional photographer there is no need for a better camera than the 450D.

The Right Lens(es)

The next decision you need to make, and the biggest one of all, is what lens or lenses you want to use. Most professional or serious amateur photographers use more than one lens because it is not possible for one lens to cover all your needs without making compromises in quality. However, there is value in the convenience and simplicity of using a single lens so there are options that try to cover all of the focal ranges the average person would want in a single lens.

No one can tell you which option is better: the convenience of a single lens or the quality of multiple lenses. That is something you have to think about and decide for yourself. Obviously, if you decide to go with multiple lenses you don’t need to buy them all at once. You can start with a general purpose lens and then add lenses as you feel the need for additional functionality. A general purpose and telephoto lens will cover 95% of the photography you are likely to want to do.

Here’s an absolutely fantastic primer on lens selection. Read through all the articles in the first section of the page, then refer to the articles in the bottom section as you consider each additional lens purchase. I agree very strongly with the author’s recommendation to add a UV lens filter and hood to every lens. Compared to the cost of your camera and lens, they are not very expensive. They improve the quality of your pictures and MOST importantly they protect your expensive lens from damage. Use both!

The Do-It-All Lens

Referred to by serious photographers as a ‘travel’ lens, the Canon EF-S 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 IS Lens is for people who really value the convenience of a huge zoom range without having to carry and change multiple lenses. This is a high quality Canon lens, but the necessary compromises in image quality have been made in order to cram so much functionality into a single lens. For many the convenience is worth it. Check out the sample photos and decide for yourself. The Nikon equivalent lens is the AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR II.

A General Purpose Lens

If you are willing to use more than one lens to cover the same focal range to achieve much higher image quality, then the Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM Lens is the one for you. What should jump out at you first is the aperture of 2.8. This means you will be able to hand-hold this lens and use natural lighting in the same conditions where other people with lesser lenses will need to get a tripod, use a flash, or just deal with blurry pictures. For the focal range it covers, this lens will allow you to capture pictures that everyone else misses because they couldn’t get enough light.

A Telephoto Lens

As you may notice, the general purpose lens above stops at 55mm which is still pretty wide and will not be able to ‘reach out and touch’ subjects that are far away. For that you’ll need a telephoto lens with a longer focal length, depending on how far away your subject is. This is where the world of lenses gets very large and very expensive. Generally around 200mm is considered the limit of useful telephoto photography without getting into equipment setups that are basically horizontal telescopes and cost upwards of $15,000.

To cover the upper middle focal ranges where your general lens leaves off, there is no better lens than the Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS USM. It is just as ‘fast’ (captures just as much light) as the general purpose lens but has increased focal length to reach out and touch distant objects, along with the image stabilization required to do so without a tripod. BUT, as you will quickly notice it is a very expensive lens at $1,800. (And we haven’t even gotten into the large telephoto lenses that you see on the side of football games yet.)

Fortunately, Canon recognizes that while this focal range is an important one, the price is out of reach for many people. So they actually created this lens as the top of a line of four lenses that cover the same focal range, each with increasing light sensitivity and image stabilization. Basically, all four lenses cover the 70-200mm range and represent a matrix of two variables, 2.8 or 4.0 aperture, and image stabilization or no image stabilization. The top of the line lens reviewed above costs $1,800 and the base line version with 4.0 aperture and no image stabilization costs $630. So you have quite a range to work with to dial in your budget.

In the review above, the author talks about the tradeoffs between each lens option and how to find the best combination of features to fit your budget. There are also dedicated reviews for each of the four lenses: the EF 70-200mm f/4.0 L USM Lens, the EF 70-200mm f/4.0 L IS USM Lens, the EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L USM Lens, and the aforementioned EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS USM Lens.

Resources

The single most valuable website I have found for Canon equipment reviews and insight is The-Digital-Picture.com. There are very thorough reviews of virtually every piece of camera equipment Canon makes along with galleries of great photos taken with each piece of equipment that also serve as creative inspiration.

The-Digital-Picture.com serves as a sales link for B&H Photo Video, which is one of the best retailers in the world. They have an amazing website with phenomenal selection, product information, reviews, and even demo videos for many of their products. They will rarely be the absolute lowest priced vendor, but their prices are reasonable and their service the best there is. There are a lot of skanky vendors out there and camera equipment is one of their favorite subjects on which to prey. Stick to the reputable vendors like B&H Photo Video or Adorama Camera.

Like every other artistic pursuit, many people believe that you cannot learn photography from a book. While I agree this is true fundamentally, books can provide useful reference and inspiration. Listed below are the two best photography books available. Together these two form a library that covers 95% of what you would ever need to know about photography.

‘Photography’ 10th Edition, by Barbara London, Jim Stone, and John Upton is considered the ultimate photography bible. If you REALLY want to understand how cameras work and what all the technical jargon means and why it’s important, this is the ultimate reference book. Because it is used as a textbook in photography classes, it’s pretty expensive. But you can find older versions like the 9th Edition used on Amazon for considerably less than the newest release.

‘Understanding Exposure’ by Bryan Peterson is considered the ultimate book on developing your photographic style through an understanding of the most important element of photography: light. The book assumes you already know the basics of photography and are looking to take your skills to the next level. It is considerably less expensive than ‘Photography’ and, depending on your previous photography experience you may get more out of it.

Steve Evans (flickr.com/photos/babasteve/3618157129/)

I remember my first walk through the old city of Jerusalem.  My body was jet-lagged, walking with two of my best friends.  We started going down famed King David Street, and before long it was a scene I had never seen before.  The streets were so narrow and crowded that you had to squeeze your way through.  The men were yelling loudly in Arabic, and some of the women were fully veiled in dark black.  Lining the streets as far as the eye could see were small garage shops selling wooden camels, hookahs, and fancy chess boards.  For the record, camels do not live anywhere around Jerusalem.

The second the shopkeepers realized that three Americans were walking towards them, we heard a constant echo of a broken English, “Hello, hello, shopping?  Shopping?  English, shopping?  Hello?”   After about twenty minutes wandering lost through this new chaos we arrived at a bright green door that led to a clearing.  It seemed like the best way out and we were ready to leave the claustrophobic streets behind.  When we were just a few feet away from walking through the door, we were turned away by two confused armed guards yelling harshly at us in Arabic and pointing their guns up in the air.

This was not what I imagined when I first decided to take a six month pilgrimage to the Holy City.  We were made to turn around and head back through the dense sprawl.  We were tired, confused, and disorientated.  Finally, a shop keeper came up to us speaking perfect English.  We figured he would explain where we were, so we decided to enter his shop.  Immediately he turned to a boy sitting on the street and he snapped his fingers at him. The boy got up and ran down the street.  The shopkeeper invited us into his shop, telling us that all green doors were entrances to the Holy Temple Mount, which in 2001, were only open to Muslims.

Within a minute that small boy was back with a tray of steaming tea.  The man quickly brought out four folding chairs and passed us each a steaming porcelain cup.  It was a Moroccan mint tea with about as much sugar as water can dissolve.  It was the first moment in the past half hour of confusion that felt normal.  We sat there for ten minutes sipping our tea and talking about the Holy City.  I started to think to myself that maybe living in Jerusalem would not be such a bad thing, but the story ends with us getting up to leave without buying anything, which turned the nice shopkeeper into a mad shopkeeper.  He started to yell what I assumed was profanity at us in Arabic, and off we were again through the narrow streets to find our way back to our school.

I do proudly say though that by the end of our six months living in those streets we considered ourselves masters of the area and could get to any point in the city without hesitation.  We also enjoyed countless cups of Moroccan tea with two shop keepers who became dear friends.  In the end, it was that first day’s mishaps that taught me an important life lesson.  Tea makes a good travel companion.

Fast forward 9 years and, yet again, tea played a pivotal role in my life.  I was sitting on a boat in the Beagle Channel off the port of Ushuaia, Argentina.  Ushuaia is on the island of Tierra Del Fuego, and it is the port that 90% of people heading to Antarctica travel through.  Yes, it is the furthest south city in the entire world.  As our small boat left the harbor, it passed huge cruise vessels that were about to embark to the cold southern continent.  They looked more like high-tech whaling ships than pleasure cruise boats.

Now, the entire time I was in Argentina I was hindered by my lack of Spanish.  Luckily for me my lovely wife is fluent and she did most of the conversing.   However, I was longing for real interaction.  Our guide and captain seemed like pleasant enough guys so I tried to make small chat, which did not seem to work too well, until they pulled out a thermos and started pouring hot water into a gourde with a metal straw.  I recognized that they were making real Mate the Argentinean way. I had read about Mate, the strongest of all tea which they were about to brew, but had never had the opportunity to taste it before. They saw my interest in it and offered me a sip.  We began to pass it back and forth, and started to talk.

Mate tastes like a hyper concentrate of a bunch of grass and twigs.  It generally grossed out the other members of the boat who tried it, but I was hooked on the insanely strong flavor.  I think that impressed the native Ushuaians.  It was here that I fully began to understand how one small beverage can connect people.  After two full weeks of travel, I finally felt like I belonged in that beautiful country.  It felt like the people there were happy I was there too.

Thinking back, my life is filled with other tea traveling memories, including drinking a steaming cup of Stash’s Licorice Spice Tea after spending a long day in the Icelandic back country.  Another was pouring a cup of Sleepy Time tea near the top of the world in Barrow, Alaska to help me fall asleep after spending a day being toured around by an Inuit guide.

I’ve also learned that it does not have to be an exotic location that makes you enjoy or remember a cup on your travels.  Just last week I brought a thermos full of raspberry herbal tea on an 8 mile pouring-rain hike through the woods around my home in Massachusetts.  Tea traveled just as well there as it did in Jerusalem.  Some lessons are hard to learn, but this one has been easy.  Tea is now always by my side.  It is a good, faithful, and memorable friend on all my travels around this world.

FEAR & FAILURE

Nothing incredible happens in your comfort zone. Trust me. For seven years, I commuted an hour each way to a barbershop. It was worth it because I was making great money, but I peaked four years in. Even after I hit the ceiling, I couldn’t leave the comfort. I mean, the thought of leaving a thick clientele I had spent years building is right on par with trading a jacuzzi for a shark tank. The more I sat in the jacuzzi, the more I realized this: nothing astounding happens in a jacuzzi (place sex joke here). A shark tank is dangerous. Danger excites the spirit and can absolutely reveal your ability! This is a great place to be. Scary, but great.

You have to manage fear. Fear is like a friend of a friend that shows up randomly to your cookout and feels strangely comfortable enough to invite all the worries you never wanted. It’s tough to calm down and realize that fear is the main problem. Once he leaves, a lot of the worries will follow him out. He’ll come back, but now you know how to deal with him. My biggest fear was failure. What if I start this thing, sink a bunch of money in it and it goes belly up? I would have to return to my job and explain what happened to each of my 200+ clients. No thanks. After I dissected that thought, I came up with this: If that’s the worst thing that can happen, who cares? I still have my health and the fact that my old job is still available is a huge plus. Anyone busting my chops for trying and failing is not a person who’s opinion I value anyway, so I let it rip.

You really have to look at failures as lessons. BOOM! I just dropped that sentence like it’s possible on the first try. It’s a paradigm shift. This is the single toughest concept to believe in. It can rattle around that cranium of yours, but getting it into your heart is tough stuff. However, doing this will change the way you look at the whole process. I convinced myself that every time I fail, I’ll chalk it up as real-world experience. I’m literally paying for my own education and it’s way cheaper than college. Now you are out of your comfort zone, managing your fears; it’s time to get busy.

VISION vs GOALS

Visions are dreams and goals are the means. Someone, put that on a t-shirt! I’m kidding, but it’s that important. You absolutely must have a vision! We all want to be our own boss and make our own schedule, but what’s your vision? For me it was to create a modern barbershop with an old-school sensibility. What’s yours? Make sure you dream a lot and add as much detail as you can. Write it all down and read it for a week. Share it only with people who know you well and are supportive. Sometimes our own families can be the greatest saboteurs. I mean, we are all human and it’s natural for humans to thrash an idea that’s unfamiliar.

Behind the vision should be your purpose. What is the fuel to your fire? What’s your purpose for opening said business, besides making money? For me, it was to work closer to home so I could spend more time with my wife and have more time for creativity. Write down the purpose under your vision. This little package of ideas will serve as the life-force throughout the process. It will be the only thing that gets you back on the road after a flat, and flat tires will happen. Here’s a few: frustration, hidden costs, screw-ups, permits, licenses, deadlines, spats with spouse/friends, self-doubt, and compromise. Take a breath here. Misunderstandings, broken glass, busted budgets, lost tools, late nights, early mornings, sleep deprivation, and nay-saying will happen. Every time you are up against these, your vision and purpose will remind you of your final destination. They can resolve and untangle the mess.

Time to set goals! Like I said, they’re the means; the road map. I wanted to open on January 1st and I signed the lease on my store front November 5th. I had two months to get the place built, painted, furnished and licensed. Also, I needed to line up some advertising, signage and utilities. I created a basic to-do list on a schedule. This is tricky.  For example, the floors need to be done before the chairs are delivered and the walls need to be painted before the floor is done. I don’t wanna paint the walls until the phone people are here in case they need to put holes in there. But I really can’t do anything until the lights and heat are on, which I couldn’t start until I had a tax ID. I couldn’t get that until I had a business license. Whoa! You can see how the scheduling is key. What are your goals for week one? Week two? Be open to changing them around every day.

NEXT

This is a boiled-down synopsis of a two-month, life altering journey. There are entire sections of libraries dedicated to this topic and countless professionals with more experience. Again, this is not a how-to article as much as it’s a motivational tool to get you on track with practical application. Get going!

In addition to the endless support from my wife, I got a lot of fuel from these resources.

The Dave Ramsey Show

Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast

48 Days to the Work You Love by Dan Miller

Purple Cow by Seth Godin

The Appalachian Trail: the East Coast’s own icon of adventure and wilderness, your ticket to freedom and the majestic beauty of the natural world. Plus a few highways here and there, but you probably don’t even see them in the summer when the flora is in full bloom. This is the great outdoors. Over 2,000 miles of it, if you’re willing to walk the whole thing in one shot, from Georgia to Maine. It takes a person a good four to six months to hike it all straight through. It’s looking like it’s gonna take me a lifetime or two.

From time to time I adjust how the straps of my thirty pound backpack sit on my shoulders. That backpack, a loaner from a friend, is my whole world this week. Besides that all I’ve got is the clothes I’m wearing, a waistpack (it must not be called a fanny pack), and the ever faithful trekking poles. Well, that’s not true. I’ve also got three compadres to share this whole adventure with.

Leading the pack this rain-drenched Wednesday morning is Chris, trail named Scott. Funny story. We ran into a guy named David our first morning, then we met him again while eating lunch, or rather he met us. We had given him our names that morning and he went down the line calling each of us by name, until he got to Chris. Instead of Chris, he called him Scott. It became an instant inside joke as so many things do when you’re out in the woods with friends for a few days with no television.

Chris has been on this Appalachian Trail more than the rest of us. This will be his fourth time. He’s also quit the Trail early more than the rest of us. This will be his fourth time. Chris is energetic, enthusiastic and knowledgeable. Which is good, because none of the rest of us are any of those things. His favorite phrase during conversations with the trail folk we meet: ‘Well, and you know how it is, ….’

Next in line is Darius, possibly the most reluctant man to ever step foot upon the AT. He is our – and evidently the rest of the Appalachian Trail’s – token black man. Darius’s trail name is Chocolate Thunder. If you can believe it, that name was not his choice. He is here because he carelessly said he would go with us if we ever went again, fully expecting us to give up after the last trip Chris and I took together in 2009.

What you need to know about Darius, besides the fact that using the woods as a bathroom is as close to hell on earth as he ever cares to get (before he hiked Kelly Knob of course), is that he is one of the most likable people I have ever met. DK knows how to make good conversations happen, no matter who he’s talking to. One of his many gifts.

I am third in line. I have no trail name, because no trail name can adequately express my sheer awesomeness. Mostly I am called are you seriously eating again? This is my third time on the Appalachian Trail and I consider myself, along with Chris, to be co-founder of this bi-annual ritual, even though I couldn’t make the second trip in 2007.

Last in line is Jeff, who is last because he does not like to be followed closely, which all the rest of us have a bad habit of doing. Jeff is that curious variety of walking contradiction, the analytical adventurer. This is only my second time meeting him and like Darius, it is also his first time on the Trail. Unlike Darius, he couldn’t be more excited about the whole experience.

Jeff was the smartest of us because he was able to borrow almost all of his gear from friends and coworkers. It’s probably because he works in finances. Working with giant sums of money in every kind of currency probably keeps him financially grounded in his own life so he doesn’t spend similarly giant sums of money on the kinds of things no one ever needs to have in their normal day to day lives. He would probably make an excellent money launderer if he were inclined to lead a more criminal lifestyle. As it is he uses his powers to do good, helping one of the largest Christian organizations in the world to keep tabs on the dollars, cents, pesos and rupees that fund hundreds, if not thousands, of humanitarian projects around the world.

We got on the Trail early-ish on Monday morning after getting into Hiawassee, Georgia on Sunday afternoon and eating Zaxby’s for lunch and Subway for dinner. We stayed at the Hiawassee Inn which caters to hikers and bikers (motor, not pedal) and they have a free shuttle service that dropped us off at Unicoi Gap, which is where Chris and I left off last time.

I don’t know if I mentioned this, but we are trying to do the whole Trail in sections. They call people like us section-hikers. The people who do the whole thing at once, they call thru-hikers. And yes, you are supposed to spell it T-H-R-U. It’s a hiking thing. You wouldn’t understand. Anyways, this is our third or fourth time out, depending on how you count it up, and we are still in Georgia. That’s why I said earlier it’s gonna take me a lifetime or more to finish.

So what’s the first thing you do when starting a five-day hike on the AT? That’s right. You take group photos. And so we did. Fortunately a guy named Josh showed up looking thoroughly beat, like the Trail had eaten him, chewed him up for a while, partially digested him, then vomited him onto a state highway which he walked across to get to us. He could see we were trying to take a group shot and he offered to take it for us. We stood shoulder to shoulder in front of a giant rock, looking clean and shiny, grinning from ear to ear. ‘You guys are just starting today, aren’t you,’ he sort of asked, sort of stated.

In an ironic twist of fate, we saw Josh again our last day, he coming back to the Trail full of blueberry pancakes and all-you-can-eat buffet calories, freshly showered, laundered, and bed-rested, looking nothing like his former self, and us now looking the partially digested and vomited ones. ‘I saw you guys a few days ago, didn’t I,’ he sort of asked, sort of stated.

The Trail north from Unicoi Gap goes nothing but steeply up. Switchbacks as far as the eye can see. We were all out of breath inside of ten minutes. They say it takes three to four weeks to get your ‘trail legs’, which sounds like a really awful venereal disease, but Chris and I have never been on the Trail longer than four days. So, for better or worse, we have no idea what it feels like to have trail legs.

By the time we got to Tray Mountain Shelter around four thirty in the afternoon that first day, we were wrecked. We stopped at the first empty campsite, dropped our crap and fell on the ground in heaps. We eventually went and filtered and refilled our water bottles and bags (called bladders – gross), set up our two two-person tents, cooked up some ‘just add boiling water’ dinners, put our remaining food in bear bags, which we strung up from a line hanging close to the shelter and far from our tents, made a fire and meandered over to check out the spectacular evening view from a nearby rocky outlook.

There’s no way to describe how your body feels after a day like that. You wake up the next morning and put that same thirty pounds on your back to do it all over again. You’ve probably experienced something similar enough to sympathize. As soon as the backpack goes back on it’s like you never took it off. All the soreness you thought you had recovered from over the last sixteen hours is right where you left it the day before.

We made a choice the second day. Chris and I had come to realize after our first two trips together that pushing ourselves to do ten miles a day or more, especially in that Northwest Georgia section, is just pure masochism. So we decided on this trip to plan shorter, more relaxed days, which he and Jeff had calculated ahead of time. On the second day we had a choice between a four mile day to Addis Gap or an eight mile day to Deep Gap Shelter, which would mean going up Kelly Knob (also known as Double Spring Knob, also known as why the hell am I doing this?), climbing just shy of 1,000 feet in one mile with no switchbacks to take the edge off.

Because we felt brave, and we would have been bored otherwise, we opted for the eight mile option. I won’t go into the play-by-play, but basically it was a few hours of trudging from shady spot to shady spot, about twenty or thirty feet at each go, spending as much time catching breath as actual walking. Except for me. I was eating while they were catching their breath. What? I have a quick metabolism.

We had one break about two-thirds of the way up when one of our number – I won’t say who because it feels like a breech of the unspoken trail code – decided it was time to take care of some business. He put down his pack, grabbed a bright orange trowel and a smashed up roll of toilet paper, and marched off into the brush like a man. As far as I know that was the only time any of us went number two in the actual raw, natural, woodsman way. Our campsites all hid privies this trip, which were basically outhouses set out from the campsite a bit where a toilet seat was attached to a shelf of wood with a hole in it, about five feet off the ground underneath. You throw in a handful of mulch after you are done and it keeps it from being awful.

When we finally arrived at camp later on, after coming down the equally steep backside of Kelly Knob, we were able to get a little cell service. We checked the weather, which reported rain starting that night continuing off and on for the next three days. The rest of our trip. We did our best to prepare for bad weather and went to sleep.

Side story: that night, Chris noticed a mouse crawling on his tent. I can’t remember the details, but he woke up in the morning to find mouse droppings in his boot. It would have been a nice boot to sleep in, warm and cozy after being hiked in all day. I think their may have been some kind of food in it too, before the mouse ate it. Other than mouse droppings, we woke up to dark skies, but no rain. That’s promising, I thought. Jeff cooked himself some instant oatmeal, which he had been looking very forward to. Then as we were packing up to head out, the rains came. We ran over to the shelter to finish packing under cover.

The shelters on the Trail in Georgia are like big backyard sheds. They’re nice because you don’t have to set up a tent, but as long as we are on the topic of mice, they have a bad reputation for mouse infestation and, as Bill Bryson points out in his authoritative work on the AT, A Walk in the Woods, you could die just from breathing in the same place mice have left feces behind.

By the time we were ready to go the rain had tapered off some. Like many AT campsites, Deep Gap Shelter is a little bit off the actual AT on a side trail. There was a stream on the way back to the main trail, so we stopped to fill up our water. It was still raining, but only drizzling. We finished up and started back towards the Trail and that’s when the bottom dropped out.

This brings us back to where our story started. Wednesday morning and soaked.

Despite the weather and the cold (I’m a big wuss when it comes to cold, so I may just be speaking for myself on that point), the hike that day was easy. Really nice. And beautiful too. Even with the rain, or maybe because of it. It began to let off after the first couple hours and by the time we came out at Dick’s Creek Gap, it had mostly cleared up. The gap was at an intersection between the Trail and a main road, U.S. 76, so we crossed the road and were met by a large middle-aged man standing next to a red pickup with a makeshift fence built around the bed of it. He kept telling us how we needed to get to town, how there were great all-you-can-eat restaurants and finger-licking good barbeque joints and motel rooms with warm showers. He was like an evil seductive temptress, but a really unattractive man version who was too scary to be tempting. He was charging five bucks a head for rides into town.

So far there have been pull-offs at most of these places where the Trail crosses a main road and this one had a big sign and picnic tables, so we walked up to a table and set our stuff down. Chris checked the weather again on his iPhone and we waited to hear our collective fate. It would be clear for the afternoon, the iPhone told us, but it would start raining again that night and into tomorrow and probably Friday as well.

If we kept going, there would be no other place to get a ride to our car. We would have no choice but to hike the rest of the sixteen miles to where it was parked at Deep Gap – another Deep Gap – in North Carolina. At present, we were nine miles from the Georgia / North Carolina border, my personal goal for the trip.

We took a vote. It was a split. Two wanted to continue, come hell or high water, and two wanted to call it a trip and quit while we were ahead. Darius referred us to the Code of the Trail, as laid down by the hikers Morgan and Bartholomew, which explicitly states that any tie goes to the man with the keys to the 4Runner. He could also have cited to us an ancient proverb I heard a few weeks later at church, ‘The prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it.’ Either way, the decision was made; we were going home.

Well, there was still that minor issue of getting to our car. Not long after the guy in the red truck left, a mother and daughter pulled up in a small SUV and dropped off three hikers. They stood outside the car chatting, so we took the opportunity and rushed over to ask a huge favor. They happily agreed to take two of us to our vehicle in North Carolina (not a quick trip) while the other two stayed behind with the gear. Thank you again, Hiawassee mother and daughter whose names I forgot to write down.

They call that ‘trail magic’, a kind of pay it forward, love your neighbor culture that is a rich part of the Appalachian Trail experience. We got to be on the giving side of it when  we finally made it back to our car and saw a group of hikers sitting down for a rest. We walked over, asked if they wanted our leftover hiking food, and laid a massive pile of energy bars, ramen noodles, tuna packets, oatmeal, instant hot chocolate, and random other goodies at their feet. They looked like they had just died and gone to McDonald’s. Happy to help, brothers, happy to help.

We made it back to our boys and the rest of the gear about three hours later, having made a point of not stopping to get hamburgers or cokes or any of the other stuff we were already craving after not quite three days away from society. We went into an Arby’s to change and try to fill some of those cravings. And then we drove straight home. Since we were all still free from responsibilities for the next four days, we went to the beach and hung out and did all the stuff you can’t wait to do when you get back from the Trail.

And there lies the strange thing I’ve experienced about the Trail every time I’ve been on it. All you can think about leading up to the trip is getting out there in the woods, away from all the noise and distraction, close to that wildness of the barely touched earth each of us craves in some back corner of our souls, sharing an adventure with friends just as dumb as ourselves, eating pre-packaged food and sleeping under the stars.

Then you get out there and it’s nothing but pain from sunrise to sunset, and probably all through the night too. And there is no entertainment and no stimulation and nothing fried or grilled or baked, and pretty soon, much too soon, you are talking about how much fun it would be to be home playing Risk around a nice smooth table or playing Driver 2 on Playstation or watching Firefly or Long Way Round or playing tennis or drinking Chick-fil-a milkshakes or just checking email, for crying out loud.

Then, finally, you either finish the section you intended to hike or you get forced off the Trail early by bad weather, and you’re totally ready to get home, thinking it’s going to be a while before I ever do that again. And guaranteed, within a month, you’re thinking about how much you can’t wait to get back on that trail again and planning to buy some new gear that will make things so much better than last time and telling stories about all the crazy times you had out there, or writing about it for some obscure online magazine.

And that’s the crazy irony of the Appalachian Trail, or any uncomfortable but fun experience for that matter. You leave everything behind looking for some kind of contentment, but the true contentment comes when you get back to everything you’ve left. And that’s a great side-effect of any experience.

So here’s to the AT, and to every other trail, to things not usually going as planned, to good and bad surprises along the way, to happy hiking Josh, for whom eighteen miles a day was a fun day in the park, to British guy Warren, the business consultant with a six month visa and nowhere else he’d rather be, to home-made banjo-carrying boat-crafting David, whose enthusiasm for hiking was more than the four of ours put together, and to the bears, for not eating us or our peanut butter Cliff bars. Bon voyage and happy trails!

If you want to learn more about the AT, the unofficial Bible of the Appalachian Trail is unquestionably ‘A Walk in the Woods’ by Bill Bryson, and it is an amazingly good and funny book, even if you have absolutely no interest in ever hiking the Appalachian or any other trail.

I blame my friend Jon. One harmless afternoon, a year and a half ago, we began talking about coffee, and I just haven’t been the same since. Thank goodness. It’s that conversation about coffee that began my own education – a journey he’s been on for some time now.

An Artisan

Just a few weeks ago I met up with Jon as he was finishing up work for the day at the roaster. Perhaps dish duty might be a more accurate picture of the end of his workday. Shot glasses, coffee mugs, water glasses, ceramic cone filters, and teaspoons filled the bottom of the stainless steel sink. We tag-teamed the cleanup so as to escape to a nearby pub as soon as we could, yet Jon’s workplace isn’t one that a person may really want to leave. Perhaps Jon’s co-worker, a person responsible for roasting the green coffee beans, put it best: ‘I never not want to come to work.’

Jon works for one of the local independent coffee shops. If I were to tell you that we live in Portland, Oregon, and if you were familiar with Portland at all, you might well understand the significance of Jon doing what he does. It’s not easy to get a coffee job such as he has. Coffee is significant in our town and not just any coffee. Artisan coffee. Coffee that is done right with care and craft, from the grower to the mug. In our big corner of the city I can count on two hands the number of large chain coffee outlets. I can’t count the number of local independent cafés serving coffee roasted in the Pacific Northwest. There are too many. We’re a town serious about cafés, roasting, and this thing called coffee.

Portland is a place where coffee is found on nearly every corner. Good coffee. Coffee that has come to be known as artisan coffee, the third wave of coffee, or specialty coffee. It’s coffee that may exhibit traits such as single-origin, or direct trade, or blended varietals of a specific geographic region, or locally roasted, or extracted by a method that many may not have ever heard of. It’s coffee where the supply chain is more familiar to the people who drink the coffee. Prepared with methods where the baristas draw out the subtleties of the roasted bean with knowledge and experience. I love this holistic approach to coffee. And I love that we simply just know this as coffee in our town.

Coffee, Historically Speaking

Here’s the thing, coffee has been loved passionately for many centuries, and likely much longer than that. The naturally occurring effect of the plant, namely caffeine, appears to have been well recognized by the Ethiopian ancestors of today’s Oromo people.

The legend on the discovery of the wonders of coffee finds an Arab boy named Kaldi working the East African trade route. As a goat herder in the country of Ethiopia he found one particular night his goats were disturbed, making noise and apparently agitated through the night – characteristics unbecoming of a goat and disruptive to the shepherd tending them. Kaldi found that his goats had been eating a mysterious cherry, and so he tried some for himself. The tiredness of the night faded. The cherries gave an energy, a stimulation unbeknownst to him previously. Kaldi and his goats had found our beloved coffee bean, hidden in the likes of a cherry.

The popularity, or perhaps drive for the ‘beverage as black as ink’ drew interest along the trade routes and by the mid 16th century the bean had found it’s way throughout the Middle East, Persia, Turkey and northern Africa as not only a drink but an agricultural product. Similarly, just following this expansion, the coffee beans were being introduced in Italy and England, where the first coffee house is believed to have opened in Oxford right around 1650. By 1675 it is estimated that 3,000 coffeehouses populated the country of England. North America was introduced to coffee and the coffee bean around this time, though popularity during the Colonial Period waned and never quite found the footing represented in England, that is until modern day.

An Education

Jon and I met back in the early parts of 2010. He, newly arrived from traveling Taiwan and Thailand, back in his home state of Oregon, and I, a recent transplant into the city of Portland from parts unknown. We had the opportunity to share a house for a bit in Southeast, and I like to think this is where my education of coffee began.

Jon spends his hours at work as an educated and trained barista. He’s good at what he does, really good. More importantly, I think, he loves what he does and he inspires others with his passion, further empowering fellow baristas and customers to properly and passionately enjoy the coffee whether by learning a particular extraction method or simply knowing where the coffee came from.

Understand that the depth of our early conversations ran the gamut of the coffee bean’s life. As a knowledgeable barista Jon is well versed in the methods of brewing or extraction (pour over, press, chemex, espresso) and certainly how to best prepare the bean for those methods of extraction (how to grind the bean, what grind size). Yet much of our conversation also rested on where that bean came from. Were the coffee bean farmers given a fair price? Who was involved in that process to get the bean into my cup?

The Bean We Call Coffee

A coffee bean is the seed of the berry from a shrub or small tree of the coffee plant, a woody perennial evergreen dicotyledon. The two main species of coffee plant commercially cultivated are Coffea Canephora and Coffea Arabica, also known as Robusta and Arabica. Three-quarters of the cultivated coffee in the world is Arabica, prized for its flavor based on its greater number of oils and sugars. Robusta, though bitter and less flavorful, makes up for this in it’s improved body and nearly half again as much caffeine. Arabica is the species that is used in artisan or specialty coffee. Robusta is at times blended with Arabica, even within specialty espresso roasts, or used on it’s own, most often in those tins of coffee you might find on the supermarket shelf (i.e., lower grade). However, there are many more genetic subspecies, commonly known as varietals, of coffee plant cultivated commercially and, in fact, primarily provide the base for the different roasts you might find at your corner artisan café (Typica, Bourban, Gesha).

Coffee plants are grown and cultivated using a variety of methods: shade grown and sun grown are terms often used in literature. Shade grown is regarded as the ‘traditional’ method and is done so within the shade of much larger, and often mutually beneficial species of trees. Shade grown produces lower quantities and lengthens the ripening time for the berries, but arguably provides a higher quality coffee. Sun grown, as the name may imply, is row grown and generally a full sun exposing operation producing shorter ripening of the berries and higher yields in shorter time frames. The expense of this sun grown method is the habitat destruction, deforestation, and soil erosion resulting from the changing landscape. Both methods of growing the coffee plant are used throughout the various growing regions of the world.

Of great debate both now and in recent history is the most sustainable growing method for producing coffee – a debate not simply limited to shade grown or sun grown. Sustainability is not just an environmental discussion but must also include those that grow the coffee – the farmers, the supply chain of our coffee drink. The production of coffee has historically seen themes of oppression of those that grow and work the plants. In terms of our Western uses, the coffee plant was introduced to Great Britain, The Netherlands, and the fledgling United States during a time when the Caribbean slave trade was at its peak. Coffee became a staple of the Caribbean plantations, eventually spreading to the Central American countries where the slave trade was also well established.

The oppression continues today as the price for coffee on the commodities markets swings wildly, a price most often controlled by what the large coffee purchasing giants are willing to pay. Arabica coffee, for example, is grown at latitudes of 16 to 24 degrees, with altitudes between 1,800 and 3,600 feet, and latitudes of 10 degrees or below, with altitudes between 3,600 and 6,300 feet. If one were to compare those latitudes to a global map indicating the third-world or developing nations it would appear quite clear that the coffee we drink is grown in nations far below the wealth of where most of that coffee is enjoyed.

While you might argue that the growth provides employment to the people of these nations, I would turn that argument back to you and ask you to consider that coffee is grown, harvested, and processed by subsistence farmers and laborers. The coffee they produce is seeking to be produced with the lowest possible cost for our developed world markets. When we demand cheap coffee with our purchasing power we also demand cheap labor – cheap labor that cannot afford to be paid any less.

And Coffee Found Him

Jon found himself in a dilemma during the college years of life. ’What to study?’ His leanings were toward a business degree with an international twist, but as only he can so eloquently put it, ‘I didn’t just want to work in business, I wanted a business I could believe in.’

And here we enter into the depth of what Jon is saying. If you were to meet him, you would recognize his welcoming personality and easy approach, yet it may take more than one conversation to grasp the depth within him. He doesn’t do what he does simply because coffee is a beverage he enjoys. In fact, he wasn’t even drinking the stimulating drink until college – he didn’t even like the stuff. It was during this time in college that Jon began working at a campus coffee shop, and as he learned the techniques of producing various coffee drinks from the roasted beans his search for knowledge began.

‘I began doing my own research. Learning about coffee and the process,’ Jon noted, ‘I began to understand the craft, the artistry of preparing a coffee drink, the complex route the bean travels.’

Some two years after beginning work in the campus café, Jon completed a bachelor’s degree in international business. His search for work eventually led him to Northeast Portland’s Pearl District where his application for a managerial position at a café morphed into his being hired for preparing coffee as a barista.

Jon spent 14 months working at the Northeast café, further learning the varying techniques of preparing coffee drinks, understanding the attitudes and approaches of customers who came to him requesting liquid stimulation, and thinking upon how the coffee beans his café prepared came to arrive in this eclectic corner of the Pacific Northwest.

From Ripened Cherry to Roasted Bean

A black mug of coffee. Rich, thick, bold, tasty. Truth be told many of us enjoy a bit of milk or creamer, sugar, and, heaven forbid, flavored syrup. Truly, a mug of coffee on a cool, rainy, dark day (a typical Portland winter day) is heavenly.

The route of a coffee bean, once ripened on the branch of the farmer’s coffee plant, is simple, but not as simple as it may sound here. After 3 years a plant will begin to produce its first cherries, which are good for harvesting around year 5 or so. Those cherries are picked, most commonly by hand, on a per volume or per weight pay scale, or by mechanized picking. Trees are picked in a selective manner. Only the ripe cherries are picked or all the cherries are stripped off the tree, ripe or not. A good picker is capable of handpicking between 100 and 200 pounds of coffee cherries a day, eventually producing only 20 to 40 pounds of green coffee beans for export.

The cherry is then processed as soon as possible to remove only the green coffee bean within, leaving behind the pulp (outer flesh of the fruit), as well as twigs and leaves and the overripe coffee cherries. There are two main processing methods (existing also in a number of sub-variations): the dry method and the wet method. The dry method is the traditional, or natural method. The cherries are placed out in the sun on large, flat surfaces, and are rotated by raking multiple times a day, often for days or weeks until the moisture content of the cherries drops to around 11 percent, the debris being sorted out in the process.

The wet method, requiring plentiful water resources, uses water to sort the debris and cherries and extracts the beans through a pulping machine leaving a silver skin and parchment layers still attached to the bean. The green beans are also sorted in the wet process through flotation methods and left in a fermentation tank to further remove the skin through enzymatic action. The final step to any wet method is to allow the green beans within their parchment layer to dry in the sun until, like the dry method, the moisture content drops to about 11 percent.

Worth noting here is that the processes described above will factor into the flavor characteristics of the coffee. In fact, the type of processing used is likely the single largest contributor to the flavor profile. The local climate and soil of the growing region would be the second major contributor to the flavor profile.

The parchment coffee is put through a hulling machine to remove the parchment layer from the wet processed coffee. Or, in the case of dry process, the hulling removes the entire dry husk of the dried cherries. Following the hulling some beans go through an optional polishing step. The final step, prior to exportation, is to grade and sort the coffee beans based on more precise size and weight evaluations and a removal of color flaws or other imperfections.

The commodity chain of coffee includes producers, middlemen exporters or cooperatives, exporters or traders, importers, roasters, and retailers prior to reaching us, the end consumers. Either the producers, cooperatives, or middlemen exporters may bring the coffee cherries through the processing described above. The chain may not appear so concisely, nor have all pieces – it’s rather complicated to understand how coffee exists as a commodity yet understand that it’s arguably the roaster who operates the most ‘control’ in any given chain.

‘Traditional’ roasters (think coffee tins at the supermarket or your favorite instant coffee) are accustomed to ‘selling large quantities of relatively homogeneous and undifferentiated blends of mediocre to poor quality.’ Due to the fact that they sell large quantities, they require very large supplies of green coffee beans. The economics and commodity chain of this supply becomes involved, to say the least.

Specialty, or artisan roasters, (read ‘not traditional’) make up a small, but increasing percentage of the overall market (20% of the domestic market in 2002, which does not include a well known green mermaid). There is insufficient space to carry on within this text regarding many notable efforts by small roasters to establish fair buying agreements directly with coffee growers or cooperatives. Such efforts at greater transparency and fairer practices with coffee producers serve to bridge the usually unknown gap between end consumer and point of origin.

And so it is the roasting of the coffee that often becomes the defining moment in the life of the bean – as a fine wine is uncorked so a green bean is roasted. Roasting is the transformative process that turns the green bean into the aromatic brown beans we are accustomed to. Additionally, roasting hastens the time in which we as the consumer must prepare the finished drink as the roasted beans begin to lose their flavor characteristics as soon as they are roasted.

At the heart of the roasting process is the heating of the internal bean temperature to around 400 degrees Fahrenheit, whence the caffeol, or oil begins to emerge from inside the bean. This process, called pyrolysis, allows the aromatics, acids, and remaining flavor profile to become fully realized as the bean is now prepared for the long anticipated brewing of the coffee. And, not desiring to gloss over the roasting process, I must leave the discussion of roasting for another time, in all likelihood when a simple method of home roasting can be shared for all to enjoy.

Can Coffee Drive Passion?

For Jon I think it fair to say that coffee is not everything. In 2009 Jon left his job in Portland to pursue other endeavors. Namely, he and a couple friends shoved off of the West Coast shores, destination: Southeast Asia. The thought was to travel a bit, exposing themselves to the culture and people of these eastern nations, and hopefully to sign contracts for a year of English teaching in Taiwan. Jon’s stories of this venture are a fun listen in and of themselves – the short story is, in Jon’s words, ‘I decided not to sign.’

Five months after leaving the United States, Jon returned, not out of a place of failure, rather stepping into a place of hope. It’s clear in sitting across the table from him at a local pub that his desires had not strayed as he sat foot again on American soil, rather his travels had strengthened his character, resolve, and pursuit of holistic living. It’s at this point in his life we meet, and the cascade of events begin that land him into his present working situation.

Jon’s return from Southeast Asia, however unplanned, held in it a series of surprises, not least of which was a recent wedding to his beautiful wife. I recall conversations with Jon in early 2010 about what he was hoping to do now that he had returned to Portland. He was looking to gain some further experience in the coffee business as a barista, maybe toying with roasting, or with a hand in the management side of things. But, as will resonate with many, jobs were scarce in our city at the time, notably jobs within the niche cafes of Portland.

Yet it was a bit of networking and a heap of Providence that Jon soon found himself hired on as a barista at a nearby café for his current coffee roasting company. He’s continued learning how to extract beautiful coffee and become more knowledgeable in roasting and other aspects of the coffee bean lifespan.

Jon’s love for coffee isn’t found completely in the full-bodied shot of espresso which he pulls out of the espresso machines countless times a day. It’s Jon’s personality, his desire for knowing the overall process, his ‘love for the international, complex, and consumer’ oriented nature of this coffee business. He’s found a business he believes in. And not only a business but a way of life – for those farmers in so many nations that grow and care for the coffee plants, for the harvesters that pick each berry, bringing them to the place of processing where they are hand-sorted and dried, for the roasters who carefully weigh the temperature to which dried beans will be exposed, and for the baristas at your corner café who prepare roasted beans into potent double-shot tall lattes or the beautifully smooth and undressed mugs of single-cup method.

On Preparation

Grinding is significant. The grind size directly relates to the longevity of brewing – the smaller the grind size the quicker the brewing method must be. Of the two grinders most commonly available the burr grinder is preferred for its uniformity, yet it is expensive for the home user. The common blade grinder, found in my home and many others is the amateur version and disliked for its named ability to simply ‘grind’ the beans by whacking them with metal blades.

Methods of brewing coffee, or of extraction, are vast. An Internet search will display any number of brewing methods or variations on these brewing methods. Only a handful of brewing methods are recommended by those who are in the know. While the other steps of cherry to bean are vital, it is in this last step of brewing where coffee can truly display its complexity – in aromatics, taste, acidity, and body – through means of proper extraction (over-extraction commonly results in bitterness or undesirable characteristics). Commonly used in the artisan coffee world are the French press, chemex, moka pot, vacuum pot, Melitta filter, café solo, siphon pot, pour over, and the ever-loved espresso.

Brewing is the collision of the art and the science. It is a land where knowledge and experience can conquer the all too common mediocre coffee. It is a place where the complexity of the aroma, acidity, and body of a particular coffee can be fully realized and appreciated. It’s here where one can appreciate the more than 1,000 aromatic compounds coffee has to offer (compared to wine’s 700).

One of the first resources at the bottom of this writing will take you to a trusted Internet place to research on your own the methods of brewing. However, I’ve left you with a step-by-step guide in just a few paragraphs that will allow you to brew a simple and great cup of coffee at home.

A barista who is trained, knowledgeable and experienced in what they are preparing and how they are preparing it can likely blow your mind with an amazing cup of coffee (small tip – no flavors added and go light on the sweeteners). It’s likely a cup of coffee that you will not be able to repeat at home – notably so if it’s an espresso based drink.

The Bottom of the Cup

Jon is a motivator. He motivates those he works with by attempting to find how they are motivated. He loves witnessing his fellow baristas ‘being able to see that they can do it right.’ His desire for that perfect pull of espresso, or the aroma of a fresh, properly prepared pour-over communicates to his co-workers, in his words, ‘knowing that I know what I’m talking about.’  His passion is contagious, and I believe that is why he is effective in doing what he does.

At the end of the day Jon notes this final word: ‘I’m excited to share with people – to make a cup of coffee that will blow them away and to explain to them how complex and how many hands are involved in executing that coffee in a way that results in the delicious cup.’

Coffee is often labeled a commodity – a product that is treated as an equivalent regardless of how it differs from supplier to supplier. Yet when a coffee bean is enjoyed, its taste and aroma taken in, geography of growth and farmer appreciated, and route to your cup understood, an epiphany awaits.

You’re enjoying a beverage similar to how many enjoy wine, or micro-beers – yet you may be doing so without giving credit where it’s due. Enjoy coffee responsibly by learning that a good cup of coffee is not a cheap cup of coffee – the farmer who grew that bean for you depends on it. Travel down to your local roaster or artisan café. Begin asking where the coffee comes from, how it travels from the producer, where the baristas receive their training. Get to know that mug of coffee before you get to the bottom of the cup.

Demand good coffee. Demand fair practices with the coffee farmers. Demand transparency.

Vote with your dollar.

A Good Cup

As a final, parting word, the following will describe the steps for a good, simple pour over (also known as single cup or Melitta) style cup of coffee. This method does take a couple attempts to master.

1. Obtain a ceramic (or plastic) ‘Melitta’ style cone coffee filter with paper filters. Purchase fresh roasted coffee beans and grind these beans to a medium course consistency (the roaster may be able to do this for you).

2. Place the cone with paper filter inserted onto the top of the waste cup or mug. Pour hot water into the paper filter to wash the paper filter and to preheat the cone (if ceramic).

3.  Move the cone to the top of your drinking mug. Add three heaping tablespoons of fresh ground coffee for 8 oz. of prepared coffee. A total of 12 oz. of water will be used to prepare 8 oz. of coffee in your drinking mug.

4.  After bringing the water to a boil, allow to cool for 45 seconds and make the initial pour. The initial pour is just enough water to saturate the grounds in the cone filter – little to no water should be dripping through the cone on this initial pour. Allow to sit no longer than 15 seconds.

5.  The second pour will be at an even pour rate, saturating the grounds as you move in back and forth or spiraling motion. The top of the bloom should be an even color with few dark or blonde spots appearing.

6.  Once you have 8 oz., or have filled your drinking mug, quickly move the cone filter to the waste mug.
ENJOY!

RESOURCES:

http://www.brewmethods.com/
http://www.ocdc.coop/fairtrade/intro.html
http://www.ethicalcoffee.net/direct.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_trade
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coffee_varieties
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Wave_Coffee
http://nationalzoo.si.edu/scbi/migratorybirds/coffee/
http://www.sweetmarias.com/library/categories/the-coffee-trade/
http://www.portafilter.net/2009/12/decades-top-ten-in-specialty-coffee.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee:_A_Dark_History
http://www.foodarts.com/webfeature/show/id/3510

Our fallback topic is lesbians. Lesbians and the lesbian lovers who love them. No one knows why. It just is. We mostly talk about work, church, television, our pasts, and current events, pretty much in that order. Women always outnumber men, usually three to one. The storytellers tell their stories while the armchair comedians throw in their one-liners. The three year old used to get all the attention until after dinner, when she would happily go to bed in our room until it was time to leave, but now her baby sister is stealing it away from her.

Wendy and I moved to Massachusetts in the summer of 2008. For the first year our apartment was tiny. We know people who have had much tinier apartments, but still. It was small. Technically it was a studio, but we slept in the attic. So it was kind of a one bedroom.

The main thing we missed during that time was having people over for dinner. We didn’t have a dining table, and only one person could fit in the kitchen at a time. Other than the few occasions when people came to visit from out of state, we thought it was better not to try until we had a bigger place.

We decided that our next apartment needed to have a dining table, and we needed to have people over for dinner once a week. We had hit a wall in our new friendships. We weren’t getting as tight with people as we wanted to. Part of the problem was they were mostly New Englanders, closed off to the outside world with hearts covered in thick or thin layers of ice, depending on the season. (Just kidding. Always thick layers.)

So we did. We moved in to a new place with a real bedroom and lots more space. Some friends gave us a nice big dining table and chairs and we announced our decision to host weekly dinners, to much fanfare and hoopla. Actually, it took a couple months to really catch on. Plus, it was the hottest part of summer and we didn’t have air conditioning. But once it caught traction, it really got to be a thing.

In the beginning we weren’t sure which day of the week to host dinner. We rotated back and forth between Thursday and Friday, finally settling on Friday as the much superior dinner-hosting night. I thought having it on Friday would interfere with people’s weekend social activities, but it turns out people don’t have the exciting lives you probably give them credit for. It’s great having an established routine with good friends to kick off your weekends.

So what about the cost? What about the cooking and before and after clean-up and extra groceries? In our case, we knew this was something we wanted to do for our friends, because we are really amazingly generous, kind and loving people who only think about others. So we made it clear we didn’t want anyone to bring anything. We wanted to practice that special kind of hospitality that only exists in places where people have almost nothing to give but give everything they have. Or in places where you ask for water and get sweet tea and anything worth eating is fried in butter fat and bacon grease.

Because this is our thing, we invite whoever we want and no one can say no. It’s interesting when your coworkers meet your church friends meet your neighbors from down the street. Very interesting. Since the beginning there has been a core group of people we can count on coming almost every Friday (the protons) and others who come when they can or when it suits (the electrons), which provides an always interesting mix and keeps things exciting for us (the neutrons).

I am fascinated by the idea of community. What is it? How does it happen? How do you keep it working? How do you make it better? Why does it sometimes fall apart at the drop of a hat while other times you can’t break it if you try? How many people is too many? How many is not enough? Why does it get harder the older we get? Why do so many people substitute real life community with televised or virtual alternatives? Why do we feel lonely without it, and angry, sad, hurt, and self-conscious with it? Is it really ever as good as it looks on TV?

The interesting thing about our Friday Night Dinners is they haven’t created community. The people who have continued to come are the ones who already knew each other outside of FND. In our case, the groundwork was laid. The Legos were connected. But, when you get together a bunch of people to eat and talk, every week, with no agenda other than hanging out, something really powerful happens. You don’t even know it’s happening until you go without it, then you come back and suddenly realize, wow, this isn’t just a random group of friends any more. This is family.

What has truly and continually shocked me about Friday Night Dinner is how much it means to everyone else involved. Wendy and I started doing it for ourselves. It was really a trade-off. We give you food, you give us social interaction. It totally caught me off guard when people started to ask questions like, are we having Friday Night Dinner this week, or started to ask on Tuesday what would be for dinner on Friday, or started to say things like, it was really hard for me to go out to dinner with my coworker instead of come to FND, and, Friday Night Dinner is one of the best parts of my week.

Like so many important discoveries in my life, in trying to figure out something like community by reading books and theorizing and trying to recreate experiences of the past, I blindly stumbled onto the simplest, easiest, possibly most effective method I’ll ever find: routine meals with friends. Go figure.

Special thanks to everyone who’s been a part of FND so far: Kim, Nancy, Brenda, Takashi, Anna, Lilly ‘Megatron Jane’, Ann, Steph, Chad, Cheeto, Kris, Jon Newbie, Jason, Janice, John, Kath, Kyle, Justin, Lisa, Scott, Beth, Geebee, Jake, Troy, and for a brief time, Lloyd the Betta Fish.

Photo: Fey Ilyas (flickr.com/photos/renneville/2731220043/).

Please introduce us. What is typography?

Typography is the study of letterforms and text. It is strange, but I just love looking at letters all day long.

If there were three type-related mistakes you could magically keep everyone from making in their documents, presentations, and websites from now on, what would they be?

1 – THINK about the typeface (the correct term for a font) you are using. Don’t use the default typeface of 12 point Times New Roman or Arial just because you are lazy.

2 – Don’t center text unless it is a headline on a poster. Centering text is something your mom does in Microsoft Word and it is a pain in the ass to read.

3 – Friends don’t let friends use Comic Sans. Unless you are making a comic book, just say no. (Nate: Especially don’t use Comic Sans if you are making a comic book.)

The biggest common problem is starting with 12 point for text. It is always too big. I’m not sure why Word sets 12 pt. as a default, but 10 pt. is much more manageable and, unless you are writing for your grandparents, you don’t need it so big.

Besides those three things, what are some of the basic principles of using type, either in print or on screen?

When designing something, keep it simple, stupid. Don’t use star bursts and drop-shadows and crap like that. If you can do it in Powerpoint, don’t. Keep your color palette to one or two colors. Black and red is one of the most classic and powerful combinations and many times, less is more.

For people who are happy to ‘fake it ’til they make it’, can you give an example of a template they can use in most situations so that type geeks don’t make fun of them?

I would suggest finding a typeface family that you like then learning to master it.

Body text alternatives to Times New Roman – Adobe Garamond, Caslon, Baskerville, Hoefler Text (a gorgeous Mac default font), Scala.

Sans-serif alternatives to Arial – Helvetica, Gotham, Frutiger, Univers, Gill Sans, and Scala Sans.

For others who want to delve deeper into the art and science of typography, what resources would you recommend?

The best resources for good typography are:

• I love Typography – you can learn good type by seeing good type in use
• ‘Thinking with Type’ by Ellen Lupton – a great beginners book that I assign to all my basic typography students
• ‘The Elements of Typographical Style’ by Robert Bringhurst – the Bible of type

Doug Wilson is directing a film called Linotype: The Film. Find out more about Doug and his highly praised work, or follow him on Twitter.

He is not filming now and I am not recording sound. I am filling in because the two guys who make up the film crew with him could not make this trip. I have slung over my shoulder this heavy, grey box that wears its own backpack and shows me a lot of lights I do my best to ignore. In my hand is a microphone that looks like one of those things that people direct airplanes with, but black and covered with a foam sleeve.

As we stop to see which lot the auctioneer is taking bids for, an older gentleman asks Doug what we’re up to. Doug explains that he is making a film about the Linotype machine, and we’re here to see what happens to the three Linotypes that are being auctioned off today.

The older gentleman shows no lack of enthusiasm in the subject and begins talking about friends who have worked in the newspaper industry, for The Boston Globe among others. We’ve already heard stories like this today and we will hear more before we’re done. Stories of men working their lives away at printing presses becoming obsolete almost overnight as the processes of print succumb one by one to their cheaper, faster, easier digital counterparts.

And that’s what this project is all about for Doug. What happens to a history-changing machine that used to be at the heart of an entire industry? What happens to the people who have invested whole careers getting to know these giant, unintelligible machines inside and out? And what happens if a whole generation grows up not even knowing of their existence, let alone how to understand or operate one?

Doug is focused and doesn’t have much patience for old men’s stories right now. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, ‘Can you excuse us? We need to go film this.’ I smile and follow him over to the crowd gathered around the auctioneer. The next item is an old phone booth, made of wood and beautifully built. The real prize is inside though, hundreds of photos of scantily clad women taped to the walls of the booth. We’ve already met the fellow who is responsible for the photos. He used to work here at the City of Boston’s Graphic Arts Printing Plant. He proudly tells anyone who will listen. The collection took him years to assemble we learn.

We’re not filming. Whenever someone old starts telling Doug stories, he says we have to go film something. It has happened a couple times already.

A functioning Linotype machine

We taped for a while earlier. Now we’re just waiting for the Linotype machines to be auctioned. Doug flew in from Springfield, Missouri just to record it happening. He had never heard of an auction like this. An entire city getting rid of its whole printing department. Whole floors of paper, tools and equipment being auctioned off. It no longer made financial sense for the city to keep it running. From now on all print jobs for the city will be outsourced to private companies. They say it will save a million a year.

In the same area where the two healthier Linotype machines sit, and almost engulfing them, is the real prize of this auction for many who have come today. It is a massive amount of print equipment, enough to fill a room, all being sold together in one lot. There are cabinets and drawers full of metal typefaces of all sizes and kinds. Letterpress hobbyists go crazy over this stuff and they’re hoping to work out deals with whoever wins it. If they’re real lucky, the winner will be ready to resell stuff piecemeal on the spot.

Letterpress is Doug’s specialty. His thesis was setting up the old letterpress machine at Missouri State University along with all the necessary paraphernalia for operating it: the ink, the rollers, the typefaces all organized in their cabinets and drawers. He’s interested to see what happens with the lot, and I can’t help getting caught up in the excitement myself.

And that’s why the auctioning of the Linotypes, the whole reason we are there, totally catches us by surprise. We’re in the middle of the excitement of the big print lot, caught up in the drama as bidders drop out and it finally comes down to two. They’re back and forth working their way up to $10,000. One of them isn’t willing to go that high. Sold! And now the next lot, the first Linotype machine. Ohmygoshhitrecordhitrecord!

I hold the mic outstretched, like some sort of midget-sized fluffy lightsaber. Doug stands next to me, up against the wall, tiny camera on big frame with handles and weight (did I mention the frame the camera is mounted on has a weight on the back, because the camera is so light) over his shoulder, watching the camera LCD screen in front of him.

The auctioneer starts at one hundred dollars. Nobody bids. Then this guy says ten dollars. The auctioneer says you’re killing me. Fine, ten dollars. Anyone else? Anyone else? Anyone else?

Nothing.

Okay, the auctioneer says to the lone bidder, but you have to take the other one too.

Twenty bucks and they’re both sold. I should mention the cost of getting them out of the building is somewhere around two grand each.

And that is it. We hang out and get an interview with the guy who is proud new owner of two Linotype machines, another with the guy who got out-bid on the big print lot, and another with the auctioneer. We miss the third Linotype getting auctioned off because we have to move Doug’s rental car, but we’re not completely sure they even tried to auction it. After Doug is satisfied that we have gotten everything we can, we walk down the street and pick up some cannoli (you can’t go to Boston’s North End and not get cannoli) and head home. Another day in the life of a niche-documentary filmmaker.

Doug, Brandon, and Jesse. Linotype: The Crew

Before the auction adventure of February 24th, I asked Doug some questions over email about the film and other stuff. Here follows our interview.

Do you now or have you ever had a garden gnome in your possession?

I have never owned a garden gnome but I’m fairly sure when I was a teenager, I stole some from a neighbor’s house and set them in someone else’s yard.

I think it’s safe to assume the biggest thing going on in your professional life right now is ‘Linotype: The Film’. Why is this movie important to you?

‘Linotype: The Film’ is about an old printing machine called a Linotype. The Linotype completely revolutionized printing and communication similar to the way that the internet is changing everything right now – but it was invented in 1886. This major invention of the early 20th century was invented by a guy that no one has heard of although the impact of the Linotype is as big as Henry Ford’s car or Edison’s light bulb.

It is important to me because people need to know about this machine and its impact on society. This amazing thing was invented and changed society and education and no one really cares. No one knows about it and the guy that invented it died unknown and poor. I hope to change that.

Professionally, I have no idea where this will take me. I am a graphic designer and letterpress printer, not a film director. I actually have no idea how to make a documentary film. But I know a good film when I see it and I know how to communicate visually – all the rest is details, right?

What makes you think you have what it takes to direct this film and do a great job?

Honestly, I am pretty terrified to be making this film. I’m not 100% sure that I can actually MAKE this film – but that is the fun of it. If you totally know you can do something before you start it, what is the point? Where is the fun in that?

What’s a ‘normal’ week like in the life of a documentary director and his crew?

A normal week for me is writing probably about twenty emails a day for upcoming shoots and people interested in the film, staying on top of our website and twitter account, and scheduling upcoming shoots. Coordinating the crew’s schedule is difficult as the guys are full-time media freelancers and one is finishing up school. I hope he graduates after all of the weeks he is missing this semester….

Directing and producing a film is a LOT of work. I am actually mostly a producer. I only get to play director on film shoots about two percent of the time. The rest is actually making this film, connecting with people, and making sure I book a rental car at the right airport. Did I mention I write a lot of emails?

As film production ramps up, what do you see as the biggest challenges ahead? What is it about the project that keeps you going and keeps you optimistic?

Staying optimistic is easy and difficult at the same time. We have had such a great response to the film and the support from all over the world encourages me on a daily basis. It is very easy to get overwhelmed at all of the details of the film. I am very much a completer of tasks, and there is ALWAYS more tasks to complete for the film, so I can get discouraged by never really feeling that completion. But in the end, I believe and love what I am doing – how many people can say that?

Your professional career up to now has centered on graphic design, but you’ve been able to do a wide variety of work within that field, and now the film. Is there some central passion or mission that ties together everything you do?

Passion and curiosity are what drive me to create. I am always asking questions, always asking ‘why?’ That is why I started the film. I asked ‘why don’t people know about this amazing machine? Are there still people crazy enough to use these machines? Will they survive?’ And here we are, making a crazy movie that I hope people will like. Or at least not hate.

You can find out more about ‘Linotype: The Film’ on the official website and you can find out more about Doug on his website.

Stacey, a native of Canada, has been a resident of Christchurch for four years. She sent this email to her friends and family on March 1st and generously allowed us to republish it.

New Zealand Defence Force (flickr.com/photos/nzdefenceforce/5469814540/)

It has now been seven days since Christchurch was hit with yet another earthquake, this one proving to be the most devastating one yet. Here’s an update from my perspective, and I emphasize that this is my perspective only – for more detailed coverage, check out www.stuff.co.nz.

As I mentioned in my last e-mail, for the first 3 nights after the quake, 2 friends and I stayed with my friend Johnny at his dad’s place outside of Christchurch. We spent the days watching the news, which seemed bizarre and far-removed from our location, where we hardly felt aftershocks and had all services. On Friday, I heard that power and water had been restored to my house, so we decided to pack a lunch and spades, and venture into the city. Getting to my house took far longer than usual – road closures throughout the city are causing major congestion. Many roads have developed bumps and sinkholes – some spanning the entire width of the street. Many traffic lights are out, water mains have burst and buildings have collapsed onto streets. Let’s just say driving around town requires extra vigilance!

Royal New Zealand Navy (flickr.com/photos/nznavy/5469765922/)

We made it back to my place to find it relatively unscathed. It has definitely shifted a lot, as most of our doors don’t quite close anymore, and there are cracks in the walls. I have power, but my hot water cylinder needs repair, so cold water only. Also, water isn’t flowing into my toilet, so to use it we need to fill a bucket and pour that into the tank to flush. Not too bad, considering all water needs to be boiled before consumption anyways.

34% of the city doesn’t have water yet. If you do the math, that means that approximately 125 000 people have no water, and therefore, no toilets. These people have had to dig toilets in their backyard until a portable toilet turns up on their street corner. Apparently portable toilets are being shipped in from all over the country to meet the massive need. For those of us who can flush, the District Health Board has advised to conserve, telling us via the 6pm news, ‘If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down.’ Bizarre and almost comical getting these instructions in a press report on the news!

I have resolved to pace myself and be careful not to over-exert myself when it comes to helping others. It is clear that this will be a long road to recovery, and I will be of no use to anyone if I burn out after a week. So I am trying to alternate days of helping with days of rest for now.

About half of the city has been badly affected by liquefaction. I’ve spent a couple days helping clean it up. This is very heavy to shovel, and there is anticipated to be 200 000 TONNES of it removed from properties around town. It needs to be hand shoveled out of properties, and carried by wheelbarrow to the curbside, where the city council will pick it up.

The silt which has come up from the ground is often mixed with sewage, due to pipes bursting. So our city smells pretty bad, and now that it has been warm and dry for a few days, there is silt dust blowing through the air. On a hot day like today, you bike around town (best way to get around these days), only to get sweaty, which causes the poo-smelling dust to stick to you. Yum. Nevermind the fact that you’re breathing this dust in, and can feel it coating your teeth. I saw lots of people around town with dust masks today. If it doesn’t rain a bit to settle this dust, I might start wearing a dust mask while biking.

Martin Luff (flickr.com/photos/23934380@N06/5470256572/)

The death toll has risen to 155 now. I am very fortunate to not know anyone personally, just friends of friends. We got some of our boys together for skate bible study last night, and it was amazing looking around the room and being more thankful than ever that we have each other. We had a great talk with the boys, probably the most intimate time I have ever had with them, with some of the boys who are normally very staunch opening up and sharing their feelings and fears. It was a really special time, especially hearing them pray and thank God for their safety and asking Him for help to get through this. I love our skate family so much, and am so thankful that we all still have each other.

It’s getting late, and I should wrap this up. In short, I am doing well. There are moments that the reality of this gets heavy. Everything from the enormity of this tragedy, and the reality that the CBD, where I spend almost every day, will be closed for weeks and weeks, to the smaller realities, like the 2 nearest supermarkets being closed due to earthquake damage. One is condemned, and the other has had a bad fire, and is closed indefinitely. This sounds small, but neither me or my flatmate have a car, so now we’ll be walking or biking with our household groceries from about 2 kilometers away.

I was looking forward to a better year financially, but now i have lost sources of income, losing my hours cleaning house, and Cheapskates is closed indefinitely. The uncertainty can be overwhelming. And many people are leaving Christchurch, which is hard too. But, we have each other, and we will stay strong. I am so aware that I am far more fortunate than many people in Christchurch at the moment. And seeing people pull together to help one another out gives us a lot of hope.

In closing, here are the lyrics to a song I find quite encouraging, which we sang on Sunday night, when friends gathered at my place for church.

“You’re the God of this City
You’re the King of these people
You’re the Lord of this nation

You’re the Light in this darkness
You’re the Hope to the hopeless
You’re the Peace to the restless

There is no one like our God

For greater things have yet to come,
And greater things are still to be done in this city. ”

New Zealand Defence Force (flickr.com/photos/nzdefenceforce/5474153291/)