A Curious Statistical Anomaly

Today, the barometric pressure is very high — higher than yesterday anyway — so the migraine that’s been off and on for a while is back with a vengeance. So, rather than immediately reach for the painkillers which I’ve been trying to avoid (mainly because they’re so hard to get a Doc to give a prescription for them) , I decided on Tylenol and coffee — doesn’t help much but it takes the edge off and then I can usually deal — provided I don’t have to actually make any important decisions. Someday, when I feel I can do it without whinging and whining, I’ll do a post on living with chronic pain.

Not only do I use coffee medicinally and consciously so, I actually like it. When we lived in Rhode Island, there were lots of coffee shops including the usual Starbucks as well as Ocean Coffee Roasters, The Coffee Exchange, Cafe Zog and a host of others. When you went grocery shopping the coffee aisle was just that; a full aisle with coffees of various types, flavors, and brands, filling nearly both sides of a full aisle. Then we moved to Maryland. Here the coffee aisle of the grocery store was one shelf carrying Nescafe, Maxwell House, and if you were lucky some of the General Foods International Coffees. Then Starbucks opened up in several communities surrounding us — within a year the urge to buy decent beans didn’t mean Internet shopping or a trip into DC or some far off mall with a specialty shop — I could now get decent beans within an hours drive. Life was good again.

Occasionally, I do some searches on coffee just to see what comes up and that’s how I found out about Raven’s Brew‘s Dead Man’s Reach (see the label above). You’ve got to check out their site, even if it’s just for the coffee labels and descriptions. I got some Dead Man’s Reach, just couldn’t resist the picture on the label, it was certainly strongly flavored and it did get the eyes open in the morning. It was smooth too which I hadn’t really expected but enjoyed with sipping or gulping each cup.

I review books and found, while reviewing Cleo Coyle’s coffeehouse murders, that I enjoyed also learning more about coffee, its history and place in society, not to mention the recipes. Not only does Coyle tell a pretty decent mystery in New York’s East Village centered on a coffeehouse and/or its manager, she slips in bits and pieces of coffee trivia and includes recipes at the end of the book.

There’s also lots of books out about the history, economics, and societal impact of coffee on the world. Today I read the Look Inside of Coffee: A Dark History by Antony Wild, Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World by Mark Pendergrast, and The Devil’s Cup: A History of the World According to Coffee by Stewart Lee Allen. They’re now on my wish list.

Also, i ran across this interesting site of coffee links, Bean Scoop Web Reviews. Haven’t had a chance to check all the links out yet but it seems fairly informative.

Now that my coffee is brewed guess I’ll go have a cup.

I have to admit I’m a real fan of Jane Austen’s books. I’ve read all but Lady Susan and Persuasion (though I’ve started it twice). Wouldn’t you know it, I also missed seeing Persuasion last Sunday. But, this Sunday, I managed to get myself settled down in front of the TV to view Northanger Abbey. I’d never seen this version of the novel before. The version I own is the BBC (1986) one. They both do an admirable job of telling the story of Catherine Morland, a spirited young woman with a good heart and a very active imagination, as she vacations with family friends in Bath, meets some interesting and nefarious people, visits an Abbey, get scared and confused, falls in love, gets sent home in disgrace, and becomes a bit more cautious with her trust and heart.

Northanger Abbey was written as a bit of satire on all the Gothic romances of the day that were inflaming the minds of young women and taking them away from any serious study of books, their surroundings, or their circumstances. When I tried to read Jane Austen years ago as literature — well, I never really could get anywhere with it. But, once I realized that it’s like anthropology, a study of a new and different culture, it became, for me, more interesting and absorbing. Austen was an astute observer of her friends, neighbors, and family. She noticed as well as thought about what happened around her. Her books are filled with pithy statements and keen observations of the human condition. She was also a woman of her times as well and there is a sensitivity to the plight of women in her social strata. There’s little in Austen that speaks of the lower or lowest classes of society in her time even thought there might occasionally be a reference to an incident here or there. The politics of her works are the politics of class and society and little of the times in which she lived.

PBS should be applauded for introducing, I hope, a new audience to her works via these films. While no adaptation of a novel can compete with the written word for depth and texture — they can give the viewer a taste of the rich world that Austen opened up for those of us reading her words so many years after her death. Now that I’ve seen two version of Northanger Abbey, I’d be hard pressed to say which I prefer — they each have their pluses and minuses — their moments of pure Austen-ism and their clinkers. What I can say is that I throughly enjoyed the presentation and have added this DVD to my ‘must buy’ list.

I checked but don’t see that PBS is re-running the series anytime soon so, if you’ve missed Northanger Abbey this evening — rent it. Don’t despair though because next Sunday at 9PM is Mansfield Park (again a version I haven’t yet seen). I’ve marked my calendar and hope this next film meets my expectations for excellence in presenting the work of Jane Austen and not a similarly titled work that might have nodded in her direction as the previous movie version of this book, that I saw,  seemed to be. I have high hopes for next week since Northanger Abbey was so satisfying.