Dear Kid,
We’re busy getting ready for the Cincinnati Coffee Festival (the world’s coolest event November 11-12 at Cincinnati Music Hall–buy tickets here). Which means we are thinking about….wait for it….coffee.
Coffee can make people do, um, interesting things.
Napoleon Bonaparte asked for a spoonful of coffee while on his deathbed, and his autopsy revealed coffee grounds in his stomach. He once said, “I would rather suffer with coffee than be senseless.” That’s pretty much how I feel every morning.
Coffee is used in all kinds of sayings. In baseball, a player with a “cup of coffee” is one who has played only one game in the majors as either a pitcher or a batter. (Did you know that? I didn’t think so.)
Some people drink coffee. Some people drink a lot of coffee. Some people drink a LOT of coffee. Like Honoré de Balzac (the early 19th century French author) who reportedly drank 50 cups of coffee a day. Most people would agree that is a ridiculous amount. It’s a good thing Balzac didn’t get $9 lattes.
Some people drink coffee black. Others don’t. Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, drank a lot of coffee. He would pour sugar into the coffee cup until it was piled up above the rim, then add incredibly strong, black coffee, which slowly dissolved the sugar. Then he’d gulped the whole thing down in one go. Have a little coffee with your sugar.
And some people think coffee is more than coffee, it’s their own personal canvas.
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