Cold Weather, Coffee, Lorde, and Lizzo
December is the coldest month in Central Oregon, and we’re in the thick of it now. We reached below zero temperatures and it is only December 6. The world is beautiful in snow, and as one of my German friends told me years ago: “There is no such thing as bad weather, only wrong clothes.” That is true. One thing I discovered living here is that every day is a beautiful day. It’s just a different kind of beautiful.
The cold air mixes with the fragrances of restaurants and coffee shops in the city, making things smell cleaner, and the shops more inviting. Out here in the mountains and forests, the air “smells like snow,” that wonderful aroma that is the olfactory equivalent of an icy mountain stream. When the temperatures drop to -5 or below, the world is quiet and everything alive goes into suspense, enduring the freeze until the sun comes back. The ponderosa pines start to crack with the cold, abruptly interrupting the silence with booms that echo in the forest. I worried when I first heard them cracking, but the trees are unconcerned and the branches are still intact. And when the spring comes, the trees celebrate by releasing their pollen into green clouds that cover us all.
Quiet is the theme of Winter - the quiet of the intense cold, the quiet when the falling snow absorbs all sound, the quiet of walking in snow, the quiet of the fog that rises above the snow when the sun hits it in late afternoon. It is a beautiful time of year.
Many of you live in warmer climes. I hope you can find the time this winter to “go to the snow.” If you live in the colder weather, embrace the beauty.
I. Coffee
Everyone has opinions about making the best coffee ever. I guess it’s human nature to want to rank things. Rolling Stone magazine has the “500 greatest songs of all time” ranked in order. I love Aretha Franklin, but is “Respect” the greatest song ever? You could take the top twenty or thirty songs and pick them randomly from a hat and get a ranking just as legitimate. I don’t believe there’s a best anything. There is just a scattergram of greatness, surrounded by an infinity of mediocrity and awfulness. Therefore to me, at least, there is no best way to brew great coffee. There is no best variety of coffee, no best roast of coffee, and no best brand of coffee. There are just varying manifestations of greatness.
Unfortunately, there are infinitely more ways to screw coffee up. Just because there are lots of great types of coffee does not mean it’s easy to make it. It’s pretty damned easy to screw it up.
I read somewhere - maybe the New Yorker - that the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York had in its collection a stovetop espresso pot, the Alessi 9090, designed by Richard Sapper, in the Architecture and Design section of the museum, and that the inventor of the process, Alfonso Bialetti, had his original version, the Moka Express, in MoMA as well.
Which intrigued me. I’ve seen Moka pots in stores, and in the kitchens of my friends and family, and invariably they were unused. Of all the ways I’ve heard to make coffee, on TV, from friends, from casual passers-by, from anyone, no-one ever said, “hey, that Moka pot, baby, now that’s the way to go” To me it was an indecipherable weird contraption.
But here they are in MoMA for design! I decided to try one out. I bought a six cup Moka Express, read the instructions, and watched a few YouTube videos. I finally saw how it worked! I grew up with percolators. My mom used one, and my first roommate used one that I don’t think he ever cleaned. He either added grounds or water, depending. I guess he had to empty the grinds occassionally, but I never saw him do it. It was always on. I never ventured to drink it.
The Moka pot is similar, but different. You heat it on the stove on medium heat, the heat creates steam and pressure in the bottom chamber, which forces the heated, but not boiling, water up the tube and through the grounds, and then into the top chamber.
I love it. I really do. I’ve done drip coffee, I love the Aeropress, I love French Presses, I’ve had espresso machines, but I love this Moka pot! It makes great coffee, at the strength I like, consistently, and it is just fun to watch!
I use exactly the same amount of water, up to the bottom of the pressure valve. I grind the coffee the same way - not-quite-fine. Between the bottom and top chambers there is a basket for the coffee. I fill up the basket without tamping it down. It's loose like it would be in a drip coffee maker. I put the basket in, screw the upper chamber onto the lower half, and then put it on the stove at just above medium heat. Seven minutes later, the coffee starts to erupt into the top chamber. When it is done, I pour. It is amazing, and it is the same greatness, every time.
I like the fact that the water volume and temperature and the amount of coffee are the same every time. I like that there are no moving parts, and no filter, and I like the physics of it. Steam pushes the water the only place it can go: up and through the grounds, making great coffee. It amazes me, even though I know how it works. There is only a drop or two of water left in the bottom chamber when it’s done. All the water is coffee now.
I’ve seen Moka pots around my whole life. It took six decades for me to try one out. And now it’s one of my favorite things. It makes me wonder how many more wonderful things are out there that if I just notice them, just be open, will become my favorite things.
II. Lorde and Lizzo
Speaking of favorite things, it is easy for people to lock themselves into the music of their youth and stay there. I am “Generation Jones,” which is the small section of years between the Boomers and Gen X. We were not old enough to be drafted into Viet Nam, nor go to Woodstock. But we were old enough to see them on TV. The heart of my musical era is around 1977 through the mid ‘80s, and it is New Wave, primarily. The ‘90s? Forget it. Weren't the ‘90s all about Vanilla Ice, the Macarena, and singers who growled instead of sang?
But here’s the thing. This year, I realized that when we look back, we are not experiencing The Now, and we are not creating our life. And rather than close myself off, I decided to lean in to The Now. I’m looking forward. What we forget is that the music of any period, ever, had many, many, many crappy songs. The ‘70s were notorious for the plethora of turkeys that shot up the charts. The ‘60s too. And the ‘50s, and the ‘40s, and the ‘80s. There is a lot of crap out there. What we love and remember and play over and over is the cream of the milk of a very anemic cow. The early ‘80s for me were phenomenal music-wise. 1982 was the best year ever. But: the top 100 singles for 1982? There is a lot of crap in there. I single one song out as an example, because this song is probably the worst song ever to hit vinyl, and it was released in the great year of 1982. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you “I’ve Never Been to Me” by “Charlene.” Now, I know someone had to love this turkey, and I can understand guilty pleasures, but my God!
We remember and love what we want to remember and love. And, the music of today? There is a lot of crap out there. Just like there always was.
So, we open our minds. We decide to not close ourselves off to artists who weren’t even born during our best music years. And there is a lot of talent out there. The HBO Max documentary on Lizzo is a phenomenal portrait of a phenomenal woman. Lizzo was born in 1988. And, Lorde? 1996. Seriously? I was balding then.
I love the song “Solar Power” from Lorde. It came out last year. It bubbled up in my Spotify lists, and I immediately loved it. Lorde is incredibly talented. I love “About Damn Time” from Lizzo. Lizzo - when she played James Madison’s crystal flute at the Library of Congress - wow. She is greatness.
Lorde and Lizzo are the cream. And there is always cream and new favorites out there to find.