I am who I am today because of the choices I made yesterday ~ Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady, activist, writer. How might one encourage newspapers to hire women journalists? Eleanor did it by hosting ladies-only press conferences at the White House. What a wild idea! Eleanor was more than a First Lady—she and FDR had a robust political partnership and her work for social reform and civil rights continued well after his death. As the U.S. Delegate to the U.N. she helped to draft the historic Declaration of Human Rights. ER was a prolific writer and speaker. What's her coffee connection? Talking to America for 15 minutes every Sunday night as host of her radio show Over Our Coffee Cups (1941-42). On her "Sunday evening visit" of December 7, she became the first public figure to comment on the attack at Pearl Harbor.

I started playing clarinet in the fifth grade. It wasn’t like a dream, I was really trying to get out of a history test! We had a pop quiz one day. It was a brutal test, each student was asked questions – you were either right or wrong, pass or fail. When the first question came to me, I got it wrong. So, I looked out of the window, like I did most days, and I prayed, saying, “God, if you can get me out of this test, I’ll do anything!” Almost simultaneously, the principal spoke over the loudspeaker, and she said, “Anyone interested in joining the band, report immediately to the bandroom.” I was “saved by the bell”! ~The Clarinet 48/2 (March 2021) (photo from www.doreensjazz.org) Coffee culture in New Orleans is only surpassed by the music culture. Regarding the coffee, when you're serving coffee with steamed milk next to fried beignets, why add chicory to it? As a caffeine-free root that grinds to a texture similar to coffee, New Orleanians claim that a 70-30 brew of coffee and chicory creates a hot drink with less buzz that may lower cholesterol, control blood sugar and improve gut health. And they say, it tastes good. That's why! We say, it's not the chicory. It is the music in the streets that makes New Orleans coffee taste so good! Wild Woman Doreen Ketchens, aka Queen Clarinet, is a key to that taste enhancement, entertaining all who gather on her corner whenever she’s not on tour. Her world-renowned band, including husband Lawrence on the tuba and daughter Dorian on drums, has toured internationally and played for presidents, but has had a regular spot at Royal and St. Peter Streets for decades. Though a classically trained musician, Ketchens has played with all the jazz greats. She attended community college, then Loyola University and finally the Hartt School of Music in Connecticut, studying under Ellis Marsalis and Stanley Weinstein along the way. She gives back by teaching and mentoring enthusiastic young musicians. An International Clarinet Association interview provides more insight into the life and career of one of our favorite Wild Women…Queen Clarinet!

The doors are closed on our favorite coffee shops and roasteries so when better than now to experiment with raw coffee and high heat at home? Green beans are easy to find online and developing a custom roast is a surprisingly easy enterprise. Green coffee beans are not beans at all, but rather the seeds of the coffee cherry. The red cherries are harvested, washed, de-pulped and soaked in a fermentation tank before being dried and bagged for sale. It is easy to find a reputable seller who can provide you with beans straight from the farm. Green beans will maintain their quality for a very long time when stored under dry stable conditions, but once they are roasted they get stale fast. Home roasting in small batches is an excellent way way to get the freshest cup of coffee — even when NOT in the midst of a pandemic! If you pop corn in a hot air popper then you already own the perfect coffee roaster. Pour a half cup of green beans into the popper, secure a piece of chicken wire to the top and turn on the heat. The beans will spin and turn and begin to change color. As the beans expand they will shed chaff which will look like tiny bits of thin paper floating in the air. If you like a light roast, the beans will be done soon after the chaff begins to fly. If you enjoy a dark roast, wait until the beans are crackling and smoking and starting to shine with exuded oil. Light or dark or in between, just before you think the beans are done to perfection, turn off the heat, pour the beans out into a metal pan or colander, and shake them briskly to cool them quickly. Let the beans rest for a day before you grind them – course for a press, more fine for a drip. Choose your favorite bean, your favorite roast and your favorite extractor to make the freshest cup of coffee while we wait for the world to open up again! Be sure to offer a precious cup to a front line worker!

So everyone reads the paper with a cup of coffee; what about reading about coffee with a cup of coffee? The biggest shared database of library books is WorldCat.org. What started as an optimistic cooperative cataloging experiment among college libraries in Ohio has become the biggest non-bookstore in the world. I say non-bookstore because it is actually a gigantic library where you can borrow any book you can imagine by having what you find sent to the library that is closest to you. Create an "account" (there is no money involved) so that you can maintain lists of what you want to read and so that the system knows where you live (at least the zip code ) and can identify libraries close to you. Search for "coffee history" and get over 27,000 results. Limit by books written for children after 2000 and there are only 27 titles to examine for relevancy. So, check out worldcat.org AND your local library and read about coffee! #coffee #library #libraries #bookstore

Sleepeducation.org (brought to us by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine—who knew?) tells us that caffeine is a “moderately effective alerting agent” and can improve reaction times, mood, and mental performance. It works best when taken intermittently. So, Drink coffee all day! (with pauses) They go on to say that coffee accounts for 54% of the caffeine consumption in the world, and Americans consume three times more caffeine than the world average at 300 mg per person. (Aside—tea has less caffeine but the English and Swedes drink so much tea that they still double the caffeine intake of Americans) A normal dose of caffeine is 50-200 mg. while a dose of 500 to 600 is like a low dose amphetamine . I always choose the middle ground so with tea at 55 mgs, coffee at 95 mg per cup, and energy drinks at 170; I suggest coffee for all! The AASM suggests use in moderation to avoid disrupting sleep. Yawn... Who has time to sleep anyway? I’m thinking this sign makes a whole lot of sense!

...where coffee came from. Juan Valdez told us Colombia, and sure, most of us have had coffee from other parts of Latin America, BUT where did that first glorious berry rear its head? When the 16th century European botanist Linnaeus was categorizing the "newly discovered" flora, coffee was being grown on the terraces of the southern Arabian peninsula and the tree was seemingly appropriately designated as "Coffea arabica". However, by the mid twentieth century, historians came to agree that the botanical home of coffee is actually the high forests of central Ethiopia. Surprised? Well, stay tuned for more fascinating facts!

The WWCBeanletter is an occasional newsletter intended to spark conversations about coffee and the world. We hope you will read, pass along, and send us feedback!

We've all seen the silly wall plaques: "Drink coffee, do stuff," "Life begins with coffee," "Coffee: creative lighter fluid," "With enough coffee, anything is possible..." and so on. But here's a new one that was confirmed by the New York Times this summer: "Drink Coffee, Don't Die! According to a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, May 31, 2022, Those who drank 1.5 to 3.5 cups of coffee per day, even with a teaspoon of sugar, were up to 30 percent less likely to die ....than those who didn’t drink coffee....and those who drank unsweetened coffee were 16 to 21 percent less likely to die....with those drinking about three cups per day having the lowest risk of death when compared with non-coffee drinkers. Ok, I left out "...during the study period.." but still, those are WILD statistics! Maybe it's not the coffee; maybe people who drink coffee make healthier choices in general. But, multiple studies have linked health advantages in the areas of Parkinson’s disease, Type 2 diabetes, certain cancers, and heart disease to (drum roll please) ... COFFEE. I'm going to heed this latest study and stick to my morning routine. Yes, please, I'll take a refill! Coffee Drinking Linked to Lower Mortality Risk, New Study Finds

Wait, who is Carl Lewis? He's the amazing athlete whose medal record was broken at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics by Allyson Felix! She has appeared in 5 Olympic Games--beginning in Atlanta in 2004 when she was 18 years old. This wild woman doesn't leave anything on the track and has 11 medals to prove it! After her last race a message to her daughter is one we all need to hear: “No matter what it feels is stacked against you, you go out with character and integrity, you give your all, and that’s all anybody else can ask of you, and you’re proud with that.” For the record (the informational kind), she likes her coffee with cream and sugar. (http://www.thepostgame.com/allyson-felix-shares-personal-information-olympics )

Be bold. If you're going to make an error, make a doozy, and don't be afraid to hit the ball. ~ Billie Jean King. One of the greatest women tennis players of all time, BJK is a tireless advocate for gender equality and a social justice pioneer. Her fierce competitiveness and great athleticism led to a slew of awards and trophies, including 129 singles titles, and a place in the Tennis Hall of Fame. In 1973 she was a founder and first president of the Women's Tennis Association. That same year King elevated the recognition of women in sport by beating Bobby Riggs in the "Battle of the Sexes." In 1955, she was banned from a Junior Tennis group photo because she was wearing shorts instead of a skirt. These days, Billie Jean King wears whatever she wants, especially on her annual visit to her favorite Wimbledon coffee shop!

So often in life, things that you regard as an impediment turn out to be great, good fortune ~ Ruth Bader Ginsberg, United States Supreme Court Justice (1993-2020). Ginsberg was a forceful advocate for gender equality and women’s rights. She lived her belief that a person creates a meaningful life when they live not just for themselves, but for their community. She was a trailblazer as the second woman on the Court, and could easily envision a bench with nine women--only fair given the long history of nine men. A wise, wild woman indeed, RBG favored a strong brewed coffee; she drank it black.