Fish Story

Great Blue Heron

I subscribe to the old fishing nostrum that the worst day fishing is better than a great day doing pretty much anything else....except, although I do love to fish...it's birding for me. Any day birding is better than almost anything else.

Thus when a good friend offered a day trip to Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge I couldn't say yes fast enough....even though the wildlife drive was still closed for winter.

Sandhill Crane

At 0'Dawn-Thirty we debated....rain until 11...should we go or postpone.

I'll bet you can guess how I voted.

Photo by Kris

By the time we made it half way there, rain was lashing down. Hmm....

However, Northern Shovelers, Green-winged Teal, and Northern Pintails in the visitor's center. pool made it feel like a pretty good plan.

Trumpeter Swan

We soldiered on through intermittent rain, seeing bird after bird after astonishing bird. And we had so much fun. You know those friends the Internet memes mention, with whom you can strike up a conversation after years of separation and never miss a beat? Yeah, like that, only with birds. You can rest easy...most of the world's problems are solved.

The rain behaved as predicted and by noon it was reasonably dry. As we tooled around one country road we saw bumps in a corn field. They were kinda sorta different-ish bumps so we stopped and lo and behold there were three Sandhill Cranes, the main goal birds of the day.

Ring-necked Duck

They posed quite willingly.

We hit the Audubon Center, the Sandhill Crane unit, all the other stops I'm familiar with excepting the wildlife drive because you know...closed and all. 

For the last stop of the day we returned to the main center so Kris could get a hat, as she had forgotten hers. As we drove in we exclaimed in unison, "it's open!"

The park opened a day early just an hour before our second visit. Of course we made the circuit.

We found Cranes!

Cranes, cranes everywhere

At almost the last pool of the day a bird with a bright, orange-red head flew in. We both dismissed it as a Redhead. We had seen several and were counting Gadwalls and figuring out why some females showed more white on the secondaries than others.

Eurasian Wigeon

Something made me take a second look and I was afraid to believe my eyes. Our "Redhead" was a beautiful male Eurasian Wigeon. I was so excited!

It would have been hard to come close to that level of amazement but when we came home there were cranberry barbecue chicken and potatoes boiling on the stove. I thought it was Liz making their dinner.

Instead the boss was cooking supper! He had never cooked chicken before but he knocked it out of the park. We had an awesome and incredible day and that's no fish story.

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And an Otter Thing

Northern Shrike

We spent considerable time on the road yesterday, what with going over to see the lineup for tomorrow's auction at MacFadden's and all. We happened to spend a few minutes at Yankee Hill Lock, which were very enjoyable.

We walked the bike path a bit, finding nobody new, but lots of activity with a little mixed feeding flock. 

There were Cedar Waxwings, actively hawking insects that only they could see.

We found Hedwig on the Hudson again...or on the Mohawk, if you prefer

And, as we stood on the river bank, scanning for ducks and geese, the boss pointed at something about twenty feet off shore and exclaimed, "What is that!"

There in a boil of water, speeding downriver in the speeding current was a river otter.

Holy cow!

Exciting photo of a spot where an otter was just fractions of a second before

I tried for a photo, but he was only coming up for a quick breath and then diving again. This was the best I could do.

What a thrill though. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of wild otters I have seen. It was a fitting beginning to what turned out to be a delightful day.

School's out

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Ozo Coffee Hosting Throwdown Benefitting KGNU Community Radio

Latte art with a latte heart, that’s what we’re all about here at Sprudge. And there’s a latte art throwdown next week that fits the bill. On Thursday, April 5^th in Longmont, Colorado, Ozo Coffee is hosting a latte art throwdown benefitting KGNU Community Radio.

This is the second annual OZO Coffee TNT, but it is the first done in honor of KGNU’s 40th anniversary, and they are pulling out all the stops. For the cost of a $15 buy-in—with the proceeds going to KGNU—participants will receive one pound of Ozo’s KGNU 40th Anniversary Blend and are entered to win tickets to see Vulpeck and Kamasi Washington at Red Rocks, amongst others. You can be the worst at latte art and still win free tickets to see a modern jazz master at the best outdoor venue in America.

And if you happen to also be good at the hearts, stars, and balloons—or whatever it is you crazy kids are pouring these days—prizes for the throwdown include items from Baratza, Topo Designs (America’s colorful answer for Fjallraven), prAna (makers of the Zion stretch, the best pants for climbing), and many, many more. After those resounding endorsements, should a Daypack or cargo green pair of pants—32” inseam—happen to fall before me, I wouldn’t not pick them up is all I’m saying.

There will of course be beer and wine, really good beer and wine (this is Colorado after all), provided by Upslope Brewing Company, Avery Brewing, and Wyatt’s Wet Goods.

The FOMO is strong with this one. It’s going to be a good time for a good cause with a ton of cool prizes. So you should definitely make your way out to Longmont On Thursday. It all gets going at 6:00pm for throwdown sign-ups, with the first milk touching espresso promptly at 7:00pm. For more information, visit the OZO Coffee + KGNU Thursday Night Throwdown Fundraiser Facebook event page.

Zac Cadwalader is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.

*top image via Ozo Coffee

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Passing The Bechdel Test At Barista Connect Melbourne

So often in specialty coffee—indeed, in most industries—the speaker scene at conferences, panels, and speaking events trends overwhelmingly male. All-male speaking line-ups are such a commonplace occurrence that a modified version of the Bechdel test comes to mind—is there actually one woman in the line-up? Is there more than one woman? Could two women conceivably have a conversation together on the panel stage? And would that conversation be about anything other than the work of a man?  

The normal tapestry of specialty coffee speaking circuits is highly guilty of the above, and especially here in Australia, where notions of gender equity and equality can often feel stuck in the past compared to other parts of the world. And so when it was announced that Barista Connect, the international women’s coffee event series, would be making its way to Melbourne for the first time, my response—and the response of many others in the Australian coffee scene—was one of outright delight.

Here’s an event that doesn’t just pass the Bechdel test, it crushes it. 

Having previously held events in Aarhaus and London, Barista Connect Melbourne is the third incarnation of the event founded by Sonja Zweidick, with the Melbourne edition organised collaboratively alongside Camilla Bargholz (8Kilo) and Mikaela Gervard (The Coffee Collective). Here at Sprudge we’ve been enthusiastic supporters of previous Barista Connect events and while each is unique, the goal of for Zweidick and her team has proven to be an incredibly consistent one: to improve equality in the coffee industry and to create and further the network of female coffee professionals internationally.

Held over the Monday and Tuesday preceding MICE (the Melbourne International Coffee Expo) at two stunning venues—Maillard Atelier and La Marzocco Australia—an intimate group of 22 coffee professional attendees were treated to a range of talks, workshops, and collaborative discussions. Presenters included—among others—Elika Rowell of Square One Coffee Roasters, Charlotte Malaval of Toby’s Estate, Monika Fekete of Coffee Science Lab, Lucy Ward of St Ali and Sensory Lab, Meira Harel of King & Godfree, Michelle Johnson of The Chocolate Barista and Barista Hustle, Jets Anita Langland of La Marzocco, and Jenni Bryant and Milla Vainikainen of Market Lane Coffee.

Barista Connect founder Sonja Zweidick (left) with Charlotte Malaval.

Highlights included Jets Anita Langland discussing the elements of value in the coffee industry, getting deep into the academic side of marketing—Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, anyone? Meanwhile, Michelle Johnson spoke about the utility and purpose of social media in amplifying her experiences and ideas in the coffee industry as a way to network and further her professional opportunities.

I was struck by the fact that this event, curated avowedly by and for women, focused so sparingly on “gender issues” throughout its speaker lineup. By and large it was an event focused on ideas, theories, skills, and experiences that felt applicable to the entirety of the industry. I never felt talked down to or marginalized. There is an all-for-one community vibe to Barista Connect that’s quite unlike most other coffee symposia. 

Michelle Johnson.

Jets Anita Langland.

The specific topic of women in coffee was, however, tackled by Charlotte Malaval, former French Barista Champion, as the final speaker of the event. After expressing frustration at the frequency of which she was asked “What’s it like to be a woman in coffee,” she moved into a fascinating presentation of anthropological theories on gender and competition by academics like Bordieu and Lévi-Strauss. Malaval’s talk put forth the theory that there are more men in competitions solely because they’re socialised to compete, whereas the majority of women aren’t socialised in the same way. As she went on, Malaval elaborated on her own experiences and how she hadn’t really perceived any negativity towards herself in relation to being a female competitor. “It’s hard no matter who you are!” she told the crowd, while also posing the question: “Do we really need to identify and be inspired by the same gender?”

It was an interesting insight to hear, and one that was at odds with a number of attendees in the audience, leading to a fascinating back and forth in the discussion segment following the talk. Some of the attendees talked about their own experiences—highlighting the fact that when some of them had previously competed confidently and assertively in competition, it was commented on negatively whereas the same characteristics garnered their male counterparts overwhelmingly positive feedback. It was a reminder that discussions like these are so important to further understand how diverse and complicated the issue of gender still is within the coffee industry, and that no two people’s experiences are the same. It left me, and others in the group, pondering as to whether the very paradigm of competition itself as a yard marker of value and worth as a coffee professional has become increasingly problematic and outdated. 

For the final group discussion, many members of the group expressed their appreciation of the supportive all-female environment, saying how good it was to talk as a group without having to feel that they had to battle to be heard. Michelle Johnson summarised the frustration of the female coffee professional quite aptly during the discussion in a way that truly resonated: “I’m happy to lean in, but I don’t always want to fight.”

Barista Connect Melbourne was a beautifully organised event, and such a pleasure to attend. But in the spirit of dialogue and challenging discussion I found at the event, I’ll pose a final question: what if, in the future, events like Barista Connect considered opening up the attendee restrictions? I found myself wishing for at least a bit of limited inclusion across the gender spectrum in that room, if for no other reason than to show just how good things can be when the male-dominated status quo is flipped on its head.

Eileen P. Kenny is a coffee professional, winemaker, and Sprudge Media Network contributor based in Melbourne. Read more Eileen P. Kenny on Sprudge.

Sprudge Media Network is proudly partnered with Barista Connect. Read all past Barista Connect coverage on Sprudge.

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Ebb And Flow Rate: A Reusable U.S.-Grown Fabric Filter Hits The Market

For those who think about the sustainability of what’s in their cup, the next step is the sustainability of the brew method. That’s where the Ebb filter comes in, a new reusable coffee filter made from U.S.-grown organic cotton.

Geana Sieburger didn’t set out to get into the coffee industry, but as a product designer interested in sustainable textiles, that’s where her path eventually led. Around 2014, Sieburger launched her Oakland-based business GDS Cloth Goods, a workshop and studio focused on sustainable production, and often, with a connection to food (the company’s first product was aprons). For the last year, she has been working to develop a pour-over filter that’s not only developed to brew excellent coffee, but that’s also ethically produced.

While Sieburger enjoys coffee, her main driving interest is in textiles. The idea for GDS Cloth Goods came after working almost a decade as a textile buyer at Britex Fabrics, “getting a realistic picture of what the industry looks like in this country.” As she worked and her interest in sustainability increased, her research led her to organizations like Fibershed and the realization that when it comes to fashion, “what a huge difference fiber choice can make.”

But while textiles are often equated with fashion, Sieburger is quick to point out that they extend far beyond that. “I’ve never seen myself as a fashion designer,” says Sieburger. “I see myself as a product designer using textiles… All of the things I make come from a very real place and a very real need in my own life.”

Interested in producing a reusable coffee filter, she came across an organic cotton that worked well for the first rendition of the filter. But she wanted to go further, and partnered with Benjamin C. Brewer, Director of Quality Control at Blue Bottle Coffee. “My standard was always ‘does it work for specialty coffee?’” says Sieburger. They found their way to the Texas Organic Cotton Marketing Cooperative which pointed them in the direction of a mill in South Carolina. Together with a textile developer, they worked their way through many iterations. The new version, which launched a fundraising campaign on Kickstarter in February, is the result of “almost a year of me going back and forth between the mill and baristas,” says Sieburger. The Kickstarter campaign—now fully funded, ending March 30th—will allow the company to add another filter size to the lineup.

Sourcing fiber from the Texas Cotton Marketing Cooperative allows Sieburger to not only ensure the agricultural sustainability of the product, but also the social sustainability. “Even though there is definitely exploitation of labor happening in this country, it’s less likely with all the regulations in place,” says Sieburger. Pointing out that for her this is “the number one reason” for choosing to source fiber in the U.S. The result is a product where ethics and quality go hand in hand.

“Ebb filters are quite possibly the most luxurious filter medium for brewing. The cloth transforms and transmits silken layers and autumnal textures to the cup,” says Brewer. “These filters have the potential to truly elevate a coffee. It is obvious that a great deal of thought and care have gone into this product.”

Born in Brazil, Sieburger notes that her path to coffee comes with personal meaning. “[It] has allowed me to connect with my grandmother in a way that I hadn’t expected,” Sieburger says, noting that during the development process of the Ebb Filter, “my mother said to me, ‘that’s how your grandmother used to make coffee, with a cotton filter.’”

According to James Freeman, Founder and CEO of Blue Bottle Coffee, her grandmother was on to something. “There is something wonderfully ineffable about coffee filtered with a flannel cloth. The technique is quite different than filtering through paper, and, in my opinion, a little trickier, but the result, especially in the texture of the finished product, has a luminosity which shines brighter and deeper than a well made paper-filtered coffee,” says Freeman.  

The Ebb filter isn’t the first reusable filter to hit the market. Sieburger points out two products she respects, Coffee Sock and the Kone Coffee Filter by Able Brewing. For Sieburger, she sees her work as not just offering the consumer a reusable product, but also highlighting the crossover between coffee and textiles. While they experience different difficulties, “coffee is an industry in crisis just like fashion and textiles,” says Sieburger.

She hopes that the new filter can be not just a tool to making great coffee, but also a conversation starter. “These things that we wear and use and consume and eat, they come from people and they come from the land,” says Sieburger. “Creating products that create awareness about that has such a far reach, and has such a powerful education value.”

Anna Brones (@annabrones) is a Sprudge.com staff writer based in the American Pacific Northwest, the founder of Foodie Underground, and the co-author of Fika: The Art Of The Swedish Coffee Break. Read more Anna Brones on Sprudge.

Some photos courtesy of GDS Cloth Goods.

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Drinking Coffee May Decrease The Effects Of Cannabis

Coffee and cannabis: two great tastes that go great together. But new research may have some bad news for collab enthusiasts (or at least the ones who like their gravy to be extra wavy): coffee may cancel out the effects of cannabis, and not just because coffee is an “upper” and cannabis is a “downer”.

In a new study published in the Journal of Internal Medicine, assistant professor of preventative medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine Marilyn Cornelis takes a look at how coffee consumption affects chemical levels in the blood. According to LiveScience, Cornelis and her team found that coffee had an effect on a total 155 metabolites in the blood, 34 of which “don’t even have names or known roles in the body.”

One of the known affected metabolites are what is known as endocannabinoids, “molecules that bind to cannabinoid receptors, which are found all over the nervous system, as well as in immune and endocrine tissue.” When you consume cannabis, the endocannabinoids in the plant bind to the receptors in your body, causing the sweet, sweet effect.

The research from Cornelis found a decreased number of endocannabinoid metabolites in persons who consume four to eight cups of coffee daily, which she posits may mean that coffee works to suppress endocannabinoids. But the nature of these effects remains unknown. Cornelis offers an alternative explanation for the lowers metabolites. From LiveScience:

The same endocannabinoids that declined with coffee also decrease when the body is under stress. It’s possible that the amount of coffee that participants were drinking (four to eight cups a day) caused stress, which led to a drop of endocannabinoid levels as some kind of protective measure.

The relation between coffee consumption and efficacy of cannabis is still a bit of a mystery, but as the new research shows, there is at least a correlation between drinking coffee and a decreased endocannabinoid effect. So if you’re looking to just get a good walking-around high going, maybe chug a lug of some batch brew beforehand.

Zac Cadwalader is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.

*top image via Dank Roast: Trichome Seattle Puts Weed In Coffee And We Tried It

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Coffee In Texas Gets Better With Dallas Coffee Gxls

The Dallas coffee scene is looking better than ever since Oodie Taliaferro of Cultivar Coffee teamed up with barista Briana Flores to found a new organization, Dallas Coffee Gxls. Founded in January of 2018, the organization’s mission is to support, empower, and foster community for coffee professionals in the Dallas metroplex area, especially those who have historically been underrepresented in the coffee community: women, queer people, and people of color.

Inspired by grassroots coffee organizing across the country and frustrated by a lack of forward motion at the local level, Taliaferro and Flores decided that if they wanted to see change in their local community, they would have to be the ones to make it happen. “Dallas coffee events are still cisgender/heterosexual/male dominated,” said Taliaferro, even though, according to them—Taliaferro uses they/them pronouns—the Dallas-Fort Worth area is very diverse. “We want all people to feel like they have an organization that fights for them. Dallas coffee is growing, and with that needs to come growth of representation.”

Oodie Taliaferro.

Briana Flores.

They also want to be clear about who they represent: “Our group is by women, for everyone,” said Taliaferro. “Some events will be exclusively for gender-marginalized people, but most will be open to everyone.” Taliaferro and Flores aim to push community-centered events past latte art throwdowns and other competitions, working towards collaborative events like social hours, meet and greets, cuppings, and volunteer-based education. They also want to support and encourage more gender-marginalized people—a term for any gender group that experiences gender discrimination, including cisgender and transgender women, nonbinary people, and transgender men—to attend, compete, and judge in the competition-based events that the area already enjoys. In working to accomplish these goals, they also plan to address access needs that keep certain community members from being able to attend, like making sure events are child-friendly.

Pouring at a recent Dallas Coffee Gxls event. Photo by David Halloran.

The fledgeling group started off strong by releasing a thorough code of conduct and gathering names for a Slack community where they can collaborate despite the geographic sprawl of the Dallas region. Their inaugural event in January was a gender-marginalized meet and greet, followed by a celebratory throwdown. “We discussed harassment and discrimination in the workplace and ways we can help each other combat it. Baristas and roasters alike shared their visions for what our industry can and should be here in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex,” said Taliaferro. The event spilled over into what was one of the most widely and diversely attended throwdowns the Dallas-Fort Worth area has seen in recent memory, with around 50 attendees. “There was definitely a vibrancy in the air as soon as we started our discussion,” said Flores. “I don’t remember the last time there was such a large turnout for a TNT in North Texas.”

The organization has much more planned in the coming months. “We’re also planning to work with #CoffeeToo and Queer Coffee Events in the future,” said Taliaferro. [Full disclosure: I am a co-founder at Queer Coffee Events.] “Dallas has a huge coffee community and so many of those folks face racial or gender marginalization. We hope to be able to be a resource for everyone.”

Judging latte art at a recent Dallas Coffee Gxls event. Photo by David Halloran.

Down the line, Taliaferro and Flores intend to elect interregional representatives throughout Dallas-Fort Worth midpoints like Denton, Flower Mound, Coppell, and Highland Village to make sure that everyone within their large region feels represented and included. “We’re fortunate to live in one of the most progressive cities in Texas, where we can find the support to move forward,” said Flores. “We want to reach out as far as possible to educate, heal, and empower.”

The group is excited to keep hearing and amplifying the voices of their local community and bring their shared vision to life. “We want to provide hope, educational resources, child-friendly coffee events, but most of all, a safe place for marginalized individuals to speak, feel, create, be appreciated for their craft,” said Flores. To stay up to date on Dallas Coffee Gxls, you can follow them on Facebook and Instagram; if you want to connect or are interested in donating, you can reach out to Dallas Coffee Gxls via email. 

RJ Joseph (@RJ_Sproseph) is a Sprudge staff writer, publisher of Queer Cup, and coffee professional based in the Bay Area. Read more RJ Joseph on Sprudge Media Network.

Photos courtesy Dallas Coffee Gxls. 

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Important Cargo

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Austin’s Houndstooth Coffee Is Taking Over Dallas

Austin brands trying to find footing in Dallas often struggle—and ultimately shutter—because they have trouble navigating the city’s love-hate relationship with anything coming out of the state capital. People in Dallas love Austin and Austin things but also presume everything coming from there is trying to be too cool for school, something that Houndstooth Coffee learned almost immediately after opening its first outpost in the city, when a local magazine sandwiched a story dubbing it the “Best Coffee Shop” between two articles smearing it for being both too serious and too nice. We locals are complicated, petty, maybe a little jealous, but if you want to serve us coffee at our best, you have to deal with us at our worst.

With the opening of Houndstooth’s third location in Dallas, it is safe to say that the brand has successfully weathered our fickle tumultuousness and, in doing so, has acted as a sort of sherpa for other Austin companies looking to make the move 200 miles north. Houndstooth’s second Dallas shop sits adjacent to Taco Deli, its next-door neighbor at the original Austin cafe (which will also be a stone’s throw from the newest spot). And for the third location, Houndstooth teamed up with TreeHouse—an Austin-based home improvement store that focuses on sustainable, environmentally friendly homewares—to create Dallas’s first 100 percent solar-powered coffee shop.

Opened in Northeast Dallas last November, the new shop is Houndstooth’s first location to exist in a stand-alone building. But not just any stand-alone building, or even a single building at that. The new cafe is basically two separate tiny houses joined in the middle by a wooden backdrop with a giant lighted “COFFEE” sign. Each of the roughly 500-square-foot houses serves a distinct purpose; one acts as a standard bustling cafe, including seating for eight to ten people stopping in for a quick drink, and the other is a much quieter area with more open seating for those looking to stay a while or have an uninterrupted conversation with a friend.

More than just offering quaint partitioning, the tiny houses fall in line with the other environmentally responsible decisions that went into the design of the new Houndstooth. From the old-growth bamboo floors and fireclay tiles to the Tesla solar-powered station providing electricity for the entire building and shopping complex–wide composting program soon to be rolled out, everything in the cafe is designed to be energy efficient, eco-friendly, and sustainable.

Houndstooth owner Sean Henry explains that the opportunity to team up with TreeHouse on the new shop serves as an eco-friendly jumping off point for the rest of his cafes: “When we looked at growth and how we wanted to make our cafes more in line with our personal thoughts on sustainability, this opportunity was a great fit. Over the next year, we’re implementing several measures across all cafes to reduce our carbon footprint.”

Inside the cafe side, the look and feel is different from other Houndstooth locations. Being in a stand-alone building allows big windows lining three walls of the cafe to pump in tons of natural light at almost any time of day, adding to the warmth of an already inviting space thanks to a variety of woods, textures, and rich, colored tiles behind the coffee bar. It’s a bit of a departure from the clean whites more common in other Houndstooth locations; that aesthetic is reserved for the interior of the other tiny house.

For this location, Houndstooth also departed from its standard espresso machine setup: Dallas shops use Nuova Simonelli Black Eagles and Austin shops use Kees Van Der Westen (or Van Der Westen–designed La Marzocco) machines. For this shop, Henry opted to go with the Mavam—the newest contender for the under-counter espresso crown—making Houndstooth the first shop in Texas to do so. Paired with the three espresso modules are three Nuova Simonelli Mythos One Clima Pro grinders, the standard espresso grinder at all the company’s locations.

“We love to break down the barriers between guest and barista,” Henry says. “Obviously, removing the espresso machine can open up the conversation even more, which is a good thing for our baristas. It is certainly a professional’s machine—everything is highly visible. We’ve focused even more on training our baristas to be conscious of every move. It has really helped us be specific.”

Coffee shops and roasters are starting to focus on increasing sustainability efforts, implementing changes big and small to reduce their carbon footprint. The new Houndstooth represents a top-down approach, where everything is seen through an environmental lens from the very beginning. And once again, Houndstooth finds itself playing the canary in the coal mine, testing the viability of an eco-forward cafe in a not-always-eco-friendly city. Smart money is on Houndstooth succeeding because for one, it’s hot here; we’ve got the resources for solar power in spades, so why not use it? But more importantly, Henry and Houndstooth are good at what they do, which they’ve proven time and again. A good cup of coffee may just make Dallas folks eco-acolytes yet.

Zac Cadwalader is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.

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Even Lions Love Coffee

Who doesn’t love coffee? Not lions, that’s for sure. Instead of making you work your way out of that unnecessary and cumbersome double negative, I’ll go ahead and tell you that lions love coffee.

A new video from the Times of Israel show a group of lions having themselves a time by rolling around in coffee grounds at the Ramat Gan Safari near Tel Aviv. “Who gave these lions coffee and why are they rolling around in it?” are two questions you are surely asking yourself right now. Working backwards and then forwards, let me just start by answering your question with another question: “who among us hasn’t rolled around in coffee grounds before? Let them cast the first puck.” The real answers, though, are that the big cats were given the coffee grounds by their handler, Yifta, and was done in hopes that the animals would act as they would in the wild.

According to the article, predatory animals often have a natural instinct to roll around in things with a strong scent, which effectively disguises their own smell from their prey. And indeed these lions as they are wont to do, rolling around in the coffee for nearly half an hour.

Either way, just look at these terrifyingly cute little buddies. Have you ever seen so many big ole cats acting like tiny kitties in such a deadly cuddle puddle?

Zac Cadwalader is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.

*all media via the Times of Israel

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Stranger than Fiction

This is our house. 

When we were kids we called it the haunted house...we didn't live there then, just went by on the school bus. I never met the boss til I was 30, though he lived on our bus route.

Nowadays, when we give directions we just say, "Look for the house that looks as if the Addams family lives there."

See the two birds on the chimney and the tower?

Yeah, Black Vultures.

You can't make this stuff up.

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Black Coffee: The New Event From Michelle Johnson Premieres April 24th

My dear coffee friend, come, sit. It’s time for us to have “the talk.”

It may seem like we’ve had this talk before—the one that involves race and how it intersects with coffee culture, but trust me when I say we’ve barely scratched the surface. We’re living in a time where having difficult conversations about our social climate are becoming unavoidable. They shouldn’t be avoided to begin with; people in the United States and beyond aren’t being afforded the most basic of rights in 2018.

Nearly two years ago, I presented an examination of what this looked like as a barista through my personal lens as a Black woman. Many of the things I experienced still stick with me. Some of them are haunting and others, just pure annoyances.

Since first publishing The Chocolate Barista in 2016, the resulting ripple effect has been mostly positive. I have been able to connect with other Black coffee professionals who knew my experience intimately. They were living it themselves, but many had never vocalized it. There’s now a strong, growing community of us supporting each other through camaraderie and amplification of each other’s ventures. We now have a Black man on the Barista Guild of America Executive Council—an historic first. Groups like I See You and the Boston Intersectional Coffee Collective are hosting events centering coffee professionals of color, driving home the point that we’re still fighting for visibility, representation, and access to opportunities in the industry.

And I put a strong emphasis on still. While there has never been more dialogue surrounding social issues in coffee, race rarely gets much airtime. More often than not, the role of race in coffee culture goes largely ignored. And yet, we have such a rich opportunity right now to change all that. To examine the role that race plays in issues across the coffee industry, from gender discrimination—you can’t ask a Black women to pick which identity to fight for over the other—to issues of gentrification, identity, and the creation of global coffee shop culture.

The microphone is far too often passed over us when the opportunity for dialogue comes.  We don’t want to be spoken for—we want to speak.

In a special live podcast event from yours truly, creative director Michelle Johnson (The Chocolate Barista) and produced by Sprudge Media Network, I invite you to come join a conversation about race and coffee culture.  The panel-style discussion will cover a range of topics from workplace dynamics to the Black consumer experience, and also dive into how we make coffee culture all our own, led by us, for us.

This is Black Coffee.

The event takes place on Tuesday, April 24th from 6-9pm at the Clinton Street Theater, a classic cinema and live theater venue in the heart of Southeast Portland, Oregon. Ticket pre-sale is now available. Hosted by Ian Williams (Deadstock Coffee), Gio Fillari (Coffee Feed PDX), and myself, you’ll hear from Black coffee professionals and enthusiasts alike, all with unique perspectives that span intersectional identities and roles on the retail end of the value chain. Special guests include D’Onna Stubblefield (Counter Culture Coffee), O.M. Miles (IKAWA), Zael Ogwaro (Never Coffee), Adam JacksonBey (The Potter’s House), and Cameron Heath (Revelator Coffee Company).

We’re excited to partner up with several sponsors for this event, including La Marzocco USA, Stumptown Coffee Roasters, Oatly, and The Ace Hotel Portland. Ticket proceeds will be donated to our charitable partners, Sankofa Collective and Brown Girl Rise.

Black Coffee tickets are $10 pre-sale, $15 at the door. We’re offering a limited number of VIP tickets that include an invite to the after party at Sprudge Studios, and a special “come down” event the following morning.

We hope you can join us April 24th in Portland! This could be the start of something special, and you’ll be able to hear it all in a podcast presentation following the event. Much more details and additional partners to be announced in the coming weeks. Follow Sprudge for more details.

#blackcoffeePDX

Original poster art by Taylor McManus (@tmcmanusillustration) with many thanks. 

Michelle Johnson (@thechocbarista) is the publisher of The Chocolate Barista, and the marketing director at Barista Hustle. Read more Michelle Johnson on Sprudge.

The post Black Coffee: The New Event From Michelle Johnson Premieres April 24th appeared first on Sprudge.

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