P/P Photoweek: Krag Peak with Muir Lake (VIII.25.08)

Coffee—the Good from the Bad
for the makers of the documentary, Black Gold:
Wake Up and Smell the Coffee (2006),
Nick & Marck Francis

I tried to give up coffee, once. It gave me a headache, so I
never tried agan. But now, as I brew my morning cup, I see
before me a large sorting room filled with Ethiopian women.
Some of the women are old, some are young, but all wear
colorful headscarfs, and all are, it seems to me, beautiful.
The women are separating good, unroasted, sundried coffee
beans from bad coffee beans. One at time; all by hand. They
are paid about fifty cents a day. And all of this for me, for you,
for the pleasure of our morning coffee.

Truly, the day of reckoning is now clearly upon us—upon you,
upon me, in which some even more subtle, invisible, unseen
hand of judgement shall separate us, too. The good, from
the bad.

MORAL COMPASS?

A question for our time? "Have we lost our moral compass?"

"Nonsense!—say the Devil's banker. "In the much-will-have-more
of the universe of money, there is no North and South, no Good
and Bad! The is only more, more, more!"

GRACE

Bless those who grew this food.

May they also be happy, well-fed, and safe.

Bless them, brothers and sisters, all.

Camp Lost & Found,
Eagle Cap Wilderness,
Oregon, VIII.17.2008