Description: A friend of mine owns a small artisan coffee shop, and once kept me entertained and engrossed with a nearly hour-long description of what constitutes a perfect espresso. He made a few for me, pointing out the differences after roasting time, resting time, amount of steam, and so on. One thing that struck my eye is how beautiful it can be. You have the light coloured crema on top, a foam of microbubbles loaded with aroma, and then a cascade of the same micro bubbles tumbling endlessly into the thick, velvety richness of the coffee underneath. It reminded me of a freshly poured Guinness, but at a smaller scale and with a vastly more complex flavour and aroma display. I love coffee and admire people who are as passionate about it as my frie...
Description: A friend of mine owns a small artisan coffee shop, and once kept me entertained and engrossed with a nearly hour-long description of what constitutes a perfect espresso. He made a few for me, pointing out the differences after roasting time, resting time, amount of steam, and so on. One thing that struck my eye is how beautiful it can be. You have the light coloured crema on top, a foam of microbubbles loaded with aroma, and then a cascade of the same micro bubbles tumbling endlessly into the thick, velvety richness of the coffee underneath. It reminded me of a freshly poured Guinness, but at a smaller scale and with a vastly more complex flavour and aroma display. I love coffee and admire people who are as passionate about it as my frie...
Description: Re-wilding is a big passion of mine, and the positive and inimaginably dramatic effects it can have on the environment is never better exemplified than by the story of when wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone Park. The environment changed. New species turned up. Old psecies returned. Balance was restored. The world _healed_. May we learn from this and other rewilding efforts. The world can heal, we just need to let it become wild again, and perhaps we need to become wild ourselves alongside it.
Description: Re-wilding is a big passion of mine. Herds of bison, both North American and European, have been reintroduced to their traditional habitats after being absent for years -- in some cases decades or even centuries. Wherever they have gone, the environment has changed, improved. New species turned up. Old species returned. Balance was restored. The world _healed_. May we learn from this and other rewilding efforts. The world can heal, we just need to let it become wild again, and perhaps we need to become wild ourselves alongside it.
Description: I got the idea for this from the Neverending Story (Michael Ende's novel, not the film of the same name, which I also love). There was a chapter that told the story of this multicolored lion, inhabiting a multicolored desert, that at night became a multicolored jungle. There was a beautiful story there about duality and purpose, that's stuck with me over the years.
