Choosing Between Coffee and Chocolate

Is it fair to ask you to choose between two simple and relatives inexpensive caffeine pleasures, coffee and chocolate? I didn’t think so.

While reading the morning newspaper on Kindle, I enjoy two cups of freshly brewed coffee, usually 10% Kona but this week 100% Molokai dark roast. For me, beginning the day slowly is sort of a pleasant, guilt-free ritual. For years, I awoke to a clanging alarm clock, rushed through breakfast and morning tasks, then traveled to my place of work, whether across town, miles down the highway, or merely a few short blocks' walk. It was the choice I made when I was sixteen years old and continued to make for decades. Now that I can stay home and compile stories at my own pace, another choice freely made, I appreciate the more relaxed lifestyle.

Recently, I attended an informal talk given at the Duty-Free Shop in Waikiki by an author and coffee aficionado. Shawn Steiman earned his doctorate in Tropical Plant and Soil Sciences at the University of Hawai‘i. One of his comments, something to the effect that coffee opens the mind and clarifies thinking, stuck with me. Could this reasoning apply to my writing? It was an idea worth some thought.

It isn’t necessary for me to have a clear idea of what I want to express when I first transform my thoughts into written words, I reasoned. But once the thoughts are on paper, I need to convert those ideas into a comprehensible format for others to easily understand. The mystery within a novel should not remain a mystery after the reader finishes the story. If I understood Shawn correctly, a cup of coffee, once consumed, should open my mind and give me the ability to clarify important details.

Yes, I know, the writing process still requires that I bring all the tools with me to the coffee table.

Shawn’s book, The Hawai‘i Coffee Book - A Gourmet’s Guide from Kona to
Kaua‘i also peaked my interest in coffee production and the diverse varieties

of coffees grown here in the islands. Some are even described as having a “chocolate character” so there really is no need to choose between coffee and chocolate. You can have your chocolate, and drink it too.

Knowing your brain needs stimulation to function properly, and assuming you have eaten all your vegetables, could you make a choice between that cuppa joe and a chunk of Belgian chocolate?

Click on the link below to check out Shawn Steiman's book:
The Hawai’i Coffee Book

Writing Sparks Old Memories

Have you ever researched a topic and found yourself immersed in memories?

As a child, I was not afraid of bugs. We lived in what was considered the country as our house was located four miles north of the small town's main street.

In our yard, we had boysenberry shrubs filled with pebble-sized berries. My two older brothers told me I couldn't eat the juicy red and purple-colored fruit because they were "poison berries." I believed them, of course.

Blushing Bride hydrangea hedges bordered the south and east edges of the yard. Beyond the hedge on the east were open farm fields, to the south a cemetery. In the crook of the right-angle hydrangea hedges were a few scattered rose bushes, the kind with large country blossoms. The bugs crawling around all this greenery were called rose chafers.

These little bugs, smaller than your baby fingernail, found their way into my current Work-In-Progress novel. While researching the rose chafer, not for any bug-like traits or description, but for the correct spelling, I relived some of those childhood days when concerns about poison berries and rose chafers measured the depth of my worries.

Thanks to the Internet and dusty back rooms of libraries or Register of Deeds offices, I love the research process. Whether for a novel or a genealogy project, it is a pleasure to ignite that spark.

What sparks old memories for you?

For more information on chafers and hedges click on:
rose chafers
Blushing Bride Hydrangea