Donut Boy

12/24/2018 by Pat Shiplett Leave a Comment

A necessity is something you have to have.

A luxury is different. It’s something you’d like to have but don’t really need.

Sometimes a luxury gets turned into a necessity. My mom turned my afternoon naps into something she needs but I don’t. I don’t even like naps.

When you’re little — I’m this many — you don’t get to decide whether something is a necessity or a luxury. When we go to the coffee shop the big people need need need their coffee. Their coffee is a necessity. But when I ask ask ask for a donut there’s a good chance I’ll end up with a bagel.

Maybe you’ve noticed that sometimes things fall into place and you get a special treat even if you haven’t been good. Not long ago I knew I was going to get a donut no matter what.

That morning was special because my grandma was visiting. And the coffee shop still had donuts with sprinkles which they usually run out of early because who doesn’t want sprinkles? My mom’s mom (maybe my dad’s mom, not sure) liked watching me eat it.

If you or anybody else were to ask me if a grandmother is a luxury or a necessity, I wouldn’t know what to say. Maybe both. Let me think about it. Okay, yeah, maybe both.

Her name is Siri

10/06/2018 by Pat Shiplett 1 Comment

Based on her voice we speculate that she’s a woman but there’s no way to know for sure.

No one remembers who first brought ‘her’ to the coffee shop. And no one doubts that she came to us with only the best of intentions.

What we do know that she is incredibly, preternaturally well-informed and it that can be unsettling to have her around.

An unbroken stream of palaver runs through this place. The conversation is never allowed to die. The topics center on current events, trivia and extreme radar weather forecasts.

Although the group is well-educated, dealing in facts isn’t the point. We huddle together for something more fundamental than the truth. An unspoken courtesy holds that every opinion deserves the benefit of the doubt.

You can lead a perfectly uninformed discussion over the value of Vitamin D and crypto currencies. Nobody’s stopping you. You can create your own school of philosophy out of thin air. You can caucus with the roundness-deniers among us who speculate about the shape of the earth.

Unfortunately the nature of our chats started to change a few years ago.

Now thanks to ‘her’ we can check facts instantly. The days of uninhibited flights of imagination and free associations are behind us.

Nothing crushes a friendly bull session faster than someone whipping out a smart phone and asking Siri to verify a fact.

Andrea Hart

09/10/2018 by Pat Shiplett 1 Comment

There’s no reason you’d connect the woman at our coffee shop with undocumented Zimbabweans or…be aware of her reporting on the policies of South African authorities.

These are experience Andrea Hart herself hadn’t imagined.

Some years back the kid who was the first in her family to go to college and to travel overseas caught a break. Her feel for words and ideas earned her a full scholarship at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism.

She learned that a muscular press is vital for a democracy and that groups lacking the ability to tell their story will be exploited.

While studying abroad she reported on economic migrants for the Cape Times and later covered general news and features at South Africa’s first totally interactive newspaper.

Fast forward ten years, Andrea now heads up community engagement activities at City Bureau. She is a cofounder of the non-profit, civic journalism lab.

Paid journalists are brought together to provide access to quality, trustworthy information that helps urban communities generate their own solutions. Residents receive hands-on training while engaging in civic processes. City Bureau fills the need for tech support and working space.

In a world of hard facts and stubborn realities, of two steps forward and one step back, professional burnout is a constant possibility. As a powerful affirmation for its staff members, City Bureau (which is not funded by taxpayer dollars) recently won a $1 million grant from the MacArthur Foundation.

The last time we had coffee Andrea said it’s important to “avoid the hero narrative” as something that can isolate an underserved community and make its people forget their own strength.

“Heroics are a false God.” she added.

Katy, Barista Extraordinaire

07/10/2018 by Pat Shiplett 1 Comment

Tattoos, piercings and assorted hairstyles that have something to say.“I look for weirdoes” Katie Ujimori says, using that word as a sign of admiration.

She laughed when I suggested some of her baristas seem conventional enough. “You might be surprised.” she replied.

Recruiting is one of Katie’s many duties here at the coffee shop. She can get a new hire up to speed in a matter of hours or in a matter of days. She’s proud of her record.

Katie searches for people with evident energy, who bring a touch of theater to everything they do. But none of them comes off as hipper-than-thou.

For those of us escaping copays, two-step logins and texts from the daycare center, Katie keeps a supply of humor next to the creamers, the sweeteners and the bagel toaster.

You’ll hear her call out customers’ orders in a voice worth its weight in Kopi Luwak coffee (beans harvested from the droppings of the palm civet of Southeast Asia; $320 a pound).

The hum of machines and the crowd and the always-present music helps people concentrate — productivity hangs in the air. But the baristas are careful about using the drip-coffee grinder. Its sound sets off the children with autistic spectrum disorder.

As a rookie Katie was overwhelmed by the crush of commuters on the way to the train, and double-parkers desperate for their a.m. dose. On her first day the neighborhood was buried by the infamous ‘Snowpocalypse’ that sent the multitudes to the coffee shop instead of to work.

The Brothers K is the sweet spot of our part of town. Unlike places that sell alcohol, mood adjustment here is based on caffeine. Debates yes, but heated arguments are few and far between.

“It’s a safe space.” Katie says.

The Detective Writer: Sirloin On A Black Eye

05/30/2018 by Pat Shiplett 1 Comment

Three years ago the guy who created me lost interest in the detective novel he was writing.

He left me in limbo with a slab of sirloin plastered to my eye.

He had read somewhere that in crime fiction every chapter should close with a cliffhanger. So he had some goon land a roundhouse punch on my right eye. Putting meat on a shiner is something they used to do in gangster movies. It doesn’t stop the swelling and it poses significant bacterial risk.

During my stay in purgatory, waiting for him to start writing again, I managed to break out of my Word doc, wriggled out of the folders I was trapped in and burrowed through 301.84 GB of data on his laptop. I’ve read every email he’s ever received.

It has been an education.

I discovered that people who aren’t active in their careers anymore still crave recognition. A lot of them of them never learn to relax. They’re like those pelagic bony fish that drown if they stop swimming.

My creator has tried a lot of stuff that hasn’t panned out. He’s approaching this novel of his in bits and spurts, not investing great hopes in its prospects.

I am thrilled to tell you that, as of this morning, he’s back in the window at the coffee shop, clacking away on a new chapter.

He’s a few hundred words in and already I know my fate. I get booted out of AA. I work undercover as a used-car repo man. My frig is empty. My sainted mother doesn’t return my calls. There’s zero chance he lets me log into eHarmony or Christian Mingle.

The pop-fiction workshop at our local library offered an introductory “problem-solving” session. They impressed on the guy that private detectives are more engaging if they have some kind of disorder to overcome.

At this very moment he’s browsing through a bookmarked list of medical websites hoping to find an affliction that will make you like me. And so it goes.