My friend Evan and his family started a coffee shop, the wonderfully engaging Roast Coffee & Tea Trading Company, a couple of years ago. They aimed high and decided early on that they to roast their own coffee. They transparently source single origin green coffee beans from around the world, roast them, brew them and serve them as “single origin brews” so that you can taste the different regions and how they compare to one another. And it is from him that Lisa procures her daily dose.

A recent trip by the folks at Roast brought Maui Yellow Caturra to our home. Grown in a hot, dry climate on the island of Maui, these coffee beans produce high yields of coffee cherries all with a bright shade of yellow when ripe. Enriched by the nutrient-rich, volcanic soil from a farm located in the West Maui Mountains and grown under the guidance of owner Kimo Falconer, this coffee is grown overlooking the famous western coast of Maui. Mild and clean with a spicy character.

I’m a tea guy, not a coffee guy, and not a particularly crazed one at that, but there’s some kinda magic in good coffee, and Evan & Co. goes to great lengths to produce the magic. At this point Roast is quiet resource from Long Island and I know first hand the lengths that were traveled to procure an appropriate roaster, get it tuned and producing excellent coffee. I’ve also had the chance to taste the roasted beans of many batches and have learned quite a bit about the varying tastes and flavors. Right now, the Maui Yellow Caturra is the one Lisa tosses in the grinder and the smell is so wondrous it makes me wonder why I don’t drink the brew. Go get yourself some before it’s gone.

BLOG — Serious Pony:

And that’s all awesome and fabulous and social and 3.0ish except for one, small, inconvenient fact: zero sum. What you consume here, you take from there. Not just their attention, not just their time, but their ability to be the person they are when they are at their best. When they have ample cognitive resources. When they can think, solve-problems, and exercise self-control. When they can create, make connections, and stay focused. 

Is that “content” worth it?  Maybe. But instead of “Is this useful?” perhaps we should raise the bar and ask “Will they use it?” (and so, yeah, I’m more than a little self-conscious about typing that as I consume your cognitive resources. But I didn’t start Serious Pony to save your cognitive resources; I want to help save the cognitive resources of your users).

Fast Time and the Aging Mind – NYTimes.com:

The question and the possibility it presents put me in mind of my father, who died a few years ago at age 86. An engineer by training, he read constantly after he retired. His range was enormous; he read about everything from astronomy to natural history, travel and gardening. I remember once discovering dozens of magazines and journals in the house and was convinced that my parents had become the victims of a mail-order scam.

Thinking I’d help with the clutter, I began to bundle up the magazines for recycling when my father angrily confronted me, demanding to know what the hell I was doing. “I read all of these,” he said.

And then it dawned on me. I cannot recall his ever having remarked on how fast or slow his life seemed to be going. He was constantly learning, always alive to new ideas and experience. Maybe that’s why he never seemed to notice that time was passing.

So what, you might say, if we have an illusion about time speeding up? But it matters, I think, because the distortion signals that we might squeeze more out of life.

It’s simple: if you want time to slow down, become a student again. Learn something that requires sustained effort; do something novel. Put down the thriller when you’re sitting on the beach and break out a book on evolutionary theory or Spanish for beginners or a how-to book on something you’ve always wanted to do. Take a new route to work; vacation at an unknown spot. And take your sweet time about it.