May Coffee News

-Bringing People Together Over Coffee
-Living Green Expo
-The World's Largest Fair Trade Coffee Break

Bringing People Together over Coffee

A few months ago, we received a very meaningful email from a coffee customer and friend of ours, Linda Neal, about how coffee brings people together. She's given us permission to share it with you and it seems especially appropriate to do so this month as we'll be gathering with many wonderful people this weekend at the Living Green Expo and next weekend joining with people around the world on World Fair Trade day for the world's largest Fair Trade Coffee Break.

On to Linda's lovely story. We dedicate this to all of the ways that coffee helps bring you together with friends far and near, and to the gentleman in the story who died a few months after Linda sent us the email.

"I have always told my family that if I am on my deathbed, to please make sure the TV is not on and that someone puts spoon on good coffee (not hospital coffee) to my lips. I work as a hospice nurse so last requests are something I take very seriously!

Yesterday, I was visiting a man who had been born in South African during the Apartheid and had traveled the world as a diamond salesman and clothing buyer. His father had owned land in what is Namibia now and raised sheep. Now he is in a nursing home dying of brain cancer at 50. He is alert, but slow to answer due to the disease. Because I was just covering for another nurse, I could have just taken his vital signs and made a very short check in visit. But we connected for some reason when I paused to look at the photos of his kids, now 14, 19 and 21. Because my daughter Thea had just landed in Namibia that very same day to work with the Peace Corp, we talked about his life there as a child. I told him he must have eaten in some equisite bistros and cafes in his life and drank a lot of wonderful coffee as he traveled around the world. He smiled and nodded. I told him there was a Dunn Bros across the street and I would love to go get him an espresso. He wanted cream and sugar so I made it a latte, with one small piece of dark chocolate. He savored that coffee and chocolate. It was so euchristic for me. He being Jewish, it was a moment of connecting to his past and to another human being beyond words. When I left, I told him he had made my day. It was so holy to know he had stood on the same soil as my daugheter. And that we had shared in this sacramental moment together. He reached for me to hug goodbye and kiss my cheek.

That's what coffee does - brings people together at the table to talk about deep things as they grasp a mug to warm hands and jump start a broken heart. You are in the business of bringing people together with their creator, your extended family and one another in a way that no therapist or doctor can. It is the energy of the plants and beans that does not die but goes on to vibrate within us as we partake in all the love and nurturing that has been toiled and given to that little seed."

---Linda Neal

Upcoming Events
As we mentioned above, the Living Green Expo will be bringing tens of thousands of people together for all things green this Saturday and Sunday, May 3 & 4 at the State Fair grounds in Saint Paul. We'll be on the 2nd floor with our coffee, recycled handbags made by women in Honduras and some fair trade coffee mugs from Lazos/Ties.

We also learned recently, that the Fair Trade Resource Network is organizing the world's largest Fair Trade Coffee Break on May 10. We will be holding our own Fair Trade Coffee Break event with Lazos/Ties by having a display table from 1:00-3:00 that day at the Como Conservatory and Zoo Safari gift shop and serving Velasquez Family Coffee of course. If you can't join us at Como that day, we encourage you to host your own Fair Trade Coffee break, alone or with friends, knowing that you are joining with thousands of others around the world at that same moment in celebrating the possibilities of Fair Trade. (Or find another fair trade event near you on their events calendar.)