"In the past I would typically ignore the flowers in the local park; now I actively seek them out. And when I’m in the kitchen I’ll inhale the aromas..."

"... that are readily available in my spice rack, and I pay greater attention to the fumes emanating from the boiling pots and pans. I now consider smell training to be an essential part of my routine. I find it to be pleasantly meditative, leaving me mentally grounded in much the same way as my daily yoga. And while I cannot say that I’ve noticed a huge leap in brainpower, I am optimistic that I am protecting my brain from future decline. This morning I made my espresso as normal and sniffed the cup hopefully. For the first time since I began my smell training, the aroma hit me hard. I couldn’t help but smile when I realised that I had, quite literally, learnt to wake up and smell the coffee, and I shall never take my nose for granted again."

I'm reading "Wake up and smell the coffee — the new way to train your brain/Loss of smell can signal a decline in mental health. David Robson discovered how to improve it" (London Times).

The author is only 39, so his ability to revive his sense of smell is very different from mine. He had luck with one of those smell kits where you sniff at various essential oils — eucalyptus, lemon, rose, clove. Keep trying. Practice smelling. I've already done that. Imagine telling blind people to look harder and deaf people to listen closely. What if that worked?

Mom & Pop Accounting.

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At the Medium Hot Mocha Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

"To be creative, you want to feel like you're getting away with something."

Also: "You spend all your life trying to save time, but when you get to the end of your life, there's no time left, and you'll go to heaven, and you go 'But wait, I had velcro sneakers, no-iron shirt, clip-on tie. What about all that time? It's gone.'"

And, though Seinfeld won't show you his Star of David necklace, he says "Yes, I wear a Star of David necklace, because it makes me feel closer to the people of Israel that I feel close to and that's why I wear it."

He reveals his favorite word: "quintessence." He discusses the meaning, but I wanted the OED meaning: "The most essential part or feature of some non-material thing; the purest or most perfect form or manifestation of some quality, idea, etc."

But that's the figurative meaning.

"Make mental note to watch 'My Dinner with Andre' again soon."

That's something I blogged on July 6, 2005, in a post called "My declining NYT habit."

I was stunned to see that in the top post of a search of my archive this morning, 2 days after re-watching "My Dinner With Andre," and one day after blogging "A big theme in this movie is whether, when things connect up, it's not just a coincidence but something mystical and important...."

What do you think? Mystical and important?!

I don't know, but what I was searching for was the topic of habit. In the movie, there's some discussion — blogged here yesterday — of the problem of doing things out of habit. There is, one person thought, "a great danger" of "fall[ing] into a trance" and no longer "seeing, feeling, remembering."

Well, I was just wishing I'd created a tag for "habit," because it would collect some good material, and it's a topic I want to think about. I like my habits. I think my habits are good.

Wake up and smell the instant coffee....

Yesterday, at 2:18 PM, 3 posts down, I was talking about "talking about instant coffee," and then, that evening, I was rewatching my old favorite movie "My Dinner with Andre" and that line jumped out: "we drank instant coffee out of the top of my shaving cream."

A big theme in this movie is whether, when things connect up, it's not just a coincidence but something mystical and important, such as when Andre — after feeling he's heard the voice of The Little Prince — runs across a copy of an old surrealist magazine with a page of handprints from 4 eminent men whose names begin with the letter A and 3 of them are Andres and the other one is Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

Wikipedia has this about Saint-Exupéry:

In The Little Prince, its narrator, the pilot, talks of being stranded in the desert beside his crashed aircraft. The account clearly drew on Saint-Exupéry's own experience.... On 30 December 1935, at 2.45am, after 19 hours and 44 minutes in the air, Saint-Exupéry, along with his copilot-navigator André Prévot, crashed in the Sahara desert....

See? A random Andre.

We were just talking about instant coffee — how you don't really need to go through a whole elaborate brew-your-own coffee ritual at home.

It's an easy choice for me because I don't have enough of a sense of smell to notice the difference, but now Meade has switched to instant. How did we all get so convinced that we needed so much equipment and fooling around to make coffee?

Back in the 1970s, there was an ad campaign aimed luring young people into the then-dying practice of drinking coffee. Coffee, we were told, was "the think drink." One thing led to another I guess, and we became way more wrapped up in coffee than the International Coffee Organization could have imagined. Do you ever stop and wonder if it's worth it, this long strange coffee trip?

Today, I run across "The Case Against 'Good' Coffee/Instant coffee tastes … just OK. And that’s fine by me" by the novelist Peter C. Baker in The New York Times.

James Taylor sings and comments on the old Chock Full o' Nuts coffee jingle.

Found this morning while searching, unsuccessfully, for an old Chock Full o' Nuts commercial (the one with the American woman going through French customs ("I have seen this coffee many times, in many suitcases")).

Alternatively, here's an operatic Chock Full o' Nuts commercial from 1991:

At Tomorrow's Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

"For some strange reason, I always feel incredibly sleepy when I'm dreaming."

"Basically, I would have to struggle to keep my dream eyelids open, and would generally pass out randomly etc. The sleepiness is very extreme, far more sleepy than I've ever experienced in waking life. It's so bad that it's basically my reality check: if you're super sleepy, you're probably dreaming. This is affecting my lucid dreaming. The sleepiness generally becomes worse when I'm lucid, so I'll easily 'fall asleep' into non-dreaming sleep. Even if this doesn't happen, the sleepiness is extremely distracting.... I tried to do things like drink imaginary coffee, but it doesn't really work...."

A Reddit post from 8 years ago, read this morning because I had one of those dreams within which I'm incredibly sleepy. Within the dream I am trying to stay awake, but in reality, I'm trying to stay asleep (to continue the dream). Or is falling asleep in a dream the real-world experience of waking up?

Around town.

 At the UPS store:

In the Wisconsin State Capitol:

At the café:

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"My decades of experience in the region taught me that Palestinian and Israeli parents may say different prayers at worship but they share the same hopes for their kids—just like Americans, just like parents everywhere."

"That is why I am convinced Hamas must go.... Hamas does not speak for the Palestinian people...."

Writes Hillary Rodham Clinton, in "Hamas Must Go/The terror group has proved again and again that it will sabotage any efforts to forge a lasting peace" (The Atlantic).

Clinton begins with an account of her brokering a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas back in 2012, a cease-fire that Hamas violated in 2014. Now, she tells us: "Cease-fires freeze conflicts rather than resolve them.... Cease-fires can make it possible to pursue negotiations aimed at achieving a lasting peace, but only when the timing and balance of forces are right."

She wants change not only in Gaza, but also in Israel: "Going forward, Israel needs a new strategy and new leadership. Instead of the current ultra-right-wing government, it will need a government of national unity that’s rooted in the center of Israeli politics and can make the hard choices ahead...."

ADDED: The first 2 sentences are too rich not to quote: "One morning in November 2012, I knocked on the door of President Barack Obama’s suite in the Raffles Hotel in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, so early that he was barely out of bed. I had an urgent question that could not wait for the president to finish his morning coffee: Should we try to broker a cease-fire in Gaza?"

Can't he just sip his Raffles coffee?

AND: That last question references this: "At diner, Obama brushes off question on Hamas. Says, 'Why can’t I just eat my waffle?'"

Yes, Obama's famous "Why can’t I just eat my waffle?" was a reaction to a question about Hamas.

Hey, New Yorker, consider the downside of scheduling your "Daily Cartoon" in advance.

Here's today's cartoon, obviously chosen — I hope! — back when the top news was the dreary deja vu of Congress needing to fund the government again and Biden and Trump tripping and stumbling their way toward another major-party nomination:

  

That seems so out of it, even as it's intended to make fun of New Yorker readers who are out of it. Or was it trying to make New Yorker readers feel sophisticated for feeling bored by all the hopeless shenanigans out there in the world? Whichever, it's painfully crass today.

Is this America — men shuffling in slippers, barely alive?

"[D]espite many of us thinking we should cut down on caffeine, there’s a solid base of evidence that it’s healthy."

"'The benefits of coffee have long been debated, but we know that in moderation [about two cups a day] it’s a good source of polyphenols and fibre, which promotes gut health, which in turn has health-protective effects for the rest of the body.'... [I]t’s all about the tipping point, and while there has been some debate around what excessive coffee consumption is.... 'Of course coffee does contain caffeine, a stimulant, which may give some people a "heart-racing" feeling, which is not necessarily bad for you but it can be unpleasant.... Ultimately, you need to decide where your caffeine sweet spot is.' Which... is usually somewhere between the joy coffee gives you and the feeling of being awake and alert, and any negative physical reactions such as feeling wired or sleep issues."

From "Here’s how I stopped drinking coffee — like Adele/The singer says it was harder to give up her caffeine addiction than cigarettes" (London Times).

"Garner" of the day.

From "Is It Bad to Drink Coffee on an Empty Stomach? Your gut is adaptable, experts say, but there are a few facts you should keep in mind" (NYT):

For many people, enjoying a freshly brewed cup of coffee first thing in the morning is a nonnegotiable way to start the day. But the idea that taking a sip without food could harm your gut — or contribute to other ills like bloating, acne, hair loss, anxiety, thyroid issues or painful periods, as some on social media have claimed — has garnered as much popularity as incredulity.

"I don't need caffeine. I'm active enough, thank you."

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If you can't get rid of your gas stove, use the microwave more! Use the "toaster oven, air fryer, Instant Pot... or an electric kettle or hot water heater."

I'm reading "Worried about having a gas stove? Here’s how to limit risks" in The Washington Post.

I think most people with a gas stove are saying they have it because they like it and they're just worried the government will take it away, not looking for workarounds because they can't afford to replace it voluntarily. 

But maybe you'd like to shun your own stove and maximize cooking on the various electric appliances you already have. There's a section of this article that reads like the chirpy women's magazines I read in bulk in the 1970s (because it was my job).

We're told that there are "creative ways" to use these appliances. The uncreative use of the microwaves is to heat foods — that is, "zap cold leftovers." So what's creative? Apparently it's "creative" to "bake (remember mug cakes?), steam vegetables and in some situations even toast, fry or caramelize food." This is the kind of thing I found depressing reading about in the women's magazines in the 70s. The idea that you could feel clever by frying something in the microwave.

By the way, what's a "hot water heater"? Aside from the common silly redundancy that makes a smart ass want to say, Why do you need to heat water that's already hot?, what is this appliance if it's not an electric kettle? You've named the electric kettle, so what are we talking about? An immersion heater?!

Are you suggesting running the tap until it yield hot enough water from the only thing I ever call the "water heater," that thing that gives me a nice hot bath? I thought you weren't supposed to drink that.

You've got me thinking of Glenda Jackson in the 1971 movie "Sunday Bloody Sunday":

I have remembered that coffee-making — and the audience gasping in horror — for over half a century!

"Unlike the common arabica and robusta varieties [of coffee], liberica can survive in hotter and drier climes, but for many years was shunned for its allegedly unpleasant flavour."

Writes Elisabeth Perlman in "I’ve tested liberica, the ‘disgusting’ coffee coming to a café near you" (London Times).

Now, as the planet warms, it is making a comeback. Nigel Motley, 31, is the owner of one of the first UK coffee shops offering the "hipster" bean.

Hipster bean?! 

"Iced coffee is... used as an amusing identifier among L.G.B.T.Q. people, with viral videos depicting their cultural claim to the drink."

"In 2019, a tweet from the City of New York went viral with a photo of a man making his way through a snowstorm with a Starbucks iced coffee in his hand. While many wondered why he — or anyone — would weather such conditions for the beverage, others offered variations of the same joking explanation: He’s gay. Sam Stryker, a 31-year-old copywriter in Los Angeles, is firmly in the iced coffee camp.... 'It’s like sort of my gay Gatorade,' he said. A Starbucks regular, he never drinks his coffee hot, stating that he doesn’t like the taste and neither does he want to wait for his drink to cool down. 'Iced coffee tastes like jet fuel to me,' he said, quickly noting that he meant that in 'a really positive way.'... While the hashtag #hotcoffee has more than 60 million views on TikTok, #icedcoffee has about six billion on the app and is full of videos of users sharing their complicated iced coffee orders."

From "Does Anyone Drink Hot Coffee Anymore? Even in the dead of winter, cold drinks account for 60 percent of Starbucks beverage sales. Is the hot cup of joe on its way out?" (NYT).

Maybe there's not so much #hotcoffee because people are still calling hot coffee "coffee." It's the original term and it hasn't gone through the process that leads to expressions like "snail mail" and "acoustic guitar." That is, "hot coffee" is a retronym that has yet to take hold. All my life, I've heard "iced coffee" specified if that's what you want, and "coffee" is presumed to be hot coffee. Has that changed?

Wisconsin breakfast.