The Baboon Congress

Kaffe Kvetch

153 Comments

Today’s guest blog comes from Clyde.

I am living in a coffee time warp.

Twenty years ago because of my many sensitivities I had to give up coffee. Not caffeine, but coffee. At the time my idea of a cup of coffee was Hills Brother dribbled into a stained mug from the office coffee maker.

Because of changes I made in my diet or maybe just changing body chemistry, I can now again drink coffee, which is the basis of afternoon dates for my wife and me. However, I find myself a babe in the coffee shop. While I look in awe and confusion at the choices, Hutterites walk right by me and glibly order complex coffee drinks.

Country of origin, color, grind, white additives, flavor additives. Hot or cold. Kind of cup. Heavens, it’s even now a moral geopolitical question. And all that specialized vocabulary: latte, cappuccino, macholatte, espresso. The servers even have a special title (and their tips, as opposed to their pay, have moral dimensions). I just wanted a cup of coffee, which I want to order by size with English words! How naive of me!

So I decided when we are not producing movies or running summer camps for goats, we Babooners should operate a virtual coffee house. But what would we call it? I know the trick is to get the right name. The Dunn Brother’s went local here and has became Rivendell Cafe. My daughter’s hangout in Redwood Falls is the Calf Fiend. One here in Mankato is called the Coffee Hag. So maybe Connelly’s Cuppa. The Coffee Poole. The Appalatte Trail. Blackhoof’s. Caffeine Congress. comeinansitawhilewhydonya.

What should we name our virtual coffee house?

153 thoughts on “Kaffe Kvetch”

  1. Rise and Have a Cup Baboons!

    OOOHHH Clyde–excellent cartoon! I love it. What a 20 years to miss in coffee land Clyde. No wonder you are confused. Can we have our virtual coffee shop in our virtual senior care facility of the future? I will have to ponder the name today. I love the concept.

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  3. java jive pops up first but i do like connelley cuppa and dales own koffee kvetch. i started doing homeopathic medicine 20 some years ago and one of the rules was you had to quit coffee. i was a 3 pot a day man and i liked the french roast. that was pretty hoity toity for the time and i ground my own beans and was quite an expert in my small world of coffee in coffee of the 70 and 80’s i had to go to places like coffee and tea limited to get the good stuff but jerrys foods did sell the french roast beans that would do in a pinch. i would wake up pour the water through the bunn and while it was dripping i would have my first cig grab the paper let the dog out start the bath turn on the radio and steel in for the morning to come. set the pot on the toilet seat next to the tub along with the ash tray grab the sports section. when my homeopathic mandate eliminated the coffee part of the equation i was looking for the tea that would do the trick. i tired a bunch of different kinds and found i like liptons, i order earl gray or english breakfast when i am out at dunn brothers or the equivilant but if they had liptons i would be ordering that. when i see you i more often than not have a couple of lipons little white paper envelopes in my coat pocket for a cup of hot water that may be available. heres to you fancy schmancy grosso double latte folk. it kind of ticks me off to pay 3 bucks for a cup of water to stick my tea bag in but the atmoshpere is sometimes worth it. i always wonder why with the tough economy in place libraries dont have an expresso machine set up in the corner. ill bet they could open at 6 am and make more money before 10 than they could imagine. book and bean. maybe we could be the blog and bean. that works.

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  4. I have read that the German word for gossip is klatch. That word has migrated to the English language, where it has come to mean “a small gathering featuring informal conversation” or “a small gathering featuring informal conversation and coffee.”

    Klatch. Can we find a better word for our very own coffee shop?

    The obvious variations are Klatch, Coffee Klatch, Koffee Klatch, Connelly Klatch, or (if you are into perverse informality) Konnelly Klatch. Something in me expects that Dale would veto that one!

    Thanks, everyone, for such a fun trip on this site yesterday.

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    1. I’ll vote for Klatch whatever, so long as I get to pronounce it with a Klingon accent. You all might want to grab some napkins before I do, though.

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  5. Daughter works at a place called Serendipity Coffee House. She invented a new smoothie that tastes like a birthday cake. I guess that it is really popular, and the owners are having posters made up to advertise it.

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  6. Morning all. I like to have a cup of coffee in the morning – occasionally two but just occasionally. I like it a little on the stronger side, so the advent of the Starbucks/Caribous/Dunn Bros of the world has been good for me. W/ some sweetener and cream is best, but I’ll drink it black if that’s my only option. And years in the bakery business has trained me to drink it even after it gets cold, so I never feel like I’m “wasting” it.

    With that in mind, I love tim’s “Connelly Cuppa” suggestion!

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  8. I don’t think I can come up with better names for the place…maybe start naming drinks – like the Blevinspresso, timalatte, CGChai (best ordered with a Klingon accent), VerilySmocha, BiBaccino (served with frothed goat’s milk), and the Clyde (coffee, straight up, no chaser, one size only). There probably should be more…gimme time for my cuppa to hit the brain cells.

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    1. Well, if you’re going to jump the gun on me, I’ll give you my version of Anna’s suggestion in a minute then and not an hour.

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  9. A warning: get your second pot of coffee or tea going because in one hour we begin Part Zwei of this brainstorming season. That is true about the Hutterites by the way. It is very intimidating to eat the pop culture dust of a people who have separated themselves from said pop culture.

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  10. And we need specialized distinctive drinks.
    The Baboon: dark-roasted African coffee, ice cold under hot chocolate froth, with a Door County cherry on the bottom.
    The Connelly: mild-roasted, delicate brown, New York-ground coffee. Served at room temperature. Lots of cinnamon. A light dash of skim milk. With a surprising but refreshing after-taste of ginger.
    The Blevin: iced blend of caffeine-free shade-grown coffees with steamed goat milk froth. Comes in a special cup which emits a low somnambulant drone.
    The Rhonda: a cool small cappuccino with added cinnamon, ginger, sugar and triple extra caffeine. Call for this one when you really need help.
    A Steve: black coffee with half and half in an old-fashioned plaid Thermos.
    Lurker Latte: extra extra tall dark glass with many layers of froth and a surprise hidden deep inside. (Don’t ask; we won’t tell.)
    The Pengra: espresso. Blended of mild mountain-grown smokey-flavored coffees. Served chilled in its own drum-shaped cup.
    The Bubby: 32 ounces of rich hot chocolate with a 10% addition of Costa Rican coffee. Extra sugar. Layered in whipped cream blended from Jersey and goat milk. Chocolate chips and a cherry on top.
    An Intimada: boiling hot dark rich Himalayan coffee blended with frothed yak milk and secret Indian spices. Available only in one and five gallon sizes. Served only from our third-story drive-by window. (Phone ahead, please)
    A Clyde: black tea in a modest plain white round-in-the-middle ceramic cup. Never served in a paper cup. Handle turned just to left of center.
    The Classical: re-blended every day of coffees from around the world. No longer available in all locations.
    Larry Kyle: In development in secret laboratories in Newfolden.
    LGMS: no longer available.
    Tom Keith: no longer available.

    Goat milk available in season.
    tim: An extra jolt of caffeine added to any drink.

    What is the recipe for a coffee drink named after you or another Babooner?

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    1. Dale wanted me to sort of distribute these through the day, but my day is hanging in air. I expect to be gone for most of the middle of the day, maybe.Or sometime. Maybe.

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    4. the tom keith and the lgms are still available in that greatest of all possible realms. the morning show was wonderful while it was on and i feel for the folks that are not familiar like dub and maybe robin and edith who missed out on that part of the deal, but for the rest of us the show was great but will likely never be as good as the memory of it will always be. it is like that image of being a book on a shelf and every time we mention or think of it we are taking down the book and paging through it. the fact that it comes up so often and so lovingly is testament to the fact that it is available. and with my memory it will always have fresh material seeing as i tend to invent the fuzzy spots that are left as fill ins for the essence of tom and for the lgms tealm of dale and jim ed. they are truly virtual coffee flavors. rich and flavorful and not to be missed. no calories and the price is right too.

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  11. Morning–

    I tried to comment yesterday but was not getting along w/ Word Press.

    I have a Kwik Trip cappucinno in a refillable cup every weekday morning. French Vanilla. Nine times out of ten I’m either gonna spill it across my desk or get busy and don’t finish it.

    And a late ‘Hey’ to CG for yesterdays post.

    No name suggestions; brain isn’t in the right place yet.

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  13. MiGalatte. Extra foam & shot of chocolate.
    The Bliss. Coffee with cream, served with a handtool chaser.

    I have a meetng but I’ll come up with some more!

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  14. In the middle of all this I am trying to make tea. But I ran out of those nifty little T-Sacs from Tea Source and cannot find a tea strainer, which I hate anyway.

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  15. Outstanding, Clyde! If we go with a goat themed coffee place, it would be called Dung Brothers, and serve only goat milk lattes etc… Will think more about the specialty drink names.

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  16. I’ve blogged before about having my life changed the day I walked into my first coffee house, the famous Scholar on the West Bank. The earlier (Dinkytown) iteration of this place saw the first public performances by Bob Zimmerman (Bob Dylan). The West Bank iteration of the business launched the career of guitar wizard Leo Kottke.

    The name comes from an old nursery rhyme:
    “A diller, a dollar, a ten-o’clock scholar!
    What makes you come so soon?
    You used to come at ten 10’clock,
    But now you come at noon!”

    This ditty refers to a reluctant student, the one who comes to class late or takes shortcuts on assignments. Appropriate, don’t you think, for a coffee house located near a college campus? Pardon me for a Cliffy post.

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    1. I wonder if there is somewhere a Stubb’s Coffee and if Starbucks would object.
      WP is really fighting me. Wonder if I’m going to go into MIGland.

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      1. Thanks for the vid, PJ! I learned about this style of dance when hunting Hardanger fiddle tunes on YouTube. Breakdancers got nothing on these guys!

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      2. He makes it look like just a walk in the park…a spin-ny, flip-y walk in the park…seems so Norwegian to have something flashy look so understated.

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  19. Good post, Clyde, and one I can fully relate to! I do find the crazy choices at a typical coffee place very funny/confusing. I usually look for something with whipped cream. Can’t go too far wrong there. 🙂
    Confession time: I don’t much care for coffee. I am Italian-American and grew up with people who think that, when it comes to coffee, the stronger the better. It just never tasted very good to me. When I met my husband, who was born and raised in the UK, I started having a bit of afternoon tea with him, and I did enjoy that very much. I am now a regular tea drinker, even though my husband is now drinking coffee every morning like the rest of his adopted country does.

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  23. I’m behind schedule today, but I can’t resist getting involved with finding a Trail Baboon coffee shop name. How about Coffee Snorting Cafe? Each table would be supplied with bags, sort of like barf bags, that could be used when it seems possible that coffee snorting might occur.

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  27. You guys are so good at naming things. The only thing I could come up with was Baboon Coffee Club. I don’t think I’ll ever chair the Creative Naming Committee.

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  29. The Linda Latte would be know for the wide selection of interesting and unusual quotations that would be found on napkins served with this drink.

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  32. I loved reading all of your suggestions 🙂 I have no naming creativity either, Edith! I have a song suggestion:

    I don’t know if it’ll show up, but it’s Coffee Break from How to Succeed In Business Without Really Trying. I played in the pit at our local theater when I was in high school. It was a great show! I always thought this song was hilarious 🙂

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      1. Tea, very likely, although he will accept a cup of coffee if he’s at Steve’s cabin and one if offered. Then he just says “Strong coffee,” which could mean “This is good coffee,” or it could mean “How do you drink this stuff?” I’m not sure.

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  38. lets take off on a new one until dales wake up bell sounds.
    great topic yesterday clyde.
    donna summers dies yesterday. ill bet this gorup has some interesting memories of the disco era. remember thos hot bars with those great polyester shirts. i can visualize dale with his orange polyester shirt open almost to the navel dancing the night away at the holiday inn on the freeway exit there in was it springfield ill? i remember the disco lights and high heels for guys along with the memorable music. how would it have been to be donna summers and be remembered as the disco queen for all time.

    do you still have any disco attire in your closet

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    1. Are you kidding me? Even if I did, I wouldn’t fit into them anymore. But I can see it in my mind’s eye, a Blevins meeting with you wearing a shiny shirt and a leisure suit and Jacque in a halter top, flaring bellbottoms and platform shoes. If that comes to pass, please take a picture cause I can’t make it this Sunday.

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      1. i still see those shirts at garage sales and goodwill but there is something about polyester that makes smells come out of your body that are never there under any other circumstances. kind of a can of chemical spray odor that really used to slay the chcks

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      2. the leisure suits were a statement to be sure. again mostly polyester that would be very interesting on a hot summer day. a room full of puffy 3 martini sales guys with big hair sweating with the disco ball flickering across those real attractive gold chains that show the italian men where the shave line should be. ahhh what an era.
        dub do you have the hairy italian guys on your family tree?

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        1. Do they still have the Leisure Suit Convention ion Des Moines? I heard about it when I lived there in the early 1990’s and a couple of my supervisors from the VAMC attended in their natty suits.

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    2. My closet never hosted any disco attire – I always found disco profoundly unnecessary. Listened to Little Feat and Traffic and Patti Smith, as well as all the fine singer-songwriter types that were flourishing in the 70’s.

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  39. i had another friend tht i got news of yesterday who died. he was a buyer at holiday gas stations and always had the quirkiest guys he hung out with. he would think of games and ways to pass the time that were so entertaining you would forget the original purpose of the get together if there was one. this was in the era of the 3 martini lunch and we would get together once a week or so and he was a manhatten guy, i remember wondering how he could function so well crunching numbers after getting a buzz on but he always did. he took the greatest delight out of creating fun for those around him where none existed before. i am now in a fantasy football league with his sons and grandsons and i will see them and share some memories of a guy who made a difference without being a disco queen. we all do it in our own special way dont we.

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      4. And that reminds me of this clip from Sweden Got Talent. No Donna Summers, but a lot of fun even so, Sorry but I just can’t resist. This may get me evicted from WP!

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  42. Hi.
    This may be my fault. I may have misunderstood what Dale wanted me to do with the second half of my post that I put up 10:30 a.m. or so yesterday, the part on names of drinks. Maybe I was supposed to post it this morning. But everyone was going there and I had to suddenly leave. I was in the emergency room from sometime after noon until 3 a.m. I’m still fuzzy from my sleep drug. My wife was the patient. But she is home and doped up and has all that sleep to catch up on, which is a lot since her normal amount is about 11 hours a night and then 1-2 hours later on.
    Sorry if it is I who screwed up today’s post.

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    2. We’ve survived other glitches on the trail…we’ll survive this one!

      I have no disco clothes… never did. I am really cheap when it comes to clothes – I hate to part w/ the money, so I don’t usually hurry out to purchase the newest fashions and therefore many fads have come and gone by the time I’m ready to cough up cash. I also hate to get rid of clothing (much to the Teenager’s chagrin). I wore a 20+ year-old sweatshirt to do some gardening last week… it’s stained and pathetic but I still like it. I will admit however that I did change to another sweatshirt before I ran up to the hardware store!

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      1. I don’t change for those side trips any more; not if I’m going to jump right back into the dirt again when I get home. I mean, if I’m going to change sweatshirts, should I take a shower too? Wash my dirty feet? Where does it end? Sherrillee, you’re one level above me, but then again I don’t have a teenager on my case any more.They do keep one on the straight and narrow. Once she’s gone, you may find yourself slipping into my slovenly realm. It’s real comfortable down here 🙂

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      2. i have shoes coats boots hats bed sheets all 25+ many 40 years old or more. i ave my 4th of july shirt form age 13 i wore until it needed mending. kind of a peter max maerican flag thing that was no good for anything else but a staple of the 4th celebration for me for many years. i have t shirts that i got about two years ago that say new orleans 2002 on them whoops i guess that was 10 years ago. but those shoes with the pedistal heels …i will never forget them. i was a style god in 1975

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    3. Hi Everybody,

      I’m responsible for the snafu on today’s post – I meant to schedule something to run today and apparently made a mistake. Sorry! It’s not your fault Clyde – get some rest and best wishes to your wife.

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  43. I shall have to get “Full Monty” again soon, too – love that movie.

    And yes, I had a leisure suit (powder blue with pink buttons) back in the day. Somewhere there is a photo of all five of the cousins in our leisure suits – big brother in his lovely tan, eldest cousin in faux denim…think the other cousins were pale green and maybe brown – it’s the faux denim that really stood out. And while I was to young to go to a disco in the 70s, I did have a satin baseball style jacket and a few other baubles appropriate for the era. And at least one 45 of the BeeGees (alas, no Donna Summer).

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    1. I missed Disco by a couple years. My older brother though, he had the polyester suit and white shoes with heels — which I thought were REALLY COOL! He had the shiny satin shirts too… a look I could never pull off.

      ‘The Who’ has a song called ‘Sister Disco’ that I like, does that count?
      (see if this really embeds. I haven’t been able to make that work so far…)

      (Framed poster of Pete Townshend on my office wall)

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    3. For the uninitiated, BBC is Blevins Book Club, which grew out of the amazing blog. For details go up almost to top right under Blogroll and click on, you guessed it…

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        1. 10531 e riverview drive
          eden prairie mn 55347

          house numbers are on the wrong side of the mail box so you have to look hard

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    5. I won’t be there…but I think Jim said he would be – and I owe someone tim’s address, maybe Edith?…(I’m behind in my email at home).

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    8. If anyone thinks it would be more convenient to travel as a group, feel free to contact me. If you get here, I’ll drive us to tim’s. If you drive on your own, remember I-94 is shut down on both ends this weekend.

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      1. I’m up for that! I’m directionally challenged, especially when driving alone and going to a new, unfamiliar place. If there’s a way to get lost, or even if there’s not a way to get lost, I’ll manage to do so.

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  46. Just when you think it can’t get much more interesting here… 🙂 Stellar end to last night, need more time to listen to all the music!

    Husband had a polyester shirt that he used for parties till he finally outgrew it. You’re right tim, there’s a strange odor to that stuff, especially aged for decades. I finally purged my closet, wish I had a couple of things from the early 70s… more later, busy day. Have a fun (warm) one, Baboons.

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    1. I gave my niece a pair of shorts I sewed when I was a teenager. She wrote about them on her blog and posted pictures. They were not polyester, some sort of faux linen. From her perspective they’re antiques – almost forty years old! How rare and exciting! The Frye boots are too big for her, though.

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