Now that we are retired and are getting to know more people, Husband and I are participating in groups for coffee. We never had the time or inclination in ND.
Every Sunday after church a group of about 16 meets in the basement for coffee and cookies. Husband and I are the youngest participants. The women sit at one table and the men at another, and the men have to make sure all the coffee pots are filled. Conversation is brisk and somewhat gossipy.
On Wednesday morning Husband goes to a men’s bible study where they drink coffee, and then afterwards many of them go out for coffee at a local coffee shop for more secular conversation.
Husband now attends exercise class with me. The other men who attend the class invite him for coffee after class. He has yet to go but is touched by the offers. I had forgotten how much men here like to get together to talk and drink coffee. My father ran a coffee shop here for many years and it was always full of guys talking and drinking coffee. After he retired he met every day with a group of fellow WWII veterans at a local snack bar for coffee and treats. They were officially known as The Last Man’s Club. They even had by-laws written up. Governor Pawlenty’s wife came to Luverne to meet with them.
I have been more of a homebody than Husband, so my coffee klatsch participation is more limited. Maybe after my 50th reunion in September I will find local former classmates to meet up with.
Got coffee buddies? Any unwritten rules for participation? Where do you like to meet?
Trail Baboon 
Minnesotans, get out there and VOTE today!
My neighbor and I are going this morning. I think coffee will be involved.
When I was growing up, women had coffee adjacent to church, but I recall “men’s coffee” was often more casual and secular. Back in the day, men in small town Iowa (not the county seat, like LeMars or say, Marshalltown) would come to town to get the mail and a cup of coffee most mornings.
My dad was not a coffee drinker, but somehow got by. My mother loved coffee. It was her one indulgence.
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Yes, get out to vote. I will be voting mid-morning. I hear the early voting turnout was heavy.
LeMars did have coffee-klatschers in the Club Cafe or the Pantry Cafe. When my dad was the Extension Youth Worker he had his rounds of cafes where he met with farmers and recruited 4Her children for various events.
Then after school, as the farmers were leaving, the kids assembled for Cokes and French Fries with Ketchup.
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Yep, we voted early because we have a full schedule today…
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I also voted early. When I say “early”, I mean a couple weeks ago, not early this morning. The polling place was very busy today, so I’m glad I didn’t wait till election day. Many, many new registrations. There are several colossal apartment buildings in my precinct that are full of people who either haven’t voted before, or have just moved in in the past year. It was a hive of activity most of the day.
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I went and voted early and then I also gave blood today so I got to wear two civic minded stickers on my shirt for most of the day. No coffee involved at the polling place, but there was coffee at the blood center although I didn’t drink any. I usually go with my BFF. To give blood and we don’t dillydally too much before we just go out to lunch afterwards. Although we did a little bit today because there was a jigsaw puzzle. Luckily it was very close to Dunn so they didn’t have to shoot us out of there after a couple of hours.
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Rise and Shine, Baboons,
My get-togethers with friends are not coffee focused at all. I am more likely to eat lunch with someone or to go visit someone in their home or garden. Now and then I will meet someone for coffee, but it is not a regular date like the coffee klatschers.
However, farmers are notorious for their coffee meeting places. My late, great ex-father-in-law had his routine for coffee in several local cafes (one in the tiny town near the farm, and one in the larger town where he traveled for supplies). He and his pals spent hours in those cafes. Mysteriously, there was no formal invitation for coffee, rather he just appeared in the cafe and the gathering commenced. Actually, these guys all just knew the schedule by which they all operated their farms. Coffee was suspended during spring planting and fall harvest. During those times they worked until all fields were planted or harvested.
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I like knit and “b*tch” gatherings where I have something to do with my hands.
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My mother belonged to a “sewing club” with several women who took turns hosting monthly evening gatherings during which they darned, embroidered, crocheted and knitted while they talked, drank coffee, and ate pastries.
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Me too! We have Fiber Friends at the Cannon Valley Makers Space here in Dundas. We meet every Monday night. Usually it’s all women, but we have had men join us. Many of the same women come regularly. Sometimes someone new will show up and decide to come back. We laugh a lot and lose track of where we are in our projects. It’s fun! Nobody brings anything to drink at all because no one wants to spill on our table.
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Somebody has to do it…
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Walked down to vote about 7:30. It wasn’t very busy.
It sounds to me like there are a lot of mostly retired mostly men who have a great deal of time on their hands.
Not for me.
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Both Husband and I have a “lunch bunch” we meet with on Fridays. Mine involves coffee when we go to the Café instead of the lake. The Blue Heron Café has amazing food with often locally sourced ingredients, and great coffee. We’ve been growing, and are almost too large a group (8) now if the topic gets really personal – the place is noisy and you practically have to yell to be heard sometimes.
So I try and have a coffee with just my best friend from the group, almost weekly. And then there’s my happy hour group, but we don’t have coffee. : )
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I thought there was a Boyd Huppert, Land of 10,000 Stories, video on the Luverne Last Man’s Club, but I could be mis-remembering.
I don’t drink coffee very often anymore. (My name is Krista and I have a problem with caffeine…) However, I have various friends who like to go have coffee once in a while. I drink coffee on the occasions that we meet, since falling off the wagon isn’t such a tragedy, and I can return to enjoying tea without a problem. No kaffee klatsch though.
My mom had a really fun group on Monday and Friday mornings in Wabasha, before her dementia was apparent. I joined her for many of these, and even became friends with one of the younger women. That group was mixed, and included everyone. It wasn’t strictly women. They were a fun bunch, and I still have contact with a few of them.
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always enjoyed breakfast roundtables when folks met for coffee and a chance to touch base with other enrtaprenuers/ cogers /small business people. that stopped during the pandemic and then i got into delivery stuff where breakfast hour was prime delivery time. nobody has a group of whiskey drinkers or pot smokers to discuss how to make the world work better. i am a social butterfly but kind of on the run rather than scheduled check ins. i used to read about clydes busy schedule of zdrs appts without connecting much. i just transferred all my medical stuff to mayo and i am hugely impressed with their way of going about things but trying to get i’s dotted and t’s crossed is proving to be a big deal. they keep finding stuff to look at. if you’re a hammer you look for nails. they are a hammer. im guessing a ways down the road they will be done poking and prodding.
coffee. im a tea drinker and a bit of a scrooge. coffee seems like process tea is a teabag in a cup of hot water. $4 for a tea bag drives me nuts. i drink 1/2 gallon of tea a day and i carry a thermos everywhere i go and i have an abundance of tea bags for the road when a thermos isnt practical
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Agreed, tim! Only way I can pay $4 for a cup of tea is if it’s a chai latte!
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Mmmmmm….chai latte.
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Morning.
I’m working as an election Judge.
Kinda slow, but steady too…
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Vote for Pillow Guy!
Vote for a circus!
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Snort
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Voted and glad to see notes on Facebook that polls seem busier than usual. Lots of absentee ballots too. People are starting to believe that their input and participation can matter to make at least our little world a kinder better place.
Also I don’t drink coffee any more (rare decaf latte) but tea (mostly herbal after the morning cup) instead. Where I now live, a very supportive and amazing group (mostly women) meet weekly–novel in that “no food is involved” which helps my “no sugar no flour no snacks” diet. A neighbor and close friend and I have a cup of tea together almost nightly, usually after a good mystery on Brit Box. These little rituals are precious to me.
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YA is out of town on a work trip today, but she sent her ballot in about 10 days ago
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I voted absentee ballot weeks ago. I walked it in to Rice County’s election office to have it witnessed and accepted. I watched the clerk as she reviewed the completeness of my envelope. She did not look at my ballot after I voted. You have to show the witness your blank ballot, then fill it out, seal it properly in a series of envelopes, sign the envelope, then have the witness sign. I like doing it that way, except I still feel torn about our two senate candidates.
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There are actually more than two senate candidates but only two that are “ours”.
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For several years I met weekly at the studio of an artist and educator who held an open session for oil painters at every level. She charged a weekly fee and provided artistic and technical guidance to whoever needed it. That weekly session ended when the artist got a teaching job in California and moved there, surrendering her studio. That weekly session was comprised of mostly women, with only one or two men participating, one of them being me. Since the sessions were in the evening the beverages involved tended toward the grape.
That seems to be the pattern. I’ve taken classes at the Arts Colony in Grand Marais, the Center for Book Arts, the Loft and the Minnesota School of Botanical Art and always the attendees are predominantly women. That’s fine with me, but it makes me wonder why men, for the most part are not represented in those activities.
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I go to a line dancing class, and have noticed that it is mostly women, and usually two or maybe three men. When a balance is tipped, it seems that the male participant numbers don’t tend to rise – men who might be interested come in and look around, say “this must be kind of a chick thing”, and don’t come back again. It becomes a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. The coffee klatsch, if predominantly male, announces “not a chick thing!” when the guys walk in, so they keep coming back.
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Their loss.
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OT- harvested 2 large eggplants and I have mousakka in the oven. It smells heavenly. Thanks, Bill for your suggestion. Now we will have to grow lots of eggplants next year so we can make mousakka again.
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Moussaka. Pardon my spelling.
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The tomatoes were out of control a couple of days ago, so I made another double batch of that sheet pan tomato sauce. Changed up the ingredients just a little bit, so we’ll have to see if it has a significantly different taste. I put some of it in the fridge for tomorrow.
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I’m not a coffee klatcher. The few groups that I belong to are afternoon groups and two of them are Zoom so they’re really aren’t even any beverages involved unless you want to bring your own to the screen. And for some reason a lot of my friends are actually tes people instead of coffee people. If left to my own devices and I’m making a hot beverage for myself, I will almost always make coffee but when I’m with friends who drink tea, I’m happy to drink tea with them.
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I don’t like coffee in any way, shape, or form. I mostly meet with friends for lunch or supper or for some activity. It helps that one of my closest friends also doesn’t drink coffee.
One of my sisters took me up to my stomping grounds so I could vote in person. While there I also got a haircut, did a little grocery shopping, and gathered more “stuff” from my condo. It was weird to see my condo half empty. In the evening both sisters took me to My Burger for supper. Now I am exhausted.
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