#But my God the balls people have to consistently post things that industry level of proffesional

[magnusbae]

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[jeanjauthor]

Clothes vs. Money: Status and Self Worth in the 18th Century

Writers, this is an EXCELLENT summation of how important the quality & appearance of clothing is in a pre-modern society.

Clothing today is incredibly cheap: a single day’s wages will get you pants or skirt, shirt, socks and underwear, all of it brand new, straight off the rack, in a vast variety of colors and patterns.  A week’s wages will get you shoes and coat and a couple changes of underwear, extra shirt, extra pants or skirt (or a dress).

Prior to the 20th century...it could take you more than a month to earn enough money for a new shirt, or underclothes, or trousers, or shoes.  Not and, but or. You’d be lucky to get two of those things at average to good wages for the vast majority of people...and since the vast majority still worked on farms prior to the industrial revolution, and with it, the agricultural revolution, you’d only see that kind of money during or shortly after harvest season.

Listen to John Townsend reading from these journals.  Take your inspiration from them.  Be realistic in what your characters would be wearing, how often they’d get a chance to do laundry, and make sure your characters are clothed appropriately for their situation.

In the movie Ever After, Danielle (Cinderella) borrows a fancy noblewoman’s dress left at the painter’s studio to go rescue her fellow servant.  The dress is only available to her because her best friend growing up is the painter’s apprentice, and because painting a portrait can take weeks of work, so it was often just easiest to leave the clothing on a mannekin form while the owner went off in their other clothes to do other things.  We might think the dress she normally wears isn’t too bad, but it’s only slightly above what the other servants wear, and it’s definitely not new.

In the modern era, this is also true, though the lines are a bit more blurred.  We have Casual Fridays, where you can come to work at some places in jeans and a teeshirt, or a Hawai’ian shirt...and we have formal suits and dresses and skirtsuits.  Some situations you can get away with a Casual Friday.  Others, you’d never get away with it.  Lawyers, for example, are expected to wear suits or the equivalent at all times, to project an air of professionalism & seriousness. 

We have a variety of uniforms that we have to wear for certain jobs or industries, too.  Not just UPS or Military or Post Office or Law Enforcement.  Have you noticed the variety of uniforms in the restaurant industry?  Some places (McDonalds, etc), issue you your uniform. It isn’t yours to keep, however; once you’re done working for them, you have to hand it back in.  You also have to keep it clean and neat at your own expense.  Housekeeping staff for hotels have to do this, too.

Other places simply say “wear black pants (or skirt, but no yoga pants or jeans) and white shirt, no teeshirts or logos (not even a lil alligator or polo pony)”...and that’s all you have to wear.  You have to supply your own “uniform.”  It could be almost any style of trousers or non-logo non-tee shirt.  Others allow you to wear a serious, sober, law-office-worthy tie...while some allow you to wear “an amusing tie of publicly acceptable subject material”...aka no naked-lady ties, or ties covered in swearwords...but you could wear Loony Tunes characters like Bugs Bunny, or a Transformers tie if you wanted.

However, clothing is incredibly cheap; if you’re used to having money in your pocket for clothes every few months in real life, you probably haven’t thought about having to repair your clothes.  Shirt gets ripped?  Go buy a new one!  No big deal!  ...Right?

You cannot take that attitude, that mindset, into a pre-20th-century tech-level world.

Just to give you an example, making the cloth to make clothes took HUGE amounts of effort before the advent of industrialization, from the farm machines to automatically pick the cotton through to the carding and spinning and weaving machines.  Prior to all of that (and yes, the mechanized industrialization of agriculture is PART of why clothes are so cheap...and why wool, which still has to be sheared by professional shearers working one sheep at a time, is so much more expensive!)...it took 12 full time spinners to keep 1 full time weaver working at the loom.

What does that mean?  It means that the 12 spinners listed above did nothing but spin all day long.  Aside from maybe making their meals, they didn’t plough (plow) the fields, they didn’t feed the livestock, they didn’t shepherd the sheep, they didn’t mend the fences, they didn’t craft the furniture or repair the roof thatching...  A lot of families grew flax specifically for turning it into linen thread, and spend every spare moment they had spinning thread, to either hopefully get them enough thread to set up a loom in the winter months when there was’t a lot of outdoor activity going on, or to sell to professional weavers, in hopefully good enough quality to fetch the best price for their balls of thread.

Ploughmen (whatever gender) would be outside all day long, plowing, weeding, harvesting, mending things around the farm and would only spin if there was time.  Housekeepers and child tenders would spin while food was cooking (which could take hours), or while laundry was drying...but it would still probably take roughly 30 part-time spinners to keep 1 weaver in constant production.

Also, consider the fact that it takes literal days to set up a loom...and god help you if you got it wrong and didn’t discover the mistake right away, because you’d spend hours more undoing and redoing it right.  Dependind on the width of the fabric, the tightness of the weave, the type of fabric and the kind of loom (Navajo vertical looms are different beasts from European treadle looms...and a lightweight linen suitable for handkerchiefs and veils isn’t going to be at all like a heavy canvas, never mind a rug weight material), the swiftness of making the cloth means that your progress might be measured in inches per day, feet per day, or if you’re very lucky, yards per day...and that’s assuming you have enough thread on hand for both warp and weft.

...Think that’s a lot?  I haven’t even gotten into all the effort required for finding and making dyes, madders (fixing agents to help keep the colors from fading too fast in sunlight) and getting the consistencies right.  (Contrary to popular belief you could get some bright colors out of natural dyes; black was the absolute most difficult to dye, not purple. The materials for making black dye were far cheaper to acquire than for purple, but still, difficult to dye and keep it actually black in sunlight.)

Nor have I gotten into sumptuary laws, which tried to dictate what a person of a certain social rank could wear, including furs and silks.  (Anyone could wear squirrel fur, for example, but to wear mink or ermine, you had to be waaay up high on the social ladder.) ...People still wanted to wear things “above their station” and sumptuary laws were difficult to enforce at times...but sometimes they were enforced ruthlessly.  So it was risky at times.

Danielle in Ever After would’ve been whipped & imprisoned/indentured for wearing that fancy dress, if people had realized she was a peasant, not a noblewoman.  But for her, the risk was worth it, to save a man from being sold off to the colonies for indentured servitude, to bring him back to his wife and his family & friends.

So John’s not kidding when he says that people in the late 1700s/early 1800s invested money in their clothes as a sign of their social status.  You want people to treat you with more respect, you have to look like you have the social status, and that preceived social status is often dependent on wealth.

Buying new is not the only option, either.  We have places like the Rack where they sell off for cheap the odds and ends, remnants of garments that just didn’t sell at listed price in the big department stores, or they might have a few flaws that the big stores reject (missing button, wonky stitching, etc), but otherwise the garment is in good shape and still basically brand new, so it’s sold for maybe $20 instead of $80

We also have the true thrift stores, such as Goodwill, Salvation Army, St. Vincent de Paul, Value Village, and those are just the local charity/donated goods shops in my area.  You can visit these places and get that same dress at $80 for just $4-$8, but it’ll have been worn by someone else, laundered (well, one hopes), and put up for sale.

The same sort of system existed in pre-industrial societies.  Mercedes Lackey has a beautiful scene in her first Bardic Voices, The Lark & the Wren novel, wherein the main character, the Wren, is taken to various used clothing sellers in the market places of the city she’s in, and given advice on what to buy, which includes torn and stained clothing, and how to hide the stains, using ribbon trim and embroidery and applique patches, or even just wearing a vest over a shirt that’s stained on the chest area.

Since Wren is trying to make a living as a bard/minstrel, it’s considered appropriate for her to have clothing that has fancy, eye-catching trim on it, as part of her entertainer persona.  When she’s busking in the street (performing for passers-by to hopefully get pennies...or pins...in payment), the more eye-catching, the better, since it goes with her ear-catching music.

And when she gets a job providing polite, soothing music in an upper-class bordello/brothel style establishment, she wears more subdued clothes.  Why?  To help her blend into the background, since the focus is to provide soothing, pleasant music while the rich patrons wait for their chosen paid companions to be available.  They’re not going to put up with someone wearing screaming shades of red and yellow and green with ribbon-strung bells dangling off their elbows...but neither will they put up with someone wearing the cheapest, crappiest woven fabrics visibly stained and ragged, badly patched or torn.

Since the adage “the clothes make (the social status) of the man” has been around for ages and ages...I can only imagine that clothing--and the kind of high-tech gear you can afford--far into the future will also still continue to be a mark of unspoken social status for humankind.

...I mention gear because aliens might or might not have any need for clothing, but they’ll certainly have a need for gear, and the higher the quality the gear, or the more functional it is, the more likely they’ll be considered higher quality in social status, too.

Also, functionality is a key factor, because social status isn’t just about kings and queens at the top and peasants and slaves at the bottom. It’s also about what kinds of society your characters move around in.  You wear clothes appropriate to being a sailor while on a ship, but you will want different outfits when you’re a blacksmith apprentice, versus a clockmaker’s helper, versus a farm laborer, versus a nobleman’s son.

A nobleman’s son wouldn’t want to wear the leather apron or smock that a blacksmith would, but if you walked into a smithy and asked for a job while wearing fine silks, you’d get turned down (and laughed at behind your back), but if you walked in wearing wool (which doesn’t catch on fire; it just scorches and smolders and goes out) and leather (ditto), you’ll be taken seriously.

Your gear is the same.  The Millenium Falcon was a rusted bucket of bolts and patch jobs compared to Queen Amidala’s personal, sleek, silvery interstellar transport, but it was still a fantastically swift, maneuverable ship.  The Queen’s personal yacht would get her respect from port authorities.  The Falcon’s capabilities would get it respect from other smugglers and crime bosses, because it looks like it can’t go very fast and should fall apart at any minute...but it won’t fall apart.  It’ll blast past everything else & keep going...provided you can keep it patched together.

Anyway, long speech short, watch this video, and think about how your stories and your characters protray their social status, their wealth, via their clothes & gear...and remember, pre-20th-century, clothing is expensive.  You and I have each probably have so many different outfits on our shelves and in our dresser drawers and wardrobe cupboards and closets that we’d be considered damn near royalty in terms of pure clothing-wealth, compared to just about anywhere in the 11th Century.

Clothing makes the character, and the story.

[braindamageforbeginners]

A New Doctor

Cycle 9, Day 10

So, I now have at least a half-dozen physicians on my case. If you believe the BMJ stat that “medical misadvenure” (which is a broad category that includes, but is not limited to, doctor error, nursing error, pharmacy screw-ups, misdiagnosis, accidental overdose/drug interactions, opportunistic infections - the list goes on) is the third-leading cause of death in America (according to the same study, heart disease is #1 and cancer is #2). So, for those for those of you setting odds on my life expectancy (and, frankly, I’d be disappointed if you didn’t), it’s been an odd, extended game of “Clue,” except I’m Mr. Body, to see if disease, side-effects, or my possibly-insane physicians will get to me first. I hate to say it, but I think I’ve finally figured the odds-on favorite in this one: my GP.

This isn’t a plea for help, or even a serious medical development on my part, it’s a warning for you, the readership, as insurance enrollment comes around. First of all, if you can’t pay, hospitals or physicians can throw you out on the street (this is something able-bodied people are so disbelieving of that took a poor black woman freezing to death on-camera in Baltimore). They are only required to treat you if you in an emergency situation, thanks to some federal laws called “EMTALA.”If you have a disease that drives you to the emergency room, the prognosis gets worse. People tend believe that just because it’s the healthcare industry, the health insurance industry isn’t a corrosive force that has a vested interest in denying care and killing you. Which is odd to me; you don’t get this anywhere else (or I haven’t experienced this sort of self-delusional attitude); you don’t see people defending McDonald’s or Nabisco or RJ Reynolds or Exxon as having their best interests at heart (and, to my friends who think they’re bullet-proof because of their health insurance, read the fine print, very, very carefully; you don’t want to get a nasty shock as you’re being rolled into the OR). So, thanks to my parent’s generosity/desire not to see me die, I rolled in last year with a very expensive PPO (there are a lot of acronyms to keep track of, but PPOs allow the patient to see anyone in a preferred provider network, which tend to be large and give the patient lots of choices, so you can directly get a referral to a neurologist if you hit your head). Unfortunately, because I have pre-existing conditions (and to my bullet-proof friends, read through the list of pre-existing conditions that’ll disqualify you, your jaw will drop)(also, it’s telling that Congressmen and Senators have the option to buy into a separate, federal employee health insurance option that’s not available to us serfs)(it’s also telling that the ACA required Congresscritters, for the first time ever, to tough it out and find health insurance like their constituents)(which is why I assume all the GOP higher-ups had melt-downs over the ACA - a slight removal of privilege to help sick constituents isn’t a part of Congressional ethos, let alone job description), my premiums went from “expensive” to “leasing a sports car” within a few months. I’m extraordinarily grateful to them for providing that financial backing, because it allowed me to continue getting treatment during the crucial 6-10 week GBM post-diagnosis period that might turn this from “Guaranteed doom” to “far too close for comfort.” So, this did give me some time to do my homework (in writing about this, I’m realizing I really should consider applying to law school, because I’ll know more about medical and insurance law and ethics than some lawyers before this is up)(Hell, I probably know more than some of them right now). Anyway, I found that all the specialists I see for cancer, do take medicaid (even the specialized pharmacy I use at the cancer center). Which is good for me, especially since being on disability in California is an automatic qualification for Medicaid. Now for the bad news; although all the specialists there take medicaid, the GPs don’t. AND the specialists only take medicaid if it’s done through an HMO carrier that the state sub-contracts with.

Great Kraken’s Balls.

There are a number of documentaries and documents (including an “Adam Ruins Everything” segment) on why HMO’s are unnecessary and lethally incompetent (like many other aspects of a for-profit medical system), but here’s the most basic deal: They act as a gate-keeper for the entire medical-industrial system. You can get your care at any of a dozen pre-approved hospitals, and nowhere else. Now, if an HMO or their doctors can’t treat you (or refuse to treat you - which is still the case for a lot of GBM patients), they are required to send you to a specialist who can. The economic incentive is to give less care, and keep all the patients in the system for as long as possible.

I suspect that delaying tactic is why heart disease and cancer are considered so deadly - you can’t sit long on either of those.

So, based on the financial folks at the cancer center, I picked one, and promptly forgot about it; because I’m already in the system there (the receptionists and pharmacy staff recognize me on sight)(which is comforting, until you realize it’s a cancer center, and then the panic briefly cuts in until you remember you’ve gone eight months without regowth or metastastis). I only remembered it when I got a call from the medicaid HMO telling me I should schedule an appointment with one of their physicians. This isn’t a big deal, I just need them to sign-off on any further black magic-based treatments with the Warlocks or Radiation Oncologist.

Now, before I go further, let’s talk about the people who go into medicine. Like anything in healthcare, we tend to give assume that an entire industry is moral, and just; when people go in for a variety reasons (as recently as 20 years ago, the vast majority of medical students said it was for money), and it’s worth noting that cuts across a vast majority of demographics and motives. And, for better or worse, that cuts across vast swathes of competence - for far too many folks, it’s a job - a rewarding job, but just a job. My father recently inquired about board exams and recertification as a way of guaranteeing some basic level of competence from everyone. He’s right, but the key word there is “basic.” Again, “basic” is fine for first aid and most major medical issues; it’s unacceptable if you have a disease with a 90% fiver-year mortality rate.

I bring this up because I think I chronicled my first appointment with my insurance-appointed GP five or six weeks ago and seemed perfectly satisfactory to my ongoing addiction to experimental chemotherapy. I’m certain it was within that time frame, because I had schedule a six-week follow-up. Which, sadly lands on my “week off” chemo. So, yesterday, after infusion #2 for this cycle (for those of you wondering what I’m doing to stay busy during infusions these days, well, rewriting Christmas carols for cancer patients)(”On the first day of chemo, the nurses gave to me, zofran in an IV”). I also convinced dear old Dad to take me out to lunch, because, again, when the Marizomib side effects hit, you do not fee like eating. This was in the neighborhood of the latest addition to my collection of medical people, so I thought I’d reschedule then. And was told by the receptionist to wait for everyone behind me to check in lest they be late for appointments. That would be fine, but it seems a fundamental misunderstanding of how queus work. And, any time post five-ish hours on infusion day, even though zofran might keep me from puking, it does give me an odd, oily, queasy sensation. I think I deserve some sort of gold star for not puking on this woman right away (again, if you have unconventional problems, feel free to start with an unconventional approach)(my next writing project will be titled, “Life Lessons from Necromancers”). I eventually - using the traditional method of looking down the reception counter, noticed someone not otherwise occupied, and manage to get an appointment more amenable to my schedule. For a physical.

Again, I’d love to use some four-letter words here, but even Finnish fails to meet the requirement. Now, it should be noted that, even though I’m well-aware that I’m physically Adonis-like; I am in chemo and recovering from radiation treatment, Radiation Oncologist implied a few months ago that, even though my scan was clean and looked good for someone with brain cancer, anyone unfamiliar with my case would probably freak out about them. Same thing with my abnormal, uh, “lab sample” I wrote about recently - the nurses agreed, a single abnormal test is hardly unexpected toward the end of chemo, especially since I’m now on a diet consisting mostly of protein, fiber, cafeine, and dangerous, experimental substances. However, I’d prefer not to have to point all that out to a new medical person who has the power to yank the plug on me (sadly, my original GP will be on vacation that week. (I’ll also be on Temodar, so there’s a solid chance my brains will be thoroughly scrambled and incapable of comprehension).

ANYWAY… WEIGHT: 198 lb CONCENTRATION: Pretty good, APPETITE: Normal (but this is 24 hours post-infusion. ACTIVITY LEVEL: Not great; the fatigue side effect definitely caught up with me and chewed me up last night. SLEEP QUALITY: Okay. although I’ve noticed that I definitely thrash around on chemo days. COORDINATION/DEXTERITY: Lousy. Thank Gods I don’t need the walker, and I don’t even think I need my magic ankle support, but my left leg is definitely unreliable today. MEMORY: Not bad, although I did forget my sheets were in the wash earlier today (although I recall stripping the bed and tossing them into the washer). PHYSICAL: Tired and kind of wobbly, but still a lot better than this time a year ago.. EMOTIONAL: Okay. It might just be that I spent yesterday next to my zofran-and-CDB salt-lick, but I’m starting to think I might make it through all this somewhat intact. Hang on. Am I really starting to believe my own bullshit? SIDE EFFECTS: Tired, somewhat sore (either chemo or increasing the difficulty of that stupid elliptical), and in the wrong time-zone, but, other than that, not much.  CURRENTLY READING (For Donna): Gonzo Girl, and The Explorer’s Guild (A Passage to Tshamballah)

[michaelfallcon]

Nicole Battefeld: The Sprudge Twenty Interview

Nicole Battefeld — Röststätte of Berlin, Germany

Welcome to The Sprudge Twenty Interviews presented by Pacific Barista Series. For a complete list of 2019 Sprudge Twenty honorees please visit sprudge.com/twenty.

Nominated by Melanie Boehme

Nicole Battefeld is the head roaster and barista team leader at Berlin’s Röststätte. A former professional chef, Battefeld is the 2018 German Barista Champion and the founder of the Female Barista Society, “a project to encourage women by sharing knowledge and passion for coffee.” The Society is currently raising funds to offer free education, technical training, and other opportunities to womxn and female-identified coffee professionals in Germany and beyond.

This interview has been edited and condensed. 

What issue in coffee do you care about most?

It’s hard to name one… but if I would have to choose I’d say education. It’s the most boring thing in the world to just read books about processing and farming and roasting, origins and techniques, but I think it is the most important part BEFORE you start working as a barista. People can then understand the whole complexion of this trade much better.

What cause or element in coffee drives you?

Becoming better at what I do. Obviously competing is a different side of the normal barista work and very far away from reality, but it just really pushes me to always become better and to get a stage where I can share passion and hopefully inspire one or two other people to learn more about what coffee actually is and why it means so much to me.

What issue in coffee do you think is critically overlooked?

Besides the fact that women are still underrepresented in leading positions in the big coffee industry, I think there should be an open discussion if the “barista profession” should be more like an official educational apprenticeship. Being a chef took me three years of training, but becoming a barista in a paid barista position takes just three days of a paid seminar? And people do believe that they are actually baristas after three days of learning how to use an espresso machine and paying way too much money.

I also think that’s our biggest problem. It’s so easy to work in a coffee shop. So many students do it and it just loses its value. If people realize how much know-how you actually need to be a professional, they would respect us more and we would at the same time probably get paid much better.

What is the quality you like best about coffee?

It connects people. Every day. And at the same time, it’s the perfect companion when you want to be alone. I can not name one just one quality, I am too obsessed with the topic and due to all the competitions, I have changed the way I look at coffee completely. It’s like I am in a relationship with it. Sometimes I just don’t understand it. It makes me frustrated. And also a lot of the times it makes me calm, happy, it helps me be the person that I want to be. The biggest benefit of coffee is: it always surprises me. It opens doors and opportunities and never gets boring.

Did you experience a “god shot” or life-changing moment of coffee revelation early in your career?

I think I’m not one of the “big wow moment” people. When I was 18 it just started and never left.

What is your idea of coffee happiness?

I have two ideas.

Number one: I meet international coffee people and can connect, be nerdy, have fun with people I would have probably never met in my entire life and every time there are events that evolve around coffee I feel truly like I am meeting a bunch of old friends, which makes me very very happy.

Number two: sitting in my kitchen next to the window drinking a filter coffee and just watching the people on the street.

If you could have any job in the coffee industry, what would it be and why?

If I could choose I would like to work as a barista for two days, as a roaster for one day, as a marketing assistant for one day, and one day I would just give trainings. I am pretty happy that I can kind of like do that at my current job, but I would just like to do all these things for one day so I could focus on them more whilst I am doing them.

Who are your coffee heroes?

There are so many! There are people that inspire me now, every day and I will never forget how I watched Erna Tosberg in 2015 on the screen during her German barista competition. I guess she was when it all started. Otherwise, my bosses at Röststätte are pretty intense. They literally dedicated their whole life to their company and running it so successful since many many years. Their stubbornness and hard work is definitely inspiring me every day.

If you could drink coffee with anyone, living or dead, who would it be and why?

Jordan Montgomery. Because there is no one else in the world I would rather drink coffee with and luckily he’s pretty alive.

If you didn’t get bit by the coffee bug, what do you think you’d be doing instead?

I’d probably still work as a chef in a star restaurant. Would I be happy is the question.

Do you have any coffee mentors?

Hmm… I have a lot of people that are my mentors in different situations. What has been very consistent are my supporters and I guess that’s what helps me the most. It feels good when you know there are people that have your back.

What do you wish someone would’ve told you when you were first starting out in coffee?

To learn more and to educate myself more. I mean I have done it but it took a long time until I found out about specialty coffee and what’s behind it. I feel like I’ve lost all those years when I meet baristas that are much younger than me and know so much and have already done many many degrees.

Name three coffee apparatuses you’d take into space with you.

Ok, let’s be honest. If I would go to space I would swap the water that was meant to be for the coffee with champagne, I would probably swap the coffee that I was meant to be brewing with illegal substances and I would swap the coffee equipment with a turntable. I mean, when in space…

Best song to brew coffee to:

Crazy by Aerosmith. It just came into my head so guess that’s my answer.

Look into the crystal ball—where do you see yourself in 20 years?

I see myself with my pig Rolfi (obviously I will adopt a pig one day) in my own crazy little coffee shop, hopefully working the positions from question number 7.

What’d you eat for breakfast this morning?

A cheese croissant, still warm, so buttery that the paper bag could never disguise the evil deed I am doing to my cholesterol levels.

When did you last drink coffee?

Today at 4pm when I finished training for this year’s World Coffee In Good Spirits competition.

What was it?

That is so evil! Well obviously it was in one of my cocktails so now I don’t know if it counts… but it was a Panama Caturra and incredible!

Thank you. 

The Sprudge Twenty is presented by Pacific Barista Series. For a complete list of 2019 Sprudge Twenty honorees please visit sprudge.com/twenty

Zachary Carlsen is a co-founder and editor at Sprudge Media Network. Read more Zachary Carlsen on Sprudge. 

The post Nicole Battefeld: The Sprudge Twenty Interview appeared first on Sprudge.

Nicole Battefeld: The Sprudge Twenty Interview published first on https://medium.com/@LinLinCoffee

[shebreathesslowly]

Nicole Battefeld: The Sprudge Twenty Interview

Nicole Battefeld — Röststätte of Berlin, Germany

Welcome to The Sprudge Twenty Interviews presented by Pacific Barista Series. For a complete list of 2019 Sprudge Twenty honorees please visit sprudge.com/twenty.

Nominated by Melanie Boehme

Nicole Battefeld is the head roaster and barista team leader at Berlin’s Röststätte. A former professional chef, Battefeld is the 2018 German Barista Champion and the founder of the Female Barista Society, “a project to encourage women by sharing knowledge and passion for coffee.” The Society is currently raising funds to offer free education, technical training, and other opportunities to womxn and female-identified coffee professionals in Germany and beyond.

This interview has been edited and condensed. 

What issue in coffee do you care about most?

It’s hard to name one… but if I would have to choose I’d say education. It’s the most boring thing in the world to just read books about processing and farming and roasting, origins and techniques, but I think it is the most important part BEFORE you start working as a barista. People can then understand the whole complexion of this trade much better.

What cause or element in coffee drives you?

Becoming better at what I do. Obviously competing is a different side of the normal barista work and very far away from reality, but it just really pushes me to always become better and to get a stage where I can share passion and hopefully inspire one or two other people to learn more about what coffee actually is and why it means so much to me.

What issue in coffee do you think is critically overlooked?

Besides the fact that women are still underrepresented in leading positions in the big coffee industry, I think there should be an open discussion if the “barista profession” should be more like an official educational apprenticeship. Being a chef took me three years of training, but becoming a barista in a paid barista position takes just three days of a paid seminar? And people do believe that they are actually baristas after three days of learning how to use an espresso machine and paying way too much money.

I also think that’s our biggest problem. It’s so easy to work in a coffee shop. So many students do it and it just loses its value. If people realize how much know-how you actually need to be a professional, they would respect us more and we would at the same time probably get paid much better.

What is the quality you like best about coffee?

It connects people. Every day. And at the same time, it’s the perfect companion when you want to be alone. I can not name one just one quality, I am too obsessed with the topic and due to all the competitions, I have changed the way I look at coffee completely. It’s like I am in a relationship with it. Sometimes I just don’t understand it. It makes me frustrated. And also a lot of the times it makes me calm, happy, it helps me be the person that I want to be. The biggest benefit of coffee is: it always surprises me. It opens doors and opportunities and never gets boring.

Did you experience a “god shot” or life-changing moment of coffee revelation early in your career?

I think I’m not one of the “big wow moment” people. When I was 18 it just started and never left.

What is your idea of coffee happiness?

I have two ideas.

Number one: I meet international coffee people and can connect, be nerdy, have fun with people I would have probably never met in my entire life and every time there are events that evolve around coffee I feel truly like I am meeting a bunch of old friends, which makes me very very happy.

Number two: sitting in my kitchen next to the window drinking a filter coffee and just watching the people on the street.

If you could have any job in the coffee industry, what would it be and why?

If I could choose I would like to work as a barista for two days, as a roaster for one day, as a marketing assistant for one day, and one day I would just give trainings. I am pretty happy that I can kind of like do that at my current job, but I would just like to do all these things for one day so I could focus on them more whilst I am doing them.

Who are your coffee heroes?

There are so many! There are people that inspire me now, every day and I will never forget how I watched Erna Tosberg in 2015 on the screen during her German barista competition. I guess she was when it all started. Otherwise, my bosses at Röststätte are pretty intense. They literally dedicated their whole life to their company and running it so successful since many many years. Their stubbornness and hard work is definitely inspiring me every day.

If you could drink coffee with anyone, living or dead, who would it be and why?

Jordan Montgomery. Because there is no one else in the world I would rather drink coffee with and luckily he’s pretty alive.

If you didn’t get bit by the coffee bug, what do you think you’d be doing instead?

I’d probably still work as a chef in a star restaurant. Would I be happy is the question.

Do you have any coffee mentors?

Hmm… I have a lot of people that are my mentors in different situations. What has been very consistent are my supporters and I guess that’s what helps me the most. It feels good when you know there are people that have your back.

What do you wish someone would’ve told you when you were first starting out in coffee?

To learn more and to educate myself more. I mean I have done it but it took a long time until I found out about specialty coffee and what’s behind it. I feel like I’ve lost all those years when I meet baristas that are much younger than me and know so much and have already done many many degrees.

Name three coffee apparatuses you’d take into space with you.

Ok, let’s be honest. If I would go to space I would swap the water that was meant to be for the coffee with champagne, I would probably swap the coffee that I was meant to be brewing with illegal substances and I would swap the coffee equipment with a turntable. I mean, when in space…

Best song to brew coffee to:

Crazy by Aerosmith. It just came into my head so guess that’s my answer.

Look into the crystal ball—where do you see yourself in 20 years?

I see myself with my pig Rolfi (obviously I will adopt a pig one day) in my own crazy little coffee shop, hopefully working the positions from question number 7.

What’d you eat for breakfast this morning?

A cheese croissant, still warm, so buttery that the paper bag could never disguise the evil deed I am doing to my cholesterol levels.

When did you last drink coffee?

Today at 4pm when I finished training for this year’s World Coffee In Good Spirits competition.

What was it?

That is so evil! Well obviously it was in one of my cocktails so now I don’t know if it counts… but it was a Panama Caturra and incredible!

Thank you. 

The Sprudge Twenty is presented by Pacific Barista Series. For a complete list of 2019 Sprudge Twenty honorees please visit sprudge.com/twenty

Zachary Carlsen is a co-founder and editor at Sprudge Media Network. Read more Zachary Carlsen on Sprudge. 

The post Nicole Battefeld: The Sprudge Twenty Interview appeared first on Sprudge.

from Sprudge http://bit.ly/2KikXWI

[abdifarah]

Match Made In Zion

Those around Zion Williamson quickly dispelled rumors that he might not play in New Orleans next year. Williamson’s father gave an interview to an ESPN affiliate in Louisiana stating that his son is already looking forward to getting settled in New Orleans, and shrewdly not much more has been said. The quiet may signify nothing. But I secretly hope Zion is meticulously engineering a dramatic escape from the Big Easy, which may come as a surprise since I happily live in New Orleans. Perhaps the basketball gods were caught sleeping when the lottery balls bounced in New Orleans’ favor, or, as I like to believe, the outcome will ultimately prove divine providence by forcing a once-in-a-generation talent like Zion to step into his true destiny, which holds more than simply posterizing defenders. As the messiah of the player empowerment movement, it is Zion’s duty to fight his way out of the basketball purgatory that is the Pelicans. In the beginning there was LeBron, who bore the wrath of the public for The Decision in 2010. We had minor prophets in this narrative: Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, and Zion’s potential teammate, Anthony Davis, who humbly allowed themselves to be seen as cowards, or ungrateful, or divos, in search of unrealized basketball promised lands. In Zion we have the culmination; a player so significant to the future of the NBA, that he has the power to change how players move throughout the league once and for all. By forcing out of New Orleans Zion will accomplish two things. One, he will force purposeless, mediocre, lukewarm teams like the Pelicans to either gain focus or close up shop for good. And most importantly he will highlight that the draft system, as we know it, is fundamentally immoral.

Despite Mardi Gras and Bourbon Street, New Orleans is a sleepy town. Anthony Davis was rightly criticized this past season for the way he attempted to force his way out of New Orleans. But I understand why a 26 year-old superstar like Anthony Davis, after 7 years in New Orleans, may want a change. And while I personally like living in New Orleans, my heart sank a bit when the city received the the number one pick and the rights to draft Zion Williamson in last month’s draft lottery. As a basketball fan first, Zion, and Anthony Davis for that matter, deserve better. This is less an indictment on the city and more on the team. This is the same franchise that chose to name itself the Pelicans! It is a team inherited by Gayle Benson, the wife of recently deceased Tom Benson, who also owned the much more glamorous Saints, and only half-heartedly agreed to buy the NBA franchise. If James Dolan, Jeanie Buss, and Robert Sarver, the owners of the Knicks, Lakers, and Suns respectively, are any indication, inheriting a team or the money to buy one usually portends terrible ownership. The Pelicans stay under the radar, mostly because of a lack of press, but they have been just as dysfunctional as those more glamorous franchises. Until the recent hire of David Griffin, the team was run by Mickey Loomis who also runs the Saints. I don’t blame Anthony Davis, and other professional basketball players, for not wanting to serve as the red-jerseyed stepchildren to the Saints.

The Pelicans were doomed the day they named themselves the Pelicans. In 2012, I had recently moved to New Orleans for an artist residency in the vibrant and still edgy, and now fully gentrified 8th ward. Television and radio stations spread word that the once-again-nameless New Orleans NBA franchise (formerly the Hornets, formerly the Jazz) was holding a contest to find a new name for the team. I ran immediately to my local coffee shop, The Orange Couch, with sketchbook in hand to brainstorm colors, typefaces, and of course the new name. The concept was simple. New Orleans used to be the Jazz, a top five city/nickname combination. New Orleans is not only the birthplace of jazz but also the home of bounce music; the cacophonous, kaleidoscopic bedrock of so much modern hip hop. Now introducing your New Orleans Bounce! The name pays homage to the bygone Jazz, as well as championing New Orleans’ continued importance to contemporary music culture, and has the double entendre of a bouncing basketball. Without much warning or fanfare news broke that the team had settled on a new name, the Pelicans. Disappointment was expressed by the few die hard basketball fans in the city. Who voted for Pelicans? The name wreaked of Uptown New Orleans: the aristocratic, country club, I have columns in front of my house side of New Orleans, and none of the gritty, flavorful, down-to-earth, downtown charm for which the city is beloved.

A name and subsequent success may be a chicken and egg proposition. What exactly is a Laker? But choosing a bad name reveals an intrinsic laziness by the stewards of the team, and reveals that basketball in New Orleans will forever rank behind the main sports attraction in New Orleans, which is the Saints. Despite producing the second most NBA players per capita, Louisiana will always be a football town. On the New Orleans sports totem pole the Pelicans may be last, behind the beloved Saints, LSU football, LSU Baseball, and perhaps even behind the minor league baseball team, the Babycakes. The Pelicans are the team players come to rehab from injury and rehabilitate their careers. Eric Gordon, who is now thriving on the Houston Rockets, was a shell of his current form in New Orleans. I saw him once at a party in the city. The strangest part of the sighting was how normal he behaved. He and Ryan Anderson, also a former Pelican, awkwardly meandered around the venue like everyone else. In any other city they would have been mobbed by people or sequestered in some roped off VIP section. Similarly, a friend used to own a little lunch spot in a local market. Jrue Holiday and his wife, soccer star Lauren Holiday, would come in and eat. Once again, no one noticed or bothered them. A city where you can make the same millions playing basketball and walk the streets freely like an average joe may entice some. But as much as the money, I believe most athletes hunger for fame. For Zion Williamson, someone who had millions of instagram followers in high school, the level of anonymity that New Orleans offers may be the opposite of what he wants.

More important than the fate of the hapless Pelicans, we need Zion to fix the draft. Recently, NPR ran a story reminding listeners that the Selective Service (the draft) still exists in the US. I, like most modern American men, do not live in dread of the draft, and actually had no idea the draft was still in effect. I know whether or not I am registered like I know my blood type. But for highly prized sports prospects in the major team sports, the draft is less a looming fear and more an inevitability. Further, the hegemony of the sports industry in the lives and minds of athletes makes the draft something that talented prospects are looking forward to, dreaming about even, from a young age. If Zion was a hotshot computer scientist leaving Duke he would have his pick of sexy startups and blue chip firms with whom to join his talents. But as an athlete he has no say. In that same radio interview Zion’s father says, “One thing that Zion has always been taught is that you accept the things that you can’t change.” Historically, most athletes have embodied this passive mentality regarding where they get to play initially, and choose to focus on what they can control on the court or field. But if Zion is truly a transcendent prospect, is it inconceivable that he can transcend even this? Sports conservatives in favor of keeping things consistent will contend that the draft preserves competitive balance. In this recent “Zion” draft lottery the Los Angeles Lakers, which added all-time great LeBron James to their roster last season got the fourth pick, while the Cleveland Cavaliers, which lost said LeBron James and had a significantly worse record, pick after the Lakers. Competitive balance be damned.

As a fan, I will admit that having superstars spread around makes for a more exciting league. A middle ground between competitive balance and more agency for the players must exist. Before the lottery, cameras caught Williamson lingering a little longer around the Atlanta Hawks logo. This choice speaks volumes about Zion. The New York centric media thought it a forgone conclusion that the Knicks were destined to win Zion, and that the attraction to was mutual. But Atlanta presents a truly exciting basketball situation; the chance to run with flashy Rookie of the Year nominee Trae Young within an organization newly acquired by a forward-thinking, new money ownership group within a city that is the epicenter of television (Atlanta), movies (Marvel), and music (Migos, Future, Gucci Mane, Young Thug, Lil Baby...literally too many to name).

When new doctors apply for post-doctoral residencies their exists the National Resident Matching Program and Match Day. A prospective resident makes their list of preferred hospitals, the hospitals similarly make a list of their preferred applicants. The two parties’ lists are processed through an algorithm that makes the final matches. Abolishing the Draft, I propose the NBA Match Program. As opposed to teams possessing all agency and drafting players as they choose, prospects like Zion could submit a ranked list of preferred destinations. Let's say Zion’s list was Atlanta, New York, the Los Angeles Lakers, and so on. Those preferences, as well as the team’s preferences of players−with some weight given to teams with terrible records for the sake of competitive balance−would go into whatever formula and shoot out a match. Zion may not get his first choose, but regardless, he can move into his new workplace knowing he had some say in the result and his future.

In 1999 Steve Francis, a hometown DMV hero of mine, had a look of disgust on draft night after the Vancouver Grizzlies drafted him second overall. He tried giving Vancouver a chance but after an altercation in the Vancouver airport he went about forcing a trade. Francis, a young man who had a tough upbringing in Takoma Park, Maryland, decided, for whatever reason, that he did not want to play in Western Canada. Francis was denounced as difficult, but Francis was not alone in not wanting to play in Western Canada. The Vancouver Grizzlies themselves moved to Memphis two years later in 2001. Billionaire owners are free to uproot a team with players and employees and fans as they see fit, yet a individual player like Francis makes a decision for himself and receives the ire of the public. Zion Williamson may look as intimidating as a real-life Incredible Hulk, but I predict that he will play nice. He will work hard in New Orleans, sign autographs, and kiss babies, all with his megawatt smile. But after some years, like Anthony Davis, he will grow weary and go about making his escape. Better to save time and choose villainy from the start like Francis.