WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE

WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE

No need to argue: everyone knows ZOMBIE of The Cranberries.

I can’t simply call it a song, to me it’s history.
It has recently exceeded one billion views on YouTube and I admit that some are mine.
A deserved success, which closes the circle of the previous song of the year proclamation at the 1995 MTV Awards.
Zombie was shot by Samuel Bayer, who also made the video of “Smells like teen Spirit” to be clear, but more than the undoubted quality, I would linger on the message and on the voice of Dolores O’Riordan.
Unfortunately now the first thing that is mentioned everywhere about her is the circumstance of death, but I would like to talk about life.
Not of her biography in detail, but I would particularly underline how she wrote this piece in a flash, after learning of the tragic death of two kids from a bomb.
Although the episode took place in Ireland in 1993, a specific sadly known context, Dolores has always avoided politicizing.
“In your head, in your head” Dolores repeats it, she invokes, she invites to think, it would seem banal and yet too often it is not.
Hers is a cry to unite, to awaken.
“Violence causes silence.”
I find that Dolores knows how to make this silence speak, she knows how to give voice to pain, she knows how to shout not anger, but the strength to say enough.
Zombie is against violence, against the inability to stop violence.
This song’s our cry against man’s inhumanity to man; and man’s inhumanity to child.”
Dolores O’Riordan

I don’t know about you but as far as I’m concerned, the thought comes loud and clear and settles viscerally.
Her “another mother’s breaking heart” becomes mine.
Her voice, her unique way of singing, constitute the focal point: a catalyst, which allows the message to communicate all its disruptive despair.
Zombie was inspired by a child’s death. His life was taken in the arm’s of his mother. She was shopping in London last year, and there was a bomb planted in a rubbish bin in London and he happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and he died. The reason the bomb was planted was because of a political territorial kind of thing that goes on in the North of Ireland and the UK. So the references to 1916 was when a contract was signed, which signed away the 6 counties to England. And it still goes on today: the war, the deaths, and the injustice.”
Dolores O’Riodan

Zombies who see and feel pain, yet do nothing.
Zombies not from horror movies and yet terribly scarier: us.

WATER IS BEING DEPLETED MANY, MANY TIMES FASTER THAN NATURE CAN REPLENISH IT. Maude Barlow

WATER IS BEING DEPLETED MANY, MANY TIMES FASTER THAN NATURE CAN REPLENISH IT. Maude Barlow

Water is an essential good for life itself.
Among the countless uses, water is also used for our coffee 🙂
If I asked you to describe what water is for you, what would you answer? What is the first word that comes to your mind?
The vocabulary defines it a chemical compound in its three states of aggregation, DIFFUSED IN NATURE.
For me, immediate association is a “precious asset”.
What I wasn’t thinking about was the vision as an economic good: commodity.
And while here in Italy the various governments follow one another with the more or less common denominator of circumventing the outcome of the referendum according to which we would have voted not to privatize it, there are parts of the world where water is subject to market prices.
Yes, as on the stock exchange, precisely with the price fluctuating even according to the weather forecast.
Can the need for water be considered a market demand? According to an increasing number of investors, without any doubt.
This speculation started quietly over fifteen years ago and provides for a division of the water into quotas: a part for the needs of the urban centers, a part for agriculture divided in proportion to the properties, and a part for the environment, for good peace of ecologists.
All this is happening for example in Australia, where as we know there are large desert areas and very hot temperature.
At the beginning, farmers were given the mirage of the option of being able to sell part of their water, if in excess, and make a profit.
But an analyst is not needed to consider that water gradually decreases from year to year.
And when does the quota allocated end?
Simple: you can buy more water.
But obviously the price will have gone up.
However, the “rising” figure, which is constantly exponentially increasing, attracts speculators is another: the total population.
More people means more water needed, not only for the needs: also for the production of food.
All this leads to a consideration: if the oil was called black gold, the water for many is already “Blue Gold”.
In the title I quoted Maude Barlow: born in 1947 in the campaign to make water recognized as a human right, to conclude, on the other hand, I would like to draw inspiration from Thomas Fuller’s phrase:
We never know the worth of water till the well is dry.
Maybe allow me to update it: we don’t know the value of water until it becomes a commodity.

WAR OF THE WORLDS

WAR OF THE WORLDS

What time is the end of the world?
No, let’s start from the beginning: The War of the Worlds is a novel written by H. G. Wells, one of the forerunners of the science fiction genre, originally published in installments in 1897 on the Pearson’s Magazine in London.
First curious anecdote: HG Wells took in part inspiration from Giovanni Schiaparelli’s theories about Mars (and if you always read me remember our save the date 🙂 )
The astronomer and director of the Brera Astronomical Observatory in Milan observed some lines on the surface of the red planet, and hypothesized that they could be natural channels for the transport of water as they changed from one observation to another.
At this point there is another beautiful smile because what is one of the painful keys for all of us Italians? Knowledge of English!
Why do I say this? Because its natural channels were translated with the wrong term that distorted the theory by transforming them into artificial canals. Hence the assumption that they had been excavated by … Martians, precisely.
These famous “Martians” who populated the fantasies of many, embodying the most varied forms and descriptions, before being replaced by the most universal aliens.
These famous “Martians” who inspired Wells first and then Welles, Orson Welles.
Curious also this coincidence, one e above all and a patented invention separates them, another curious fact, always in 1897, always in London, and always by an Italian: Guglielmo Marconi.
Why do I switch to radio? Because in the meantime we arrive in 1938, and the radio is still the fledgling mass media and, exactly as it works today for the internet, it is seen as a form of potentially dangerous communication. It is seen as a vehicle of social mutation, for the rapid diffusion to the easy reach of a large number of people, and above all harmful to the publishing giants, worried about losing their income.
And precisely at CBS Orson Welles conducts The Mercury Theater on the Air: a program consisting of the narration of the great classics of literature, for the truth poorly paid and not much followed.
But Orson, at that time a Shakespearean actor, expresses his genius by using the program also to deal a blow to the system, deciding to cut the news in real time, and in view of the imminent Halloween, structures the Martian invasion described in the book like a real-time radio commentary.
It is in fact on October 30, 1938 when the reading of the opening words of The War of the Worlds is on air, interspersed with musical broadcasts, as usual, until an announcement interrupts the music and transposes the text setting it in the United States. With the help of screenwriter Howard Koch, completed with mock interviews with experts, imitations of press releases from the authorities, and sound effects to which Orson Welles pays special attention.
At the beginning and during the transmission it is clearly stated that it is the transposition of the novel, but many tune in at different times and the illusion effect created artfully succeeds perfectly.
It is said that a man called the New York Times to ask “what time is the end of the world?” to which the famous song written by Michael stipe of R.E.M. is inspired.
There is a chorus that supports the exaggeration of the estimates that count people running in the street, panic scenes, or hysteria, and I honestly don’t intend to dwell on the numbers, since, especially in this period, we everyday hear tragic counts.
In fact, in Grover’s Mills, New Jersey, there is a commemorative plaque with the following inscription:
On the evening of October 30, 1938 Orson Welles and The Mercury Theatre presented a dramatization of H.G. Wells The war of the worlds as adapted by Howard Koch. This was to become a landmark in broadcast history, provoking continuing thought about media responsibility, social psychology and civil defense. For a brief time as many as one million people throughout the country believed that Martians had invaded the earth, beginning with Grover’s Mill, New Jersey.
The important thing that Orson Welles has more or less voluntarily shown us is that people are led to believe rather unconditionally what is communicated to them by the mainstream mass media.
How many times have we heard “TV said it?”
How many care to check the news?
This time I went beyond coffee time, but today we can also indulge in chocolate, what do you say?
Now I conclude with the last strange coincidence: in The War of the Worlds the Martians are defeated by a virus.

DALGONA COFFEE

DALGONA COFFEE

While here we demonstrate to be more a people of bakers, expressing ourselves in pizza, bread, and cakes of all kinds, in other countries the Dalgona Coffee Challenge goes crazy: it comes from Korea, where both the quarantine and the challenge started first.
What does Dalgona mean?
The name comes from Korean street food, more precisely a lollipop-shaped snack called and Ppogi. This Ppogi / Dalgona is made with caramelized sugar and baking soda, which gives a spongy texture. The melted sugar is spread in a rounded shape on a plaque. Then made to solidify by affixing molds with designs of various types, to which the classic stick is fixed.
How does it associate with Dalgona coffee? I would say for the creaminess.
The base principle could be associated with the cream that our grandmothers made with the first coffee that came out of the coffee maker and with sugar.
The mixture obtained, in many of the various ways of execution with instant coffee and electric whisks, is placed on top of the cold milk.
Perhaps here we would not associate the final result properly with the name “coffee”, but the appearance is certainly very inviting.
Have you already tried?
If you want to try:
two teaspoons of instant coffee
two of sugar
two of water
and then mix

the “keep calm” version also includes a pinch of cinnamon 🙂

Pin It on Pinterest