For a loooong time, I've been wanting to figure out an alternative way to store the bulk coffee we brew at World Fare. However, with such tight margins all the time, we haven't been able to afford one way valve containers and I didn't want to use disposable vacuum seal methods. We've been re-using and re-using one pound bags that one of our volunteers brought in, but the zip-lock seals have been coming apart, which sort of defeats the purpose of the one-way valve bag. They've started to look pretty crummy, especially when they're held closed with paper clips.

But...TODAY I finally found a solution that I could make with items we have on hand. (Rob says he came up with it before, but I just wasn't in the right brain space to hear it then.) I took jars that we'd purchased some time ago from Global Infusion and, after cleaning them thoroughly, drilled small holes in the lids. I then cut out the one-way valves from the coffee bags we've been using and taped them inside the lids. Voila!

Thanks to this web page for the idea! (And also Rob. :)

One of my first "unofficial" jobs was working for the billboard company for which my mom was an office manager. I swept floors, organized gallons of paint by Pantone color, and painted over old plywood panels and billboard flex (the large vinyl sheets billboards are painted on) for reuse. Not particularly exciting stuff ...

The painters, though, seemed to be really cool things, especially to my 14-year-old eyes. It was endlessly interesting to watch the art for ads go from small designs on paper in the office to huge paintings on vinyl in the cavernous shop. The one or two guys who hand-painted directly on walls throughout the city were especially revered (and you can see why below). In fact, our shop was the company that painted the famous Bigsby & Kruthers wall along the Kennedy on the north side of Chicago. During one of the Bulls' championship runs, Dennis Rodman was featured prominently on the wall and the painters would change Rodman's hair color on the mural every time he changed his; it became such a traffic nuisance, they had to remove it.

I was intrigued, then, to see "Up There," a short documentary about the dying art of hand-painted billboards in a new digital age. Watching the apprenticeship process and the years of training necessary to paint wall murals gave me newfound respect for the guys I worked with so many years ago. Though painting ads probably isn't what many of these painters would like to be doing with their considerable skills, their dedication to the process is fascinating.

My dad's mom passed away this week in Arizona and I won't be able to make it out to the funeral, but my thoughts, of course, have been there with my family all week. Here are some memories of my grandma that I sent over to my dad.

Rob and I have moved around quite a bit in the almost-ten years we've been married. Most of our possessions have found their way to us through thrift stores, garage sales, hand-me-downs, curb sides and dumpsters, so when we box up our lives, there are very few objects I'm overly concerned about packing well. Among those very few is a teapot Grandma Marge made for me in her ceramics studio.

Maybe it came from spending her formative years around so many men--her father, brothers, husband, sons--or maybe it came from having parents with deep roots in the sometimes dour world of Dutch Calvinism, but Grandma wasn't overly sentimental. And yet, her affections for her long-distance grandchildren found ways of coming through. I still remember the excitement of greeting her and Grandpa in the terminal in the days when such a thing was still possible. She'd be wearing white sandals with hose, an Arizona tan and all pastels. During her visits, she'd play with our hair and give an occasional hard squeeze or pinch on the cheek with her characteristic inside out laugh.

As Grandma and Grandpa grew older, so did I, and soon I was the one showing up on their doorstep with my overnight bag, ready to pick citrus fruit and play Rummikub, ready to enjoy tater tot casserole and bran muffins. On one visit, I admired the glaze on a set of ceramic coasters she'd made--a foggy blue gray misting over a brown background. Then, not too long after I returned home, I was browsing a thrift store when a set of four Chinese teacups caught my eye. They were lovely, but wanting for a teapot. I don't remember exactly how the conversation with Grandma went, but within a couple of months, a package quietly arrived containing a set of blue-gray ceramic coasters and a teapot to match.

This past spring, I unpacked my teapot to find its place in what will hopefully be our home for a long time: a second floor apartment above an 1865 storefront in Three Rivers, Michigan. The last time I talked with Grandma on the phone, she said she didn't think she'd be able to make it up the stairs to see our new place when she came to visit next. I doubted that was true, and told her so. I guess neither of us knew how very true it would be.

Over and over again, we humans prove true that even while we mark the deaths of our loved ones, they continue to live on in memory, in objects, in ways of being that make their ways through generations in both nature and nurture. In that sense, Grandma's here in our home every day; neither a cross country flight nor a flight and a half of stairs can get in her way. She and Grandpa watch over me from one of their wedding photos as I write at my desk; the massive flower bouquets and the ocean of a train on her dress are almost as big as their smiles. And of course, among the less tangible traits she's passed down to me through my dad, there's always the teapot, waiting to offer a hot beverage as a symbol of hospitality to our guests as they come in from the cold of a Michigan winter. And maybe some day, a cup of tea will be one of the concrete ways I demonstrate my love to my own grandchildren, along with laugh and a squeeze and a pinch on the cheek.