Dear Wally 68 Earth Day

Dear Wally:

Earth Day is coming up. I know that we all have much to be thankful for and there’s much to be gained by sharing and celebrating our commonality, though it seems a hard sell these days to culturally weave that encompassing reality into something that doesn’t resemble a very flimsy g string. Statistics and warnings and film clips of melting icebergs and polar bears clutching life rafts are losing their punch as we numb to their repetitious exposure. What do you think? I feel the world’s people scratching their paunches, ho-humming and going back to life as they know it in their corners of a flat world. Tell me we are all connected, please?
-An earth lover feeling alone.


Dear Earth lover:
With a little bit of eavesdropping, a few questions, Google and some speculation, I’m ready to prove, once again, to those who still don’t believe it, that the earth is round, and we are connected. And as my friend who knows I get lost all the time says, don’t worry, you’ll eventually get back where you started because the world is round. You’ll meet a lot of folks on the way, but you’ll get back. The earth’s roundness is our connectivity, our complexity and our commonality, illustrated in part through the seemingly simplest of actions- drinking a cup coffee.
I am in a NY coffee shop-- In my hands, a hot cup of coffee. I consider the roundish shape and global implications of the bean we worship.
OK, I worship.
In the corner of this small shop, which is owned by a Spaniard, are rough burlap bags of coffee beans grown in Guatemala and picked in part by Hondurans.
The 100 pound sacks are loaded onto a Japanese-designed truck which runs on diesel. This fuel comes from Venezuela and is refined in the Caribbean. The truck travels to the seaport where the beans are offloaded into a container made of Indian steel. The container is loaded onto a cargo ship which was financed by the Austrians, made in the Netherlands, captained by an Australian, crewed by Indonesians, fueled by the Saudis and registered in Panama. The ship has just arrived from Singapore by way of the Portuguese Azores and all on board are relieved to have successfully avoided Somali pirates.
The captain wears a ring that is made from the gold and diamonds of two African countries. The setting was handled by an Israeli jeweler in Istanbul. It reminds the captain of his New Zealand wife whom he misses and so calls on a Korean cell phone (which was made in China) to say he is alive and well.
The shipping manifest for the coffee bean that makes up my coffee is written on a laptop designed in the US and manufactured in Taiwan with finally assembly in Mexico. A satellite with Czech avionics tracks the cargo as it makes its way north.
In America it is offloaded by enormous Norwegian cranes operated by an American born Kenyan who smokes an illegal Cuban cigar. A heavy duty Swedish truck with tires from Brazilian rubber takes the container to a distribution center, and it makes its way to a Vermont operation that uses natural gas from Canada to run the bean roaster.
Then it’s back on a truck driven by a UPS man in a brown uniform made in Thailand and brown boots from Senegal . He drops the roasted beans off with the coffee shop’s nice English manager (of Lebanese and Asian heritage) who signs for them with a pen made in Bangladesh while she serves A Russian man Irish coffee with a hint of Madagascarian vanilla. He hopes he doesn’t spill it on his Egyptian cotton shirt.
If the wood from the coffee shop’s frame could talk, I’d have proof from the way it says, Ehhh, that it was milled in Quebec, even though the logs are from New Jersey.
The manager takes the beans and drops them in a French made grinder before putting them into an Italian latte machine. She rings a small bell made in Tibet which signals that my order is up.
I take the coffee cup to my table, cup it in my hands and happen to look in the corner—Whaddya know! a few burlap bags of coffee beans from Guatemala!
As the caffeine works its way into my body, I become even more aware of a reason to celebrate.
Happy Earth day, indeed you round world!
-Wally

Got a question for our advice columnist ? Just want to argue that the Earth is flat? Or yell at him because he forgot to mention Greece? Email him at cwn4@aol.com