Skip to main content

Got Default?


When I was 28 I started drinking coffee seriously. In my second year of teaching, I found that a morning cup really got me going. The revolution in coffee was beginning to brew and Peet's became my gourmet coffee of choice. There was only one Peet's back then, but a few Bay Area restaurants started serving Blend 101 and my department bought a Mr. Coffee machine with the stipulation that only Peet's be used. In the half dozen years that followed, I drank 4 or 5 cups a day.
These days I'm down to only a couple of cups, but Peet's has found its way to Portland as well as many other places. It's almost the same. Not quite. In recent years, I've fought the "corporitization" of Peet's. They only play classical music now, they limit internet use to 1 hr. the baked goods are all sugar/fat laden (no more bagels) and now the issue is milk.
We have to ask for 2% milk these days.
But in this malaise, I recently came across a new term in use: "default milk." In fact, I heard the term twice within two days this week. First in response to a question about what kind of milk Peet's uses in their espresso drinks.
"Well, our default milk is whole milk but...," said the intellectual barist(o) Is that what you call a male espresso maker? At first I thought it was just his technical background slipping out. Default milk, something about that term sounds...funny. But the next day NPR ran a story about Starbucks making 2% milk their default milk. I know that's a good thing, even though Starbucks is not my coffee shop of choice. (They roast too long and lose all the flavor of the bean.) But using 2% in place of whole milk will cut down on fat. It's that term default in front of milk that bothers me. The use of a term like default milk comes from computer science. It describes pre-settings. Nothing smacks of a corporate approach to selling coffee like that term. It presupposes that someone has determined what is best for me, or perhaps more accurately what is best for them. In another context, default means a lack of something, a need for something, or a desire for something. As in why do I have to ask for 2% milk, why isn't it available at Peet's like it used to be? Nothing seems more simple that cup of coffee. Not now.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

To a Tee

 I'm a sucker for a good t-shirt.  They are the foundational garment of my life.  My day starts with selecting a t-shirt and it ends with sleeping in one.  Once thought of as under garments, t-shirts are now original art and no doubt, a billion dollar business.   You can get a t-shirt with anybody's picture displayed.  You can commemorate an event, a birthday, a death, even a specular play in any sport.  Family reunions usually have a commemorative t-shirt.  Also, any organization that solicits your support in the form of a donation is likely to offer you a t-shirt. Where once I only had the basic white t-shirt, my drawers are filled with all manner of colorful choices.  Some recognize major events in my life, some, spectacular performances or plays I have witnessed, and some unforgettable places I have been.   I say I'm a sucker for a good t-shirt because I have taken the bait on what I perceived as a must-have only to be disappointed. ...

Mr. Greene v. Mr. Brown

I want to tell you about something. Something I've carried inside myself for a number of years now. Perhaps if I were a different kind of person I wouldn't need to talk about it. I'm not. My need to tell it is stronger than your need to hear it. Because, however, there are a number of teachers and former students of mine who may read these meanderings from time to time, I need to tell this story all the more. About 7 or 8 years ago I was asked if I would allow a university PhD. candidate to observe an English class. At first I decided against it because I was scheduled to have a student teacher placed with me the second half of the semester in question. After some urging, however, at the request of a respected colleague, I agreed. Soon I was committing to extra meetings, signing documents and explaining to the class in question who the young woman who thoughtfully pounded away on a laptop in the rear of the classroom three times a week was. I knew that the topic of ...

Body Language

I'm sitting there in a hospital gown, waiting for my doctor to complete my yearly physical.  This is when I look at everything on the walls, read the medical posters, the instructions on any equipment in the room, look in every corner and behind every chair.  I study the paper on the examination table, laugh out loud at the picture of a smiling child holding a bouquet of broccoli, and the note the placement of the computer in the room. Finally, wondering if the gown I'm wearing is on correctly, I focus on myself.  At this point in my life I'm fairly comfortable in a doctor's office.  But it always seems to take so long when waiting for the doc to enter.  So I fidget.  Then I begin a tour of myself.  Scars are tattoos.  I look at the one on my knee and see myself at 12.  Whittling a piece of wood with my Boy Scout jack knife.  The blade slips and I cut a crescent slash through my jeans and into my flesh for life.  50 years later ...