Grande latte, hold the gay

If you are among the last of the American troglodytes, meaning you still read the print edition of the newspaper each morning, risking ink smudges on your fingers and shirt cuffs, bravo. And if so, there is a chance that you're reading this as you sit in a Starbucks coffee shop. If you read the PG online, you may likewise be in a Starbucks, as the shop offers free wireless Internet access. The Morning File's point (hooray, we've finally arrived) is that you are probably not reading the PG while sipping a Starbucks coffee served at Bob Jones University. That's because Bob Jones will no longer allow Starbucks brew to be served at the campus cafeteria, on account of the Seattle coffee company's stance on gays (Starbucks' stance: gay is OK. Bob Jones' stance: not so much). Starbucks was "supportive of homosexual events and causes," said university spokesman Jonathan Pait. "That would be a problem for our constituency." The Seattle Times says that the controversy has been brewing (sorry) since the company began printing popular quotations on its coffee cups. The offending quotation was from author Armistead Maupin, who wrote a book and essays about San Francisco's gay community.

The quote

"My only regret about being gay is that I repressed it for so long. I surrendered my youth to the people I feared when I could have been out there loving someone. Don't make that mistake yourself. Life's too damn short."

-- Mr. Maupin

The solution

How best to mollify those who like hot coffee but don't like it, uh, flaming? Maybe a steaming cup of evangelism will do the trick. Greg Beato writes in the Las Vegas Weekly, "Soon after the Maupin controversy, Starbucks confirmed that Rick Warren, author of 'The Purpose-Driven Life,' will join the ranks of its coffee-cup sages [with] this bit of divine salesmanship: 'You were made by God and for God, and until you understand that, life will never make sense.' " But "what happens when people who have no interest whatsoever in what Jesus would brew get a shot of Warren's deep-roasted evangelism in their morning lattes? Starbucks will no doubt plead objective neutrality: It doesn't believe in God any more than it believes in happy gay men -- it just wants to carry on the great coffeehouse tradition of [inoffensive, conflict-free] conversation and debate." Sounds a bit like The Morning File's tradition, no?

More Starbucks news

As journalists (more or less), we visit the online media news bistro run by Jim Romenesko, mainly to find out who in our industry will be the next to lose his job. (Side note: You aspiring journalists out there, grow up to be an engineer or something.) But for those of you who couldn't give two whits about the roots of the newspaper circulation nosedive, Mr. Romenesko also maintains a Starbucks news page. This week's offerings: the Bob Jones controversy, a column from The Boston Globe, complaints from an independent coffee shop owner who says Starbucks poached her customers and a story about Mexico City hipsters who hang out at (you guessed it) Starbucks.

-- starbucksgossip.com

Cuckoo for cocoa

Bad news for chocolate lovers -- Starbucks has phased out its Chantico drink, a recipe unveiled a year ago amid reviews that it tasted pretty much like a melted Hershey bar. But the good news, said spokeswoman Audrey Lincoff in an Associated Press story, is that Starbucks is trotting out some new chocolate drinks this month. She was mum on details, but gossip on the Romenesko page says test-marketing has been under way in Chicago and Houston for three weeks. Word is that they're trying five new variations -- cocoa, cocoa espresso, hazelnut cocoa espresso, spicy cocoa and double dark cocoa.

Coffee fit for a king

In Annapolis, Md., the King of France Tavern is a local landmark, first opening in 1784, later becoming a jazz club, always a favorite hangout of lawmakers in the state capital. Now, naturally, Starbucks wants to turn it into a Starbucks. And why not? The nearest Starbucks is literally blocks away, and in this age of short attention spans, you can't allow a single city block to be without a Starbucks, otherwise you run the risk that customers, while walking from one Starbucks to another, might forget that Starbucks exists. But "the prospect of bringing the ubiquitous coffee retailer to the basement of the Maryland Inn, which has operated continuously at Church Circle since 1780, has some residents and town stewards dismayed," says The Washington Post. Steve Duffy, who owns a local chain of coffeehouses, tells The Post he fears Annapolis' historic district has too many national chain stores and is fast becoming a homogenized urban shopping center.

"How does it sound to hear, 'Come to Annapolis, visit the oldest working statehouse in the country, and visit one of our six Starbucks?' If we become a mall with our offerings, we're hosed.''

A Well-Lived Life
Arlene Gardopee, Butler

It was an unlikely pairing: a coal miner's daughter from Western Pennsylvania and a retired Yale University professor from western Russia, now part of Poland. Think Jennifer Beals in "Flashdance" (much older and much less sexy) and her Russian-born ballet mentor (only male but with the same accent.)

I had studied Russian language in college, did my student teaching at Mt. Lebanon High School 35 years ago and moved to Connecticut with my husband. The stay-at-home mother of a little boy, lonely in the strange land of Connecticut, I searched for stimulation and answered an ad in the local paper: "Professor Emeritus of Russian offering private lessons in his home. $25/hour."

Driving to his home in my small town of Southbury, I felt as though I had entered Russia itself as the landscape changed into evergreen and birch and the cottages and mailboxes showed the hand-painted designs of Russian folklore.

His modest one-bedroom cottage had rickety steps, a burgeoning beriozka tree out front and his business card tacked to the front door: "Igor S. Mihalchenko, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Russian, Yale University and Mount Holyoke College." Thus began a nearly 20-year symbiotic relationship with the old professor who became a grandfather figure to a displaced Pennsylvania girl.

Igor Sergeevich lived alone. His daughter in Chicago rarely kept in touch, his wife had long ago left him, and his entire family lived in Poland. He had a small pension, a broken-down Honda and a tiny house with questionable plumbing. I have never met a happier person in my life. Every day was a gift to him, whether just sitting in his garden reading Russian newspapers, walking along the village roads with his stick or tending to his few anemic tomato plants. His eyes shone with pleasure as he talked of his former students, his youth, his travels and his friends in places from Brazil to Czechoslovakia. He kept in touch with most of them by phone.

Igor feared nothing, including illness and death, which he saw as just another part of life. He rarely saw a doctor, ate what he pleased and slept well. Every visit to his home for a lesson ended in his awkward, yet heartwarming attempt to fix tea and cookies. Later, as he became weaker, I took over the tea-making and repaid his kindness by driving him to his appointments and making his phone calls to businesses who now answered his polite, Russian-accented inquiries with confusing instructions to "press one if ... press two if ..."

Nearly two years ago, at age 88, Igor Sergeevich decided to sell his cottage and return to Poland. There he could live on his small pension and even hire someone to cook and clean for him. He didn't say so, but I suspect he wanted to die among his own people, coming full circle to where his life began.

Soon after, we, too, decided to move back to our homeland, Pennsylvania. I sent him a change of address and a birthday card last year. He responded with a scrawled postcard telling me in Russian that he was well and wishing me all the best. The next Christmas I sent him a card, hoping to hear in return. It's been over a year now and I expect there will be no more cards.

A life well lived is one that influences another in a positive way. Igor taught me to appreciate small kindnesses and everyday pleasures and in this way became a treasured mentor. Now, driving to Butler Community College, where I teach language, I pass through the old village of Lyndora with its Eastern European heritage and its Orthodox churches. Often I wonder if there sits another Igor Sergeevich, dressed in his suit and tie, waiting for his pupil to come.