I have a lot of experience bringing people together at many many unlikely tables. I can cook pretty well sometimes, and occasionally I write a decent line or two. and it seems I am getting good at asking some provocative questions – pushing bruises a little, such that I get to take part in conversation of the slightly controversial persuasion.

there will be misspellings – a few hyperboles – but I promise that I will somehow manifest a long table in each coffee excursion.

if you haven’t read some of the other rhetoric prior – it is probably best to stop here and explain the project – the one pot + caffé vita “project”.

the idea is this: I jump on a plane and travel with caffé vita, landing spotdown in some of the most intriguing coffee regions on the globe. caffé vita is undertaking this fractured journey in order to begin sourcing much of their coffee directly from farms – and along the way creating strong cultural relationships with each of these farm partners. I bump and grind along while coffee is sampled, trees are inspected, dowries are negotiated – and somewhere during our tenure at each locale I figure out how to manifest a long table – and cajole some local cooks into teaching me a few local traditional one pot dishes – and then we pack the table as full of entrenched coffee professionals as possible – farmers, pickers, exporters, coyotes (slang for traveling coffee buyers), writers, bankers, cooperative managers, fair trade organizers, organic acolytes, politicians – really anyone that has a voice and an essential hand in the local coffee economy – and then we eat from the pot. we drink pinga in brazil, rum in guatemala, and who the fuck knows what in ethiopia – and then I ask questions – lots of questions.

from the moment I arrive in each distinct locale I begin asking questions – political, social, economic, coffee-specific, labor-related, culinary, controversial, poetic – I ask about fair trade – I ask about organic, about pesticides, about how much the pickers get paid – do they get health care services, dental, I ask about starbucks, and proctor and gamble, about their hopes, dreams, and fears – I ask about violence, and the stability of the government. and in the end I figure out what to ask all those gathered at the long table – and as we share the feast and the booze I fire away – people twist and turn in their seats, some mutter under their breath, arguments occasionally break out, elegant eulogies arise, but in the end a conversation happens – a small part of a global conversation occurs. and I capture it on tape, and on video, and in that more feeble mechanism of the mind and its most awkward utensil – the pen.

this project is about the power of the table. that is what all one pot projects are about – the power (and sometimes the ineptitude) of the table to inquire into culture – to not only create it, but to consider it and stretch it – to give it a place. we spend just about all of our free time shopping, buying, consuming – as rem koolhaus so succinctly stated, “shopping is arguably the last remaining form of public activity” - the common table is a small respite from that pressure. finding creative and provocative uses for the table is the realm of one pot.

so I do these dinners – and I record these conversations – and then I write something – it will first appear on the web, in a rough version – and there will be pictures and soon some video – and then the writing will get a little prettier and it will be printed in little books – chapbooks – that will appear in caffé vita locations and at the coffee houses and restaurants that sell their wares. and we will send these little booklets to coffee folks around the world – they will be humble but handsome – something to read in a few sittings.

and then we will also recreate the food – and host lavish feasts in seattle – bringing folks to the table and sharing with them the coffee, and food, and video footage, and fermented spirit of each locale. and that in a word is: one pot + caffé vita.

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