During summer we took a long weekend for a mini-vacation not too many hours from home. Before the breakfast service began the guests were invited to serve their own first coffees of the day here in the lobby, since no mini-bars and coffee machines feature in the old-time rooms. Having read a few non-fiction books with one-word titles in the past few years about salt, beer, bread, coffee, sugar, and so on, the scene that presented itself here sparked a realization that several histories intersect in this one view.
Seeing the antique silver about the size and shape of a church collection plate, the infamous mines of Potosi in Bolivia come to mind, where countless lives were ruined and the surrounding habitat was despoiled for many generations. The various heads of ancient Roman rulers and later the rulers of the British Isles and continental lands appeared on coins in pockets and purses of residents and travelers, both for official and unofficial (private) business.
The sugar and non-sugar sweeteners loaded into the silver dish hearken to the generations of the Middle Passage in the slave-sugar-steel triangle from Africa’s west shores to the Americas to industrializing Great Britain. At first it was sugar refined from cane that was manually harvested, crushed for juice, boiled to fill sugar molds used to transport the calories to industrial workers leaving the British countryside for factory hours and cheap energy in the form of jam on bread to take with their mugs of hot tea. Later, the use of sugar beets meant that cooler lands could make sugar, too, including on a mechanized scale and pace. With expanding waistlines and chronic health conditions linked with sugar excess (diabetes, heart disease, obesity) a new line of sugar substitutes since the 1970s emerged and now appear in this silver bowl. Sidney Mintz (1985) documented, interpreted, and reflected on the many meanings and causes of good and bad stemming from sugar in his Sweetness and Power history of sugar.
The flask of cold milk from warm cows is a long story, too. As indicated in the Latin word for cattle, Pecus, the grass-eaters were a form of wealth; a Pecuniary currency for mobile communities (non-agriculturists, pastoralists). Thanks to the multiple stomachs, grassland can be converted to milk and meat; although there is risk of raids reducing wealth for the victim or boosting the wealth of thief. There is a relatively recent theory to explain lactose tolerance, a relatively rare thing among adults, since most humans change from child to adult and then lose the ability to digest (cow) milk. Since the ability for adults to survive on dairy (in particular, milk) seems concentrated among people with northern European ancestors, the theory is that harsh weather and poor growing seasons reduced the possible sources of nutrition in some years to cow milk. Those who could tolerate it survived and reproduced this ability. Those who were lactose intolerant starved or at least were less able to raise the same number of children as their lactose-drinking peers.
The coffee dispenser tells the story of a local drink that turned into a world-wide part of daily life. What was little distinguished as “plain coffee” during the 20th century now has become something more like wine: guides help discriminating sippers to know what soil type and plantation offers the best beans of each region for one year or the next. Aficionados debate the superior was to buy, store, grind, and brew the roasted beans of one part of the world or another. What began with regional trade associations and buying/selling has changed into a global commodity like oil, grain, or semi-conductors. And the rising sea levels, together with the rising level of #ClimateChange awareness, has led to some consumers seeking out organic beans, or ones belonging to #FairTrade agreements to compensate pickers and growers beyond the strictly market-based race to the bottom wages and services.
There is a ceramic cup at the coffee station, as well as a bunch of plastic facsimiles behind the serving pot. For a very long time the Chinese closely guarded their sources and methods of fine porcelain creation. But, like the guarded production of tea leaves, as well, the creation of fine ceramics eventually began to be made far from the Middle Kingdom. The facsimiles to the mug in blue-tinted plastic, made from fossil fuel extracted from the ground, are a product of that earlier ceramic tradition of design elements. But the mugs also depend on mass markets of hot drink sippers who want cheap, non-breakable, cheerfully colorful alternatives to the original model made of crockery.
When all these elements appear together it means the coffee is fresh, hot, and ready for drinkers to help themselves. But when these come into focus, then these essentials to modern, familiar, normal, and civilized living also express the intersection of their several histories, even when the voice speaking is not very loud.
