Glancing at a book lying open on Table 5

"Gerald was a man who despised God for giving humanity free will, because it gave them the impunity to commit horrible acts of violence against each other. He had never been convinced by the argument that God's joy rests in the coming to Him by our own volition, that the gift of our soul to Him was worth an eternity more than if we had just been made automotons innately programmed to blindly worship.

"He would have preferred that, he often told us. 'I wouldn't mind just being something like a hummingbird, darting from flower to flower, minding my own business, eating insects but never to extinction, and just flitter my little wings until the day that I just fall dead to the ground.' "












I turned the book over, the cover read "Phenergan's Wake"

The Artwork on the Walls of Zen and Tao Acoustic Café

Perhaps the first thing you will notice about the walls of the Zen and Tao Acoustic Café is that they are covered almost entirely by framed album covers - the old LPs, which have been mounted in solid black frames, so as not to detract from the subtle elegance of the artwork. However, the proprietor, Verble Gherulous, noted aficianado of album cover art, and who supposedly has an extensive collection at his personal home of what he considers the finest in album art, here displays only albums that he considers some of the finest examples of acoustic guitar music.



That is to say, Verble has said before, "They may be crappy covers, but if it's good acoustic music - it goes up."



One of the more interesting covers I've seen is this:


















Which I had never really recognised as an "acoustic album" but I asked Verble about it one time and he said,

"Me neither, but I read an article about it a few years back in Acoustic Guitar Magazine, and they reviewed it as a pure acoustic album: think about it, 'Dear Prudence' 'Bungalow Bill' 'Julia' 'I Will' - not to mention 'Revolution I' 'Blackbird' 'Mother Nature's Son' 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps' 'Cry Baby Cry' - acoustic masterpieces, all of 'em. It goes up!"

And up it went - right above dark roast coffee.

Overheard at Booth 5

1: I saw "The Reader" the other night, pretty good movie.

2: Isn't that an Opera book?

1: Yeah.

2: Then doesn't that mean it's depressing as all hell?

3: Oh God we don't need another movie about the Holocaust, really now do we?

1: You guys don't get it - this has got Kate Winslet in it.


3: Well, THAT's all I need to know!









1: And the amazing thing is, there was this one scene in there, where she's sitting on the edge of the bed, and I swear I had seen that shot before and I spent all night thinking about it, and I finally this morning woke up knowing where I'd seen it before - Edward Hopper. There is one definitely, but possibly TWO Edward Hoppers that looked like that shot - I mean, MAN! Edward Hopper knew Kate Winslet before she was even BORN! Isn't that cool?









3: Who's Edward Hopper?









2: Who's Kate Winslet?

Overheard at the counter

And I grew up in Upper Marlboro Maryland where in the colonial days there was a port . . . there isn't a port there any longer, because the water has receded -

there's your global warming for you . . .

Overheard from Booth 3

1: Heard the VP dropped the F-bomb this week, everybody's in a panty tizzy-wad over it.

2: Really? I hadn't heard a thing about it.

1: Got a tweet about it from my neice, she's usually at the front of these rants, but I'm thinking what's the big deal anyway? People have cussed for centuries! In fact as long as there's been language there's been "foul" language.

3: The Bible says it's wrong - the mouth that praises God shouldn't be a mouth says spews slime.

2: Yeah, but since there are so few people PRAISING God anymore, why should anyone care?

1: Personally, I take the road that it cheapens you. I try to tell my seventh graders to stop calling each other a-hole and f-wad and all the rest by telling them that that's actually shows a lack of imagination. Find something better, more descriptive - something that hasn't been around for five hundred years.

3: You're right that it's cheap, it's the small minds that revert to namecalling.

2: Like the Republican Right?

1: Apparently like our VP!

Overheard from Table 1

"So then I hear the pastor telling the choir 'OK, make sure you pop the T with my cut-off'."

"What was that? Some kind of new gang slang?"

"That's sure what it sounded like to me! The sound guy and I were laughing about that the rest of the day - 'Hey! Don't forget to POP THAT T with my cut-off!"

Zen and Tao Acoustic Cafe

Today I was talking again to some of the others in the Praise Team who say that they're going to miss me when I move, and they mentioned my guitar playing. It's not that I'm all that great a guitar player, but for some reason people really like the way I play, and before I even thought it, I just blurted out the words, "It's because other people just play the guitar, I LOVE the guitar!"

And it was only after I said the words did I realize it was true: I just love playing the guitar, I love touching the guitar, I love pressing my fingers against the strings, I love moving my fingers over the various frets, trying to make them work the way they're supposed to . . . I just love everything about the guitar!

Don't really know what all that means, except that most nights you will find me in the corner of the Zen and Tao Acoustic Cafe, playing for tips and cappucino.