July 31 We leave California today, flying to Alabama via Los Vegas. The last couple of days have just been maintenance days getting ready to go home. I think I have been here too long, there is so much more I want to see again before I leave, I could stay another month. We never made it up to the Mount Shasta/Susanville where I used to work in the woods, or the Redwood National Park which I have never seen, we didn't even go to San Franciso, thats a first. We leave SF at 2:15 pm and arrive in Birmingham at 11:10 pm. Gerri has been ready to come home for a week, I think she saw enough of the mountains, I could live there.

June 28 This week Berkeley bob's was named Cullman's Best Coffee for 2008 by the Cullman Times Readers Poll. I forgot to even fill out a nomination form and I don't think Gerri or Erin did, so we didn't try to work the system to get this award like some. So thanks to all of you who voted for us.

June 28 Jerry Ryan was back for an encore performance. He was hot and the house was full. It was a great show. He did something unusual I thought: he let a member f the audience sing several songs with him. It was Jamie Weathersby, a regular here. The did Proud Mary, Ride Sally Ride and Who Stopped the Rain. They met before the show she asked him if she could sing and they practiced and it worked out well. Jerry was having some voice problems and I think the break was helpful. I will refer the reader to my April 12 blog for a critique of Jerry's show "Me and Blue" this was as good or better. i am thankful to have wonderful professional talent like Jerry Ryan who enjoy coming here and a customer base who appreciates them. That is the only reason we can continue these venues. Jerry says he will be back.

5/31 What a wonderful surprise the Double Shot band gave us. This is a new band, made up of really good musicians who hadn't played much together, and none of us really knew what to expect. The band is composed of John Lott, Julie Lindsey, Martin Mann on bass, Bill Warren on drums and Zach, a young hot guitar picker. Julie did most all the vocals, which surprised me as normally she and John evenly share the venue. Julie is a great songwriter, but in the past she had been shy with her vocals and even the mike had trouble picking her up and she used to get very nervous and it showed. But what a transformation! Tonight it was a different Julie, confident, energetic, great stage presence, belting out her songs, talking between sets and really feeling the music from the band which at times had her jumping around on stage like a rock star. It was great, she has a really nice voice and she put her personality into every song. Many of the songs they performed she had written and I had heard her perform them in the past, but with John's country rock band backing her up, and they were really good, the songs sounded brand new. It was an incredible performance, one that could have played anyplace. The band was led by John's hard driving guitar in his very unique style which set the mood for the band and for Julie. His guitar sound made this band really special and then add Julie's wonderful vocals on top, and it was an impressive and enjoyable evening.

4/23/08 Our local paper, The Cullman Times, has an article today about me taking Connie Brien's Wallace State College Biology 101 class on a field trip to Thacker Creek. This is the second year in a row I have done this and we plan to make it an annual event if we can. Our goal is to do a Bio-Assessment of the creek. This involves collecting macro-invertebrates, which live in the creek, and classifying them by species and pollution tolerance. These critters are good indicators of the health of a creek. Macro-invertebrates are living creature big enough to see with the eye, but which have no vertebrae; they include crawfish, snails, worms, beetles, fly and beetle larvae such as hellgramites, mayfly, stonefly and caddisfly larvae and others. No fish or animals with backbones are included in the survey. We collect them using kick nets. These nets are held by two people with the bottom of the net placed on the bottom of the stream and then another one or two people disturb the rocks and soil upstream from the net to dislodge the critters. Then the nets are taken to the shore, the critters picked out and identified and placed in one of 3 containers depending on the pollution tolerance of that particular macro-invertebrate. When 200 or so critters have been collected, we total up the number of species and individuals in that species and use a matrix provided by Alabama Water Watch, a part of the Auburn University Fisheries Dept. We use their protocols in this study, and we assign the creek a numerical value from which we can determine how polluted or clean it is. The biology students, about 18 I guess, had a ball and we collected some really good data. In the end Thacker Creek came out Excellent, this is a big deal because several years earlier the US EPA had declared Thacker an impaired creek. Over the past 5 years or so that I have studied this creek, the creek has steadily improved due mostly to conservation practices being put into place by livestock producers. All in all it was a great day, the students learned something about aquatic biology and water quality issues and we were able to provide some data for the AU Fisheries waterway data base. Thanks Connie.

3/31 I don't think I have said anything about our Japanese and American Friends in Cullman Association. We meet here at the coffee house twice a month. In attendance are several members of the Japanese community here, mostly from Topre, a local Japanese industry and several members of the local community. The purpose of the association is to share aspects of our two culture with each other and the community in general. Our first two outings were cherry blossom viewings, a traditional Japanese custom, first at the Japanese Garden in the Birmingham Botanical Garden and then at Dr Adams place outside Cullman. The Birmingham viewing was hosted by the Japanese American Society of Alabama and the Topre wives sponsored the local viewing. I went to both. The Birmingham Japanese Garden is very beautiful, I go there as often as possible, and the Tea House was open, a rarity. It was a nice day, but the blossoms were not fully opened. At the local viewing the Japanese ladies provide traditional Japanese food, sushi, rice balls, and many other things-delicious. The cherry trees were in full bloom and the day was beautiful and warm. We had a great time. If I can figure out how, I will post some pictures. Anyone is welcome to attend our meetings, just let me know. Our goals are to provide venues so the Japanese can teach Cullmanites about their culture as they learn about ours, we also want to find a sister city in Japan and a long range goal is to have our own Japanese garden. We are all excited about this, although I did have one major disappointment: I found out that the Japanese screen in my Japanese Tea Room is really Chinese. I guess I'll have to change the name of my tea room to our Asian Tea Room.

2/26/08 I have heard nothing but favorable comments on Larry Woelharts performance here last Saturday night. Larry does a really great job playing and singing all the great music from the 60's and 70's. We had a good crowd and he played for two hours straight. Larry is very versatile and can play anything from Gordon Lightfoot to Janice Joplin, with John Denver, Bob Dylan, Peter Paul and Mary, John Prine, Kenny Rogers and you name them, thrown in for good measure. He plays enough familiar stuff that everyone can join in on something. As I watched the audience, on almost everything he did, someone knew the words and was singing along. On some songs like Kenny Roger's Lucille even those who didn't know the words, the kids mostly, after the first chorus joined in. It was great. Even on the serious songs like the Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald, everyone was paying attention to the story as it unfolded in song. However I think I was the only other one there that knew all the words to The Canadian Railroad Trilogy, which I rate as Gordon Lightfoot's best song. Its difficult for a singer to sing famous songs which are signature songs for certain artists and have credibility, but Larry does it very well and pulls it off. He has a great laid back style, both vocally and musically, that allows him to be successful doing that. He doesn't try to compete with the original songs, or clone them, but simply performs them in his style and it is very effective. Larry also plays at a neat venue in Huntsville, on Governors Drive just down form the Botanical Gardens, called the Nook, I think he plays on the first Thursday night. The Nook serves 120 different kinds of beers and is a laid back establishment, not rowdy. I like dark beer, but limit myself to two usually (three if I have been there for a long while) and they had the best dark beers I have ever had. The owner chose the ones he wanted me to try and they they were outstanding. I hope Larry will be back soon.

1/31/08 A few of days ago, Caroline Kennedy endorsed Barak Obama for president, saying that he had similar characteristics as her father John F Kennedy in charisma and ideology, and said something to the effect that he was the the most exciting presidential candidate of her lifetime. She apparently is hoping that he will inspire voters like JFK did in the 50's. Having lived through the JFK era, I was in High School when he came on the scene, and being (at that time) an Irish Catholic I was caught up in the JFK vision, charisma and ideology. I still carry some of that today although tempered with age and hopefully the wisdom that comes with it. Most people don't realize today that he got us into Vietnam and gave impassioned speeches about our responsibility to stop the Communist advance across the world in RVN. I heard him on many occasions.It was he who proclaimed the domino theory, if RVN fell so would the rest of Asia. It was because of his vision and charismatic persuasion that in 1964 I joined the Marines to help in the fight against Communism there. I truly believed that it was my duty to go, his assassination crystalized it in my mind. It was only after I got there that I realized how wrong it was. I would have followed that man into the gates of hell. I haven't seen that ability in Obama, I haven't seen the mass hysteria among young and even older voters, I've not seen the wild adulation that often accompanied JFK, in Obama. Not to say he is not avery responsible person or even the best for the job, but he is not in the league of JFK in my opinion. It makes me wonder what the Kennedy motive really is here, to preserve their legacy as our first family rather than allow the Clintons to replace them? I don't know, this is a strange twist to me. I have never been a fan of Teddy, in fact i tend to take the opposite position he supports and if he is for Obama I may have to look very hard. I only wish the Republicans had a candidate.

12/18/07 What a great open mike Monday night! Many of the Wallace students who left last year to go away to college returned for open mike last night and brought their parents, we had a full house. This was the first time many of the parents had met each other, it was a special occasion. We had 14 singers including Dennis Kaylor, Josh Brooks, Carlo, Mark Magee, Joe C, Opie, Meliah, Abby Smith, Emily's mother even read some poems, John Lott, Garland Talbert sang Grandfather's Clock and recited Little Boy Blue, John Mitchel, me and others. Everybody hung around afterward and talked, it was really nice.

11/30/07 We have been in the new store nearly a full month and business has really picked up; all of our regulars are still with us and we are seeing a lot of new people. It's really interesting how much difference a block and a half move has made. I'm not really sure why. Some reasons probably include that we have much better parking with the parking lot across the street; we are more visible, you can see our new sign coming up highway 278; new customers say we are also more inviting with the new front, especially the three new doors. I have had some people say that they often drove by the old store and wondered what was inside, but didn't want to go in. From the outside the old store was too "alternative" looking (this is Cullman Alabama remember) while the new store doesn't give that impression. I think alternative meant hippie. Some folks have always called our store "the hippie store". They also say that the new store is more elegant (I hate that term) than the old store. The doors do that. When Garland, the owner, put in the new doors I told him that maybe he didn't understand what we were doing, that we were going to move our same old junk in and try to create the same abiance as the old place. He said that was what he wanted. Anyway, although the new place looks similar to the old, it has a better feel, even folks who before weren't comfortable with our 60's looks somehow are now. Although the main area has nearly the exact square footage as the old, it is wider and shorter and has the brick wall running down one side, both of which make it feel more warm and open. We are all pleased with how it has turned out.

10/31 I was very important that everything went smoothly today for us to be ready to open tomorrow. I had scheduled the plumber and electrician to be at the new store at 7 am to begin hooking up our espresso machine, ice machine, coolers and sinks as well as the fans. etc. The a/c wasn't complete either and that had to be finished today also. The health inspector and building inspector were scheduled to show up at 2 pm to give us permission to occupy the building and cook so that we could open tomorrow. I had always thought it was doable, but by noon I was beginning to doubt and by 1:30 I was ready to give up; I didn't see how we could be ready. The inspectors got there by 2 and didn't really stay that long and didn't find any major glitches and passed us. I was both surprised and elated. Then it was a matter of just getting everything inplace so we could open. We had to figure out where to place tables, to get all the equipment working, put stuff away, stock shelves and so forth. By late that night we were exhaused again, but we had it to where we were ready to go.