November, 1908: A surveyor team hired by the Oro Light and Power Company, accompanied by guide Merle Apperson traveled to Deer Creek, in the heart of Northern California’s Yana Tribes country. Assuming the country to be uninhabited, the crew went about its business with not a thought of the former occupants. Two of the group were returning to camp one day when they unwittingly stumbled upon an Indian man fishing in the creek. They hurried back to relate their tale of a “wild Indian”, but most brushed it off as nonsense. Not Merle Apperson. The following morning he led the way along Deer Creek to where he suspected there may have been a camp. The surveyors walked into the tiny village. As far as they could tell, it was inhabited by three “wild” Indians—an old man, an old sick woman, and a younger woman. The man they had seen the day before was not evident. These were Yahi Indians; the last of a nearly vanished tribe that once covered much of the northern California countryside and were part of what was once the Yana Nation of Tribes with the Yahi being the southernmost and smallest tribe of that nation. This small remnant of Yahi Indians had been hiding for years, eluding detection and capture by living in their cunningly hidden settlement like trapped animals. Their existence was depressing, with starvation, fear, illness and grief as their daily burden. The younger woman and the old man fled to hide as the intruders approached the village but the old woman could not run. She had been covered with blankets in the hope that she would not be noticed.

The men entered the hideaway and poked around, eyeing whatever goods were present. They then shook the blankets and discovered the Indian. Her mourning was obvious by her shorn hair. Her deer thong-wrapped legs were swollen and she could not walk. She was weak, sick, and in pain and she shook with fear as the strangers looked her over. An attempt was made to communicate but with no success. Incredibly, after seeing the pitiful state this woman was in, the intruders ransacked the village, taking with them everything they could carry—even the food—leaving the woman to die. According to Apperson, he alone was appalled at his companions’ actions and protested their thievery. He claims he pleaded with the others that they should at least transport the woman to their camp for care but his protests fell on deaf ears. What these men had done with such casual ease was strip four terrified, starving people of their meager possessions, including items they needed to find food. They had handed down a death sentence, with no mercy or cause to the last surviving members of a people who had once inhabited, thrived, and survived the northern California region for thousands of years. In a fateful moment brought on by the actions of callous men, the Yahi people apparently had come to an end.

After the theives departed, the Indian man seen fishing at the creek returned. No food, tools, utensils, or comforts were left. It was he and his mother— alone. The other two never returned, nor was any sign of them ever found. They were gone. Dead. Likely drowned during their escape or eaten by one of the numerous predators in the back country. Before long, even the old woman was dead and the man stood completely alone.

The lone man survived the death sentence of 1908. With no home, shelter, tools, food, or companion he somehow found a way to live. Though grieving and alone, despair never overtook this last Yahi.

Three years passed since the raid on his village and the death of his family. It had been that long since he had heard a single utterance from the lips of another Yahi. Nearly dead from starvation, and perhaps desperate for human companionship, the man made a decision. Knowing he would die if he stayed at Deer Creek, and fearing he would be killed if he left, he took a chance.He departed the Yahi world and enter the world of the aliens who had decimated his people.

On the morning of August 29, 1911, in a slaughterhouse corral, two miles from Oroville, a nearly dead “wild man” was discovered, emaciated, exhausted, frightened, and starved. The sheriff took the Indian into custody, and was baffled as to what to do next. Locked in a cell, unable to communicate with any number of Indians brought before him, the traumatized man awaited his fate at the hands of people who thought he was insane and likely dangerous.

In a carnival atmosphere the “wild man” caught the imagination and attention of thousands of onlookers and curiosity seekers. News of his discovery reached two professors of anthropology at the University of California, Alfred L. Kroeber and T. T. Waterman. Both men had an interest in the human saga being played out in Oroville for several reasons. Beyond the obvious general anthropological interest, they had been searching for the lost “wild man” that had been sited three years earlier by the surveyor crew a few miles north of Oroville—in the Deer Creek region. They wondered if this could be him.

Two days after the man’s discovery, Waterman was on a train to Oroville to assume responsibility for the “wild man” per the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs’ instructions. Kroeber and Waterman became guardians of this last Yahi. For nearly five years he lived at the university’s museum, employed as a janitor and teaching the professors whatever he was able to communicate about the Yahi people. There were no other speakers of his tongue so communication was difficult and tedious. Kroeber persevered and managed to learn and communicate in ‘conversational’ Yahi, while the man learned about life in 20th century America.

The bond that developed between Kroeber and the man was, by all accounts, a close one. They both came to depend upon one another, not only for the pursuits of study they were engaged in, but on a personal level. For the man, this relationship must have been especially precious, for he had been alone for so long. Kroeber eventually named the man “Ishi”, which is Yahi for ‘man’. Yahi tradition prevented Ishi from speaking his own name or the names of the dead.

As Ishi told the Yahi story, Kroeber became anxious to see the country he spoke of. At first, Ishi resisted, afraid to revisit the places at which he had experienced both joy and sorrow. He told Kroeber that there were no chairs, tables or beds there, and very little to eat but eventually, he agreed to go. The results of the 1914 excursion to Yahi country were invaluable. Kroeber drew maps, marking crucial sites of Ishi’s life, and recorded the place names as the Yahi knew them. There were also photographs taken of both locations and of Ishi demonstrating the Yahi methods of crafting arrow heads, arrows, bows, spears and the other tools of his daily life. Kroeber recorded the past through living history in the present for the future. It was as if he had reached back in time, pulled forth a man of another age, and asked him; “Please show me what life was like long ago.” Ishi was physically contemporary, though culturally and socially antiquated.

The tale Ishi told was grim. The Yana peoples suffered the complete loss of their lands and way of life when the Americans came during the Gold Rush. In less than thirty years the peoples who once called the region home had gone into hiding in the harsh mountains where food was scarce and the chances for survival were slim. Ishi used to refer to the time of the American arrival as “when the stars fell”. Much of his life was spent watching his people fade away like animals facing extinction.

While still a child sometime in the 1870′s, Ishi’s own father was killed in a village massacre. The boy and his mother escaped by jumping into a nearby river. The Yahi who fought to preserve their territory against unequal odds and long range rifles were slaughtered until only a remnant band of 40 or so remained. The survivors of this tiny band hid successfully for nearly forty years, undetected by the outside world. It was firmly believed, even by locals who went up into the foothills of the Lassen, that the Yahi, or “Mill Creek Indians”, were a people of the past. Gone. No record of their history, origins, culture, or language had survived until Ishi walked down from the mountains.

This remarkable man was the last repository for the culture of a people who had lived in his region for some 2000 years. The records of his beliefs and myths, ways of life and tradition and language would have vanished forever as the clean sweep of American conquest overrode the lands and native peoples and assigned them a footnote in books that described them merely as the “Mill Creek Indians” who briefly and violently resisted American expansion. If Ishi held any animosity toward the American Californians he never showed it. He seemed happy enough to find some company even among those who regarded him as a curiosity. He was painfully shy around women and soon adopted American clothing, only reluctantly posing in the skins and rags of his former days. Shoes disgusted him while a penny whistle gave him hours of childlike pleasure. However, his mind was anything but dull. Ishi was asked what he thought when shown an increasingly popular modern wonder; the airplane. He simply asked, “Is there a white man up there?” Ishi was not fazed by the novelty of the modern world.

Ishi lived the last several years of his life at the San Francisco Anthropology Museum. He made bead-work quivers, and his bows showed the greatest craftsmanship. He did this in front of an enthralled public, 3 days a week as a living exhibit there.

Ishi soon encountered health problems that became harder to overcome. Exposure to large numbers of the public and foreign pathogens that he and his people had little ability to withstand took its toll and by 1915 he was diagnosed with tuberculosis, which in the days before antibiotics was a death sentence. The sentence for Ishi played out on March 23, 1916 at Berkeley where he had gone to be with his friend, Kroeber. Kroeber was not there; he was trying to get funding from politicians on behalf of his friend who died before Kroeber’s return.

Ishi was autopsied at the UC Berkeley Medical School. His body was cremated ashes sent to Mount Olivet Cemetery in Colma. His brain was removed and sent to the Smithsonian Institute in 1917 by Alfred Kroeber where it stayed for over eighty years, until other Yana tribes agitated for its return. In August, 2000 Ishi’s brain made it back to his closet relations; the Redding Rancheria and Pit River Tribe. Ishi’s remains were interred at an undisclosed location and it is likely that he finally had the song of the dead sung for him.

NEWS COMMENT BY J.A. RIPPO

As the economy sinks deeper, some people are motivated to become politically active in causes that matter to them. One of those people is Dave Peiser, who recently joined Moveon.org in its effort to confront mostly GOP congress members on issues that matter when it comes to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. As Peiser puts it, “We progressives believe that Republicans in general have been pursuing an agenda that destroys these “inalienable rights.”

Peiser and a Moveon group waited on Representative’s Darryl Issa in Vista on Tuesday, August 2 to protest what they believe are wrong directions that he happens to support.

The group entered the Congressman‘s office with signs proclaiming our concerns and disagreements with Republican policies and pledges. Two staff members, District Director Phil Paule and Senior Policy Advisor, John B. Franklin stood at the office entrance “and were almost cordial” in welcome. After protetors thanking Mr. Paule and Mr. Franklin for their public service, the conversation quickly turned loud and argumentative. As Peiser recalls, “Unfortunately our words to the staff were merely bouncing off them; not really being listened to as input to the congressman’s thoughts on issues. Thus, here is where the democracy lesson comes.”

A protestor reminded Franklin that Issa is in office to represent all of his constituents. At that point, Franklin let Issa’s cat out of the bag by replying that Issa “does not need to” represent all the constituents in his district. Franklin’s next line; “Issa was elected by a majority of his constituents who agree with his views and if you don’t agree, there’s an election in 2012,” summed up that Representative’s approach to both power and the public.

Going nowhere, in the usual direction of such confrontational meetings, it is hardly surprising that the protest soon broke up with nothing being accomplished; this after the usual veiled threats by staff about calling security, arrests and other expressions of naked power against individuals exercising their rights to be heard. What it says about Issa speaks volumes of the Representative’s ignorance in choosing staff with whom to interact with the public and of the Representative’s presumed views about whom he’s working for.

It is a common misconception indulged in by the dishonest and ignorant that only those who voted for a candidate matter following an election’s outcome. This idea has not found favor in the broad American history of politics for very good reason—if the concept became commonly accepted, it would bring complete anarchy to the soon-to-be destroyed system. Anyone could simply say that if they didn’t vote for an incumbent they were not bound by anything that incumbent did while in office.

It would also mean that no constituent who failed to vote for a Congress member who brought new economic benefit to his region should be able to use it, either. Didn’t support that new highway? Take the surface streets—after all, you voted against it, didn’t you?

Even a child in the third grade who had made it that far into his or her educational career by understanding how to follow rules might be expected to see the failure of that idea. It is a great and grim surprise that any staffer of any sitting Congressman should be so fantastically ignorant of basic Civics that he would say that his boss had no duty to the minority share of American citizenry from his district without first having first drunk too much gin.

Such failed concepts echo the failed ideas of a pre-Civil War Supreme Court Justice who infamously said that blacks have no rights the white man is bound to respect. A lot of changes have happened in the US since the late 1850′s and it is a mark of failure against Issa that he would tolerate anyone on his staff so backward in his knowledge of American governance and so willing to make it plain.

Never the less, the concept seems to have found growing favor among Republicans, especially since the administration of GW Bush who early in his presidency referred to his supporters as “good Americans” while ignoring others. Issa presumably follows this same idea. He did not return contacts from this newspaper prior before press time and it is perhaps likely that since its offices are not in his district he has no need to interact with anyone outside his favored circles.

We suggest to Franklin and Issa that high school was a very long time ago, and that remedial classes in American political structure are in order. No one supports anarchy and those who want a better America should be the last to champion that lost cause, even by default.

On July 1, San Diego enacted a new series of fees for entertainment permits that will have serious effects on coffeehouses and entertainers of all kinds who depend on café venues for their living. Increases of over 700 percent for yearly entertainment permits is likely for some cafés and the chilling effect of high fees are likely to cut the number of coffeehouses that can afford to host musicians and profit from entertainment.

The new fees are part of a package that was voted unanimously by the SD City Council on June 23. The new package raised fees for many other permits and city services, including building permits, inspections and medical helicopter flights. Also included in the scheme to collect some $774,000 annually is a new way to fund the SDPD Vice Squad, which oversees issuance of entartainment permits to all venues, including coffeehouses.

The City claims that in tight economic times, “cost recovery” of services rendered to businesses regulated by Vice is necessary and that means that regulated venues have to pay for the Vice Squad that does the regulating. Though the City insists that previous fee structures only collected some 26% of costs, where the Vice Squad is concerned, the numbers are unknown. Vice does not make its budget public as of June 23, 2011—the day the vote came in at City Hall. The Vice Squad determines its own budget, unburdened by any oversight—and charges regulated businesses accordingly. So far, there has been no challenge to this from of cost recovery and SDPD has resolutely refused to comment on what Vice’s budget amounts to.

This will have significant and perhaps grave meaning for the businesses that face sharply increased costs. Entertainers will be affected too.

For example, the new fee structures for cafés, restaurants and clubs will see a rise in yearly permit fees from last year’s $379 to this year’s $2,383—for a place with a 100-person maximum occupancy that sells alcohol. Depending on the occupancy rate, alcohol sales and history of police calls, a place like that described could face yearly costs of nearly $4000 per year for a permit to keep entertainment going.

Smaller cafés will pay less—from the current $184 annually for a place that seats 50 or more without alcohol or dancing, to a new rate which will be $288. Places that seat fewer than 49 persons without alcohol or dancing used to pay $126; they will pay $230 this year. For cafés with alcohol and dancing, the costs will skyrocket—to $1840 for more than fifty seats and alcohol where dancing may be allowed; and to $920 for under 49 persons with alcohol and dancing.

In addition to that, many small venues will be forced—as a condition of maintaining their entertainment permit—to reconfigure their structures to the same standards as nightclubs use now. This means double doors on exits, panic bars to open those double doors, at least two restrooms and one security guard for every 25 guests. Last year, the rate was a single guard for every 75 guests. For most coffeehouses that were never built to this “nightclub” standard and whose levels of entertainment income do not allow them to afford the muscle at the doors, this will likely mean that the curtain falls on entertainment permanently.

As if that weren’t enough of a blow, new rules will force all businesses offering entertainment to stop while they reapply for entertainment permits from year to year. In effect, each business will face an entertainment moratorium for an inderterminate time on what is for some, a primary profit center. “You couldn’t ask for a better way to hurt our business,” lamented one Mission Valley coffeehouse owner. “It’s like they have a handle on the faucet and can turn off your profits as long as they want from one year to the next.”

For some, the new fees are Deja Vu all over again.

That’s because in 2000, the City tried to pass similar laws that would have made coffeehouses and other small venues 21 and up only, if they offered entertainment of any kind. The building upgrade language in the new law was there in the 2000 legislation and then, SD City Attorney and Vice publicly stated that “entertainment equals crime” since all venues served as conduits for drug and gang activity, in their opinion. The proposed law was skewered by media and hotly contested by many of San Diego’s entertainers, coffee people and others concerned that it would cripple the growth of local culture, hurt business and interfere with redevelopment in some areas.. After two hearings by the full City Council, the law was amended. Now, the baser portions of the 2000 law are back and hailed as a cost cutting measure.

Councilmembers De Maio and Zapf opposed the rate hikes until the final vote when they voted for the measure which was originally championed by Kevin Faulconer as a strong “law and order” message coupled with saving City money.

At first glance, a yearly fee of $920 does not seem to amount to much; but when coupled with high costs of hiring security guards and new construction demands, the total cost to maintain code compliance becomes unaffordable for many small venues.. As one café owner put it, “The day they do that to me, I’ll just throw parties after hours in the street. That will cost them plenty and get me no end of great press…”

The ones most affected by any change in fees will of course be musicians and other entertainers robbed of places to play. Until now, coffeehouses in particular have reported a surge in numbers from entertainment of all kinds and more venues means more money and public support for the next Jewel, Tom Waits, Blink 182, Jim Morrison and Novamenco that first got started in the San Diego coffeehouse scene. Coffeehouses outside San Diego city limits may benefit from the blockade of culture forced by the PD; and at least one La Mesa café reports that it is aggressively seeking new bookings from bands and singers forced out from San Diego cafés.

Some in the hospitality industry point fingers at the California Restaurant Association, a trade group that has long regarded “non-standard” venues as a direct threat to its members’ bottom line, for promoting the new rules.. Like the 2000 effort before it, the new rules were allegedly promoted with urging from that organization. Cal Restaurant did not respond to ESPRESSO’s questions on the matter by press time.

Others in hospitality say that the City has it all wrong when it comes to jacking fees for small venues like coffeehouses. The San Diego Food & Beverage Association has been quietly lobbying the city for a more enlightened form of permit structure that would take types of entertainment into account for purposes of regulation and also factor in occupancy and previous history. Until the budget plan was proposed by Vice, some progress had been made toward setting maximum sizes of stage and numbers of musicians with unamplified music in small venues. The current mantra of “cost recovery” coupled with dodgy Vice budgets killed that plan.

THE PD AND THE SD COFFEEHOUSE SCENE

Though it may surprise some, San Diego’s Finest have long worked to undermine the growth and divergence of the coffeehouses when it came to expanding into entertainment of any kind. That’s because for the last fifty years, many in city government and the PD have looked at coffeehouses as problems in regulation and undesirable social action waiting to happen. Ever since the 1960′s, coffeehouses in the city faced opposition when they ventured out beyond the sale of coffee and into entertainment—or what some regarded as activism. Whether serving as hangouts for anti-war youth in 1968 at the once famed Blue Whale or Upper Cellar, to the stirrings of gay activism in the 70′s at The Study, to the café-cum-nightclub antics of Java Joe’s in Ocean Beach in the 90′s or to more prolix activism at Chicano Perk, the seven-year run of which was ended suddenly last year by the City for alleged zoning violations—two weeks after lectures on Socialism were offered to area youth at the coffeehouse—to the pols and cops, coffeehouses have been the square peg defying the round hole where regulation is concerned. The cops and presumably City Attorney Jan Goldsmith would like to see them limited solely to selling coffee. The coffeehouses realize that especially as times tighten, entertainment is crucial to their ability to grow. Entertainers of all kinds have used cafés to start careers, build new acts and develop their talent.

SDPD has long stated that its manpower and money resources are low and their pro-active stance toward anything that may cause a problem too hard to control means suppressing trouble before it starts. Where entertainment is concerned, it means tightly controlling how venues can operate and to some extent, what kinds of entertainment they can offer. For a half century, coffeehouses have been a traditional wild card for the PD; Vice wants to regulate them the same as bars, clubs or concert halls and calls from business owners who point out that the kinds of trouble often found in other establishments is virtually non-existent in them fall on deaf ears. Now, Vice needs to make its budget from regulated businesses entirely and this hardens their stance when negotiating with business groups for breathing room. The net result is that coffeehouse venues are threatened, the PD is enriched and entertainment—and chances for an organic, homegrown culture to arise in the cafés suffers.

The uphill battle for any change in fees is with Vice to overcome their insistence that a having a good time is likley a crime—no matter if it’s had at Lestat’s, Anthology, HOB or at the San Diego Symphony Hall. Whether that can happen now is anyone’s guess and hospitality insiders offer long odds on change. As one hospitality insider put it, “There’s no way this thing is going away. Not now.” Still, change occurred last time, in 2000 when hundreds of maddened entertainers and others threatened by entertainment permit concerns flooded the PD with publich protests and crammed City Hall twice with hundreds more people demanding change. Last time, the cafés in San Diego were lucky and found some friends in City Hall at a crucial time. Whether that will happen again without organization between the coffee tradespeople and entertainment intresests is perhaps unlikely.

SD premier coffee man victim of injuries in motorcycle accident.
Bob Sinclair, founder of Pannikin Coffee & Tea  and later of Cafe Moto, died on August 6 after sustaining injuries in a motorcycle crash in New Mexico on July 28.
The crash occurred around 4.30 p.m. as Sinclair travelled east on NM 502 and attempted a left turn onto County Road 101 East. For unknown reasons he lost control of his Ducati motorcycle and was thrown from the seat. Head injuries were extensive though he wore a helmet. Transferred to the ICU at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Santa Fe, he lingered in a coma until August 6.
Robert “Bob” Sinclair was born in Hollywood on November 1, 1942 and grew up on a farm in Antelope Valley. After four years in the navy, most of them in San Diego, he and his first wife opened a cookware store on La Jolla’s Prospect Street. An incidental product was whole bean coffee and an antique roaster set up in his home garage on Rosemont Street fed the appetites of a growing number of La Jollans. The shop soon sold more coffee than cookware and the Pannikin was born.
Eventually, Sinclair established several coffeehouses throughout the county and a second retail shop on Girard Street in La Jolla. A large roastery was sited at the corner of 13th and J Streets in what is now East Village. A flair for location was always evident and The Pannikin counted the former Santa Fe Railroad station in Leucadia as its most magnificent jewel. Another location sits across the street from La Jolla Cove and operates as a restaurant. Along the way, Sinclair supplied every one of the early coffeehouses in San Diego in the 80′s and quickly became respected as San Diego’s premier coffee roaster.  Hundreds of restaurants, cafés and bars throughout the county and elsewhere became Sinclair’s clients and under the wholesale entity now known as Cafe Moto, the business continues to expand.
Bob Sinclair’s Pannikin set a style for coffeehouses in San Diego for layout, design and signature coffees that endures. He introduced whole bean specialty coffee to San Diego, revived coffee roasting singlehandedly here and was the first to create public awareness of coffees’ diversity. His business model and taste helped frame the style of many coffeehouses that elevated them from offbeat hangouts to the comfortably chic places they’ve become. There is perhaps no one individual with more significance to more aspects of San Diego’s coffee and allied trades than Bob Sinclair, dead  at the age of 69.

Front page image by Nan Palmero, Flickr.com Creative Commons

Though San Diego has always been known for its wonderful weather, measuring  and observing it has only a 160 year history here. The first recorded observations were taken on July 1, 1849 at the Mission San Diego. Later, the US Army placed instruments at the Presidio where they were tended by the Medical  Corps, whose duty it was to monitor weather for army operations. In 1860, San Diego’s weather watchers moved to the army barrack in what is downtown now and in 1911, when the century-old table at right was compiled, the weather office stood at 5th and F. Now, there are several around stations around the County and the media tends to settle on the findings from the weather measuring station at Lindbergh Field, from where the data for last month’s data is taken.

Two months’ data a hundred years apart is not going to give conclusive proof of global warming or anything else. What it does show is the slight variations we have come to expect during the season. We can also wonder at the utility of weather observation over a century and how that observation has been homogenized into modern data forms.
The photo of the San Diego’s  Weather Bureau Office above shows the kinds of primitive machinery used to aid observation and recording a century ago. The office then was the preserve of Ford Carpenter, “Local Forecaster” for the US Weather Bureau, who wrote a book titled The Climate and Weather of San Diego published in league with the SD Chamber of Commerce in 1913. Carpenter spent much time winding up barographs, oiling anemometer bearings and marking cedar sticks used as rain gauges. He also spent many waking hours logging changes that occurred daily. He noted that San Diego is full of microclimates caused by its terrain and that some official low temperatures didn’t correspond to the actual lows found in some valleys, canyons and areas that channel the wind. The same concern was and still is true for humidity and wind speed—all of which still tend to make residents view some weather readings as flawed.
Like many things a century ago, San Diego seemed to have a more organic relationship to weather than may be said to be common now. “June Gloom” was unknown in 1911; the term in vogue for the month’s overcast of low stratus cloud was “El Velo”—Spanish for “the veil.” Carpenter urged that the term replace the then-current “high fog” that dated to the early American period of local history and was the product of mildly literate ship captains. 356 days of sunshine were claimed then for San Diego in 1911; the current information from the US Weather Bureau claims 339 days of sun here; a loss of 17 days.
Almost gone from current weather commentary are any mention of cloud formations over San Diego. Yet in 1911, these were rightly considered of primary importance when it came to understanding weather and its changes. The four basic kinds; stratus, cumulus, nimbus and cirrus were divided into ten subtypes and their layered interplay over the region often foretold rain and serious weather change. Carpenter mentions that early aviator Glenn Curtiss took careful measure of cloud formations before flight from North Island, and he comments on a now forgotten form of summer rainstorm to the east then known as the “Sonora” storm. Evidently, the formation of the cumulo-nimbus over Cuyamaca was enough to give challenges to early airmen over Coronado a century ago, since disturbed air patterns had a long reach that could endanger the frail planes.
One of Carpenter’s best recommendations for predicting weather is based on cloud formation. The directionof thetopmost of any sandwiched layer of  cloud tends eventually to become the wind direction at sea level. If that top layer of cloud shows ragged wisps at its ends that tend from south to north, rain will soon follow. This becomes even more definite when the seagulls begin to fly layered, tight circular patterns in order to get ready for sligh pressure changes that weather will bring to their sense of balance and direction.
Nowhere in the US Weather Bureau’s site is any of this kind of thing mentioned now, and it is one small bit of perspective to keep in mind when long term weather is predicted, or when dire forecasts of dire change in weather is made. Weather is as much how it is observed than how its interpreted, even in San Diego.

See the accompanying charts for 1911 and 2011 in this site.

by R. Reitman

Locate your parked car? Identify songbirds? Check surf conditions? Yeah, there’s an app for that. With over 100,000 active applications currently available for the iPhone —and more added constantly—there’s no foreseeable end to the stream of creative software designed to interface with the popular mobile phone from Apple. The newest addition to the roster, launched in July, brings a fresh twist to mobile application technology: documenting street harassment.

The application is the brain-child of New York activist collective HollaBack. According to co-founder and director Emily May, “Street harassment is on a spectrum of violence against women.” She points out that between 80% and 100% of women internationally face some type of street harassment, yet it is largely unreported.

What is street harassment? It’s a term activists still struggle to define. Typically targeting women and the LBGT community, verbal street harassment can range from “Hey baby” to a violence-tinged sexual tirade. Street harassment also includes flashing, public masturbation, groping and sexual assault.
While most people—as well as criminal statutes—agree that a stranger’s unwanted groping on a subway is a clear violation of one’s physical privacy, many other forms of street harassment are harder to define. Where do men and women draw the line between flirtatious and frightening?

“It’s really up the individual, which can make it tricky for defining street harassment. Anything that’s sexist or sexually explicit, anything that involves touching, anything that doesn’t stop, is over the line,” explains Holly Kearl, a national expert on street harassment and author of Stop Street Harassment: Making Public Places Safe and Welcoming for Women. She says that, “Most of it’s not illegal as long as it’s not a threat or touching or masturbation.”

But legal doesn’t mean welcome. “We felt victimized,” stated May in a recent telephone interview, “When we would say something to the guys it could just escalate the situation — and the police wouldn’t care.”
So May and a group of likeminded men and women turned to the Internet to vent their frustrations – and HollaBackNYC.com was born.

HollaBack offered a unique solution to street harassment—the ability for victims to share experiences, advice, and consolation online. For the most part, victims just tell their stories.

Immediately after its 2005 launch, the HollaBack website found a warm welcome with both the Internet community and the media. And it’s not just New Yorkers who wanted to stand up to street harassers. HollaBack now has independent outposts in five US cities as well as international groups in Australia, Mauritius, the UK and Toronto. While each group currently operates independently, the advent of iPhone app, interest from the press and several years of experience make this a fortuitous time for the HollaBack collective to try its hand at creating a more cohesive, connected, and official nonprofit.

And it’s clear that mobile technology is going to play a big role in HollaBack’s future.

The new iPhone application, which achieved its fundraising goal May 28 through Kickstarter.com, will allow individuals in New York to document street harassment as it happens. Victims can choose to make a report with or without a photograph and will choose a category for each incident: verbal, groping, flashing, assault or other. Users will also be able to provide additional details via email at a later time. Incidents will link up to an online mapping system.

This won’t, however, provide a real-time map of street harassment in New York City. To prevent abuse of the technology, HollaBack will vet entries before they are posted, resulting in an unspecified delay before submissions are published. (Among other things, HollaBack does not allow posts from heterosexual men harassed by women or posts that could be interpreted as racist.)
Of course, there’s no reason to think that iPhone owners in New York suffer a disproportionate percentage of street harassment. What, then, for the rest of us? May refers to the current application as a “beta” version— HollaBack is getting the technology working in New York before opening up to those outside the city as well as smart phones other than the iPhone. Initially, though, incidents outside of New York City can be documented via the iPhone application but won’t be published on the online map.

There is also hope for the victims of street harassment with less-than-smart cellular phones. HollaBack is combining efforts with activists in Egypt who are raising funds for a “Harassmap” which will allow women to report incidents via SMS text messages. Once this system is fully functioning, HollaBack plans to integrate the international Harassmap with New York’s own HollaBack mapping system – a collaborative effort with an ambitious target launch of December, 2010.

All of which begs the question – can an iPhone application, or even SMS posts to an international Harassmap, really combat street harassment?

The answer isn’t an easy one to address. Street harassment is, to all appearances, a series of unrelated incidents perpetrated by (mostly) men who have no connection to one another, no coordination of activities and little or no planning. Often these men don’t consider their actions to be demeaning, harassing or intimidating; they may even consider it a form of flattery. (What woman wouldn’t want a stranger to compliment her breasts when she’s on a morning jog?) So, would fear of public castigation and online notoriety deter potential street harassers?
Even measuring the efficacy of a program to combat street harassment is challenging. In Boston, an ad campaign on subway trains targeting sexual harassment resulted in a significant jump in the number of harassment incidents reported. However, because most street harassment is still widely unreported, it’s difficult to measure whether the ad campaign was an effective deterrent against harassers or simply encouraged more individuals to make reports.
“The solution is always going to have to be multi-layered,” according to Kearl. She believes the best way to deal with street harassment is a program that involves education campaigns, public awareness campaigns, laws and the empowerment of women and girls to stand up to street harassment. Kearl also praises the new iPhone app: “It’s very useful for raising awareness and for the self empowerment of women. I think that documentation through the iPhone app of HollaBack is really the next step so that we can approach lawmakers and say that this is a big issue.”
HollaBack certainly hopes so. According to their website and Kickstarter.com, this application will “track street harassment through data points to quantify and communicate its impact to legislators.” The end result of collecting all of this data is to see “significant improvements in policy and a reduction in crimes against girls, women and LGBTQ individuals.” The data collected through the system will be reviewed and analyzed by researchers from the Barnard Center for Research on Women to better understand the nature of street harassment.

With all of this data and scientific analysis, should we look for stronger laws in the coming years? Not necessarily. May spoke glowingly about the benefits of public policy and legislative reform, but then cautioned that, “Developing laws around it aren’t going to be nearly as effective as educating people and creating a cultural shift. That’s because women don’t want to report it — and I don’t see that changing at any time in the near future.”
While HollaBack is quick to point out the benefits of empowering and educating people, they studiously avoid discussing privacy implications on their website. In fact, the only place they address the issue directly is via an FAQ section. They posit: “But aren’t you worried that your site will fuel the latent vindictiveness within women and LGBTQ-identified folks across the country, leading to a massive witch-hunt and rampant Soviet-style denounciations of countless innocents?” HollaBack’s answer? “No.” They then provide links to two articles that deal with government surveillance of citizens.

This is a cavalier response to an issue that merits at least a thoughtful, open discussion. While, as a general rule, in most situations it’s not illegal to take photographs of adults in public spaces and publish them on the Internet, there are concerns about what the future of our society will be if vigilante justice via cell phones becomes a widespread tool.
In the late 1700s, the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham invented a model prison known as a “panopticon” – a prison in which the inmates would never know whether or not unseen guards were observing them. As mobile technology becomes more prevalent and our daily lives increasingly are spent in cyberspace, do we run the risk of inadvertently creating our own citizen-run panopticon? While it might be an effective mechanism for holding street harassers accountable, will we be one step closer to a world in which any activity in a public space will be considered fair game for posting in perpetuity on the Intenet? While these issues may be more a function of the increasingly mobile and connected world we live in than HollaBack’s new iPhone app, it might behoove HollaBack to address these concerns with sensitivity and attention. After all, many of the individuals who are clamoring for privacy on the Internet are the same individuals who turn to the HollaBack site to share anonymous stories – sexual and gender minorities and the victims of sexual abuse, assault and stalking.

Reading through the stories submitted to HollaBackNYC.com is disturbing. Women report being attacked on the way home from school at night, being the object of masturbatory fantasy on subway trains and the subject of sexual speculation when they walk down the street. One who spends enough time on the website might begin to wonder if a course or two in self defense and quite possibly weaponry might be needed for a woman to venture out safely in New York, especially on the subways. The incidents date back years, hundreds of pieces of evidence woven together to show that women are routinely treated as sexual objects when moving in a public space. Kearl describes street harassment as a mechanism for disrespecting women: “I think that it says that women don’t deserve as much respect as men, and it’s almost a way of gender policing. You’re attacked if you meet the societal beauty standards and you’re attacked if you don’t.”

If nothing else, the stories posted to HollaBackNYC.com serve as evidence that America’s struggle for gender equality is in no way finished. Which, for readers who enjoy partaking in the democratic process, might merit a phone call or letter to one’s representatives in Congress. That is, if you can find the right number.

And yes, there’s an app for that, too.

A growing effort between Elan Organic Coffees CEO Karen Cebreros and Foundation for Women founder Deborah Lindholm is shaping a brighter future for impoverished women by harnessing coffees as an engine to move needy women from poverty to economic stability and independence.
Inspired by Nobel Peace Prize winner and economist Muhammad Yunus, whose Grameen Bank in Bangladesh has built a financial empire based on small loans to poor people in the belief that even the most economically disadvantaged can be reliable borrowers and capable entrepreneurs, Lindholm’s Foundation for Women extends “microloans” from $50 to $1,000 to help impoverished women locally and globally start their own businesses and become self-sustaining.
Lindholm founded her non-profit in 1997 after a visit to southern India where she witnessed first hand the power of microloans. One woman’s life had been changed by a four-dollar loan; in Lindholm’s words, “I met a woman who borrowed four dollars. She had never seen $4 in her life. She bought a comb, a pair of scissors and a mirror and she put her husband in business as a barber and became the cashier. Now she has a home and her children are in school. All because of $4.”
Deeply moved, Lindholm committed herself to helping impoverished women around the world leave poverty behind by providing them access to credit and an opportunity to start generating income.
Though each loan to enterprising third world women may amount to small sums, it takes a great deal of money to be in the money-lending business. Fortunately for the Foundation for Women, Lindholm met Elan CEO Karen Cebreros at a World Trade Center gathering in 2008. Joining forces was perhaps a foregone conclusion; in addition to single-handedly shaping the global certified organic and sustainability movements in coffee, Cebreros at Elan has ever been a champion of women in all aspects of the coffee trades. Since its founding in 1989, Elan has sought to identify and build relationships with growers, millers and exporters of superior coffees throughout Central America, India, Indonesia and Africa—many of whom are women.
The statistics are compelling. Coffee is the second largest-selling commodity—after oil—in the world. Half of the world’s population of 3.5 billion people sustain themselves on less than $2 a day. Seventy percent of this population are women and children. Coffees sourced by Elan from womens’ co-op farms in Costa Rica, India, Ethiopia and Rwanda—all of it certified organic and suitably named the Microloan Blend—are sold by the Foundation for Women, with proceeds funding microloans to women in San Diego as well as Liberia.
Microloans require no collateral but must be paid back with a small interest rate. Ironically, the women most often denied traditional lines of credit through banks in third-world countries, have a 98% repayment rate of their microloans. From Ethiopia’s only female coffee miller and exporter to a San Diegan refugee mother of two who recently started her own cleaning business, the extension of small sums has enabled the recipients to establish a credit history, maintain families and create money-earning businesses that in turn enrich recipients’ families, neighborhoods, communities and nations.
Since its inception, the Foundation for Women has touched one million lives around the world with its microloan programs in San Diego, Tami Nadu, India; and Liberia, Niger, and Zambia, Africa. Their collaborative projects often involve working closely with non-governmental organizations (NGOs), local communities, and heads of state to provide much needed credit, support groups, business education, children’s schools, medical care, and training to the poorest of the poor. In 2006, Lindholm established connection with Liberia’s first female President, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. There, the Foundation for Women is a registered NGO and is operating 27 microloan programs in seven counties with over 1000 women borrowers with a 98% repayment rate.
Unlike charity, which may create dependence, microloans are provided to create independence. The providers of microloans feel that initial small line credit should be a human right and that empowering women is not only compassionate, but socially responsible—and good business.
Today, Microloan Blend women’s coffee has been sold primarily at Foundation for Women fundraisers, events, farmer’s markets, and website. It is often the featured (and most consumed) coffee of choice at Women’s events such as the International Women’s Breakfast and the Microfinance Summit held at the University of San Diego’s Joan B. Kroc Institute of Peace and Justice. The powerful grassroots efforts behind the coffee and the cause took it all the way to the United Nations (UN) meeting in New York City on July 2. Current efforts are to expand and sell Microloan Blend retail to increase proceeds for more microloans and bring greater awareness and support to women’s issues globally. A variety of coffees, including an espresso and decaf are available.

by Ioana Patringenaru, UCSD News Service

James Stout is part of an elite racing team that promotes Type 1 diabetes education and is made up of riders that all suffer from that condition.
James Stout, a UC San Diego graduate student in history, is only 22. But he already has ridden his bike on four continents and in about half a dozen countries. All the while, he has been battling Type 1 diabetes, a chronic disease that is more severe than Type 2 diabetes and disproportionately strikes children and the young.
Last year, Stout joined Team Type 1, a top cycling squad whose members all have the disease. The team has won the grueling cross-country relay Race Across America twice—in record-breaking time. Team members now hope to take part in the Tour de France by 2012. They not only race, but also take part in public outreach events, including visits to schools and conferences.
Type 1 diabetes is a particularly challenging condition for top athletes, because exercise can cause their blood sugar levels to drop dramatically. Asked why he keeps biking, Stout cites inspiration from his teammates.
“I used to use diabetes as an excuse for doing badly,” he said. “Now, it’s a motivation for doing well.”
Being part of a team where everyone struggles with the condition helps, he added. Teammates watch out for each other. If one says their blood sugar level is dropping, they’re quick to offer that person sports drinks and snacks, and invite them to rest in the team’s car.
Stout joined the team last year after a chance meeting at the Tour of California. He was helping out during the race, when he noticed Type 1’s tent. Because his diabetes was considered a pre-existing condition, getting medical coverage—and care— here in the United States was a struggle. Team Type 1 members immediately took him in, offering advice about managing his diabetes while competing.
He now knows that to keep his blood sugar under control during a race, he needs to take in about 400 calories an hour. So he makes sure he has plenty of sports drinks and snacks when he sets out. And he can always count on his teammates for additional help, he said.
In addition to joining Team Type 1, Stout also is a member of UCSD Cycling, a collegiate team that includes undergraduate and graduate students. “It’s a good way to meet people and make friends,” he said.
Stout went to a cycling trade show and came back with sponsorship for the team’s gear, including clothing, wheels and saddles, said Tammy Wildgoose, the team’s president and a senior majoring in neuroscience. He now acts as the team’s coordinator of sponsorships.
Stout also has done a great job taking new riders under his wing and talking to them about training and good nutrition, Wildgoose said.
“He’s supercool because he really cares about getting new people into the sport,” she said.
UCSD Cycling competes in the Western Collegiate Cycling Conference against other University of California campuses, including UC Berkeley, as well as Stanford and California State University campuses. UCSD’s team ranks sixth in the conference.
Stout is one of about 25 riders on the team who take part in races. He figures he trains about 20 to 30 hours a week. He also works as a teaching assistant, which takes up another 20 hours. “There’s not much time for messing around,” he laughs.
Cycling appears to always have been a part of Stout’s life. He first rode a bike as a little boy in his native England, more precisely in the small village of Murcot, in the country’s Midlands. He started riding on the road around age 16 or 17. But at age 18, he was diagnosed with diabetes. His condition, called MODY diabetes, is more complex than typical Type 1 diabetes. His body produces insulin on and off, which means his blood sugar levels, and his condition, vary widely. He jokingly calls the disease “Type 1 ½ diabetes.”
Treatment includes diet, exercise and fast-acting insulin. He was recently fitted with a continuous blood sugar monitor that rests on the skin and eliminates the need to draw blood. Exercise, including riding, can be tricky, Stout said. It can lower blood sugar levels. But stress related to competing can also make sugar levels spike, the UCSD student said.
“You’re never really in control of it,” he said. “You manage it. It’s a beast.”
Asked what he loves about cycling, Stout, who studied modern history and politics at Oxford as an undergraduate, cites the sport’s intellectual nature.  It’s not about brute force, but about strategy, he said. “It’s like chess at 50 miles per hour,” he said. Cycling also has other appeals. “I like going fast,” Stout admitted.
Stout has taken his bike all over the world. After high school, he lived in Kenya, where he helped build a house on a sanctuary for the endangered Rothschild giraffe. He didn’t have electricity and water was heated by the sun. Adventures in that country including water-skiing while hippos and crocodiles looked on.  “It was fantastic,” Stout said.
In summer 2006, he lived in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, where he taught children English, math and physical education. He also took part in races, with his students cheering him on. He came in third in the country’s championships. “So many kids were excited for me to get there,” he recalls.
While at Oxford, Stout also raced all over Europe, including in the United Kingdom, Belgium and France. One of his favorite spots is the Catalonia region of Spain. That area also has become the focus of his academic work.
He is investigating how members of the working class were expressing their Catalan identity through street art, food and, of course, cycling during Spain’s civil war and the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco. Spain is home to one of cycling’s best-known races, the Tour of Spain, also known as “la Vuelta.”  The race has become an arena for political struggles between Castilians, Catalans and Basques. One of the first terrorist acts perpetrated by the Basque separatist movement ETA took place during la Vuelta. Today, the competition avoids Basque country, Stout said.
Stout started biking on the road around age 17.
He wrote his first academic paper at UCSD on la Vuelta for a first-year graduate seminar taught by Robert Edelman, himself an expert in the history of sports and author of “Spartak Moscow: A History of the People’s Team in the Workers’ State.”
Stout is smart and lively and knows how to tell a good story, Edelman said, but he needs to hone his writing skills. “He can be a great teacher, no question about that,” the professor said. “He knows where the bodies are buried in terms of sources in Spain. He can do innovative research.”
Stout was admitted to Stanford and the London School of Economics. But he chose to come to UCSD. He said he was looking for an area different from England and was attracted by the university’s top-notch history department, the structure of UCSD’s doctoral program, which allows for research, and by funding. He also is committed to teaching at a publically funded university. But there was more to it than that.
“It’s a great place to ride your bike,” Stouts said of San Diego. “And I like the beach.”

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.”
— Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail
Marcos da Silva came to the United States on a student visa in 2001. He had a desire to learn English and continue his exploration of music; a passion of his. Marcos connected with like-minded people in San Diego and formed a band that made the rounds and usual precarious living common to musicians everywhere. He had no criminal record and as far as can be determined, lived a peaceful life with numerous friends.
On Saturday, March 27,  Marcos da Silva’s band left San Diego for Lake Havasu, where they planned to play as part of a music benefit for a hospice. After crossing the Arizona border  just outside of Yuma along I-8, Marcos discovered that his student visa had expired. He was now an illegal alien in the United States; he had exactly 15 days left to live.
Marcos was quickly arrested at the first checkpoint east of Yuma by the Border Patrol, who immediately zeroed in on the foreign man. Pulling him aside from the others, they grilled him on his university studies, his student loans and other activities related to education prior to his arrest. His American companions were separated and asked similar questions about him. As is usual in any arrest, suspicious items are taken away from the prisoner; among the items on da Silva was a bottle of pills needed to treat a heart ailment; these were an experimental medication prescribed by UCSD Medical Center. Though he and his friends told the arresting agents that those pills were critical to Marcos’ health, and that da Silva wore a pacemaker to regulate his heartbeat and that his heart worked at perhaps 20 percent of normal capacity unaided by medication, the agents responded that they weren’t doctors and knew nothing about—and were not required to care for—medical conditions. One salient comment stuck with the driver, a man named Ken Deaumont, who recalled an agent pointing at da Silva and saying, “People like him bankrupt the system.” Their pleas fell on deaf ears; the bottle of pills was separated from the prisoner. There was nothing any of da Silva’s friends could do to change that, either.
Marcos da Silvas’ separation from his bottle of pills when he was handcuffed and arrested led directly to his medical deterioration and subsequent death.
Marcos was taken into custody and held for 48 hours. On March 30,  he was to meet with a federal judge in a deportation hearing. He was transferred to several detention centers during this time and on March 31, he arrived at the federal Elroy Detention Center in Arizona.
By this time, Marcos’ health was deteriorating. His lack of medicine and the stress of arrest and confinement, inability to eat a prison diet contraindicated by his medical condition, to say nothing of the shackles, terror and fear of other inmates led to a collapse.
On Thursday, April 1, doctors at Elroy  realized Marcos  was in danger and they had him transferred to nearby Casa Grande Hospital. He spent three days there in intensive care. During this time, Marcos’ friends contacted the honorary consul of Brazil, Brad Brendan, in Phoenix, for assistance. The honorary consul tried negotiating various means to free da Silva without success.
On April 5, friends and associates organized a search to finally locate where he was being held. One of them located Marcos at the hospital; he and the rest rushed to visit , only to be told they did not have authorization to visit da Silva.
Once da Silva was stabilized, he was returned to Elroy Detention Center where he received notice to continue the case in the Federal Court in San Diego. Released on his own recognizance, he was given a return bus ticket. Ill, bewildered and with no way to get to the bus station, the Brazilian honorary consul arranged to drive him to catch his bus back to San Diego.
On April 8, Marcos rode the bus from Casa Grande to El Centro.  He carried with him a court summons and a few remaining pills for his heart ailment.
It isn’t known whether he misread his bus ticket or if there was some other error; what is known is that he spent the night in the bus station and walked to the nearest ATM to withdraw enough funds to purchase the remainder of his ticket early the next morning.   Marcos arrived in San Diego the following day, and spent the night at a friend’s home.
By April 10, Marcos’ condition deteriorated further; this was presumed to be from the stress of the arrest and imprisonment, the desert heat and the break from his medication. He was taken to UCSD Hospital and placed in the intensive care unit.
On April 11, Marcos began having multiple heart attacks and was placed in an induced coma.
On April 12, Marcos died of heart failure. Doctors at UCSD attributed his death directly to his loss of medication, complicated by high stress. An autopsy is pending. There was a memorial on April 25.
By April 22, news of Marcos da Silva’s death made headlines in Brazil. Media in that country have kept the dead man alive in commentary for over a week and highlights of immigration crackdowns in the US have focused much attention on this country in terms of one of their citizens who died at the hands of uncaring Yankees, attempting—and failing to save money on his incarceration.

Roasting coffee is a delicate process that isn’t well suited for most home kitchens. Coffees tend to smell grassy as they roast and give off a great amounts of heat and smoke that can make for an embarassing social disaster complete with screaming smoke alarms and anguished neighbors. Getting sloppy with the time and fire is a sure-fire way to start a fire in the kitchen, with dreadful consequences. Still, there is a lot to be said for fresh-roasted coffee and for those whose tastes have developed beyond the bean-in-the-bag pale, nothing else will do but to do it yourself.
San Diegan Joseph Behm spent nearly a decade designing and building a fairly foolproof home coffee roaster that’s hardly bigger than a microwave. His Behmor 1600 is a one-pound capacity, automatic roaster that uses a wire mesh drum that rotates past a heating element in a closed chamber. The machine is programmed to measure the time of roast for “hard” or “soft” beans in quarter-pound increments and a set of adjustable parameters attends every step of the roast before the machine starts operating. A miniature afterburner burns up the smoke and smell of the beans. The entire machine weighs less than twenty pounds and is a masterpiece of miniature engineering and manufacture in stainless steel.
ESPRESSO got to try a machine recently and spent several days roasting Nicaragua and Sumatran coffees with it. Once we got the hang of how it worked, we very charmed by the Behmor. We should reiterate from the beginning that according to Joe Behm’s manual, the 1600 is not a machine to be treated like a common toaster—one tends the Behmor at all times, if for no other reason than to listen for the first and second crack of the coffee beans which lets the operator know when the roast is reaching its time limits—whether or not they agree with the programmable time settings. The Behmor 1600 is not a machine to roast dark with either; this is because the longer the roast, the hotter it gets and in a tiny chamber, the hotter it gets the more “interesting” things can become. This isn’t to say that the machine is dangerous—one has to have a good sense of timing when cooking anything on the stove and get food off the burner at exactly the right time if it’s not to be ruined—and coffee roasting has to be stopped at exactly the right moment for a given roast profile—which was right around 10 seconds after second crack with the Nicaraguan beans. The Behmor is better at yielding full-city or Viennese roasts with greater finesse than Italian or Turkish ones.
After a visual inspection to make sure that there were no cracks, grit in the afterburner or chaff in the heating element, we loaded the beans into the drum and fitted the drum into the roaster. The U-shaped stainless chaff collector follows the drum in and is sealed against it, and the door is closed firmly. A flurry of programming then occurs; to define the coffee by the hardness of bean, set the roast time and power setting adjusts the roast profile. Push the button and the drum begins to turn and the element heats up rapidly to several hundred degrees. The process is slightly hypnotic as the beans rhythmically rise and fall in the drum, the machine hums and the scent of heat fills the room. Our Nicaraguan beans were unusually soft, meaning they had a great deal of retained moisture; sure enough, this gives the grassy smell so common in coffee roasting. While it didn’t seem bothersome to us, our smoke detector located a few feet away from the roaster, over the kitchen door, suddenly went off and we cancelled the roast to switch off the alarm. The “soft” Nicaraguan beans gave off a pungent aroma as they roasted in a small pan on our stove, too; much more so than the Sumatran “hard” beans we tested.
Back at it again, we cleaned the machine gently and thoroughly per the manual’s instructions, and then programed it for a “self-clean” effort to take care of anything we missed. We also covered the alarm, opened a nearby window and tried it again. This time, the roast went off flawlessly! The full pound of green Nicaraguan nets us .83 pounds of fresh full-city roast. The only bit of excitement this time came from the all too short period between first and second crack. The flurry of rice crispy-like popping noises told us it was all over and the machine’s roast time was shortened by ten seconds with one of the button controls on its front panel. Immediately, the roast stopped and a cool-down period began as a fan drew air through the machine, beans and afterburner. When the timer indicates it’s all over, we carefully open the door and test the chaff collector. It’s barely warm to the touch and we can lift it and the drum out with bare hands. The beans are free of chaff and the roast is extremely uniform in color. What chaff is present is mostly in the collector and this is carefully swept out with the small brush provided with the machine. The beans are jugged with the exception of a few used to make a french press pot so we can taste the fruit of our labors.
In our judgement, the Behmor 1600 is a winner. It does what what Joe Behm says it will do, consistently and repeatedly. It is an exacting machine—no power cords to be used with it; it requires exact free space on all sides of it; most definitely not a “set it and forget it” machine during the roast process; but it works well once you understand it. Its complexities are well-explained in the manual and the data is backed up clearly on the Behmor website. We think it’s just the thing for the confirmed coffee connoisseur or anyone who needs to sample roast a batch of beans. The Behmor 1600 retails for around $300 and is backed by a warranty. Check out www.behmor.com for more information.