Our Morning Coffee

This article originally appeared on the Love Wins Community Center blog. I am working there for a year through the Jesuit Volunteer Corps.

Every afternoon at closing, I make a 100-cup pot of coffee and set it on a timer to brew at 8 am the next morning. If I falter or am forgetful at any point in the process – if the timer isn’t set correctly, the pot isn’t switched on, the filter isn’t cleaned out – then I have to tell a crowd of tired, cold, and hungry community members that it will be another 45 minutes until they can have their first cup of coffee. It also means that I will have to stumble around until then, getting hygiene kits and putting away donations in a bleary haze. Coffee is very important.

In many ways, coffee is the great equalizer. A senator needs his morning Starbucks with the same ardor and intensity as the person on the sidewalk outside the Starbucks waiting for his spare change. It’s the first requirement for an office, an A.A. meeting, a church reception, a soup kitchen, a diner, a college dining hall, and for Love Wins. When I meet somebody who is visiting us for the first time, I always offer them a cup of coffee from the kitchen. It’s an invitation to relax, stay a while, and partake of our community in a small but significant way. The warmth of the cup in your hands imparts a feeling of comfort and stillness while the subtle lift of caffeine makes staying awake a little easier.

There’s cultural meaning encoded in a cup of coffee. It’s what you drink when you need to wake up, focus, and get things done. I have a cup of coffee beside me as I write this. It helps you to face the challenges of the day, to feel like a functioning adult. Your coffee can also tell a lot about your class and attitudes. We use powder creamer for our coffee, and pour sugar from a plastic jug. Carrying a latte in a white paper cup gives a much different impression than holding a ceramic mug filled with drip coffee. At Love Wins, we all drink from the same pot and pick from the same gallimaufry of donated mugs.

Since the function of our space is primarily a place to be during the day, we don’t promise to have a great many amenities. We will always have a public agender bathroom, space to take a nap, books to read, a community phone; and we will always have coffee, creamer, sugar, peanut butter, jelly, and bread. These are the building blocks of hospitality, from which we can make Love Wins an open and welcoming place for all.

MASS Gathering 2016: Bacon, Yoga, and Rock 'n' Roll

This article originally appeared in The Berkshire View magazine, here. All photos by James Grady.

I am standing on the vernal summer slopes of Ski Butternut in Great Barrington, amid a crowd of people gathered in the thick humidity to watch Matisyahu perform. Skirts are billowing, bare feet twirling, heads nodding, wristbanded arms flung up in the air. The scent of pot drifts over our heads in peaceful, eddying waves. In the middle of the gaggle of bodies a man dances with a cigarette in one hand and a water spritzer in the other, which he sprays periodically over the crowd’s thankful heads. Mid-verse Matisyahu clutches the mic with both hands, closes his eyes, and begins chanting in Hebrew as the cheering swells.

Matisyahu became well known in the mid-2000s as the man who introduced Jewish hip-hop to the mainstream. He was a Hasidic man who could expertly beat-box and spit rhymes over a reggae fusion beat. Lately he has shorn his beard, but he is still just as devoted to his personal faith as to his music. An avowed Phishhead, Matisyahu’s love for full-band improvisational jam translates into an amazing live act. There were Santana-style guitar flourishes, intense drum solos, and the most entertaining keyboardist I’ve ever seen; he rocked and grinned over the keys like jazz virtuoso Keith Jarrett. Matisyahu’s verbal acrobatics, coupled with his phenomenal backing band, created a groove that pulsed through the ground and got everyone to dance (or at least sway in quiet joy.) Onstage he jumped and kicked around like an ecstatic ska Jim Morrison.

After the show the band was gathered out behind the stage, signing autographs and taking selfies with fans. We talked to Matisyahu for a minute and learned that the Pennsylvania native had once visited Great Barrington as a high-schooler. One of his friends had been accepted into Bard College at Simon’s Rock at 17, and young Matisyahu (then Matthew) came to visit him. He said laughingly that things looked pretty much the same here as they did then.

The bounty of food trucks at the festival did not disappoint. I had a perfect burger with all the fixings from PaPa Dogs and Burgers, cool hard cider from Hilltop Orchards, and talked with the lovely husband-and-wife proprietors of The Farm Concessions. They drove their truck all the way from Keene, NH, where they will soon be opening a café. A few hours later, I gave in to temptation and got fried, bacon-wrapped mac-and-cheese balls on a stick from The Chuck Wagon; as you can imagine, they were sublime. At least I didn’t get the “Hot Mess”: a Twinkie and a hot dog deep-fried together and smothered in pulled pork.

As twilight loomed over the festival grounds, a circle of women was silhouetted against the mountains doing group yoga. Up on the hill above them, people retreated to camp sites, wrung out their sweaty T-shirts, or settled onto blankets to watch Whiskey Treaty Roadshow bash out some good roots rock at the festival’s after party. Assembled on stage were 7 string musicians – on guitar, bass, banjo, or Dobro – and one drummer. They had been playing alt-country and Americana classics all day between acts on the main stage. I recognized Chris Merenda from The Picky Bastards on banjo. In the grass watching them were couples drinking beer, a woman swinging a hula hoop around the bun on her head, and solo listeners sitting on blankets or laid-out sweatshirts. As Chris sang “This Land is Your Land,” the pink-laced azure sky slowly darkened and the first day of the festival wound down to a close.

To see more photos of this year’s MASS Gathering from our editor and expert photographer, James, check out The Berkshire View’s Facebook page. We have photo coverage of events throughout the day, including some of the other great bands who performed. These include Deer Tick, Gin Blossoms, Parsonsfield, Wild Adriatic, Madaila, Strange Machines, DJ BFG, and West End Blend.

Pączki-Eating Competition on Valentine's Day

This Valentine’s Day I found myself standing in a small crowd outside Bennison’s Bakery in Evanston watching eight men and boys compete in a pączki-eating contest. Mothers stood with babies and toddlers to cheer on their fathers, bundled against the icy, lacerating wind.  Plump pastries – in flavors of strawberries and cream, chocolate, praline mousse, prune, apple, apricot, cream cheese, or bananas and cream – are rapidly consumed down the line of tables as the crowd cheers, laughs, and murmurs “Oh my Lord…”

A pączki – pronounced “poosh-key” or “pawnch-key,” depending on who you ask – is a rich Polish donut with jam or cream filling. They’re truly wonderful, something that Bennison’s Bakery has specialized in since its opening in 1938. Bennison’s is packed and bustling today with orders for Valentine’s Day and Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday is known as Pączki Day in some circles, after all.) The atmosphere is warm and intimate inside, with four coffee pots piping on burners behind the counter and the scent of baking sugar mingling with easy-listening jazz in the air.

Outside, things are a little colder and harsher but no less convivial. The competition is varied; some chew determinedly and take time to swallow, while others cram fistfuls of pastry into their mouths in between slugs of water. Patrick, a habitual competitive eater, eats with two hands bloodied by strawberry filling. After the five minutes are up, he is declared the winner with 25 pączki. Patrick then bites with exaggerated nonchalance into yet another pączki, to laughter and the soft thudding of mittened applause.

This is Bennison’s 6th Annual Pączki-Eating Contest, and one of today’s competitors was in fact the winner of the first. This year he brought along his 10-year-old son, Kyle, to compete with him as a team. Before the competition, Kyle predicted that he would eat three pączki and that’s exactly what he did. The other competitors ranged from lanky twenty-somethings to middle-aged men.

All proceeds from the competition will go to Phil’s Friends, a cancer support charity. Each contestant was sent home with a t-shirt, a Bennison’s gift card, and as many pączki as they could carry.