HOW THINGS GET MORE COMPLEX BUT MAYBE NOT BETTER

 ,,mmmm,,,msilver plate serving spoons and forks which sat in center shelf in a big, glass-fronted piece of furniture she called a “breakfront”.

She does have a coffee maker. It is an expensive and complex, electrically operated machine. It has a black plastic water reservoir in the rear and a silver metallic top.  

To operate it for a cup of coffee one must first choose a small aluminum container or “pod” housed among many others arranged  in a sliding wood drawer below the mechanical coffee maker. 

One must shuffle among the choices, or pods to read the contents: decaffeinated,  pumpkin-spice, cinnamon flavored, chocolate honey, and many others. I looked long and hard for a pod labeled “coffee”, or simply, plain unadulterated good coffee…but there was none fitting that descriotion. 

I finally settled on “magic brew” uncertain what to expect. So I placed the little aluminum pods packet in the receiver at the top, closed the top down until I heard a “click” and then pressed the pulsing “brew” button. 

The mechanism emitted a whirring and igurgling sound  then finally a thin brown foamy liquid emanated brom an aperture I had not expected any liquid from. I had to quickly slide my empty cup to intercept the stream  and watched as the cup slowly filled with this hot, brown, foamy liquid. The machine turned off when the cup was filled three fourths of the way up.(I like my cup hot and full to the lip).  As I reached for the cup, the silver colored cap on the machine popped up and the aluminum pods still steaming popped out.

“What do I do with these little coffee packs?”, I asked, adding, “Do you refill them?”

“No, just put them in that big plastic container-under the coffee cabinet, I collect them and send them back to the company to be recycled,” she added.

As I sipped the “magic brew” (it wasn’t that bad).  I began a mental calculation of how much expended energy went into granma’s coffee cup versus how much each cup of my daughter’s cups cost in energy expended.

When I got to the point of calculating the mailman’s caloric and fossil fuel i usage, as he picked up and carried  the now packaged pods to the the mail office….I gave up. 

No contest!