Twenty years in a classroom will do something permanent to the way a person reads. I spent most of those years teaching students the difference between a primary source and everything else. A primary source is the document itself: the treaty, the letter, the census record. Everything else is someone’s interpretation of that document. The interpretation might be brilliant. It might be wrong. The only way to know is to go back to the source.

I retired. The habit did not.

Most coffee bags in most shops are selling a feeling. Words like “bold” and “smooth” and “artisan” describe nothing verifiable. They are marketing language dressed as product language. A bag that says “bold” is making a claim it cannot support with a document.

The claims worth reading are the ones that point somewhere.

“Roasted [date]” points to a roast log. Either the roaster printed the date or they did not. The date is the primary source. Its absence is also information.

“SCA 80+” points to the Specialty Coffee Association’s 100-point scale. Ten attributes evaluated blind by a licensed Q Grader: aroma, flavor, aftertaste, acidity, body, balance, uniformity, clean cup, sweetness, overall impression. Roughly five percent of the world’s coffee production scores 80 or above. The number is the document.

“Lab tested by FoodChain ID” points to a specific report. FCID 22210A-1, Lot #12983284, dated July 14, 2025. Heavy metals, mycotoxins, mold, yeast. Tested using FDA-validated HPLC and mass spectrometry. All compounds returned Not Detected. The report is accredited by PJLA under ISO/IEC 17025, recognized internationally by ILAC-MRA. The lab’s name is the citation. Without it, the claim is not verifiable.

“georgecoffee.eth” points to Ethereum Mainnet. A permanent record independent of any website or platform. The ENS identifier on the back of the bag resolves to a record that will outlast the bag itself.

These are the things I read before I buy anything. Twenty years of teaching students to find the document behind the claim trained a habit that does not turn off.

The George blend is a medium roast. Brazil Cerrado and Mexico Chiapas. Available through December 31, 2026. The 250th anniversary ends and so does the coffee. The 17.76% subscription savings is not an accident.

The George is in the cup now. Ground ten minutes ago, bloomed for forty seconds, water at 196. The molasses is in the first sip. Not sweet exactly, but present the way good molasses is present in anything it touches. The toasted almond comes in behind it. The citrus is in the finish, bright enough to notice, gone before I can name it precisely. The morning is cold. The cup is not.

George — Medium Roast Blend, America's 250th Anniversary officialfellowcitizen.com/products/george-regular

In that time I gave approximately four thousand cups of bad coffee the benefit of the doubt. Vending machine coffee. Breakroom coffee. The kind sitting on the burner since six in the morning that someone covered with a lid at ten as an act of misplaced optimism.

I retired early. I had time in the morning. I started paying attention to what was actually in the cup.

Paying attention to coffee is not unlike paying attention to history. Both reward the person who asks where something came from and why it ended up here. Both have something to say to the person who reads the label before buying.

These notes are what I write when something is worth writing down. About coffee, mostly. About American landscape. About the Smithsonian paintings that end up on specialty coffee bags because a founder’s father kept his neckties pressed and hung in order, and someone understood that a brand asking to be part of your morning should be built from something real.

America turns 250 this July. There is a coffee on my shelf built for this year and this year only. It is named George, after George Washington, roasted in the United States, specialty grade, lab tested. Molasses, toasted almond, hints of mocha, heirloom citrus. His term ends December 31, 2026. After that he goes into the record and stays there.

I will write about him. I will write about the parks and the paintings and what Thomas Moran saw when he traveled into Yellowstone Territory in 1871 before most Americans knew what was there. I will write about what it means that a Polaroid photograph taken on the Washington Mall on the Fourth of July, 1976 ended up on a coffee bag fifty years later.

I will write when I have something worth saying.

That turns out to be most Wednesdays.

— G