Gevalia Coffee canister

Cleaning the house today, my eye alit to the porcelain Gevalia coffee canister, which currently holds 8' O'clock coffee which Mary insists we mix with Starbuck's because she hates the thought of paying for the latter at McCaffrey's.

This canister has a long history.  First off, it came with Gevalia coffee, which is, many years of coffee culture later, still really good coffee.  Secondly, it was sent to me in the winter of 1988, a snowy winter in Chapel Hill, when I was living south of town in a glorified shack heated only by a coal stove in the living room which, fortunately, burnt wood too.  These were hard times for the kid.  Having returned from a northern swing full of avant garde glamor and romance in New England, I settled in for a nasty winter when I got a DWI and was freezing my butt off.  My mom and sister chipped in and sent me a down comforter and chamois sheets and pillowcases, which were helpful.

And then, one day, the mailman brings me this coffee canister, sent by one Elizabeth "Betsy" Bishop of the University of Chicago Department of Political Science, with whom I had hung in Moscow in the summer of '87 and who was doing a dissertation on Russo-Egyptian relations. She subsequently married some Egyptian guy and settled in a suburb of Cairo.  If anyone knows her whereabouts, send her to comment on this blog or have her email me at mct7@columbia.edu.  Good people.