My spring semester just ended, and I find myself with loads of free time. What a pleasure it has been to take advantage of the gorgeous spring weather, landscaping and gardening my bit of earth, seeing my flowers bloom in their resplendent colors. John and I have gone on lovely drives, picnics, and have been working on house projects together. Our little Xenia is getting to the point where we can add finishing touches, and we are quite content to rest in our home.
The following piece is one that I am sharing from one of my college classes, entitled "Cultural Literacies: Protean Shapes and Coffee Grounds." I hope you enjoy it:
It was a typical fall morning, with a brisk tinge in the air that caused me to shiver when I breathed in too deeply. A bit reluctantly, I pulled my hand out of its warm nestling place in my coat pocket and made a grab for the door. The warm aroma of coffee grounds greeted me. In passing, I noticed a new window cling on the glass announcing the arrival of the Pumpkin Spice Latte, ushering the change of season. Out of habit, I glanced up at the menu boards, even though I had already decided on what I wanted to order. An array of the offered drink categories marched across my vision, formed in neat, orderly rows:
Frappechino, Exprosso, Brewed Coffee, Tazo Teas, Hot Chocolate, Iced Coffee or Tea, Smoothies.
"May I help you?" The barista's inquiry interrupted my train of thought. Smiling, I walked up to the counter and placed my order for a grande White Chocolate Mocha. My total was displayed on her register screen, but she announced it to me as well. After my transaction was complete, I surveyed the room for a place to sit down. As I skimmed the back corner with the comfy red chairs, I recognized two familiar faces. My sister-in-law Sarah and a mutual friend of ours occupied the desirable cushioned chairs, and they were conversing over coffee and chai. I interrupted them and the three of us exchanged greetings. Historic Irvington is a small town and the Starbucks is located at the heart of it, making the coffee shop an ideal hangout spot.
The song
Lean on Me was playing quietly, providing ambient music. "That is the third time that song has played since we got here this morning," Sarah informed me, "And I am tempted to just go and stand on one of these tables and bust into song!" Sarah is like that, spontaneous and fun loving, and it would not have surprised me in the least if she made good on her word.
One of the baristas called out my order, and I took my leave of Sarah and our friend Chrystal. My hands clasped the warm surface of the coffee cup, and I breathed in the wafting creamy sweetness of the brew. I slid into a wooden chair at an empty table for two, sipped on my mocha, and observed my fellow customers. A group of seven young women were quietly conducting a Bible study at one of the larger tables. They were discussing John chapter 15, and each participant had brought along her personal Bible and a small notebook. I wondered if they met here every Sunday morning.
In the table next to theirs sat a man, alone with his laptop and iPhone. He was seemingly oblivious to everything else around him, concentrated on his screen and plugged into his earbuds, which were connected to his iPhone. His sole interruption occurred when he received a phone call, which caused him to pull out the earbuds. After a brief conversation, he reinserted the buds and devoted his attention to the computer screen.
Another single man was situated at the table next to mine, and he, too, had a laptop set upon the round table. As he got up to retrieve his iced soy latte, served not in a disposable cup but in his personal plastic mug, he glanced down at my scribbles. "Beautiful handwriting; perfect handwriting..." he said as he brushed by my table. Having obtained his mug of iced coffee, he settled into his seat and proceeded to find an outlet along the wall. When he had accomplished his task, he began to interact with the Internet. After a time, he noticed an acquaintance of his standing in line, and he called out to her. She turned, headed over to his little table, and the two of them began to converse. He disregarded his laptop to focus his attention on his impromptu visitor, and he mentioned how he routinely grabs his Starbucks coffee every Sunday morning and reads the
New York Times. As she headed off to her church service, he bid her farewell. "Say a little prayer for me."
I nursed my coffee in silence, musing. A rack of newspapers sat untouched in the front corner of the shop, available for purchase or perusing, but none of the customers paid it any heed. They had their laptops, and what need did they have of crumply, inky papers? My sweeping glanced paused momentarily upon a metal bin of complementary coffee grounds, 'grounds for the garden.' I wondered how many people took advantage of the garden grounds, and recalled when I did. That was another time and place.
It was for Jason and Theresa's garden, the one on the mountainside in Olongapo. They were our neighbors in the Philippines, when John and I lived in a one-room bamboo hut with a grass roof. John, my husband of two years, would take me on special dates to Starbucks, perhaps once or twice a month. We said it was for the coffee, yet we both knew it was for the luxury of the green comfy couches. Knowing that we were heading into Subic Bay for our coffee date, Jason and Theresa would ask us to bring home the garden grounds for their herb and vegetable garden terraces. We always obliged.
There was a distinct clientele at the Subic Starbucks. For the average Filipino, a cup of coffee from Starbucks was a full day's wage, a luxury they could not afford. Only the upper and middle class citizens frequented the coffee shop. Tourists flocked to the Subic Starbucks, giving it an international atmosphere. During our visits I noted Korean, Japanese, Canadian, British, American, Australian, and even German customers. The baristas were bilingual, speaking both Tagalog - their native tongue - and English.
While English was the commonly spoken language, the clientele had varying degrees of English literacy. The menu, mounted on the wall, was practically identical to the in the Irvington Starbucks and was printed in English, but located on the counter was a visual cheat sheet. It was merely a laminated square with a grid of images featuring the most popular frappechino and iced drinks, with names for each printed just below the picture. Due to the humid climate, chilled drinks were the best sellers at the Subic Starbucks. This visual image grid simplified the ordering process for the customer base, whose literacy backgrounds were very diverse.
I took another sip of my now lukewarm coffee, fluctuating between past and present. I distinctly remembered the month of December, leading up to Christmas, how the Subic Starbucks played the classic tune
I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm to put us in the festive mood. When I glanced out the window, I saw palm trees thriving in the 85-degree weather, and pedestrians walking around in shorts and tee shirts. No amount of Christmas music would produce Irving Berlin's idea of a white Christmas - not in Subic Bay.
It was very different there, and yet familiar at the same time. Glancing up from my reverie, I saw yet another familiar face. His eyes were smiling at me, and he swooped in for a kiss. Carrying on the tradition, John was meeting me for coffee.
In the words of Shirley Brice Heath, renowned ethnographic researcher and professor of linguistics and English at Stanford University, a literacy event is "any occasion in which a piece of writing is integral to the nature of the participants' interactions and their interpretive processes" (371). In this short story, I focused on the different ways that writing is integrated into the Irvington Starbucks and contrasted it with another Starbucks located in the Philippines. Both coffee shops display their products on a mounted menu, printed in English text. Due to their international customer base in Subic Bay, Starbucks created a special menu in addition to the one on the wall, a picture grid, for their more diverse clientele. This catered to their unique blend of literacies and helped the bilingual baristas to better serve their customers.
The Filipinos and the international tourists in Subic Bay were literate, upper class individuals, and many of them were literate in more than one language, at least to some degree. And for those who were less literate in English, a visual form of literacy was invented to convey meaning. Heath observed, "The information to be gained from any prolonged look at oral and written uses of language through literacy events may enable us to accept the protean shapes of oral and literate traditions and language, and move us away from current tendencies to classify communities as being at one or another point along a hypothetical continuum which has no social reality" (391).
The literacies witnessed in the Irvington coffee shop were oral, written, technological, and in the case of the Bible study, the participants negotiated meaning from the written texts. I noted how most of the customers preferred to access the newspaper online rather than reading the tangible papers located on the rack in the corner. Linguist Dennis Baron predicted this growing trend - a preference for digital pixels over paper and ink - in his essay "From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literacy Technologies." Back in 1999, when his essay was published, Baron observed, "Futurologists write books predicting that computers will replace books. Newspapers rush to hook online subscribers. The
New York Times will download the Sunday crossword puzzle, time me as I fill in the answers from my keyboard, even score my results. They'll worry later about how to get me to pay for this service" (423). He noted how electronic texts were less credible than conventional print, and stated that: "In order to gain acceptance, a new literacy technology must also develop a means of authenticating itself" (Baron 429).
The events described in this composition are true, though I broke up the sequential order to improve the flow of the narrative. I played the part of the observer while jotting down my field notes in the Irvington Starbucks. The alluded to memories of Subic Bay and Olongapo are also true, as my husband John and I were residents there for nine months. We frequented the Starbucks, and the excerpts included in the short story were taken from actual events.
Literacies are all around us, and as Baron stated, "we live in an environment that is increasingly surrounded by text" (439). The nature of literacy is ever shifting, but the underlying meaning is the same. Our interaction with text shapes our understanding of meaning, and our understanding of meaning shapes our world.
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Works Cited
Baron, Dennis. "From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literacy Technologies." Wardle and Downs
423-440.
Heath, Shirley Brice. "Protean Shapes in Literacy Events: Ever-Shifting Oral and Literate
Traditions."Wardle and Downs 368-393.
Wardle, Elizabeth and Doug Downs. Writing About Writing: A College Reader. Bedford: St.
Martin's, 2011. Print.
You were the one who taught me how to read my first words, opening the gateway into other worlds for me to explore. You fostered my love of books, teaching me how to read well. You also taught me how to persevere, to never give up, even when things get hard. I learned that life is not always easy, but Christ is our anchor when the storms get rough. Thank you for showing me how to honor my husband, by giving me such a wunnerful example, for you live out your love and commitment. You have always supported me, and you under gird me even now. You taught me how to be hospitable, and that hosting and generosity are practical outpourings of our love for people. We are never too old to chase after fireflies, and gardening is good for the soul, teaching us to hope in tomorrow. Coffee and afternoon tea are good for what ails you, and wisdom comes with age. You are surrounded by love, and I love you ever so muchly, my dear, bibliophile mother.
