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He won the part, only it wasn’t a part it was a role, the persona of a Colombian coffee farmer. Over the next 10 years, Duval would help create one of the most enduring advertising characters in history, Juan Valdez.

I’m not sure I know what this means, that over the last 100 years the average lifespan of a company has shrunk from 67 years to 15 years. But I think I know that the “average” coffee roasting company from “yesteryear” might be interesting to look at.

He would not be surprised to discover that his goats are part of his story but he would be very surprised to find that the berry from the bush would one day become so important that we would need a legend, true or not true or some comical combination of both, as a marker in time and space to which we could point and claim lineage of a sort. Beginnings are so important to us...

Not many of us, especially in the United States, can claim to live on land occupied by our ancestors for thousands of years. Although the Mam were at times forced into slavery by Aztecs (in part, because they were such good farmers, especially of cocoa, which Aztecs used as currency), they had their own kingdom, the capital city being Zaculeu, just outside of the present-day city of Huehuetenango where it is now a tourist destination. Although the Mam language is one of the most commonly spoken among Maya people in Huehuetenango, the region is as linguistically diverse as it is culturally unified.

I want to think this is George Peppard with John Wayne and he’s saying “I agree, and I love it when a plan comes together,” but the movie Trouble Along the Way was made in 1953 and George Peppard was not working as a professional actor until 1956. He did work with John Wayne in How the West was Won in 1962. But who knows. Peppard would have been 25 when this photo was taken and he was an aspiring actor … and it really looks like George Peppard.

Patent drawing of Burns original roaster, December 1864 issue of Scientific American. Image: Internet Archive used under Creative Commons. I don’t know what the chances are, the statistical likelihood, but...

It’s 2014. Your family grows coffee in the highlands of northern Burundi. Your family has been growing coffee for generations because they were forced to grow coffee, long ago, by...

  Separate Ethiopia from coffee, the facts, and the lore, and the country remains one of the most fascinating regions in the world. Ethiopia is home to the oldest evidence...