The Tea Baroness Abdicates

Yesterday, Trent and I made the difficult decision to close the doors of our café, Cargo & James Tea, Halifax. I imagine that our decision comes as a surprise to some of you, and not at all to others. I also imagine that many of you feel that we should have told you personally, and you’re right, but I hope you’ll forgive us, knowing that we would rather not have to tell the story more than once. However, we are very grateful for all of your support, and we want to thank you for helping us out in so many ways: giving us the start-up money we needed, moving furniture and equipment, putting together a safe and giving us a stereo, coming all the way downtown to buy our tea and coffee and teapots and steepers, setting up our bank accounts and lines of credit, working for us for peanuts, sharing your artwork, your music and your poems, not kicking me out of the PhD program or Trent out of the sector council, handing out our coupons and telling your friends and families to stop by the café, coming by to chat with me at work, listening to us gripe, worry, gush, brag and confide in you, helping us navigate the mysteries of Simply Accounting, and not telling us we’re crazy when we told you we wanted to be business people. Thank you so much.

Although, in the last sixteen months or so, the store has been financially self-sustaining, it has just been too much for us to handle. Until very recently, we had hoped to sell the business, and were in negotiations with potential buyers as late as Friday, but when the last interested party backed out this weekend, we decided that it would not be responsible to incur another month’s expenses and stresses. In addition, we have yet to take home a paycheck or any dividends from the business, and after thirty-three months of working for free—and working some very, very long hours—we are feeling the strain. But while the business itself is kaput, Trent and I will be fine. If things go worse than we think they will, though, does anyone want to buy one very small dog? How about one slightly used Baroness tiara?

Although tea wasn’t quite the financial goldmine we had hoped it would be, we are glad that we made this venture. We learned so much, had so much fun, gained experience in business that we could never have had otherwise, and met so many extraordinary people in the process. We have thoroughly enjoyed the last two and a half years as Tea Baroness and Baron.

We plan to lay low for the next week or so—we haven’t seen all that much of each other lately, and it would be nice to see if we still remember how to sleep in—but we know we’ve neglected a lot of important relationships in the past few months, and we want to get in touch with so many of you very soon.

We are, of course, sad about our decision. We will miss our little tea empire, but we are also relieved and excited to focus on other things.

Coast Best of Food

It's back! The Coast is now accepting votes for Best of Food! Maybe I'm biased, but I think you should keep Cargo & James Tea in mind for Best Tea, Best Cafe, Best Coffee... and don't forget Zoe, Amanda, Elise, Alia, Christine and Britta when it comes to Best Barista!
Thanks for your vote!
http://www.thecoast.ca/halifax/BestofFood2009/Page

A Pretentious, Biased and Uneducated Art Review

To the confession: art makes me feel dumb. I don't really understand the different between a really good painting and a poor one. Like everyone else, I like some paintings, and I don't like others. I have some basic concept of technique and composition, but visual art usually makes me feel like I'm going to be exposed for my plebeian tastes.
Poetry used to make me feel the same way. I was nearly 30 before I finally felt that I "got" poetry. A startling confession for an English PhD candidate, I know. Give me a novel or a short story, a play or an essay and I'm a critical fish in water. But poetry... I'm still getting used to it.
And maybe it's because we're all so used to seeing photos, but my visual arts anxieties are somewhat lessened when I'm looking at a photograph. So I'm pretty excited that this month's Cargo & James exhibit is part of the Photopolis Festival. Until the end of October, we will be showing Scott Blackburn's Religious Views by a Non-Religious Person. And you know what? I look at his photos and I think, "I get it..."
And so right now, I'm going to offer a critical review of some of his paintings. Don't judge me if I get it wrong.
My favourite photo is of a Madonna statue from a church in Church Point, NS. The statue is remarkably lifelike, and her eyes are turned to heaven, only Scott has managed to capture her gaze from a downward perspective. As you look at the photo, you feel an uncomfortable sense of voyeurism--like you have somehow got between her gaze and God. In addition, the statue, and its gaze in particular, is uncannily lifelike--I continually forget that I'm looking at a photo of a statue. It's both beautiful and usettling.
Scoot has also taken a composite photo of a church that is falling into ruin; the amazing thing about this photo is that the images suggests iconic heaven-and-hell imagery: beams of sunlight falling through the ruined roof, and darkness showing through the broken floorboards.
Other images expose the often decaying pageantry of religious imagery: beautiful statues feature cracks and faults, and the guilding on haloes is tarnished and rusted.
Okay. I'll stop being so bloody pretentious now. You can trust me when I tell you that tese are beautiful and haunting pictures, or you can come to Cargo & james to see them yourself, and then tell me how utterly wrong I am about them.

I Want Your Brains! BraaAAAAAIIIIIIiinnsssss!

Here's the skinny: Trent had a brain child this spring, and now we're trying to get it working. Buckley's Music is donating a guitar to our store. We're going to hang it on the wall next to a donations box and invite customers to play it... for a small donation. Then we're going to match those donations, and the money will go to providing music lessons for kids whose families can't afford to pay for them on their own; the YWCA is going to help us select program participants. All is going well, except we can't think of a clever name for the program. "Music for Youth" is just so prosaic. Little help?

I'm on TV!

...but am I that prissy in real life?!

Halifax Living

It's Not Really Sexism if You're a Woman.

You know what I DON'T like? UFC. You know--cage fighting, mixed martial arts, ultimate fighting, call it what you will. Two 'roided-up guys with cauliflower ears grappling on the ground, trying to make each other pass out or tap out or whatever. And don't tell me I have to give it a chance before I decide. I gave it two chances--watched two PPV events. Both times, I felt mildly nauseated and very bored. I think it's a big masculinist display of brute force and it's dumb.
It's not that I'm against violence in sports. I think boxing is stupid (we all saw Rocky IV and itwas no surprise that Stallone--er, Rocky was brain damaged), but I do like hockey fights (in a hockey game, not just staged for the hell of it). Of course, I like hockey fights because they're funny. Guys with that much padding are NOT going to hurt each other. They might as well just have a pillow fight. (Or not, because my mom says that's a good way to lose an eye.) Okay, maybe I am a little against violence in sports.
I've discovered that I have an exception: women's mixed martial arts. My friend Tannaya (yes, green drinks Tannaya) is an Ultimate Fighter. And I think that is so cool that I want Cargo & James Halifax to sponsor her next fight! How awesome would that be? I mean, tea is healthy, and mixed martial arts is a sport and sports are healthy, right? Right?
Trent, of course, is mildly perturbed by what he sees as sexism on my part. After all, if I hate watching men kick the crap out of each other, that should go for women, too, right?
Wrong. Here's why: when men do stupid things like Ultimate Fighting, I'm pretty sure it's meant to be a display of masculine prowess: "look at what the male body can do!" Or "See? I'm a man. I'll prove it by kicking some other guy's ass and emasculating him in front of a huge crowd and some TV cameras." But when women do it, they're picking at the very masculinist posturing that's behind these macho displays. Suddenly, it's all, "look at what the human body can do!" Because women are meant to be excluded from these displays of physical prowess. Or we're just supposed to watch and be impressed by them or something. Kicking some other woman's ass is an act of feminism, see?
Or maybe I'm just justifying because I think Tannaya is so cool and I want to go and watch her kick some other woman's ass.

From Sanguine to Bilious in Three Days Flat

You guys don't know how excited I will be when our teahouse is finally open for business. Either that, or I'll already be locked away in a mental ward. I know that construction never goes exactly as planned, but I can't help but feel that we've had a particularly rough week. First, our power meter, which was supposed to be installed last Monday, still isn't in, so we have no electricity. Then on Friday, when the Eastlink guy showed up to hook up our phone and data connections, the workmen on site sent him away because they didn't know where the cables are, and we haven't been able to reschedule. And last week, the truck carrying all our millwork (counters, shelves, tabletops) was in a traffic accident and most of it was destroyed. And, although they rebuilt a lot of it, our shelves were apparently destroyed again in last night's storm. Also, our cash register and espresso grinder are both missing in transit. I am so, so tired.
Also, I have to finish my marking today.

Teastuff in our Garage:

A printer-fax, a loveseat, twelve dining chairs, four bar stools, an easy chair, an ottoman, three coffee tables, two mini-fridges, a commercial dishwasher, a toaster, a panini grill, eighteen plates, twelve bowls, twenty-four saucers, thirty-four mugs of various sizes, thirty-six spoons, twelve butter knives, twelve forks, twelve dishrags, twelve towels, three milk jugs and a microwave.
On its way to our garage: another loveseat, a couch, a full-size fridge, two more easy chairs, and an upright freezer.

I can't wait to rent us that cube van!

Tea Update

Dear diary,
Today I was pompous and my sister was crazy...
(Sorry. Couldn't resist beginning with my favourite Firefly quote.)

Dear diary,
Yesterday I was pompous and crazy. And then Trent and I spent a shitload of money on furniture that strangers will sit on. We got a real (but cheap) brown leather couch from the Brick, and two pleather loveseats, a pleather ottoman and twelve pleather dining chairs from Wicker Emporium. Our teahouse will be spill-proof! Our cabinetmaker is building tabletops for four used table stands that our equipment saleswomen found us, and our garage is now full: two mini-fridges, a commercial dishwasher, toaster, panini grill, eighteen plates, twelve bowls, twenty-four saucers, thirty-four mugs of various sizes, thirty-six spoons, twelve butter knives, twelve forks, twelve dishrags, twelve towels, three milk jugs and a microwave. Our full-size fridge and stand-up freezer just arrived at the brick warehouse, and we are still waiting for some of our furniture. Hopefully, the espresso machine, four-foot refrigerated showcase, slush machine and coffee grinders will be delivered right to the shop!

Hana (my pickpup truck; keep up, guys!) was looking a little worried until I told her not to worry: Trent and I are going to have to rent a cube van next week or the week after to get all this stuff to the teahouse. Cause we're not serving tea out of our garage.

Yay! a cube van!