ABSTRACT
The three conversations I have reconstructed here recapitulate my induction into a world of coffee drinkers in late millennium America. I have used examples developed out of my own present coffee habit because they are fresh in my mind. A lifetime tea drinker finds it difficult in the US to locate a real cup of tea in public venues and so one strategy which I have adopted, now that somewhat improved varieties of coffees are more widely available, is to have coffee when I am out in the world and reserve my tea drinking for my life at home. Having lived in Asia for most of the last decade and in a small town in Alaska for the decade before that, when I returned to the US I found that an almost tropical variety and abundance of coffee was now available in most large cities but that I did not know any of the practices linked with this new coffee society.
