Glass, Paper, Beans: Revelations on the Nature and Value of Ordinary Things - Softcover

Traces the origins, manufacturing processes, and world connection associated with three everyday objects--a glass, a newspaper, and coffee--and considers their geographical and personal values. Tour.

time, we knew the origins of things: what piece of earth the potato on our dinner plate came from, which well our water was dipped from, who cobbled our shoes, and whose cow provided the leather.  In many parts of the world, that information is still readily available.  But in our society, even as technology makes certain kinds of information more accessible than ever, other connections are irrevocably lost.  In Glass, Paper, Beans, Leah Cohen traces three simple commodities on their geographic and semantic journey from her rickety table in the Someday CafÚ to their various points of origin.  And through the intimate portraits of three everyday workers--Ruth Lamp, a night-shift supervisor at the Anchor Hocking glass factory in Ohio; Brent Boyd, a third-generation lumberjack from Plumweseep, Canada; and Basilio Salinas, a man who tends the coffee trees at Pluma Hidalgo, Mexico--a whole new world of connections and values are realized as Cohen, O