Keurig Coffee and the Decline and Fall of the American Republic

          "Let's go in the kitchen.  I'll put a pot of coffee on and we can talk."

          All through my part of the twentieth century words like that were part of my life.  When I was a kid, my parents percolated their coffee, the boiling bubbles popping up to the glass top for a few minutes before it was finished brewing.  My wife's family used a drip pot that took several cups of boiling water and let it slowly drip through the fresh-ground coffee beans into the pot below.  Later still the electric drip coffee pot took the place of the real thing (like the way electric typewriters replaced the manuals), and I was unhappy about that too, but at least we still went into the kitchen and put a pot of coffee on.

          Now, however, we have the Keurig Single Cup Brewing System.  My wife and I held out until yesterday, and now the new coffee maker sits on our kitchen counter.  It just doesn't have the neighborliness associated with putting a pot of coffee on, damn it all to hell, and I'm dead certain this is yet another step toward the end of civilization as we know it, or at least as I know it.  Sad.

           I wish our new Keurig coffee didn't taste so good.  It ruins all my self-righteousness.