Origin of a name
We thought of calling our Saturday morning farmers' market pop-up take-out café Grindstone Café. We hesitated... I looked at the logo Peter Stephenson had created with some paint he had on hand, saw the colours of the Italian flag, wondered "what is 'grindstone' in Italian? It made me think of machine, which is la macchina, pronounced MA-kee-na, and both words are from Latin, mac
hine, and ultimately Greek, maykanay. Coffee grinder is macinacaffè, and according to Pete, the grinder is of extreme importance in the making of a good espresso. Then I thought of the expression 'deus ex machina', a kind of miraculous or contrived solution to a problem, first applied to ancient Greek plays, where a god would appear from the clouds and resolve the chaos.
2020 has been quite the chaotic year, and it's not over yet! We need some god to emerge from a device or machine and set things straight, save us from our folly. Or maybe a god from our grinder...deus ex macina.
