"It is a mark of insincerity of purpose to spend one's time in looking for the sacred Emperor in the low-class tea shops." - Ernest Bramah - The Wallet of Kai Lung
I had drunk tea for forty years, enjoying every sip of every type imaginable, but when the movement founded by liars, funded by billionaires seeking backing from the vulnerable angry American People, I suddenly lost my taste for tea.
While watching a morning news program showing clips of Sarah Palin and the so called " Tea Party Express" I suddenly started choking on my breakfast tea. How could this nasty woman be associated with tea? Her lies about 'death panel' provisions of the health care bill frightened everyone of us over 60 until some of us took the time to learn the truth. She's made millions as a "tea party" icon but no one seems to notice, or care too much. She is like fingernails on a blackboard, she is like the girl bully in middle school that my neice complains about. Nasty, nasty, nasty.
She besmerched the good name of tea to the point where the beverage tasted like poison to me every time I tried to drink it. It was like she placed some kind of curse on tea. So bitter. I was heart broken to give up my wonderful tea drinking habit and turn to coffee or soda instead. No matter how many times I tried to drink it after that fateful morning, I always spit it out.
Then one day, it occurred to me, if Sarah Palin had made me hate tea, then perhaps someone with real power, someone with integrity and true purpose for bettering the condition of the American people could make me love it again. Eleanor Roosevelt. Only she could break the curse on tea that Sarah Palin and her like had wrought.
Eleanor's tea drinking habits were well known in her day. At her home in Hyde Park, New York, she had held real tea parties with everyone from world leaders to hobos off the street. I just knew I needed to make a pilgrimage to her home in Hyde Park, New York to break the tea curse that sent me into gagging fits everytime I even smelled a pot brewing.
As soon as I stepped out of the car into the peaceful atmosphere of Mrs. Roosevelt's home at Valkill, I knew I had been right. There was a positive vibe in the air, a spirit of goodness. Eleanor had been a true champion of human rights, gracious, giving and self-less.
I bought some tea and a little blue teapot in the little giftshop at Valkill. I took it home, brewed it and drank it down, with each sip my taste buds revived and tea was once again my favorite beverage. Thank you, Eleanor, for reassociating tea with strength and courage and goodness.
"When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it."
- Eleanor Roosevelt
