Tea in Newspaper Headlines

Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes, 24 seconds

In this digital age, countless people have never experienced the joy of reading a print copy of a magazine or newspaper.

Most major publications’ websites follow their print editions’ familiar formats and fonts to safeguard prestigious identity. They also provide robust search capabilities, enabling visitors to retrieve meaningful data.

An article titled Care for a Cup of Satanic Chamomile? appeared in the New York Times on Sunday, September 27, 2020. Its online version was published two days earlier, on September 25, and was updated on September 28. Interestingly, using “September 27 2020” and “tea” as keys, the online search mechanism fails to locate the post.

Without a hard-copy subscription, I would never have read the article, regardless of how many times the headline was pushed to me via social media. With the hard copy, I chose to read the article mainly because a few months earlier I watched the eye-opening 2019 documentary Hail Satan?, which introduced me to The Satanic Temple and its enlightening Seven Fundamental Tenets.

This New York Times article tags Craft Tea vinyl-centric. I find it more feline-oriented. Purple being my favorite color, the cute purple typewriter featured in The Ghostwriter’s artwork caught my attention. I ended up ordering Heavy Thinker, Taiwan oolong-blended with roasted cacao nibs, holy basil leaf, and—last but not least—gotu kola leaf – also known as centella asiatica and a skincare ingredient. Unlike some blends possibly targeting chocolate lovers and tea novices, the flavor of cacao nibs does not overwhelm oolong – the exact reason I give Heavy Thinker a favorable review!

Shopping teas alongside pop art was fun but more time-consuming. While I like the rainbow in Heavy Thinker’s artwork, the meditating elephant reminds me of my month-long stay in India, during which I did not purchase one single Ganesha souvenir. How many potential customers left without ordering a tea because they could not love the art? Hopefully zero.

Tea in Newspaper Headlines - Heavy thinker tea

Tea in Newspaper Headlines - Brutaliteas packages

Another online shop I visited after reading the article is Brutaliteas. The second brew of Karamel Popkorn tastes so much like grass jelly – a popular bubble tea topping. Amusingly, none of the ingredients (black tea, red rooibos, natural caramel flavor, air-popped popcorn) exudes the flavor of grass jelly, produced from the plant Chinese mesona. My review of Brutaliteas’ teas resonates the comments left by others: I had not tasted a tea like this, yet enjoyed it.

After succumbing to information overload, I first terminated my subscription of the New Yorker magazine. In 2020, a month after I cancelled the Los Angeles Times, a surprise gift subscription of the New York Times started arriving. It saved me the trouble of waiting in line at the newsstand on November 8, 2020.