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Joe, Mike and the best advice in the Galaxy*

December 26, 2019
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*Galaxy Grind, 12402 E. Saltese Road

On Wednesdays, Mike and Joe confront Earth’s cosmic challenges at a Galaxy Grind not very far, far away.

What’s wrong, Chewbacca? Not able to make that jump to hyperbole? Fine. Here’s how Mike puts it: “We meet for coffee and cream cheese cinnamon rolls and try to solve the world’s problems.” (The coffee shop is walking distance from Mike’s house, though, so there’s that.)

While the pair may not be going head to head with the Galactic Empire, from the moment I learned about their weekly coffees, I was angling for an invite.

Mike Vlahovich, 75, and Joe Connor, 71, are longtime friends and Spokane legends in their own right. Mike spent more than five decades covering local sports (the first half when his father, John, owned the Spokane Valley Herald), and he is a member of the Inland Northwest Sports Hall of Fame’s Scroll of Honor. Joe spent decades running a successful independent insurance agency in Spokane. A Gonzaga graduate, he is a season ticket holder for men’s basketball games. (The same day I crashed their coffee get-together, they reconvened in the evening with their wives to watch Gonzaga dismantle North Carolina at the Kennel.)

For two hours, we talked politics, life lessons and why Joe believes this year’s Zags are better than last year’s version — a sentiment he’s held since before the season began. I still can’t fathom that last point, but much of what we discussed is still inspiring me these days later. So while the best advice in the Galaxy (Grind) should include trying the cinnamon rolls, here are four even more important gems I hope to carry with me into 2020, courtesy of a conversation with my own version of Obi-Wan and Yoda.

  • Joe Connor, left, and Mike Vlahovich meet weekly at Galaxy Grind in Spokane Valley.

The love of money is the root of all kinds of … generosity?

Joe lists many reasons that drove him to a career as an independent insurance agent, but two are particularly to the point: 1. “I don’t like working for people.” 2. “I like money.”

The former reflects the values of many entrepreneurs who want to reap the rewards (and/or any other related consequences) of their own efforts. The money thing, though? Joe and Mike are lifelong Catholics. I’ve spent most of my life in nondenominational Protestant churches. Some version of 1 Timothy 6:10 rings familiar: “The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.”

“People don’t understand how money is; people think it gives them power and stuff like that,” Joe explained. “I don’t see it that way. It’s like you are a steward, and you have to go back in and help other people out. … It’s the opportunity to help people.”

(Money) is the opportunity to help people.

Joe Connor

As with most things, it’s the misuse and abuse of money that is the problem. You have to avoid the grip of greed.

“Like my dad used to say, ‘You can’t spend your way to prosperity,’” Mike said.

You can, however, give your way into a prosperity of a whole different kind.

Be yourself – the ‘yourself’ that has a plan

Whenever Joe encounters a young person — from neighbors and friends to the stranger taking his restaurant order — he invariably turns the topic to education and asks, “Where are you going to college?”

“You don’t ask a kid, ‘Are you going to college?’ You ask, ‘Where are you going to college?’” Joe smiled. “Assume the sale.”

He explains it’s a process of leading them through questions to embrace a direction for themselves.

“Have a plan,” Joe said. “I think that’s really, really important. The questions that I ask are all intended to … try to get them to think for themselves. What are you going to do? Open ended questions like that help them become the best that they can be.”

It doesn’t have to be a four-year business degree from Gonzaga, it just has to be a plan that honors – and maximizes — one’s own God-given abilities, Joe and Mike explained.

“Everybody is successful if they do the best they can with what they have been given,” Mike said.

A value system serves as a great compass

Before Mike had even declared his major in journalism at Washington State University, he was surprised to be offered the job as sports editor of the Daily Evergreen. Little did he know, another tempting offer was right around the corner from legendary basketball coach Jud Heathcote, who Mike knew from West Valley High School.

“Jud Heathcote calls up and says, ‘Do you want to be the manager on the Cougar basketball team,’” Mike recalled. “It was like the next day after I had committed to (The Daily Evergreen), but I was already committed so I went that way.”

Not only did Mike not seem to regret the choice he made, he talks about the episode with an aura of unblinking clarity: Reneging on his first commitment was never even an option.

“The lesson here is something that’s really important to us, I think: You’ve given your word,” Joe added. “There are times when you’ve given your word and you see, ‘Oh, I think I might have made a mistake.’ You still have to go through with it, and that’s a value system.”

Both Mike and Joe credit family and their Catholic upbringing with instilling the type of value system that serves as an anchor for life, for success and – you knew it was coming back to this – for Gonzaga basketball.

That’s right, Joe is convinced the success of Gonzaga basketball is rooted deep within the Jesuit tradition. He would know. He played for legendary Gonzaga coach Dan Fitzgerald in eighth grade while attending a private Catholic school in San Francisco. Joe also played on the Gonzaga freshman basketball team in 1966. As much as he loves Coach Fitzgerald (who would end up at Gonzaga much later), he believes the enduring success at Gonzaga is more about the school’s Jesuit values than the various GU personalities with accomplished resumes.

“The value systems they had back then are the same value systems they have now,” Joe said. “(The university) has grown and expanded, but the value systems haven’t changed. … We have a core that’s consistent that does not change year after year after year. … That’s why GU is doing so well.”

Don’t shine the spotlight on yourself

Mike spent five decades as a prep sportswriter in the same community. While many sportswriters may dream of working the sideline of a Super Bowl, Mike has found greater fulfillment in celebrating his neighbors. He has spent the equivalent of years of his life at local high schools — walking hallways, visiting practices and pacing sidelines with a notebook in hand. Many area scrapbooks are filled with stories and photos with Mike’s byline, and he is always ready with a story of the joy he has found in celebrating the accomplishments of other people.  

It wasn’t just his job; Mike found ways to encourage others through the years through coaching youth sports and volunteering with schools, a passion Joe shared as well. Both Mike and Joe believe strongly in mentorship (it’s probably why they let me tag along on this particular Wednesday). They are consistently on the lookout for opportunities. In fact, Mike begins a new mentor relationship in January, when he will weekly share lunch with an Opportunity Elementary School student through the PrimeTime Mentoring program. It’s an apt setting, across the street from the first home he purchased in the Valley decades ago.

Maybe this is what Mike really meant by “solving the world’s problems.” It’s not as much about making a political point over coffee; it’s about investing in another person, one at a time.

Coffee Notes

Mike and Joe order the same thing at Galaxy Grind every time they meet: cinnamon rolls and mochas, though Joe takes his hot while Mike likes his iced (even in December). The two regulars have become part of the fabric of the local Valley business, where they know the staff by name and are on the Christmas card list.

  • Thanks to Joe and Mike for allowing a third wheel at their weekly coffee visit.
    The community is better for presence of men (and mentors) like these two.
    — Josh Johnson (soccer jersey: Celtic FC)

While you’re here, would you do me a favor?

If you enjoy articles like this one, join the CoffeeJosh mailing list. It’s hurry-free, spam-free and also free … free. As a thanks, I’ll send you a PDF — you guessed it, free — that has 10 of the best coffee shop orders in the Spokane area. (All 10 are drinks and treats local coffee shop owners make for themselves. In this case, expect to pay for your order and feel like it was totally worth it.)

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Three questions to ask your coffee

January 9, 2020
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Insight from Gonzaga’s ‘Coffee Professor’

Professor Stacy Taninchev would love to talk to you about your cup of coffee. No, not about latte art or that crazy-amazing cappuccino that made your week — though as a former Liberty Lake coffee shop owner she would be all ears.  

  • Professor Stacy Taninchev

Rather, Taninchev has a penchant for getting her Gonzaga University students to percolate on a favorite topic until they glean insights into themselves and the world they live in. Example: The class she teaches based upon “The Hunger Games” that provokes discussion about authoritarian regimes, basic human rights and the values of democracy.

Love coffee? Enroll in her first-year seminar class, “POLS 193: Brewing Justice: The Global Coffee Trade.”

But in case you don’t get around to it, here are three questions to ask your next cup of coffee, inspired by a conversation with Taninchev at Arctos Coffee and Roasting Co., just down the street from the GU campus.

Question 1: Where are you from?

One of the assignments in the “Brewing Justice” class is a coffee shop interview. Students head to Spokane-area shops with inquiries exploring the origins of the coffee served at each establishment.

Some baristas are clueless, while an increasing number can trace every step a bean took since departing its original home growing region — some even able to name the farm it was grown on.

Taninchev then teaches her students to research and ask questions about the place this coffee originated from, such as:

  • Was it grown in an area where farming practices are leading to deforestation? Shade-grown coffee plants typically produce a greater yield, but the greater density and conveniences created when canopies of trees are cleared out of the way makes sun-drenched planting a common practice in once-forested regions of the world.
  • What about the wildlife that call these farms home? The Smithsonian’s National Zoo & Conservation Biology Institute actually runs a “Bird Friendly” certification process for coffee growers. Sun-drenched coffee farms that have been carved clean from forests remain hospitable to 61 bird species in Peru, according to Smithsonian researchers. By comparison, “partial shade” farms support 79 species. Natural, shade-grown farms, with layers of canopies reaching as high as 35 meters? A whopping 243 species of birds can be supported there.  
  • What about the coffee region’s political environment? Many of the best coffee-growing regions in the world are formerly colonized countries that have faced a long series of challenges. Taninchev encourages her students to learn about these places. What is the history of coffee growing in the country? Was there oppression of indigenous peoples or other coffee growers/laborers? How have government regulations affected them? How has the global trade regime affected them?

“We start with the cup of coffee we drink, but my goal as an international relations and political science professor is to get these students to understand … the interconnections between us and the rest of the world and how we affect each other,” Taninchev said.

Question 2: Who brought you here?

If your coffee could tell you about the human hands it has passed through, the stories may read like a novel. Indeed, Taninchev’s students do read a novel. “The Taste of Many Mountains” was written by economics professor Bruce Wydick in part to illustrate the human impact of coffee’s journey from peasant Guatemalan growers to a U.S. cup.

“I do want them to think about the farmer behind the cup when they think about whether they want to pay 25 cents more for a cup of coffee at a place that has organic Fair Trade coffee,” Taninchev said. “But what’s more important than paying more for the coffee and understanding certifications is helping people. … It’s to empathize with people in other places and to understand their history and political system and how it affects people’s everyday lives.”

She referenced a June 2019 Washington Post article detailing the plight of Guatemalan coffee farmers who are abandoning their farms to migrate to the United States. Why? External factors have pushed the price of coffee down sharply the past two years, leaving Guatemalan farmers unable to cover costs — even fair-trade and premium growers who are guaranteed a minimum price per pound are nowhere close to breaking even.

Taninchev teaches her students to ask questions about the real human beings behind the coffee we drink. Is there a way to help them receive better education? Are the leaders of coffee-originating countries as well as coffee-consuming countries treating the farmers humanely? Should “economic migrants” fleeing poverty and starvation be treated differently from refugees fleeing persecution and violence?

“The most important thing is I want people to understand and empathize with people in other countries,” Taninchev said.

The most important thing is I want people to understand and empathize with people in other countries.

Gonzaga Professor Stacy Taninchev

Question 3: How are you going to make me a better human?

Taninchev is often asked about the best certification to look for “to get the most money back to the growers.”

Before addressing the question of certifications, she emphasizes that helping those growers receive an education is more important than giving them a slightly higher price for their coffee.

“The certifications bring them a little more income, but access to education will bring them opportunities to get out of coffee growing and pursue other careers as well as the ability to hold their government responsible for injustices,” she said. “Knowledge is power.”

That said, she encourages U.S. consumers to learn about endorsements such as Fair Trade, Rainforest Alliance, Bird Friendly or certified organic. Single origin relationships are becoming more common in specialty coffee shops, a trend Taninchev added could be ideal if third-party oversights are also involved to keep one or both of the parties in these direct trade relationships from “saying whatever they want.”

“For me, being a responsible consumer is one part of the equation,” Taninchev explained, “but it’s much more important to understand your connection in the global order, how not only your consumption patterns but also your political choices affect other people and affect us.”

Through her “Brewing Justice” class, Taninchev and her students have the unique opportunity to study this connection firsthand. In 2017, she traveled to Colombia to study the coffee industry.

But education is available closer to home, indeed as close as your favorite cup of coffee. Sit down with it, breathe deeply of that invigorating aroma — and ask your coffee some questions.

Stacy Taninchev, Ph.D, is associate professor and chair of the political science department at Gonzaga University. She lives in Liberty Lake with her husband, Bobby, an executive chef who specializes in Mediterranean-inspired food. The Taninchevs own Bobby’s Café & Catering and previously owned Twisp Café & Coffee House, both based in Liberty Lake.

Coffee Notes

Arctos Coffee and Roasting Co. is one of my go-to coffee spots in Spokane, and so I suggested it to Stacy for this interview given its proximity to Gonzaga. I tried the maple and oat milk-infused Logan Latte (pictured above). Yes, please. Stacy said she has enjoyed Arctos lattes, but on this day she sipped on the brewed coffee made from beans roasted in-house.

  • I first met Stacy and her husband, Bobby, when they owned Twisp Cafe & Coffee House in Liberty Lake, and I’ve been fans ever since. Stacy, thanks for allowing me to “sample” your coffee class and share your insights!
    — Josh Johnson (soccer jersey: Uganda national team)

While you’re here, would you do me a favor?

If you enjoy articles like this one, join the CoffeeJosh mailing list. It’s hurry-free, spam-free and also free … free. As a thanks, I’ll send you a PDF — you guessed it, free — that has 10 of the best coffee shop orders in the Spokane area. (All 10 are drinks and treats local coffee shop owners make for themselves. In this case, expect to pay for your order and feel like it was totally worth it.)

A ‘lost pause’? CVHS counselor is proactive about screens

January 23, 2020
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Kara Twining remembers the day everything changed in her work as a high school counselor.

It wasn’t connected to her first cyberbullying case or an embarrassing viral video. Those were still to come. Instead, it revolved around a routine change in a student’s class schedule.

It was 2008, and she was working at Post Falls High School. Twining shared options with the student and then sent her on her way to “talk to your parents and come back tomorrow and tell me what you want.”

Five minutes later, Twining’s phone rang. It was the parents. Telling her what they wanted.

“Today, we go, ‘well, yeah,’” Kara said of the quick relay of information and decision. “But back then, it was weird.”

This lightning connection didn’t take long to catch on, fueled mostly by the convenience of cell phones and quick-fire emails. Almost as instantaneous was Twining’s realization that whatever was gained in efficiency had a corresponding loss.

“We have lost our pause,” she said. “We have lost the time to think, the time to have a conversation, the time to get over emotions.”

“We have lost our pause. We have lost the time to think, the time to have a conversation, the time to get over emotions.”

Kara Twining

As we visit, a Central Valley student approaches the glass wall to Twining’s office. After a few years at University High School, she currently works with CV sophomores and seniors, last names H-O.

He mouths a message to Twining through the window. I offer to take a break from the interview, but the need isn’t urgent. Twining explains that in this case, it won’t hurt him to wait.

“There’s an anxiety toward getting stuff done and answered immediately,” she said, explaining that despite a caseload of 385 students, students and parents often expect her to respond to requests in real time. “Everything has to be so instant. If they turn in a note, and I haven’t called them down that day, they are super confused.”

Society has become fond of calling this type of behavior “entitlement.”

“That’s a big word adults are using on kids,” Twining said. “I just think it goes back to the instant, on-demand lifestyle that they live.”

She added that it’s unfair to tag this as an 18-and-under issue. Parents commonly make a reactionary call or text moments after their student encounters an issue.

“There’s no pause,” Twining said. “There’s no, ‘Let’s talk about it at dinner’ or, ‘I’ll see if I can connect with Mrs. Twining tomorrow. Let’s sleep on it.’

“I mean, no one does that anymore. And I feel like that set us up for the Armageddon of social media that was coming at us.”

Aww, social media. If cell phones and email kicked “pause” out of the house, social media locked and barred the doors. Twining not only knows the research, she has seen it file in and out of her office for the past decade: the marked increase in depression and anxiety since 2011; the 2017 CNN study about how teens no longer differentiate between their online and offline lives; the billions of dollars companies spend to keep your face lit by a glowing screen.

A decade ago, the issue was virtually unexplored. It’s hard to draw the map before you enter the frontier.

“There was no way to know what this would do to our privacy, what this would do to our hearts,” Twining said.

So Twining and her peers have been responding in real time, identifying and sharing best practices as they go. The education of both students and parents has become a priority. From podcasts to parent meetings, she talks about social media whenever she gets the chance. In the past year, she has helped organize a handful of local screenings of “Like,” a documentary that asks, “Are you using technology or is technology using you?”

It’s a question Twining said parents should first address to themselves.

“We have the same addiction to the validation that the kids do, and to say that we don’t is ridiculous,” she said. “We look at who likes our pictures.”

While parenting through social media begins with an honest look in the mirror, it certainly doesn’t end there. When her son asked her why YouTube comments were blocked on the Minecraft video he was watching, Twining taught him how commenters often leave deceiving links that are gateways to pornography or other predatory corners of the web. Then, she offered to turn the filter off long enough to read the comments together before turning it back on.

“Kids need to know why,” Twining said. “Parents operate out of fear, and it’s so much easier to shut it down than talk through it.”

She said that’s one problem with society’s fixation on limiting “screen time.” While time limits are well and good — “you wouldn’t leave your kid at a party for four days; you need to have downtime,” she said — on their own all they teach is the importance of, well, time limits.

Twining prefers a more holistic approach coupling parental controls — “Every device you have has parental controls; even your WiFi has parental controls”— with purposeful education. Teaching opportunities extend from the moment a child picks up their first device to helping them navigate social media, where she encourages parents to constantly be teaching: “We don’t talk to people like this. We don’t like pictures where people are being hurt. We don’t friend people we don’t know. We don’t DM a boy inappropriate pictures.”

“Are we talking about the things that are happening in their social universe and parenting through it?” Twining said. “Our parents didn’t know everything we were doing; we’re not going to know everything they’re doing. But you give them the most tools that you can.”

The end goal is to equip them to make the right decisions on their own. Whether that’s muting an online “friend” who is posting questionable content or learning the value of “pause,” “you have the power to stop seeing those messages,” Twining said.

“The hope is that by the time they get to the ocean (of social media) with all the sharks that they know how to swim or cry for help,” she said. “Hopefully, you raise a child that recognizes the crap and calls it out.”

Coffee Notes

For this conversation, we met in the Central Valley High School counseling office, and so I brought along coffee from Kara’s first-choice drive-through: Crush Coffee Bar, 16923 E. Sprague Ave. She said she first started her Crush habit when she worked at University High School, just down the street from Crush’s first location on 32nd. A coffee purist, she went with an Americano, drinking it black. A coffee experimentalist, I tried something I’ve never had before: the Amaretto Cheesecake, made with white coffee. Definitely a “have to be in the mood” drink, but on this occasion, I was — and it was perfectly executed.

  • My sincere thanks to Kara for helping teens (and parents like me) navigate the uncharted waters of technology.
    — Josh Johnson (soccer jersey: Borussia Dortmund)

While you’re here, would you do me a favor?

If you enjoy articles like this one, join the CoffeeJosh mailing list. It’s hurry-free, spam-free and also free … free. As a thanks, I’ll send you a PDF — you guessed it, free — that has 10 of the best coffee shop orders in the Spokane area. (All 10 are drinks and treats local coffee shop owners make for themselves. In this case, expect to pay for your order and feel like it was totally worth it.)

1 Comment
    Rob Hartman says: Reply
    December 31st 2019, 8:59 am

    Inspiring. Thank you for what you have done and continue to do for our community, Mike and Joe!

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