“No matter how thin a pancake is, it does have two sides,” is advice that television psychologists Dr. Phil McGraw often dispenses to the troubled individuals who appear on his show in an effort to resolve their problems. And at a recent midmorning breakfast at Granny’s Kitchen Edmond resident Dr. Salih Al Shorepy, who was celebrating his passing of his test for US citizenship at the USCIS office on SW 44th in South Oklahoma City, saw fit to comment on the surprising thickness of the pancakes that that his guest had received from their smiling waitress. Al Shorepy, who is a native of the Arab state of Yemen and speaks impeccable English, told of how that he had originally come to the US to study agriculture at OSU in Stillwater, and like many foreign students who studied in hit’s august brick buildings and enjoyed the hospitality and warmth of the people of Payne County, he departed that institution with a love of the natural beauty that is found there and a graduate degree as well as fond memories that would on occasion bring him back there. He subsequently earned a doctorate from Virginia Tech and later returned to the Arab world where he taught at universities in the region and did research that was later published in scholarly journals. He also spoke at gatherings throughout the world on his field of study. Like many dedicated professors, he insists that he learned much more from the students he taught than what they learned from him. After he had obtained his permanent resident status in the US, he returned to Yemen for a time after his mother’s death and was stranded there for a time as a result of the civil war that erupted there as well as the lockdown that followed the coronavirus pandemic that swept through that region. The former academic tells of how he has long been a student of the coffee bean that is said to have been first harvested in Yemen, and tells of how more than ten different varieties of it are produced there, and then individuals who have worked in it’s production can tell by taste where the coffee beans that were used in it’s production came from in that nation. Years ago, the late management theorist Peter Drucker, who was an immigrant from Austria, told a symposium of students on the OSU campus that in the course of their daily lives they encounter numerous successful businesses regardless of where they are, and said that they should realize that the individuals who had founded those businesses had made a courageous decision when they chose to open them. And Salih Al Shorepy made such a decision recently when he founded a business that will soon be dispensing coffee made from the beans of Yemen. He detailed how the first such coffee shop will be located in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and that he is currently visiting possible location there for it. He anticipates eventually opening others and maybe starting a franchise operation that will serve Yemeni coffee throughout the nation that is now his home.
Against the Grain 