Fear and Loathing and My iPhone

I suffered a strange techno/physical reaction this morning.  I was in Panera when I realized I didn't have my phone with me.  I suddenly felt a bit naked and a bit troubled.  What would I do if I needed to make a call?  What would happen if someone needed to call me?  Worse, how could I "google"something that I absolutely needed to know?  My goodness!!  Was this the feeling one gets when one needs a valium?  After all, there were no pay phones anywhere to be seen...in the entire county.  I was out of the net, the web. . .I was out of it!!  I calmed myself by seeing Terry across the room and realizing he would loan me his phone if I needed it for an emergency, but would he, if I needed, let me look up the capital of Macao?  Is there such thing as the capitol of Macao?  How would I know without Google?  I talked to Nick and Mary, telling them of my plight in a comic way.  But damn, man, I was serious inside!  Then it came to me.  Wrote a post about this on FB, then use it as a blog entry.  That was it!  By composing in my mind, this piece of fluff as I finished my bagel, I was able to push away the terror of the plight I was in.  Which just goes to show that good can come out of a frightening situation.--Greg Ellstrom

Note to myself:  How is one a bit naked?

More from Panera

I haven’t been blogging for a couple of months.  Sometimes life just gets in the way of things.  Now, I am back to my table at Panera.  Actually, I didn’t leave. Just stopped writing.  For those of you who might care to read, I’m going to try it again for awhile.

Little kids!  I’ve mentioned them in my Panera blogs before.  Everyday, toddlers and pre-school kids come with their moms to hang out at the P.  They’re great, some in particular like little Gio!  This handsome little boy feels that the front area of Panera is his special playground.  He scoots around, often with a very serious expression, to visit with the regulars he has met before or with new acquaintances.  Gio is really a toddler, maybe 18 months old, but so personable.  Recently, he toddled up to Terry, who was eating a scone.  Gio raised his arms to be picked up, and Terry obliged.  For the next several minutes, Terry and Gio shared the scone.  Gio would make a little “some more, please” sound whenever he wanted another bite.  His mom is a very smiley, young woman.  You can understand why she is happy when you watch her little boy joyfully interacting with a room full of mostly senior citizens.

Here’s another observation about little ones and Panera Bakery.  The kids are fascinated by the floor.  It’s tile, probably 12”x12” pieces, and they love bouncing across them.  I get a particular kick out of a little girl who is wearing her rain boots each time I see her.  They’re pink; she must just love them!  She just is overjoyed by galumphing along in her big boots over the tiles.  I’ve noticed also that some kids must still know the rhyme, “step on a crack, you’ll break your mother’s back,” that we always chanted when we were kids.  It’s great to watch them navigating the tiles with out hurting mom’s back.  Of course, some of them stamp right down on the cracks!  This probably occurs on days that Mom has been forced to be a disciplinarian.

It’s time to move away from kids, and over to coffee, but not Panera coffee!  Starbucks on the corner of Genesee Street next to Romano Chrysler Jeep is expanding their shop into their parking lot, where there was already limited parking!  Now parking will be cut by a third.  Why enlarge, when there aren't enough places already?  I have a way for them to deal with this dilemma.  The new casino in Chittenango, short on parking, has made a deal with St. Patrick’s Church, which is down the road a bit.  For what I have heard is a nice fee, the church is allowing casino overflow to use their parking lot when it is not in church use.  They even have a shuttle to transport the gamblers from the church to the casino.  Here’s a chance for a Fayetteville Church to make a few bucks.  Supply the overflow parking for those folks who just must get their Starbucks’ fix.  Of course, this most certainly won’t happen, but pick a church, anyway, and start a fun rumor! Greg Ellstrom

P.S.  Final irony: A catholic church providing parking for a place that includes bingo!

WE HAVE SEEN THE FUTURE AND IT IS. . .

Change is hard!  Everyone says so, and change has come to Panera Bread in the weeks we have been away.  The barista counter, where you could watch your smoothie or latte being made and chat a bit with the maker, has been blocked by a dark wall.  No more eye contact, no more friendly back and forth at this once happy spot.  Two of the four person booths, which seemed to have been pretty constantly in use, have been converted to two person booths to make room for a dark little nook containing a bench and a pile of baby chairs.   This new bench construction is again unfriendly to light.  The message here seems to be that Panera is becoming a darker place.  Finally, the wide and accommodating recycle/waste/silverware/tray bins, have been replaced with a garbage receptacle less than half the size of the original.  And this my friends is what has truly pissed us regulars off!  Why, you ask?

Why?  Because the comfortable trash containers we grew to know and love have been replaced by tables holding what look like miniature ATM’s installed in front of ballpark containers for scooping mustard, relish, and onions.  Now, we are told that in the near future, maybe June, these tables will become order kiosks, where you can step up to the little screen, order your bagel, pay for it, pick up a buzzer, and wait for it to buzz the arrival of your food.  I’m still not sure what the mustard/relish like installations are.  I guess the idea of this is to make it easier to order.  Maybe it will work.  I wonder, though.  The kiosk/table pictured above sits directly to the right of the place where people who wish to order from live people line up.  Another kiosk/table with a little garbage can next to it is directly to the left of the line up area.  Possible result:  kiosk lines bumping into regular order lines from both sides. . . creating Panera Mayhem.

Funny, true story:  On Sunday morning, I was going for coffee and a regular customer, I don’t know his name, but he is the man with the big hat and scarf, plopped his cup and tray down on the order kiosk-to-be.  Trying to be helpful, I said, “They’ve moved the garbage can over there.”  To which with red face the man said to me, “Then they can damn well move this over there, too!”  

I guess that little tale is symbolic of the difficulty of change.  For the Panera regulars, the philosophy would probably be “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!  Maybe the kiosks are necessary to up the bottom line.  So be it.  They won’t disappear.  There’s a large investment in those unpopular facilities.  But the walls blocking the customers from the staff need to go down.  Come on, corporate, let the light back in!  Don’t you realize that a big reason that many of us regulars come to drink from the Panera Dark Roast Grail everyday is that we like the people who work there, and we like to interact with them.  It stinks to say good morning to a wall!--Greg Ellstrom

Panera and the I.R.S.

On Friday morning as I sat in Panera, I thought forward to that afternoon when we were to get our taxes done.  I wasn’t worrying.  Linda keeps copious records, and we have a terrific finance guy who knows all the ins and outs of the tax laws.  Still, tax time is time to think about your finances, and I got thinking about all the money I spend at Panera over the course of our personal fiscal year.  On Friday, I spent $3.62 for my coffee and bagel.  Now that’s a little low for a typical day, so I decided to go with $4.00 as a mean amount.  I don’t go to Panera everyday but I do go often so I decided to opt for 300 days of the year.  At 4 dollars per day for 300 days, I provide Panera with $1200 per year!  Holy $@^$&@$##!  

What if this figure somehow came up in the discussion with our financial guru?  How would I explain such an expenditure of funds?  I could say that Linda never has to buy anything for me for breakfast, which would be true.  But she still has to buy coffee and eggs and bread and the other foodstuffs that could go into my morning meal.  What I needed was a good solid tax dodge to give not only explanation but purpose to my Panera expenses.

My first thought was medical.  I could claim I need caffeine for my health.  Just this week a Blue Ribbon scientific/medical panel declared coffee, in fact 4 cups a day, as wonderful for a person’s physical well being.  Not only that, but another Blue Ribbon scientific/medical panel vowed that their studies proved that high cholesterol isn’t harmful at all.  What a great week for breakfast foods.  I saw in the findings of these two panels as a way to declare Dark Roast coffee and egg and cheese on cibatta bread as medications.  Not just medications, I might add, but PREVENTIVE medications!

Still, I worried.  I was pretty sure that before I could begin to make a case with the IRS, that two new Blue Ribbon panels would announce findings completely to the opposite of the ones I was using.  Also, everyone knows that for a medication to really make it into the pharmacoepia, it has to cause terrible diseases and conditions to other parts of the body, and those diseases and conditions have to be included in any commercial advertising the pharmaceutical.  That way, you can tell your doctor about them when you go see him or her to tell them just exactly what you want them to prescribe.  This would require so much research on my part and probably a lot of fabrication.  What to do?

Then an even better idea came to mind.  Somebody should pay me something for writing this blog, its impetus being my morning visits to Panera.  If I could get someone to pay me a few bucks--and send me a W-2--I could declare my Panera breakfast as business expenses.  This is not impossible.  I published a book online with Amazon this year.  It sold about 20 copies.  And Amazon sent me a W-2 for the miniscule amount I made.  So I have to find a corporate Sugar Daddy to jump on board.  Yes, indeed.  I will make that my goal for the months ahead.

I felt a lot better about my Panera expenditures, then.  But I do worry about using “IRS” in the title of this post.  With all the subtle tracking equipment the IRS employs to search the web, will some agent out there find my financial plans to be subversive to the intent of the tax code.  If so, then listen:  I’M KIDDING!  THIS IS A JOKE!  LOL!  DON”T TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY, O.K.?  Thank you.  I hope IRS is one of those meta expressions.--Greg Ellstrom

Just a little posting as addendum to Stopping by Panera. . .

(This was originally the last paragraph of my weather posting.  I decided not to use it the first time to keep the weather posting positive.  Decided to do it now.)

I hate to close on a down note, but I have to think about how this strange weather the world is having is surely the product of “climate change.”  It scares me.  It scares me because we are doing so little about it.  Instead of taking action, I think the majority of us feel quiet despair about where our world is headed, and then put that despair aside, to go for a ride in our fossil fuel-mobiles to a coffee shop or somewhere else where we can smile and discuss other things.  When I step out into an icy blast, and say to myself, “Man, day after day, this is just too darn cold,” I must remind myself that, yes, it is colder than it’s supposed to be here. . . and hotter than it’s supposed to be other places, and drier than it’s supposed to be somewhere, and wetter than it’s supposed to be someplace.  Then I remind myself that mother nature must think this is the way it is supposed to be now, because, after all, we made it this way.  That’s what we must have wanted.--Greg Ellstrom

Hostess vs. Table Talk--Which Side Would You Be On?

It was Dale and the group of guys at Panera who inspired this entry to my blog.  Early this week they were having a glorious discussion at full volume about the greatness of remembered food, food consumed when we were younger and calories and cholesterol were of no concern.  Foods like Ho-ho’s, Twinkies, Dale’s favorite Table Talk pies in the little boxes, Hostess Cupcakes with the squiggle and the cream inside, Hostess Snowballs with the pink gooey icing and the cream inside, birch beer, french fries with cheese curds on top, and Hostess Pies that looked like empanadas.  The guys also were talking about memories of places like Heid’s and of food customs they recalled.  One guy claimed he had eaten 10 hot dogs in one sitting.  I empathized with one of them who said when he was a kid he never knew what a hamburger roll was.  His family always ate hamburgers tucked between two slices of white bread. (Probably “Wonder.”)

I remember those terrific treats from time gone by.  I still see the Twinkies and the Snowballs on the rack in Byrne Dairy, but I never buy them.  When my friends and I were around 10 years old there were two stores we could bike to buy treats.  The Pennysaver was a great store in the part of Webster called Forest Lawn,  (No relation to the cemetery of the same name), but my favorite store was Unger’s on Bay Road, an easy bike ride away, even though we had to ride on DeWitt Road and avoid the always dangerous Bay Road to get there.  Unger’s wasn’t very big, and it was run by an old couple.  It had all the snack foods, plus it was the place we went during baseball card season to buy packs of Topp’s bubble gum cards for a nickel apiece. We’d open them and pray for a special card.  I remember getting a “Hank Aaron” at Unger’s.  Wish I had it now. The store had a cooler for bottled soft drinks, which we called pop.  My favorite was Orange Crush back when it was the color of lemonade and came in brown bottles with orange letters.

That was a good time for food and drink.  Coke machines that vended 7 oz. bottles for 6 cents, the four-in-one Sky Bar, and those stupid little candy dots that were stuck in long rows to the strips of paper that looked like they belonged in an adding machine.  The worst, I thought were the wax bottles filled with room temperature liquified sugar.  Does anyone else remember Super Cola, a short lived soft drink that came in a metal bottle that looked like the containers they use for engine additives?

I repeat, that was a good time for food and drink.  I imagine everyone’s pasts feature the same kind of memories. Tasty.  And the best pies were definitely the “Table Talk” variety with the little foil pie tins!  That’s what I think anyway, and I know Dale agrees.

Greg Ellstrom

Stopping By Panera on a Frigid Morning

File Photo:  Our Driveway, Winter 2011

This has been said before, but I think it bears repeating.  People who live in Upstate New York are tough when the winter rolls around.  This morning it was negative 4 at our house, and the wind was whipping.  We only have a single car garage, and my car was in the garage, and Linda’s was out in a snowdrift.  Linda had to get to physical therapy so I went out and got her car out of the drift.  It wasn’t fun, but the only things that hurt when I came in were my fingertips.

I got to Panera, and the place was kind of quiet.  Still there were a bunch of people who weren’t about to let sub-zero wind chills prevent them from having their coffee in their usual spot and in their usual chairs.  Plenty of regulars were there:  Dale, Nick, Mary, Vicki, and Al to name a few.   Of course, when you first arrive and see people, the first thing you ask is, “how about this cold?” or some such question.   But then, rather remarkably, the weather stops being a topic.  From where I sat I heard people discussing internships and trips to Cape Cod.  I was involved in two short discussions, one about lacrosse and the other about Yellowstone Park.   People were smiling and apparently happy despite the record cold.  By the way, I checked the temperature in Denali State Park in Alaska today.  It was 41 degrees above zero.  That’s right above zero!  It’s about as cold here as it is anyplace on the habitable parts of the globe.  Maybe it’s the sunshine that keeps people smiling regardless of the shiver.  It has been sunny lately.  When I step outside into the bright sun and into a gust of frigid wind, I imagine that this is what it must be like on a summer day in Antarctica.  Look hard enough, and you can almost always find summer.--Greg Ellstrom

Coffee With Brian Williams (Not On a Helicopter)

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Yesterday morning, I had coffee with Brian Williams at Panera.  We talked about a lot of things, in particular, the fact that Brian had just patented a vaccine that when given to the parents of children who have not been vaccinated will remove all the fallacies and misconceptions in their brains.  We also talked a little about a cat he had saved out in the parking lot.   All right!  Enough of this foolishness!  I never met Brian Williams for coffee.  I’m just taking advantage of this public figure and kicking him when he is down like so many others are.  Shame on me!

Let’s face it, embellishing one’s past isn’t something new.  Remember when one time Syracuse area coach George O’Leary lost his dream job as head coach at Notre Dame when it was discovered that he had fudged the facts on his academic resume.  But come on, don’t we all do things like that?  Don’t we let folks think we’re a little bit more important than we really are?  I remember one time when we were in Virginia Beach or Myrtle Beach or Pismo Beach, or one of those beaches, and I was sitting on a bench enjoying the sun while Linda visited a gift shop or possibly a honky tonk saloon.  A guy sat down next to me.  We started up a conversation.  This.  That.  The other thing.  I told him I was an English instructor, and he asked where?  I was going to say in the Syracuse area. . .” because no one knows where Chittenango is.  Especially someone at Vero Beach.  But he cut me off after the “Syracuse,” saying, ”oh, wow, you instruct English at Syracuse University!  We love Syracuse University basketball.”  Right then, I should have said, “no, wait, I teach high school English in Chittenango.”  But I didn’t.  Shamefully I rode the tide of illicit fame and pretended to be an SU prof.  Then the guy asked me if I knew the Pearl or Marius Janulis, or Mookie Jones, or one of those guys, and I said “no, but Fab Melo was in my class in ‘English As A Barely Acceptable Language.’ ”  The point being here is that I failed to be totally truthful.  And I’m almost half positive that it actually happened like this when we were vacationing at Venice Beach in either California or Italy.  And I think there might have been a helicopter involved, but I can’t swear to it.  Anyway, who are we to judge Brian Williams when we have likewise sinned?!

Some more dirt was dug up on Brian, though.  Highly opinionated columnist Kathleen Parker, or was it Fess Parker, has suggested that Brian Williams was not only having trouble remembering the truth but had become a loose cannon at NBC, apparently with no one to give him a check or a balance.  Makes me wonder if he was the one who got his daughter Allison the Peter Pan gig.  His inability to properly recall his “helicopter incident,” makes me wonder if he misremembered Allison’s youth.  Maybe she didn’t play Peter Pan all the time as a little girl like Brian “remembers.”  Maybe little Allison really wanted to be Penelope Pennywise, the bathroom attendant in URINETOWN, and stood outside one of the families many bathrooms collecting quarters from anyone who wanted to use it.  Or maybe she was of a more classical bent and wanted to play the hunchbacked, hideous title character in a cross-gendered production of Shakespeare’s RICHARD THE THIRD, and went around all day wearing a false hump and frightening herself each time she saw her shadow.  This would explain the lumpy performance she gave as Peter Pan.  It’s her dad’s fault.  Of course, it does nothing to explain the shipwreck that was Christopher Walken.

So, in the end, Brian is on a six-month suspension.  Word is out that during this hiatus, he will be starring in the new musical which sends Pinocchio to the Wicked Land of Oz and is entitled “How Green Was My Nose.”  Previews suggest that the closing song will bring down the house.  Title?  “Defying Honesty.”

Just What It Means if You Were Talking to the Most Obnoxious of the 3 Stooges and Stuttered His Name!

I love words.  I love learning new ones.  I am particularly intrigued by slang words and expressions.  I’m pretty sure that I was the first teacher at Chittenango High School to use the expressions “talk to the hand” and “my bad.”  Becky Wilson and Diane Newman taught them to me during “Little Women” rehearsal.  Last Monday, after the Seahawks dreadful Super Bowl ending, I was talking to a youthful Panera friend about the now infamous “call” and Peter Carroll.  Of Coach Carroll she said, “What a momo!”  It was a new word.  I didn’t know what it meant to be a “momo.  Rather than asking, I decided to do a Google search, and the first word-related place I was taken was the "Urban Dictionary."  There I discovered that “momo” was crass to a startling degree.  If you wanted a profane epithet to fit any occasion, you had found it in that two-lettered four-letter word.  Warning:  I am about to post the URL for the "Urban Dictionary’s" definition of “momo.”  If you are positively put off by profanity, then go no farther.  Do not click on the URL below.  I REPEAT:  DO NOT CLICK ON THE URL BELOW.  Don’t let your curiosity get to you and make you come back later on.  But. . .having been forewarned. . .you simply have to know the nasty mass of meanings for “momo,” then click right here, http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=MOMO.  For my older readers, of which there are many, you now know what it means if your children or grandchildren talk about a “momo,” or, perish the thought, call you one, and you can take proper corrective action.  I don’t plan on using the term. . .probably.--Greg Ellstrom

Thinking About the "Bitchy Resting Face" With Help From Laura Benanti

LAURA BENANTI WITH POSSIBLE "BITCHY RESTING FACE"

A couple of days ago I was listening to the radio and heard an interview with Laura Benanti.  I don’t know how familiar her name is to people, but she’s a successful TV actor who currently has a role in “Nashville, and she’s a Tony-winning Broadway musical star.  She’s pretty amazing.  She’s also hilarious when interviewed.  She was talking about the now famous concept of the “bitchy resting face.”  This concept, brought to fame by a video, suggests that a lot of us suffer from this syndrome.  When our faces are inactive, they settle into an unpleasant frown, which is unintended.  Ms. Benanti was talking about the severity of her personal “BRF.”  She said that one afternoon she was walking into a department store and saw a woman approaching.  Her  immediate reaction was “what a bitch this woman must be!”   Seconds later, she realized she was approaching a mirror.

This morning Panera was pretty crowded.  Lots of unusual faces mixed in with the usual suspects.  Kids were there, a couple business people working hard and rather loudly on their laptops, several groups of mostly ladies.  Quite a few individuals were there, too.  As I looked about the room and thought about Laura Benanti’s story, I started to judge the number of “bitchy resting faces” and came to this conclusion.  Almost all of us when not engaged in conversation suffer from this syndrome.  If you are sitting alone, drinking your coffee, reading from your iPad, happy as a little clam, your face doesn’t necessarily reflect this.  So I thought some more about it.  What if we didn’t have BRF’s!  What if we all sat around reading our papers, drinking our coffee, doing our crosswords, with great, big, inane grins on our faces.  Wouldn’t Panera, or anywhere else for that matter, resemble a meeting place for pharmaceutically-controlled folks who find reason to smile when there is no reason apparent.  I don’t know, but it made me think once more, that nature usually has a reason for things the way they are, including BRF’s.--Greg Ellstrom

(For samples of Laura Benanti sense of humor go to You Tube and check the “Laura Benanti Explains Shakespeare” videos.)

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS plus ONE of ST. PANERA

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS PLUS ONE of St. Panera*

1. Thou shalt throw away thine own trash after eating.
2. Thou shalt  do thy best not to throw out silverware with the trash unless the silverware is made of brown plastic.
3. Thou shalt not block passage between tables with thy chair or thy butt..
4. Thou shalt not hog one of the two corner booths or the big table on the south side for thyself and thy computer no matter how important thou believe thoust work to be.*
5. Thou shalt not sneak small soft drinks in the cups intended for water.
6. Thou shalt not pilfer pieces of lemon and spirit them away in one of the aforementioned cups.
7. Thou shalt not read a newspaper without paying for it.
8. If thou breaketh commandment #7, thou’ll at least put the sections of the paper back in the proper order before thou return it to the rack.  (Thou probably shouldn’t do the crossword, either.)
9. Thou shalt not stand and block the coffee and cream counter as thou slowly stir thy coffee or tea ad infinitum and make the people behind thou want to scream.
10. Thou shalt have thy “Thy Panera” card out and ready before arriving at the checkout.
11. Thou shalt be forever kind to John, Jenn, Eric, Ian, Megan, Marie, Karen, Steve, Debi, Sierra, Tori, Victoria, Angela, Christine, Danielle, and all the others whose names I don’t recall as they worketh hard to make thy stay at St. Panera a blessed one.--Greg Ellstrom

*  Thanks be to Nick for assisting me with the title and Commandment #4.   

For the Love of Puppies and Kittens: Wanderer's Rest

Sometimes, I have to think for a time to come up with a blog idea.  Sometimes, an idea just comes walking in the door.  This was the case last Thursday morning when I was having my coffee at Panera and sitting across the aisle from the tables occupied by the “guys,” retired men about my age who meet in a group of a dozen or more every morning at the “P.”  In the door walked a lovely young woman, beautifully dressed and smiling, and she walked right up to the guys and said that they were just the people she had come to see.  Holy mackerel!  Talk about a bunch of fellas immediately perking up!  Eyes widened!  Smiles brightened!  And some who had put on their coats in anticipation of leaving, took those coats off.  I imagine there was a considerable rise in group blood pressure as well.  But the guys had to wait a bit to find out why she needed them.  They had to wait for Tom, the Mayor of Panera, to return.  Not surprisingly, the pretty young woman was mostly there to see Tom.

While all waited for Tom to arrive, the young woman crossed to a table to meet with someone else.  I was pretty sure I recognized her when she passed by from a presentation she had done at the Chittenango Lions Club about the Wanderer’s Rest Humane Association.  When Tom returned she talked with the guys for awhile.  They listened attentively.  Before she left, I asked her if she was from Wanderer’s Rest.  Indeed, she was.

The young woman was Linda DeMuro, the Executive Director of Wanderer’s Rest Humane Association on Southerland Drive, right off Route 5 in Canastota.  Wanderer’s Rest is dear to the Ellstrom family’s hearts.  It was there that we adopted Mandy, our boxer/bulldog/hound combo back in 1987.  I mentioned Mandy in an earlier blog, I think.  She was a sweetheart, an athlete, and a genius kind of dog with an array of tricks, taught to her by my daughter Jan, that people loved to see.

Linda was at Panera to see Tom because he had promised to donate his musical talent to a fundraiser in which Wanderer’s Rest was involved.  Linda also took the opportunity of presenting the details of the fundraiser to the bevy of guys who meet there everyday.  What a fundraiser is planned!  

For the first time, Wanderer’s Rest is hosting a gala at The Landmark Theatre called Black Tie and TAILS.  On Saturday, February 21, 2015, from 7:00 P.M. to 11:00 P.M., the beautiful and ornate theatre will open its doors to people looking to support the great work Wanderer’s Rest does.  Black Tie and TAILS will feature an open bar from 7 to 9, cuisine by Karen’s Catering, music by Perfect Sounds DJ, and casino games by Ralston Supply Center.  Tickets for the event are $150 person or two tickets for $250.

Wanderer’s Rest does so much and is such a worthy cause.  Not only do they have pet adoption from their Canastota center, which serves Madison and Oneida counties, in particular, but they also have 4 off-site adoption centers in Onondaga County.  They distribute spay/neuter certificates, provide emergency food supplies so families can keep their pets, and do Humane Education presentations to civic organizations and schools across Central NY.  That’s just a few of the amazing things they do.

So. . .think about attending the event, being an event sponsor, or assisting Wanderer’s Rest in other ways.  Tickets can be purchased at the Landmark Box Office, by calling the Landmark at (315) 475-7979, or at the Wanderer’s Rest Humane Association.  If you want to help or find out more about this amazing organization go to the website at www.wanderersrest.org.  You’ll make some dogs and cats happy!

Greg Ellstrom

This Is a Test!

High school kids have been visiting Panera the last couple of mornings. In groups of 2 or 3, notebooks and texts in hand, they entered, bought some sweet stuff, and settled down at tables.  I wondered at first if they were home school students.  In the past, groups of home schoolers have met at Panera for group presentations.  It didn’t take me long to realize that this last week of January was midterm exam week across the state, and that some of those kids, not having to be at school at that time, were probably prepping for those exams, and possibly even studying for a midterm REGENTS EXAM.

Only in New York does the word “Regents” have a special meaning.  In the other 49 states, people might think of the regents as a group of people charged with running a university.  In a monarchy, a regent is the person who takes rulership of a kingdom when the monarch is indisposed.  Only in the minds of people who spent their high school years in New York, does the word Regents immediately recall a series of tests deemed proof of proficiency in a variety of disciplines.

From the time I was the taking the exams through the first 25 years or so of my teaching, the Regents exams were proof of the effectiveness and often superiority of a high school education in New York State.  These special state exams in math, the sciences, history, English, languages and other areas were both finish line and possible prize in these races to comprehension.  Serious students wanted to earn “Regents” diplomas, maybe even “with honors.”  High Regents grades were something to be bragged about to your peers.  Low Regents grades were something to be concealed from them.  When I was teaching, one young man at Chittenango earned 100% on 8 Regents tests!  To New York high school students this is an achievement akin to climbing Everest without portable oxygen.

The Regents was a handy prod for a teacher to use on a class, especially on a hot day in May as final exams approached.  More than once I used the line, “Come on, you guys,  Let’s concentrate here.  This is going to be on the Regents.”  That generally served to bring focus to the unfocused at least for a couple more minutes.  Threatening the “Regents” carried some weight.

A few years before I retired, the Regents Exams began to change.  They were probably in need of some overhaul after all the years they had been used. The English Regents, however, wasn’t overhauled.  It was exploded.  It went from an exam that could be completed in two hours, to a 6 hour marathon that stretched over two days.  The idea was to make it a better test.  Truth be told, for the better students, it became an easier test, just one that was more exhausting to take.

Enough said about the English Regents, because it is just another symptom of the mess that testing is in all over the country.  And here in New York, we have a governor who neither respects teaching as as a profession or teachers for the important people that they are.  I wish the kids studying in Panera today all the best on their exams.  Because the way government tends to look at education now, exams are all that count.--Greg Ellstrom

Thinking About Clint Eastwood's AMERICAN SNIPER

My Panera Time isn’t always used for doing puzzles, people watching, or talking to friends. Linda and I spent some Panera Time last week talking and reading about the film the AMERICAN SNIPER, which we had just seen.   Then yesterday morning, I gave some more P-time thought to this truly thought-provoking film.  There is so much noise about it both in print and on the air, claptrap from both ends of the political spectrum. Michael Moore and his self-serving tweets.  Sarah Palin and her self-serving, politically motivated rants.  I think it needs contemplation in silence not noisy discussion.

AMERICAN SNIPER isn’t a movie you can say you enjoy.  We were very moved by it and are glad we saw it.  I don’t think it’s a movie about war as some have suggested.  Rather it’s a character study of a man who after 911 decided to enlist in the military as did many others.  He had a legitimate desire to help protect his country and countrymen.  It makes no difference if you think we were wrong in being in Iraq.  We were there.  Chris Kyle was there and was given the job of protecting his fellow soldiers on the ground by being a sniper. He was good at it and saved a lot of American lives. Let me reiterate: maybe you don’t think we had any right to be there.  But we were, and Kyle believed in what we were doing. It’s ludicrous to suggest that because he shot from concealment that he was acting as a coward.  It’s like saying that the bombardier in an aircraft is cowardly because he is thousands of feet above his target.  Chris Kyle was often in harm’s way and the weight of the deaths for which he was responsible and the specter of those comrades he felt he failed to save were burdens for him.  I think his motivation changed over the course of the movie.  At the beginning, he felt he was sniping to protect the American way of life.  As time went on, he became a sniper less concerned about the purpose behind the conflict and more concerned about protecting his friends.  By the end, he was caught in a personal/professional vendetta.  When that was settled, he could finally go home.  The scene near the end of the movie when he has just arrived in country and is sitting at a bar having a beer is particularly touching.  When his wife calls, he breaks down and tells her he is ready to come home, his need to keep returning to Iraq was gone.

A talking head on FOX News suggested, as have many others, that the popularity of AMERICAN SNIPER is the result of a mid-American, patriotic need to witness a hero.  Label him a hero if you want but it makes more sense to label him a soldier doing a terrible job, and, of course, there is something very heroic about that.  Others have suggested that the film glorifies war.  They didn’t see the movie that I saw, then.  Maybe the scenes of the Seal training would look exciting to young people because of its rigorous nature.  I can’t think of any other scenes that would make a young person want to go to war.

I guess the point I most wish to make in this post is that AMERICAN SNIPER is a film that shouldn’t be used, used by people of different political persuasions or people with agendas.  Director Clint Eastwood called his film an “apolitical character study.”  (POST STANDARD, 1/25/2015)  For me, that was the only logical way to view it.    If you haven’t seen it, I urge you to go in with the mindset that you will be following the life of a brave man with a terrible job at which he excels.  Watch and learn how that job affects him and his loved ones and eschew any political statement you may see or think you see.  Then maybe you’ll go into Panera or some other place and think about whether or not you agree with me.

Finally, I am not writing this post to serve as the opening of a debate.  This is my opinion  which I have come to quietly.  When the film ended in the big Shoppingtown theater where we saw, it ended with the audience in absolute silence as its members thought about what they had just seen.  That’s what I tried to do in writing this.--Greg Ellstrom

The Face That Launched A Thousand Pats

It’s time for a short blog about a Panera fixture no longer with us.  Lucy, our wonderful labrador, came with me to the P almost every day.  In every season, she curled up in the back seat and slept, waiting for the visits of her many Panera buddies.  

In the winter she’d curl up on her blanket, but I always left a window partially down so she could peek her head out to say hi to her friends.  Being a lab with a thick pelt, she loved the cold.  When I would work outside in the winter, Lucy would find the best snowbank to curl up in to watch.  One winter day, when Lucy was about a year old and very much a puppy, I came out of Panera to see a woman with a very angry face looking in the car at her.  Before I could ask if Lucy had done anything wrong, she turned to me and said that she was going to call the police and report whoever it was that left this dog out in the cold.  I said, “that would be me.  Let me introduce you to Lucy, a labrador who is most happy when the temperature is freezing.” I opened the door.  Lucy bounced happily over to meet the woman.  Lesson learned.

Lucy did not like warm weather an awful lot.  She liked air conditioning, so when we would park at Towne Centre in the summer, I would find a spot in the shade for her.  Sometimes, when it was too hot, she had to be left home.  This annoyed her.

Lucy befriended so many people at Panera.  Dale, both Toms, Nick, and more.  And Elizabeth, who we have lost track of, always inquired into Lucy’s health and happiness.  I remember coming out on a summer day to see a teenage girl standing by the car scratching Lucy’s ears.  I walked over and said, “This is Lucy.”  The girl looked at me, smiled, and said, “I like her so much.”  I’m not sure if she was offering in a subtle way to adopt Lucy if I didn’t want her.  I don’t think so.  Everyone liked Lucy so much.  Although I do remember a time when I was throwing frisbees to Mandy, our dog before Lucy, who was both a genius dog and an athlete.  She would sore through the air at Bolivar School yard and snatch the flying discs.  A boy, who I knew from school, came up to me one day and said, “Mr. Ellstrom, if you ever don’t want Mandy, I’ll take her.”  Pardon this diversion, but I thought it fit.

Lucy had been gone for almost two years, and I still miss her and think of her daily.  When she passed, my Panera friends were saddened and kind.  Months after the fact, they would say to me, “when I pass your car, I still always look in to see Lucy.”  They used to ask when I was going to get another dog.  Another puppy?  They’ve pretty much stopped now.  I have been unable to act on getting a new dog.  I just wasn’t ready to for months after Lucy died unexpectedly.  And now I don’t act because a dog is so demanding on an owner’s time, although I always loved that about them.  Also, traveling is so much easier when you don’t have to worry about the canine member of your family.  I would love to call up a breeder and order up a female yellow English puppy.  I watch videos of them on YouTube, sometimes.  But I don’t think I am ready to take care of a puppy anymore.  They get up so early, get into so much stuff, and remain amoral little beasts until they are a year old or so and decided to finally join up with your pack.  I’m afraid I need to take care of Linda and myself more than a puppy.  But who knows.

I’m thinking that next fall, I will find an older dog at a shelter to adopt.  A dog who likes to sleep in, is housebroken, and doesn’t feel she has to run everywhere we go.  I called that possible future dog a “she” because I have always owned females.  I suppose it’s too much to hope that I would come upon a 4 or 5 year old, female yellow English lab to adopt, although I will search the lab rescue sites that aren’t too far away.

This post is not about me, though.  It’s in memory of Lucy, pedigree name:  Lucy Lima Bean, in honor of the LL Bean catalog labs.  The sweetest natured dog I’ve ever known.  A dog who spent 8 and 1/2 years with us making people smile.  One of my friends said, “that she was the only dog he had ever met, who made you feel that you were her best friend, the first time she met you.”  I thought I might have a terrible time writing this post.  Not at all. I loved it.  Didn’t shed a tear.  Just enjoyed the sweet memories of our sweet Lucy.

This didn't turn out as short as I thought it would be.

photos: Lucy enjoying the winter and suffering in the summer.

The Benefits of a Cross Word like "Scup!"

“Bildungsroman!”  O.K., English teachers.  And anyone else.  Any of you recognize this word?  I didn’t nor did the other English teacher in our house.  It turns out that a “bildungsroman” is a term for a literary genre, that of coming of age novels like HUCK FINN or A SEPARATE PEACE or dozens and dozens more.  In all the English classes I took and taught, I never stumbled upon this particularly strange literary term.  I learned it two weeks ago doing the Sunday New York Times Crossword Puzzle.  Other words that I learned this week in the crosswords are “perdu,” an archaic term for “hidden,” “pineta,” a  planted forest of pine trees, and “scup,” an Atlantic food fish.  I have been to Cape Cod more than 100 times, I imagine, and in all the fish markets in all those towns, I never once bumped into a fish called a “scup.”  Turns out a “scup” is also referred to as a “panfish” or a “porgy.”  I thought a panfish was a fish that would fit in a cook pan.  And a “porgy,” well, I can’t imagine a fish singing, “Bess, you is my woman now!”  

This silliness is mentioned in my “Panera blog” because Panera is where I do a crossword puzzle while drinking my coffee almost every day.  Truth be told, I have been doing a crossword puzzle almost every day for at least 40 years.  I know that I was doing them in 1975, when I worked at Camp Goodwill, so that’s a clue to the duration of my pastime.  Probably people wonder why I, and a lot of other people, are addicted to these adjuncts to every newspaper’s comic section.  They do become a habit but a good one according to what I have read.  Doing crossword puzzles and such is really good for the old grey matter with an emphasis on “old” and “grey,” I suppose.  You do learn neat words, too, like “iter,” and “amah,” and “raison d’etre.”   Also, you face a daily challenge.  One that grows more difficult as the week goes on.

The Monday puzzle is always easy and each day gets more difficult until Friday which is pretty darn tough, but usually doable.  Then comes Saturday which is about impossible.  I remember completing one NY Times Saturday puzzle in all the years I have been doing them.  Then comes the SUNDAY TIMES CROSSWORD which is large and has a theme, is challenging but doable, and is my favorite puzzle of the week.

Creating puzzles is an ability that I can only imagine.  The complexity of running so many words down and across in a specific pattern is more than I can imagine.  It’s kind of like imagining infinity.  Probably not quite that hard.  Will Shortz is the NY Times Crossword editor and the most influential voice on crosswords in the world, I imagine.  He went to Indiana University back in the early 70’s when the school was allowing people to tailor make their own majors.  Shortz devised one in puzzles and gaming.  As they say, “Way cool!”  He even helped the Daily Show’s John Stewart, a crossword lover, devise a puzzle with which to propose to his wife.

Without doing puzzles, you have probably never noticed that each grid is not only a super accomplishment because of the intermingling of words but because of the shape, too.  To qualify as a puzzle worth publication, the opposite side of a grid along both x and y axis is the opposite mirror image of the other.  Check out the grid below and see of what I speak.

That is the down and across, the short and long, of this post on “Panera 13066," the place where I go daily to do the daily crossword.  Linda has a pile of crossword books, (edited by Will Shortz) as she took up puzzling when she retired.  She’s addicted, also.  For us, somehow, they never get old.  And we always do them in pen--Greg Ellstrom

"Space Invaders"

A couple of days ago, I was at one of the two tables I generally occupy from about 9:30 to 10:30 most mornings at the Panera in Fayetteville Towne Centre.  Two ladies were sitting in the armchairs by the fireplace, which were about 15 feet from me.  They seemed to be talking about something both earnestly and in a subdued fashion.  I was hard at work on my puzzle when a man came clomping in the front door and immediately clomped over to a table right next to the ladies and hung his coat on the chair.  Any chance of privacy for their conversation was gone.  The chair this guy chose is maybe 3 feet away.  They would have needed to start using American Sign Language to prevent him from hearing every word.  The ladies looked at each other and shrugged.  They might have rolled their eyes a bit, but I couldn’t swear to that.  As soon as the man clomped off to get coffee, the ladies picked their drinks up and went off to another location to continue their earnest discussion.  I had just been witness to a case of “Space Invaders!”

I apologize to anyone who thought this was going to be a post about old video games.  A “space invader” in my coffee shop talk is a person who sits at a table right next to yours when there are plenty of others available.  I have to say that I am not offended by anyone who plops down right next to me.  I don’t care.  I’m not doing anything for my eyes only.  But I know this bothers other people.  Some people believe “space invading” is a character flaw and can’t imagine how anyone could be so crass as to practice it.  Even though those who are offended may not be discussing anything covert, they can’t stand anyone sitting too close.  For them, it’s like when a person gets too close to you at a cocktail party, and you just want to say, “take a step back, buddy, please!”

There is another kind of coffee shop “space invasion” that annoys some people.  We are all creatures of habit.  It’s the “always sit in the same place at church” syndrome.  The Panera regulars are only human, and when one of us arrives to see our regular table occupied. . .by a stranger. . .well, it can throw off your whole day.  In fact, I wasn’t going to mention this, but the two ladies I talked about earlier were sitting in Terry’s chairs.  He always sits in one of them, and they prevented him from sitting there that day.  So some will think that the arrival of the “clomping man” was karma.  Me?  I don’t think that’s true.  Well. . .maybe.

Greg Ellstrom

Hail, Hail the Gang's. . .

It took me awhile to figure how to introduce my fellow regulars at Panera Bakery in Town Centre.  I wanted a creative way, not just a list.  I thought I might base this blog on “The Canterbury Tales” pilgrims, but then everyone would have to have a story.  I thought some more, and my mind went back to a place where we all have been--a high school cafeteria.  A school cafeteria contains a food line, a lot of tables, and a variety of personalities.  That’s what a Panera contains, too.

If you walk in the front door of Panera, you will often find me sitting by myself at a table to your right.  I could be labeled the lonely kid, sadly sitting by himself, reading his newspaper.  I’m not lonely.  I’m perfectly happy and often contemplative.  The lonely kids in high school might be thinking about their English essays.  I might be thinking about something to blog.  And if you come in and see me squinting, it’s not to be nerdy, it’s because the sunshine coming in the front doors makes it hard to see just who you are.

I am only the lonely kid for part of the time.  Sometimes, I’m half of a couple who are sweet on each other and who take their trays to a spot at a table in the high school caf. where they can sit alone, make eyes at each other, and play footsie.  When Linda comes with me we are like that couple. . .a little bit.  We usually sit at a table that Linda chooses, and I sit at the chair that Linda doesn’t want.  What follows does not include eye-making or footsie.  We both read the paper.  We also talk to each other, read each other news items, watch people together, and sometimes laugh.  We are not the only sweethearts at Panera.  There are several regular pairs, including Nick and Mary, a wonderful couple, always together.  They should be the senior homecoming king and queen of this high school cafeteria/Panera.

Across the aisle from my usual seat, sit the largest group of regulars at the P.  This group is almost always all guys.  Sometimes a dozen or more.  They can be a little noisy, often talk sports, occasionally tell a dirty joke that can be heard farther than intended, make fun of each other, and peek furtively at the pretty girls that pass them by.  For these reasons, I think we should call them the “jock table.”  Many of them are retired teachers, ex-coaches, one time athletes, including some of acclaim in the Syracuse area.  They sort of practice the camaraderie they used to observe and correct when they had cafeteria duty.  They are terrific guys, though, without the nasty attitudes that are sometimes apparent at tables of jocks.  And they never have food fights!

Sitting at the jock table, but operating throughout the restaurant, is Tom, the de facto Mayor of Panera’s.   Smiling, shaking hands, patting people on the back, and smooching cheeks, Tom works the room everyday.  Little kids coming in with their parents look for Tom, knowing he will make a fuss over them.  The best way to refer to Tom in our high school cafeteria analogy is as the benevolent President of the Student Council, at home with the jocks, the musicians, and the peons as well.

A bevy of business students, often slurping coffee, also occupy tables in this analogy.  If they were in high school, they would be taking “Entrepeneurship” or “Business Skills.”  They spend hours at their tables, eyes glued to their computers.  Some forget to eat in this cafeteria.  Some are there for the Wifi not the dark roast.  From my nerd table, I sometimes wonder just what it is they do to make their livings in a restaurant on computer.  One, I know, who does business there is a wedding planner.  It’s fun to see the brides and grooms-to-be or the brides and their moms poring over the photos of flowers and the samples of invitations.  I have a feeling the brides get the final decisions, with the mom’s assistance.  When planning a wedding, I think that the guy is just another accessory.

I think this is enough Panera denizens for today’s post.  Some later time, I’ll write about the interesting visits by study groups of kids being home schooled. . . or maybe about the occasional invasions of the tweens.