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It is a restless time of the year for me. Our gaming groups are both now in hiatus, the Christian Holiday has just passed after inserting its usual complications into our schedules and lives and I can clearly see the coming storm of January. when conventions rule several weekends.
Along the way our housecat had a brush with his mortality, having suffered a near fatal hairball that resulted in major surgery and a long slow recovery that has left many of the house members working with a lot less sleep than normal. Add in the snowstorm that blew thru here yesterday and the traditional Pagan associations with the period from Solstice to February, and it's inevitable that the world will lie heavy upon our minds and hearts.
Word has come that the Putnam Cafe, my favorite place to write and home to some of our public gaming events, is closing as of the 1st if January for good. It's a victim of the corporate mindset of Whole Foods (the parent company) and the local Bread & Circus management. They failed to give the new manager a reasonable time to turn it around to a greater profit, failed to provider her the needed infrastructure changes needed to compete with the other Cafes in the area, and failed to give support and supplies needed to provide for customer needs.
I don't think that the management ever really wanted her to succeed, that they had it in their mind to rent out the space to a small bank branch or dry cleaners right along, and that they had only opened the cafe as it had been part of the zoning board negotiations made before they could build their complex. They basically handed the helm of a sinking ship to the new manager and told her that she had to make it float.... with almost no crew, no tools and no way to patch the leak.
I've written off letters of complaint, but I suspect they will fall on deaf ears. I will be reducing my purchases from their grocery store in the wake of this.... if I have to trek all the way to Mass Ave (either Central Sq or Harvard Sq) whenever I want coffee and writing space away from home, I might as well be picking up my groceries from stores nearer to where I'll be.
This also means there is one less gaming space available to folks in the area, or a meeting space where one could carry out a conversation and be able to hear oneself (something that one can't do in other area cafes and resteraunts). One less solace for creative minds.
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