Abandoned shopping cart numbers are surprisingly low at the moment. Not sure what’s going on – maybe they melted away with all the snow. Or maybe it’s like Groundhogs Day and “Silver Street Sam” the shopping cart saw his shadow, got scared and went back to P&C’s return rack to hide-out for six more weeks.
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Speaking of melting snow…
The onset spring certainly tells a tail.
With the nice weather we’ve been having came a winter’s worth of preserved cigarette butts, dog poop and rotting garbage that’s been released from a prison of snow and ice. Aside from being a little symbols of persistence and survival, these spring lovelies are nice accent of the local culture.
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Condolences to the family of Terry Periard.

Spring has sprung throughout Chenango and by the looks of the front page over the past week so have the criminals…
From the drug dealers to the rapists to the murderers- to an outsider our safe haven community looks like it may be on the verge of cracking.

A look back throughout the last four days: A Cincinnatus man was arrested for killing his girlfriend’s 16 month old baby, an oxford man was arrested for having possession of an illegal handgun and $1,500 of processed cocaine, a Columbus man was arrested of forcibly raping a woman and the newest edition to the criminal overload these days is the kidnapping and killing of a local woman.

For people reading this who join us from other areas one missing person and less than five other highly criminal actions may not mean much, but to this community with approximately 7,000 residents it has felt and still feels like a community where everyone knows everyone. When something horrifying happens the chill running down the spins of residents county wide can be felt in the air.

We often see the same people day in and day out, you hold the door open at the gas station on a Tuesday and the following Tuesday you run into the same person buying milk in Byrne Dairy. This close knit community is what I call my “safety net,” a nice place to raise my children because it has always has carried the aura of peacefulness and simplicity.

The question now is…Is it changing, is our safe haven slowly going to start oozing criminals out of its seams and turn this place into the same chaotic disgruntled city like many others?

In the years I have lived here the chills up my spine as I walked alone on an unlit street at night were un- existent but as more criminals are starting to spring closing my eyes to it and carrying on being naive is becoming more difficult. The premonition that you have to be a lot more aware of your surroundings is bit overwhelming after the years of simple care free living and the saying- “it would never happen here” no longer applies.

In the 24 years of living in Norwich I can honestly say last night was the first time I went to bed with a knot in my stomach telling me something horrible happened right here, right in Norwich. For the first time I was uneasy about coming to work and finding out the latest update on whether or not a body was found or not. Thinking someone was missing, someone I knew and knowing full well she was gone was a little unnerving at the least. I did not know her well nor do I know what happened well but I do know she has shown me an apartment once and she was very friendly, I talked to her on the phone a few times and she was always polite. I must have seen her hundreds of times just in passing as I see many of the same people gallivanting throughout the city everyday.

To see the headlines state manslaughter or missing in our local newspaper with a Chenango County dateline is one aspect we all have to realize is reality settling in. It can happen here no matter how safe our community is there are people everywhere who think and behave in ways most of us will never understand. It does not mean our fortress has to be called upon but identifying your surroundings and being cautious never hurt anyone. Being paranoid never got anyone anywhere either but just never letting yourself think that it could never happen here or that it could never happen to you is one way of thinking that needs to cease.

I love the spring and summer. I love being outside and not having to wear a sweater, a coat, mittens, a hat and furry boots. (I’m a whiner and I get cold fast.) All winter long, I have been longing for warm weather and dreaming of bike rides and picnics and blooming flowers. Now, spring is finally here, or so it would seem. I should be happy. The temperatures are getting warmer, the birds are singing and the snow is melting.

It’s wonderful…except for the constant threat of flooding. It seems that since the snow has started to melt, every day we have had temperatures above 40 degrees, the National Weather Service has issued a flood warning. I don’t want to argue about the merit or the necessity of these flood warnings, but it seems every time I turn around, another warning or watch has been issued. I’m all for these types of alerts when something is actually happening, I just doubt they are necessary every time a cow pasture on the banks of the river gets a couple inches of water.

In recent weeks, so many flood warnings have been issued, that it feels almost like the NWS is the boy who cried wolf. It’s spring. Of course there is going to be extra water creeping onto the banks of the river, but if every time the water rises an inch or two, a flood warning is issued, nobody is going to pay attention when the next real flood comes our way.

Syracuse has the right to sing the blues in the off-season. Their fans – myself included – have a right to hold a grudge. But not one of us has the right to let the NCAA tournament selection committee’s decision to shaft Syracuse overshadow the team’s real problems.

Because after watching the NIT – and the entire season, for that matter – it’s clear Syracuse’s sob-story is more like a Greek tragedy.

They had everything a team could want (almost). Bulking size, big league skill and oodles of talent. But they took it for granted – until it was too late.

First off, they lived on the edge way too often. It seems like every game they had to get buried alive or put on life support before they’d start clawing tooth and nail to survive. 24 times it worked. However, the entire season felt like a tear-jerking movie. You’ve seen it; some guy with a nice family, nice house, nice job, and a nice car doesn’t enjoy or care for the things he has, and then he loses it all by some twist of fate – temporarily. It’s only after everything gets taken that he realizes he wants it back, proves his love, and it all works out. The End.

Not the case for the Orange.

Syracuse didn’t deserved to get snubbed. But they deserved a wake-up call. And they didn’t even answer the one they got.

The NIT was the same old story. Get totally out-played, out-hustled, and get out-muscled for 20 or 30 plus minutes – then turn it on in a panic when the walls start to cave-in. That strategy earned them two home wins from two mediocre teams.

Syracuse lacks identity. Yes, they are known for the 2-3 zone. But that’s pretty much it! They don’t rebound, pass, catch, defend, make foul shouts, shoot or finish with any consistency. Real identity comes with taking care of the little things, something Syracuse doesn’t do.

They do hustle – after they screw up. They need to hustle with purpose. They need to hustle with success in mind.

They have potential, they need results. They have leading scorers, they need leaders.

They don’t need to get angry (the NCAA already accomplished that). They need to stay angry and play angry, and carry it into next season.

Some words and phrases can be misleading. The English language is full of them. For instance, if someone snaps at you, you might say they’re biting off your head, or if someone is telling a story, you say they’re pulling your leg.

Phrases like those could be easily misinterpreted, but to the best of my knowledge, public meeting is not one of these slang terms that sounds like one thing and means another. Everyone should be able to tell from the term “public meeting,” especially the “public” part, that the public has a right to know what occurs at the meeting.

It seems obvious, yet, I still talk to people who don’t seem to understand. Last night, a gentleman got up at a meeting of the Common Council and spoke during the open forum. (Yes, it was public and open.) He spoke his mind and the council responded. Yet after the meeting, he informed me that everything he said was off the record. He even went one step further and said anytime he ever speaks at a meeting, it is off the record.

At the time, I wasn’t sure what to say, so I simply said my good-byes and left for the night, but after some consideration, I only find myself more and more confused. I did not quote the gentleman in today’s article, but if he had said something worth noting, I would have been obligated to do so. Speaking at a public meeting and declaring it off the record is a lot like screaming a secret from a rooftop. Just because you call it a secret, doesn’t mean everyone isn’t going to know about it anyway. Public meetings are just that, public. So if you don’t want to be on the record, don’t say it in a public forum.

Picture this…..
You take one step out of the shower, and in the distance you faintly here the phone ringing for your attention. You grab a towel from the rack, throw it and run (just in case that one call may be the deciding factor in our life that lays he foundation for everything else of course) as you run through the house, hair dripping, towel falling off, sliding on the floor tile and leap to grab the handset before the ringer gives up.
“Hello”
“Hello”
“HELLLLLOOOOWWWW”
“Oh hello I am Sebastian from debt solutions”
“I don’t have any debt”
“everyone has debt”
“We also sell life insurance”
“I don’t want life insurance” you say
“What if you die”
“Then I won’t be worried about my debt”
* And this is the part of the conversation were all you want to do is hang up on Stan whatever his name is. Although, if you are like me you feel bad and simply sit down and get comfy to join in a useless conversation with a man named Steve or Sebastian or whatever from some country that you have never heard of….

20 minutes later…..
“No I don’t know if a $5,000 floor cleaner would suit my tastes either….”

“Oh but you have to try it out, we can make an appointment and a representative will bring it to your home and show you how easy it can be. You sound like a busy woman I bet you could use some extra time.”

OK long story short…Telemarketers get on my nerves but the sad part is I can’t hang up on them… I have been training myself to show my rude side. I have caller ID so I know when not to answer so I do not have to yell at some person simply trying to earn a buck but sometimes those tricky numbers can get ya! The ones where you look at the phone and think you know what company that is… YOU DON’T so back away from the phone.. If you are like me you will soon be getting windows and magazines delivered you don’t remember ordering.

I wonder if anyone around here hosts How to be rude to telemarketers classes?
Well I have gone on long enough, even longer than most people keep telemarketers on the line… See this was only a test because just like them I am trying to waste your time with mumble jumble that you aren’t going to care about…

Well, whaddya know? One of the entries I commented on in “30 Seconds” is currently the highest rated.

Here’s the entry:

“Seeing what actually gets posted in this forum kinda makes me want to see the garbage that they don’t print.”
Man from Sherburne

I’m saving them all for a tell-all I’ll write in my retirement. Somewhere around 2033 …
-Ed.

As I write this at 7:30 Tuesday night, waiting for Idol to come on (shameless Idol plugs seem to garner the most response on the blog side - Go, Lakisha!), it’s currently got 21 greens and 2 reds, making it the top of the heap when you sort by “Highest Rated.”

I have no idea what that means, either.

Do readers really want to see the garbage we don’t print? Do they think what we print is garbage? Are they anxiously awaiting my future best-seller, or are they just anxiously awaiting my retirement?

Trying to make sense of “30 Seconds” is like trying … oh, why even bother to complete the analogy? It’s just darn right impossible. When our webmaster came up with the Red State/Green State voting scheme for the online “30 Seconds,” I said sure, why not, it can’t get any more inane, can it?

Oh Ed., sometimes you’re so silly.

If nothing else, the voting system gives some instant interactivity to “30 Seconds” that it’s never had before, which is cool. And it puts some pretty primary-colored numbers off to the side, which is also cool. And I’m particularly fond of the new sorting feature, though I still think we should add a drop-down choice for “Most Inbred.”

What’s happening to our beloved Evening Sun Forum?

It’s become a wasteland.

Clicking on a posted topic these days is like lifting up a couch cushion at a frat party and discovering a well-placed pile of Milwaukee’s Best Keg vomit.

The forum has gotten so bad that it makes 30 seconds look like the New England Journal of Medicine.

It is so stinky we’ve actually discussed putting in some interactive scratch n’ sniff buttons next to each topic so you can get a hint of what you’ll be digging into.

Come on people! The uni-bomber’s manifesto made more sense than some of the stuff in there – and it was probably shorter, too.

Let’s play a game. Let’s see if we can have three posts on a topic that make sense and have a logical connection. Let’s keep them down to five or six normal sentences. If you’re feeling really froggy and want to throw in some evidence to back-up a point, put up a link rather than pasting in an entire article. And if you see a topic already in the forum that is a lot like the one you want to create, use it. Don’t just make a new one.

We have to conserve our free forum spaces, or else they will be gone.

Many of our native “forum-mericans” have already been pushed onto smaller, marginal forums because the greedy have taken up all the choice intellectual lands for themselves, only to waste it. Soon the forum, just like the once proud “Buck Corn Cobb,” our first user on the Evening Sun website, will disappear forever.

Hobbs = General Custer.

You know what makes me mad? Probably not, but if you keep reading, you will in about two seconds. I can’t stand grumpy, rude people who get angry just because you expect them to do their jobs. I don’t know what has happened to customer service and the “customer is always right” attitude, but if you’re looking for it in the general vicinity of upstate New York, all I can do is wish you luck.

This weekend, I had a run in with an especially rude store employee. When I asked a question, she rolled her eyes and acted like the simple act of doing what she is paid to do was too much to ask.

I’m sure everyone has had similar experiences, and I’m sure it isn’t entirely one sided. I worked in the food service industry for years while I was in high school and college, and I know dealing with people all day can be frustrating, and customers can be every bit as rude as employees. What I don’t understand is why people have to be so negative in the first place.

Maybe I am an idealist, in fact I know I am, but I don’t understand what is so difficult about being pleasant to people. Granted, after I was addressed so rudely in the store, I probably wasn’t the most pleasant person to be around. (Fire was shooting from my eyes and my glare had the potential to cause physical injury.) But maybe if everyone had a sweet disposition and a friendly attitude the world would be a better place.

I know, that will never work. I guess we’ll just have to go around hating each other and being rude, and I can keep complaining about how much rude people suck!

Within the City of Norwich you’ve probably smelled a lot of skunk activity lately. No, it doesn’t mean spring is here early – if the Siberia-like weather wasn’t indication enough. More than likely, since they don’t really hibernate, it just means there’s enough garbage laying around to get the little stinkers up and at em’ full-time again. So if your nose, eyes, and mouth are burning in the morning, rest assure it is nothing to be thankful for.

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If you drive down Silver Street, it’s apparent that shopping carts now play “king of the mountain” on top of snow banks and piles. Let’s give them sleds, hats, snowpants and some Kool-Aid mustaches and make them really fit in with the winter landscape.
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Turning left onto Broad Street coming out of any street located in between Hale and Cortland Street should be prohibited between the hours of noon and 2:00 p.m. and then again from 4 to 6 p.m. If not every street, at least Front and Mechanic Streets. It’s no fun being stuck behind some airhead who’ll sit there for 5 minutes when they could have driven to a lighted intersection. Instead you watch them pull some shady maneuver, nearly cause a wreck, and probably flip somebody off for their stupidity.