Lessons from the Pandemic

Peepers, Peppercorns and What Belongs on a Good Italian Sub

The sun rose at 6:43 this morning and will set at 6:52 this evening. We now have over 12 hours of daylight. Early evening walks after work are now a highlight of the day for many.

Welcome spring! The Vernal Equinox will arrive at 5:01 a.m. Thursday morning. We’ve been seeing signs of the season for the last few weeks with flowers blooming and increased bird song. Sunday night I heard the peepers. The faint sound from those little frogs echoing throughout the neighborhood is a sure sign that spring is here.

Can you believe that the Daffodil Festival is just five weeks away? Our daffys should be in full bloom island-wide by the weekend of April 25-27. Our unusually cold winter, which has delayed everything green, means we won’t have the problem of these signature spring flowers having bloomed too early. Last year the daffodils on the Milestone Road were well past their peak by the time Daffodil Weekend rolled around.

The Corner Table finally opened Wednesday, but I can’t see any evidence of why they needed to shut down for three months for “renovations.” When you hear that term renovations, it can mean one of two things: legitimate and necessary work being done to restaurants in the off-season, or an excuse for an extended vacation by the owner/operators.

Running a coffee shop is different than a restaurant in one important way – a coffee shop’s role in the community is to provide what some islanders in the 1800s called “our sitting down places.” If a place closes for most of the winter, it means one less place to hang out, one less chance to find a moment of unintended community.

During the winter closures of Born and Bread, Corner Table and Handlebar, the sit-down place for coffee meetings these last two months has become 45 Surfside. The coffee is excellent and so are the breakfast pastries and sandwiches at lunch.

A true Italian

I picked up an Italian sub the other day from 45 Surfside and was pleasantly surprised at how good it was, with proper ratios of meat and cheese, oil and vinegar, fresh lettuce and banana peppers. The only thing missing was a spread of hot peppers. Fortunately, we always keep a jar of those in the fridge.

I am always horrified when I see people putting mustard or mayonnaise on an Italian sub. It doesn’t matter what the American appetite is, those items don’t belong there. My husband is from the North Shore, so even though I’m a Nantucket native, I’ve been introduced to what a proper Italian sub should contain, and what is just plain wrong.

I am reminded about the first time we were in Paris years ago and were at this iconic little bistro on the Ile St. Louis. We’d ordered the charcuterie plate, and as we sat there sipping our wine, we saw a waiter delivering a plate of French fries to a neighboring table. They were golden and crispy and looked absolutely delicious. We hailed our waiter and asked for some fries to go with our order.

“Non!” was the response. We asked again in our sub-par, high school French. The response was the same. However, this time our waiter went further explaining that French fries “did not go” with a charcuterie plate. And that was that. I feel the same way as that waiter about putting mustard or mayo on an Italian sub.

Five Years Later

This time five years ago we were in the early throes of the pandemic and still navigating what it meant to be quarantined, to work remotely from home and question why suddenly there was a run on toilet paper at all the grocery stores for months on end.

I was the editor and publisher at The Inquirer and Mirror back then, which was owned by GateHouse and under Gannett management. We had been owned by a series of national news management firms since my parents sold the newspaper in 1990.

GateHouse bought the newspaper in 2013. GateHouse and Gannett then merged in 2019. That’s when the real trouble began. When news of the pandemic hit, Gannett’s management team directed us all to shut our offices to the public and work from home.

But it was impossible for us to do that because our production systems were in our office building at the Milestone Rotary. While ad reps could call customers and work remotely, as could reporters, the rest of us needed to be in the building in the middle of the week to put the newspaper together.

While some people may have enjoyed working from home, sitting around in their pajamas until noon, I did not. In my dual roles, I saw the harm to the business in the lack of energy and lack of productivity generated by not having everyone together. It was apparent. We needed to be able to bounce ideas off each other, and to react in the moment to challenges and opportunities to move the business forward. You don’t get that from working remotely.

Within weeks, we were all back in the office, wearing masks and sitting at our desks, having built plexiglass partitions between each other for distancing and personal safety. Bottles of hand sanitizer were placed on everyone’s desk and strategically throughout the building. We were safe and we were a team again. There is simply no substitute for working together with colleagues in a shared space.

On the corporate level there were endless zoom meetings with my bosses and other regional colleagues in the news divisions. I was horrified to see editors participating in these meetings, sitting on their unmade beds, wearing PJs or sweats. Be professional! I was glad when those days ended.

Stop & Shop

In those days I learned the value of ordering things online, things I couldn’t find at the Stop & Shop. To this day I still order peppercorns by the pound, Amore tomato paste in tubes by the case, citrus air freshener, Trappist strawberry-rhubarb jam, aluminium-free baking powder and specialty spices and flours online. This pattern has increased as the Nantucket store has continued to minimize its offerings in favor of more and more of its store brands.

I’ve not been a fan of most of the changes at Stop & Shop. I heard this week there’s been a near complete turnover of staff with even the long-serving Dave Monast transferring back to a mainland store. Dave had been a Stop & Shop manager on the island for over 25 years.

One of the most helpful Stop & Shop employees who works in the self-checkout center at the mid-island store is a man named Bob. I don’t know his last name, but I’m sure if you shop there regularly you’ve run into him. He’s a gem, and a true example of a customer-focused employee, always helpful and gracious.

Memorials

I wrote about the passing of Rev. Ted Anderson, several weeks ago. He died in February at the age of 80 after a long and productive life as minister at the Unitarian church for nearly 30 years, elected town official, volunteer firefighter and stellar citizen of Nantucket. I learned this week his memorial service at the UU will be Saturday, June 14. Expect standing room only.

Russ Morash, who was a longtime summer resident and a towering figure in the world of public television – introducing the world to Julia Child as the producer of her French Chef show on PBS, and creating the genre of home improvement shows with “This Old House” – will be feted at a memorial service on Saturday, October 11. Look to The I&M for more details of the service closer to the date.