Panera Bread and Paul Simon

Here’s mainstream media coverage about Panera Bread’s new Community Cafe’ restaurant in Clayton, Missouri.

This past winter, the Panera Bread restaurant and a local grocery store in Albany, New York generously donated muffins, pastries and cookies for the 2010 Battered Mothers Custody Conference. Seeing the delicious arrangements of delectable treats waiting for us each morning was comforting, yet more comforting than that was knowing that a mainstream business like Panera Bread would offer their help. The family courts don’t help. The mainstream media hasn’t helped. Panera Bread did help and what’s more comforting than pastries and hot coffee on a cold winter morning in Albany? It might seem like a small gesture, but to battered mothers who have lost their children to the family court nightmare, just knowing that a well-established “mainstream” restaurant cared for us was enough to help us put one foot in front of the other. The same probably goes for those who’ve lost their jobs and their homes in Missouri.

We hope and pray that the Panera Bread’s community cafe’ concept flourishes. We hope more community restaurants will spring up in other states soon. May the folks in Clayton, Missouri feel as cared for as we felt this past winter in Albany, New York.

If anyone reading this knows of anyone who might like to offer donations ie. food or financial assistance to the 2011 Battered Mothers Custody Conference, please make a few phone calls and send a few emails. Here’s Dr. Maureen Hannah’s email: HANNAH@siena.edu . Her telephone number at Siena College is: (518)-786-5067 .

Food and financial contributions always help, however, an educated public would help the most. As E.M. Forster once said, “Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.” So, if the federal investigation isn’t enough to compel ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN to cover a scandal that’s lasted 30 years, how about a really famous entertainer to entertain at the conference next winter? (Hint: We’re thinking someone other than Alec Baldwin.)

The mainstream media would then have to tell the public at least a little bit about the family court crisis if a famous entertainer would get involved, right?

Does anybody happen to know Paul Simon by any chance? Does he still live in New York? He once sang a song about the mother and child reunion being just a motion away…