Twin Tiers Living

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Ray Maratea has asked for a section where he can post items of interest pertaining to the economy and about investing. This is an excellent idea, and I appreciate Ray's suggestion. To cover both Ray amd our rears, please keep the following disclaimer in mind:

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Servers told researchers that they were instructed to make their male customers feel special. Brian Brainerd/The Denver Post via Getty Images by Dawn Szymanski, University of Tennessee In 1983, six businessmen got together and opened the first Hooters restaurant in Clearwater, Florida. Hooters of America LLC quickly became a restaurant chain success story. With its scantily clad servers and signature breaded wings, the chain sells sex appeal in addition to food – or as one of the company’s mottos puts it: “You can sell the sizzle, but you have to deliver the steak.” It inspired a niche restaurant genre called “breastaurants,” with eateries such as the Tilted Kilt Pub & Eatery and Twin Peaks replicating Hooters’ busty business model. A decade ago, business was booming for breastaurant chains, with these companies experiencing record sales growth. Today it’s a different story. Declining sales, rising costs and a large debt burden of approximately US$300 million have threatened Hooters’ long-term outlook. In summer 2024, the chain closed over 40 of its restaurants across the U.S. In February 2025, Bloomberg reported that the company was on the verge of filing for bankruptcy. Hooters isn’t necessarily going away for good. But it’s certainly looking like there will be fewer opportunities for women to work as “Hooters Girls” – and for customers to ogle at them. As a psychologist, I was originally interested in studying servers at breastaurants because I could sense an interesting dynamic at play. On the one hand, it can feel good to be complimented for your looks. On the other hand, I also wondered whether constantly being critiqued might eventually wear these servers down. So my research team and I decided to study what it was like to work in places like Hooters. In a series of studies, here’s what we found. Concocting a male fantasyland More so than most restaurants, managers at breastaurants like Hooters seek to strictly regulate how their employees look and act. For one of our studies, we interviewed 11 women who worked in breastaurants. Several of them said that they were told to be “camera ready” at all times. One described being given a booklet with exacting standards outlining her expected appearance, down to “nails, hair, makeup, brushing your teeth, wearing deodorant.” She had to promise to stay the same weight and height, wear makeup every shift and not change her hairstyle. Beyond a carefully constructed physical appearance, the servers relayed that they were also expected to be confident, cheerful, charming, outgoing and emotionally steeled. They were instructed to make male customers feel special, to be their “personal cheerleaders,” as one interviewee put it, and to never challenge them. Suffice it say, these demands can be unrealistic – and many of the servers we interviewed described becoming emotionally drained and eventually souring on the role. ‘The girls are a dime a dozen’ It probably won’t come as a surprise that Hooters servers often encounter lewd remarks, sexual advances and other forms of sexual harassment from customers. But because their managers often tolerate this behavior from customers, it created the added burden of what psychologists call “double-binds” – situations where contradictory messages make it impossible to respond properly. For example, say a regular customer who’s a generous tipper decides to proposition a server. Now she’s in a predicament. She’s been instructed to make customers feel special. And he’s already left a big tip, in addition to being a regular. But she also feels creeped out, and his advances make her feel worthless. Should she push back? GOP presidential candidate Bob Dole shakes hands with Hooters employees after a campaign rally in Jacksonville, Fla., in 1996. J. David Ake/AFP via Getty Images You might assume that managers, aware that their scantily clad employees would be more likely to face harassment, would try to set boundaries and throw out customers who treated servers poorly. But we found that waitresses at breastaurants have less support from both management and their co-workers than servers at other restaurants. “Unfortunately, the girls are a dime a dozen, and that’s how they’re treated,” a former server and corporate trainer at a breastaurant explained. The lack of co-worker support might also come as a surprise. Rather than standing in solidarity, the servers tended to compete for favoritism, better shifts and raises from their bosses. Gossiping, name-calling and scapegoating were commonplace. The psychological toll My research team also wanted to learn more about the specific emotional and psychological costs of working in these types of environments. Psychologists Barbara Fredrickson and Tomi-Ann Robert have found that mental health problems that disproportionately affect women often coincide with sexual objectification. So we weren’t surprised to find that servers working in sexually objectifying restaurant environments, such as Hooters and Twin Peaks, reported more symptoms of depression, anxiety and disordered eating than those working in other restaurants. In addition, they wanted to be thinner, were more likely to monitor their weight and appearance, and were more dissatisfied with their bodies. Hooters didn’t reply to a request for comment on this story. Why are women drawn to the job? Given our findings, you might wonder why any women would choose to work in places like Hooters in the first place. The women we interviewed said that they sought work in breastaurants to make more money and have more flexibility. A number of servers in one of our studies noted that they could make more money this way than waitressing at a regular restaurant or in other “real” jobs. For example, one of the servers we interviewed used to work at a more run-of-the-mill restaurant. “It was OK, I made OK money,” she told us. “But working at Hooters … I’ve walked out with hundreds of dollars in one shift.” All the women we interviewed were in college or were mothers. So they enjoyed the high degree of flexibility in their work schedule that breastaurants provided. Finally, several of them had previously experienced objectification while growing up, or they’d participated in activities centered on physical appearance, such as beauty pageants and cheerleading. This likely contributed to their decision to work at a Hooters or one of its competitors: They’d been objectified as adolescents, and so they found themselves drawn to these kinds of setting as adults. Even so, our research suggests that the financial rewards and flexibility of working in breastaurants probably aren’t worth the potential psychological costs. Dawn Szymanski is Professor of Psychology at University of Tennessee This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Photos: National Archives and Records Administration / Rawpixel; kaktov / Getty images by Clara Hemphill, New York Focus Keith Wagner, a dairy farmer in the rolling hills and open fields northeast of Albany, shelled out $1.4 million to build a device that promises to cut his electric bill and to reduce air pollution: a generator powered by manure and food waste. He was confident he would be reimbursed for a big chunk of that money, thanks to a $422,806 grant from the US Department of Agriculture. Now, the Trump administration has frozen billions of dollars in payments to rural farmers and small businesses for climate-friendly projects approved during the Biden administration. Wagner doesn’t know when, if ever, he’ll see the money. “It’s unfair,” said Wagner, whose 1,000-acre family farm with 400 milk cows, Wagner Farms, is just 13 miles from the state capital. “We signed a contract with the federal government to complete a project. We did that. Now, they’re not holding up their end of the deal. It’s kind of like, if I wasn’t going to pay my taxes, and I said, ‘Well, I’m just not going to pay them.’” Methane gas from manure and food waste fills a dome to generate electricity for Wagner Farms in Poestenkill, NY. / Keith Wagner Wagner is one of 151 farmers, rural businesses, and municipalities in New York State who were promised $186 million under Biden’s signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), according to an analysis by Atlas Public Policy prepared for New York Focus. The grants are for projects designed to plant trees, protect farmland from the effects of climate change and to bring solar power and other forms of clean energy — like Wagner’s manure-powered generator — to rural areas. Almost all of that money is now frozen. On Trump’s first day in office, he ordered the USDA to stop payments to all IRA grants; Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins says the department is reviewing projects to ensure money goes only goes to “farmers and ranchers” and not to “far-left climate programs.” That leaves grantees in rural parts of the state — where support for Trump is strong — in the dark, with no information about when a review might be forthcoming or what it might entail. “I asked my contact at USDA if they heard anything,” Wagner said. “They said, ‘Nothing yet. Radio silence.’” His generator, called an anaerobic digester, is a success. It extracts methane gas from the cows’ manure and food waste and generates enough electricity for his entire farm, saving some $7,000 a month in utility bills. He even has enough electricity to sell some to the grid. The machine helps the environment, too, by keeping planet-heating methane from escaping into the atmosphere. But Wagner still doesn’t know how he is going to pay back the bank loan he took out to pay for it. Even some who support Trump’s agenda are frustrated. Todd Drake, a Republican member of the Albany County legislature, was awarded an $87,000 grant under the Rural Energy for America Program to install solar panels at the Adirondack Diamond Point Lodge, his family-owned vacation property in Lake George. Now he doesn’t know when he’ll be reimbursed. “I absolutely support what the Trump administration is doing, reviewing projects to get at the fraud and waste,” Drake said. “But if you’ve already committed to a project, there should be some clarity. We’d be really happy if we knew how long the review will take. There is a fear about what’s going to happen now.” Keith Wagner (with arm on cow) says the Trump administration has blocked payments for a clean energy project on his family farm in Poestenkill, NY / Clifford Oliver The funding freeze may become an issue in this summer’s special election in the 21st congressional district to fill the seat vacated by US Representative Elise Stefanik, Trump’s nominee as ambassador to the United Nations. Stefanik, whose district runs from the Adirondacks to the Canadian border, won reelection in 2024 by a whopping 24 percentage points. Democrats have nominated a dairy farmer, Blake Gendebien, in the hopes that his appeal to rural voters will overcome daunting odds; Republicans have yet to name a candidate. Trump’s policies will have a far-reaching effect on agriculture in New York, said Allison Morrill Chatrychiyn, a researcher in the Climate Stewards Program at Cornell University in Ithaca. Layoffs at USDA and cuts to Cornell’s long-standing agricultural research programs will make it difficult for farmers to get the information they need to adapt to climate change, she said. Farming has always been a risky and unpredictable business, but changing weather patterns have made it worse. Hotter summers make cows vulnerable to “heat stress,” which means they produce less milk and, in extreme cases, die. Heavy rain alternating with periods of drought damages the soil and makes it less fertile. Warmer winters may seem like a boon to farmers, but unpredictable temperatures sometimes damage fruit, such as the grapes grown in the Finger Lakes’ vineyards. “If you have a warmer winter, and then you get a cold snap and a freeze after grapes have already started to bud, that’s deadly to the crop,” Chatrychiyn said. Research geared at mitigating these problems is in jeopardy. USDA laid off seven researchers at a Cornell lab in Geneva who studied how to make grapes more resistant to changing weather, for example. (An independent federal board later ordered the USDA to temporarily rehire laid-off workers.) “We signed a contract with the federal government to complete a project. Now, they’re not holding up their end of the deal.” —Keith Wagner “USDA layoffs will definitely have an impact on farmers in New York State and on research at Cornell,” Chatrychiyn said. “It will have a long-term effect.” During the Biden administration, the USDA awarded $60 million to New York State to help farmers mitigate the effects of climate change under a program called Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities. These funds, too, have been frozen. As a result, eight small farmers in the Hudson Valley won’t get the first payments of grants they had been promised for projects to prevent erosion and improve the quality of their soil, says Megan Larmer, senior director of programs at the Glynwood Center for Regional Food and Farming in Cold Spring. For example, a vegetable farmer was planning to use his grant to buy wheat and rye seeds to be used as cover crops. Cover crops grow in the off-season and are allowed to die and decompose naturally, putting nutrients in the soil. Other farmers planned to plant trees. “Promising farmers money, as the U.S. government did, and then freezing it creates financial havoc,” said Larmer, whose organization was managing the $4 million grant to be divided among the farms. “This is especially disruptive at a time of year when there is little cash, because the farm has nothing to sell, and there are lots of expenses like labor, seeds and equipment repairs.” Also frozen is a $560,000 grant to the Adirondack North Country Association (ANCA), a nonprofit in Saranac Lake that fosters economic development, to help eight small dairy, beef, and vegetable farms become more resistant to heat, drought and heavy rains. “If you have really intense rainstorms, like the ones we’ve been having, it can carry off soil nutrients and result in erosion,” said Jon Ignatowski, the ANCA staffer who manages the grant. “And that has implications down the road. Will these fields still be fertile in 10, 20, 30 years? How can we prevent runoff and erosion, or at least slow it down a little bit? Trees, with their deep roots, can hold the soil in place. They also provide shade, making animals less prone to heat stress. But the money ANCA was expecting to buy trees has been halted. “Our invoices were being paid regularly up until the new administration took over, and then our invoices stopped being paid,” Ignatowski said. “Suddenly, eight farms that thought they had this amazing opportunity to grow are being stuck in their tracks, and the implications of that will be felt over many years. We’re losing funds to do good rural economic development work in the region that really, really needs it.” This story originally appeared at New York Focus, a nonprofit news publication investigating power in New York.

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Corning, New York, March 21, 2025: Josephine Uyinmwen is proud to announce the release of her very first book, Silent No More: A Domestic Violence Survivor’s Story, which is now available for purchase on Amazon.com. According to a press release sent to Twin Tiers Living, Uyinmwen was born in Nigeria into an extremely large, noble family. As was customary in her culture at the time, Josephine’s father had many wives and more children and grandchildren than she could count. After her father passed, the family members were separated from one another as property was divided. Following a brief stay in Italy, Josephine found herself immigrating to Canada and then the United States. Silent No More: A Domestic Violence Survivor’s Story is the first of two books in Josephine’s series depicting the story of her years-long battle for her health and life. What should have been a beautiful, loving relationship became a horrific and constant onslaught of physical and emotional pain. Josephine and her children face the unthinkable in this true account of survival and courage. Silent No More: A Domestic Violence Survivor’s Story is now available for purchase on Amazon in ebook and paperback formats.

State Senator Tom O’Mara (R-C, Big Flats), Assemblyman Chris Friend (R,C-Big Flats), and Assemblyman Phil Palmesano (R,C-Corning) today reminded area residents that New York State Electric & Gas (NYSEG) has scheduled a “Community Connection” public forum on Thursday, March 27, at the Big Flats American Legion. According to NYSEG, these events are aimed at giving customers an opportunity to meet directly with NYSEG representatives to address billing concerns and learn more about available resources to help manage energy costs. The company said it plans to hold additional Community Connection events throughout the region. O’Mara, Friend, and Palmesano have requested NYSEG to hold as many of these public meetings as possible. NYSEG’s event on Thursday at the Big Flats American Legion (45 Olcott Road S) will run from 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Customers can meet with NYSEG representatives on a first-come, first-served basis. The local lawmakers welcomed NYSEG’s outreach effort, noting that their offices have been inundated with constituent complaints over skyrocketing utility bills over the past several months. O’Mara said that his office has heard from over 300 constituents in the past two months alone. In a joint statement, O’Mara, Friend, and Palmesano said, “Skyrocketing utility costs have been the number one constituent complaint that our offices have been fielding throughout this new year. And rightly so. Some of these billing increases have been outrageous and inexplicable. We have been working with NYSEG, as well as with state officials at the state Public Service Commission and other state agencies, to try to get answers and assistance. Unfortunately, we haven’t yet received the answers or solutions we need. It’s critically important for NYSEG to conduct this direct outreach with ratepayers and we’ve requested NYSEG to do more of these meetings across the Southern Tier and Finger Lakes regions. Hopefully, more customers can begin to get the answers they need and deserve.” Over the past several years since then-Governor Andrew Cuomo and the Democrat-led State Legislature approved the “Community Leadership and Climate Protection Act” (CLCPA) in 2019, the year Albany Democrats took control of the State Senate, O’Mara, Friend, Palmesano, and other legislators have warned that clean energy mandates being rapidly imposed on all New Yorkers under that new law would have dire consequences across the board, including higher utility costs. In addition to this week’s NYSEG public forum in Big Flats, the area lawmakers said that customers unable to attend should continue filing complaints directly through NYSEG's customer service hotline at 888-315-1755, Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. They also encouraged customers who don’t get a satisfactory explanation or result to file complaints directly with the state Public Service Commission (PSC) through the PSC Helpline at 1-800-342-3377, Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Complaints to the PSC can also be filed online at: https://dps.ny.gov/file-complaint.

DEC is again providing pheasant chicks, free of charge, to approved applicants who can properly raise the birds to adulthood and release them at suitable sites. Applications are due by April 1, so don’t wait! Adult pheasants reared through this program must be released at sites with appropriate pheasant habitat and which allow public pheasant hunting. If you need help finding a release site, check out locations where DEC already releases pheasants in its interactive pheasant release map at Pheasant Stocking Mapper or contact your regional wildlife office. For over 100 years, the Day-old Pheasant Chick Program has been providing opportunities for participants to gain animal husbandry experience and has provided numerous additional fall pheasant hunting opportunities. The application to rear pheasant chicks in 2025 can be found on DEC’s pheasant hunting webpage and at the following link: 2025 Day-Old Pheasant Chick Application. Additional information on pheasants and pheasant hunting, as well as a downloadable guide to rearing pheasants can be found at Pheasant Hunting.

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On Tuesday March 25, 2025 24-year-old Aiyana Hazlett of Elmira, NY was arrested following an investigation conducted by the Chemung County Department of Social Services Special Investigations Unit and the Elmira Police Department. The investigation found that Hazlett did file fraudulent paperwork for public assistance with the Chemung County Department of Social Services. As a result, she received $9,621.00 in SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits that she was not eligible to receive. Aiyana J Hazlett was charged with one count of Welfare Fraud 3rd (a Class D Felony), one count of Grand Larceny 3rd (a Class D Felony), and four counts of Offering a False Instrument for Filing 1st (Class E Felonies)

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Francisco Javier Flores, who is known for his family's beloved Los Panchos restaurant in Elmira has died at the age of 69. According to his obituary, Flores was a skilled jeweler who worked with Dozacks for many years before transitioning to Toshiba alongside his wife. However, his true passion lay in the restaurant business. He dedicated himself to his family’s restaurant, Los Panchos, from 1978 to 1994, later taking ownership and reopening it on Water Street in 2005. You can see his entire obituary here.

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