After 30 years of morning Joe, Geneseo coffee klatch wonders if it's time for a logo

Does your coffee group have a logo?

I realize that’s a rather abrupt start to this column. I know it assumes you have a coffee group — if you don’t I think you should — but stay with me. I need your advice.

First some background:

My wife, Cindy, and I live in Geneseo. It’s a small village with a granite fountain in the middle of Main Street that’s a magnet for vehicles. Last weekend, a car swiped it again leaving a few skid marks. Now you know. No big deal.

We start most days by going downtown and having coffee with friends. We’ve been doing this in various coffee shops (we’re now at Cosmic Charlie Cafe) for at least 30 years.

Most people under 40 might find ritual gatherings like ours to be strange. Talk every day about colonoscopies, the Buffalo Bills (alas), and Main Street parking regulations? Isn’t it time you got a life?

Maybe. But for better, or for worse, this is our life, or at least a part of our life that we need.

I’d argue there is something sustaining about seeing a table filled with friends, friends who know your history, your strengths, your weaknesses, your worries.

I think we sensed this when the pandemic hit. Realizing what we’ve lost, we quickly started Zooming from our homes.

Good heavens, we were awful at first, finding the audio, finding the video, failing at screen sharing. But there everyone was on the screen, isolated, but not isolated. We needed that.

When restrictions eased, we gathered in the village park one day a week, sat in a wide circle, shouted out greetings. Eventually, we resumed in-person meetings. It was, and is, a joy.

But back to my initial question. Do we need a logo?

I ask because, when Cindy and I were gone last week, someone in the group proposed creating a group logo.

Our friend, Tom Bushnell, the multitalented village justice, hopped right on the suggestion and started working on the design.

His first has “Cronies & Codgers” above a steaming cup of coffee. The second adds to the alliteration with “Cronies, Codgers & Curmudgeons” above the cup. Both versions are ageist, but we’re old enough to get away with that.

Tom added “curmudgeon” to triple down on the alliteration, and I suppose I’m being a curmudgeon to question whether adopting any logo at all would be a step in the wrong direction.

First the logo, then T-shirts, bylaws, officers, dues, chapters, and, last, but not least, a mission statement.

A mission statement would do us in. There we would be, up from our chairs, writing phrases on big sheets of paper hanging from the wall. We would fill every one of them. We would spend days, weeks, months, boiling all this thinking down to one sentence.

All the while, we wouldn’t be talking about colonoscopies, or the Bills (alas), or, better yet, our grandchildren, or a restaurant we liked, or a program we streamed, or the final Jeopardy question, the question we never remember.

Once we had a mission statement, some of our essential topics wouldn’t be mission worthy. “We’ve heard enough about that quirky dishwasher door,” someone would say, “It’s outside the mission.” (Full disclosure. We have spent hours discussing a dishwasher door that doesn’t work. Get a life? Perhaps.)

I think I’ve made my worry clear. I realize that we’ve earned a logo — three decades of coffee should be recognized — but it might upset our vibe.

Other coffee groups may have reached the logo crossroads. I know you’re out there. I see you gathered around high tops in Dunkin’ Donuts and hogging corner booths in diners.

So let me know if you’ve had the logo debate and how things went afterwards. Did you become mission driven? Did you establish chapters? Did you dissolve? And, if you’ve got a moment, let me know how your dishwasher doors are doing. One member of our group needs to know.

From his home in Geneseo, Livingston County, retired senior editor Jim Memmott, writes Remarkable Rochester, who we were, who we are. He can be reached at jmemmott@gannett.com or write Box 274, Geneseo, NY 14454

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Geneseo coffee klatch wonders if it's time for a logo after 30 years