The R.A.T.S. pack
Are
you between the ages of 20 and 29? Are you sick of sitting home, pulling
bongloads, and playing Sega until your thumbs bleed? Tired of the bar scene?
Wish you could meet and mingle with people your own age without flunkies from
the Zone showing up and trying to give you stickers and ski trips?
           Try moving to Guam.
           Or, if you’d rather stay in town,
you might consider hanging out with the R.A.T.S. — the verminous acronym of
the Rochester-Area 20-Somethings.
           R.A.T.S. is a social and
professional networking organization for people just old enough to remember
disco and just young enough to think it’s cool. It was formed last June by
three Rochester natives and one transplant from St. Louis. The idea is to provide
young people with opportunities to hang with their peers and, in the process,
advance their careers, make new friends, and maybe even score. If their
gatherings get really popular, the organizers hope 20-somethings will stop
leaving Rochester like, well, rats abandoning a sinking ship.
           According to R.A.T.S. co-founder
Laura Allen, 22, about 260 people have signed on to get info about the nascent
group’s gatherings via e-mail (see www.rochesterarea20somethings.org). “This is
a much bigger response than I ever imagined,” she gushes.
           The group has held two picnics, so
far — the next takes place September 7 at Ontario Beach Park. It has also
played miniature golf, watched movies at the Highland Bowl, and spent a
Saturday pounding nails for Habitat for Humanity. Though R.A.T.S. tries to be
an alternative to the bar scene, Allen says the group is “not totally opposed”
to infesting a watering hole, and it invades “professional networking” events,
like Digital Rochester, at Tonic every month.
           Membership is free, and if you’ve
hit the big 3-0, don’t worry: R.A.T.S. doesn’t check IDs.
—
Chris Busby
New York rules!
This year’s gubernatorial
race has spawned a disturbing side contest: the race to appeal to New Yorkers’
basest instincts.
The competitors in this match-up are Governor George Pataki and Rochester businessman Tom Golisano, who’s challenging Pataki
for the Independence and Conservative party lines on November’s ballot.
Golisano kicked things off in August with his offer to
give the football program at the State University of New York at Buffalo
several million dollars, on one condition: The school must change its name to
New York State University. “This could be a rallying point for the entire
state,” he told the Democrat and
Chronicle. Just as Tennesseans quit fussin’ and fightin’ ‘mongst
themselves, get loaded together, and cheer on their Volunteers, New Yorkers
would settle their differences come game day and unite behind the New York
Bulls.
Never mind criticisms that big-time college football is a
soft-core version of slavery, where poor kids break their bones against each other
to satisfy coaches with six-figure salaries; generating millions in merchandise
and TV-rights revenue, of which they’re prohibited from getting a dime. After
all, some get scholarships, and some actually become scholars, albeit
23-year-old bookworms with blown-out knees. And there are those lucky few who
get the chance to make millions playing in the NFL — at least a half-dozen
every year out of thousands of others who go on to sell used cars and flood
insurance.
(A week earlier, Golisano announced he was interested in
buying the Buffalo Sabres. Hockey: The only professional team sport where
players routinely stop playing, start punching each other in the face — as
the refs stand aside and children watch, rapt — and get back in the game,
minutes later.)
As though not to lose points with the bloodlust lobby,
later in August, Pataki announced he’d convinced the Navy to name the first of
a new class of amphibious warships the USS
New York. “The USS New York will
ensure that all New Yorkers and the world will never forget the evil attacks of
September 11, and the courage and compassion New Yorkers showed in response to
terror,” Pataki said in a press release.
It’ll also ensure that young men forced to fight for a
dictator, who may be helping people connected with the people who perpetrated
the September 11 attacks, will see the words “New York” as our young men kill
them in “good” attacks overseas.
Why do we suspect the “compassion of New Yorkers” won’t
be among their last, terrified thoughts?
William Warfield lives
The death of famed
bass-baritone and voice teacher William Warfield, who grew up in
Rochester and has surviving family members here, is made less final by his
recordings. We went back to one of them — his singing of “Ol’ Man River” from
the 1951 MGM film version of the Jerome Kern-Oscar Hammerstein musical Show
Boat — to hear the full, living sound.
Warfield’s accomplishment was to turn an almost jaunty,
dance-like number into a small drama, beginning contemplatively and ending with
dramatic, sustained high notes. The performance capped the development of “Ol’
Man River,” which went through great changes between the late 1920s and early
1950s, as you can easily hear on a compilation on the excellent Pearl label.
In 1928, for example, African-American singer-actor Jules
Bledsoe recorded a stirringly operatic interpretation, one geared for a large
hall. The same year, Bing Crosby, as if born to the microphone, gave the song a
quick, light treatment. Even Al Jolson made a stab at it — vocally strong in
the middle register, shakier on top, and racist from the first word (“niggers,”
actually not so much worse than “darkies,” the term sometimes chosen). Then
there was the great Paul Robeson, one of Warfield’s friends and mentors, with
his rich, though not so technically polished, natural voice.
By the time Warfield made his decisive appearance in the
role, Robeson was sidelined by the McCarthyites for his leftist politics. (As a
1947 recording shows, Robeson revised the “Ol’ Man River” text: “I’m tired of
living,” etc., became “I must keep fighting until I’m dying.”) But as
you consider Warfield’s enduring fame, remember that he wasn’t even pictured on
the 1951 album cover; only the white lead cast was so honored. But what’s past
is past. In his hometown and throughout the musical world, Warfield’s is the
standout performance.
Another of Warfield’s great friends, author and oral
historian Studs Terkel, spoke the other day about extra-musical things worth
remembering. Warfield, Terkel told the Chicago Sun-Times, was “one of
the most loving artists of our time… His religion was that of the whole world…
He was a great teacher, a delightful conversationalist, and a man who always
spoke the truth.”
Boaters floaters
Two years ago, the International
Joint Commission, a US-Canada body that has oversight of the Great Lakes
and St. Lawrence River systems, empanelled a committee to report on water
levels and related issues. Now the committee, with help from a Public Advisory
Group of citizens and public officials, has put out its “Year One Report.”
We’re sure many Rochesterians will zero in on the
report’s lake-level data. After all, boaters, fishers, and other “users” of
Lake Ontario, etc., have immediate worries. Will they be able to dock the cabin
cruiser? Will next winter’s ice make a pretzel of the dock? Will the wave
action undermine the cottage and shorten the back yard? Then there are the
commercial interests, of course, who want to know if there’s enough water to
float their boat. And regulators wonder if levels are low enough to, say, keep
some shore areas in southern Québec from flooding. It’s a complicated business.
Almost lost in the competition are the lakes, rivers,
ponds, and shores themselves, and their ecosystems. We did see this note in the
Year One Report, however, about water levels in Lac Saint-François, a shallow,
wildlife-rich widening of the St. Lawrence just this side of Montréal: Levels
there “are currently maintained within a 30 cm (one foot) variation compared to
natural variation of about 1.5 metres (five feet)… Pleasure boaters find this
an ideal arrangement, while environmental interests are concerned with the loss
of wetland vegetation variety due to more constant levels.” In short, it’s
Ecology 101. Bodies of water need wide fluctuations so some species can take
hold during “down times,” while others establish themselves during the up’s.
They used to call it the balance of nature.
But ecology is almost beside the point, to some. Right
now, for example, a US Army Corps of Engineers’ “Great Lakes Navigation System
Review” is being vetted in Washington. The review looks at the necessity and
feasibility of “replumbing,” or widening and deepening, the connecting channels
along the shipping route from Montréal to Duluth, Minnesota. The big factor
here is larger ships. A Corps spokesperson tells us a final decision on the
plan may be made this fall. But environmentalists are watching. For example,
Great Lakes United, a Buffalo-based watchdog group, is urging opposition to any
replumbing. The group fears dredging and channelization will disrupt some
habitats and help new exotic species invade our waters. (See www.glu.org for
more information. The Corps of Engineers Detroit office posts information at
www.lre.usace.army.mil.)
Dog overboard
Biking up North Goodman
Street the morning of August 27, a City staffer
turned his head to the left and found himself face to face with a bulldog
riding shotgun in a passing van. The dog was clearly enjoying the ride,
which made it all the more surprising to see him tumble out the window as his
driver slowed to take a right on Anderson Avenue.
The pudgy mutt made a less than graceful landing on the
asphalt and squirmed to his feet inches from the wheels of the turning van. Our
writer experienced several harrowing moments wondering which way the dog would
decide to walk as vehicles passed in every direction through the intersection.
Luckily, the pooch regained his cool and sauntered onto
the grass to sniff a tree and a fire hydrant nearby. “He just jumped,” said the
driver to a startled female pedestrian on the scene. His tone suggested he was
just as surprised as she was to witness the stunt.
Don’t be surprised yourself if you see the same bulldog
riding around town, a seatbelt strapped across his canine chest.
This article appears in Sep 4-10, 2002.
