Time was, if you wanted the scoop on Rochester Gas and Electric, you could look in your own backyard — not only at the poles and wires near your home, but also the corporate headquarters on East Avenue. But today you have to travel, figuratively, to Ithaca, where RG&E’s corporate owner is headquartered. The […]
Jack Bradigan Spula
Posted inNews & Opinion
Playing Medi-tag: the price of long term care
“I cried for three months,” says Nova Robbins. The 74-year-old Fairport resident had helped her husband, Robert Robbins, get necessary long term care after a paralyzing stroke. But the crying that Robbins mentions here was connected to other terrible difficulties: the paperwork she needed to wade through, and the money she needed to […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Jail in a recession: the all-you-can-eat diet
It’s like the Ice Storm all over again — this time in public services. Yes, the county legislature restored some social-service funding to next year’s spending plan. The restorations are connected to a hard-won but slight increase in the county property tax rate. The modest tax hike won’t make up, though, for a decade […]
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Doing or undoing a slow burn
Amid snowy tree branches and slush-dappled parked cars, the aroma of wood smoke makes its way down many Rochester streets. Even if you don’t burn wood yourself, you get a taste of the season and all its associations — like that “chestnuts roasting on an open fire” thing. The romance invites itself into your […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
The march of homophobia
Now hear this. The military does not — I repeat, for those of you daydreaming in the ranks, does not — discriminate against gays and lesbians. I have this on the word of Danny Francis, education specialist with the regional US Army recruiter command, based in Syracuse. Francis says the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” […]
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Ancient music, modern times
The drama of “East meets West” has a long pedigree, one rooted in tectonic frictions and overthrusts. But there’s a very personal element, too. For me, it all hit during one cultural exchange of the 1960s and 1970s. Sure, it’s an old rap: Sitarist Ravi Shankar and his disciple George Harrison were opening the Western […]
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Advance exit polling
Since we go to press hours before the polls close November 5, I’m in a weird position as I write this. I don’t know the outcome of the election, though I’ve tried to prepare myself. Some things are as certain as conservative hatred of the “death tax” (it’s actually the most progressive one we’ve […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Documented arrogance
On July 18, 1870 — the day before France declared war on Prussia — the First Vatican Council met for a vote on papal “primacy” and infallibility. There were “533 Fathers on hand, and all but two voted placet [yes],” writes Father Robert F. McNamara in his history of the Rochester diocese. Rochester Bishop Bernard […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
The vital center: river talk
Stand beside the Genesee River in the middle of downtown — the several hundred yard stretch from East Main north to Andrews Street — and you feel the impure thoughts welling up. Is this a river or a canal? What’s in that soup of muddy water and driftwood? Is this a living stream or a […]
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Getting fiscal: municipalities beat each other
This being election season, real issues are as scarce as hen’s dentures. Sound bites degrade to dum-dum bullets: “I’ll create jobs,” “I’ll fight crime.” Meanwhile, the manifest wounds lie open. Society has fallen on barbed wire; every small movement causes another cut. And the issue that cuts most deeply on the domestic front — economic […]
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Things go better with food
“Look, these are done,” cries fifth grader Lekisha Mitchell as she tests the weight of a ripening sunflower head. Behind her and friend Terri Burnett, also a fifth grader, the row of flowers stretches almost to a vanishing point beside School 9 on North Clinton Avenue. The sunflowers, though, are only a garnish. The […]
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Look homeward: the finances of long-term care
As US battleships prepare to set sail again, another iceberg floats into harbor with hardly a PT boat deployed against it. This ‘berg is a troubling financial downturn among nursing homes, mostly connected to Medicaid reimbursements. (Medicaid, created in 1965 to provide health care for the poor, wasn’t designed to pay for long-term care. […]
