In late summer, you drive along Waterport’s winding country roads past fields of tall corn swaying in the breeze. Kids hang out on the small bridge spanning LakeAlice while several men lazily cast their fishing lines nearby. The town’s peaceful, nobody’s in a hurry, and there doesn’t seem to be much trouble of any kind. […]
Joseph Sorrentino
Posted inNews & Opinion
Car Zen: the art of mechanical meditation
If a mint-condition, 1958 Silver Cloud Rolls Royce cruising down a Rochester street isn’t enough to turn your head, then its license plate — “One Zen” — is going to grab your attention. The car’s owner, Doug Seibert, is a retired heating and air-conditioning contractor who started repairing bicycles as a kid and now spends […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Life on the edge
Edith clearly remembers the night she was reunited with her ex-husband. After having no contact for 10 years, he discovered where she lived and traveled a few hundred miles to let her know how he still felt about her. “I didn’t know he had shown up at my house,” she says, “and then, ‘pop, pop, […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Shock amidst the onions
A van carrying 13 Anglos and a Mexican translator bounced down some country roads outside of Brockport on a recent summer evening. We passed dozens of farms and untold acres of potatoes, young corn, and, as we approached the migrant camp that was our final destination, the onions and black dirt for which this area […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Cultural mining, at the source
A love of Latin American culture and a taste for adventure have led James Potemkin from a job teaching science to a life collecting Mexican arts and crafts. “I spent several years traveling in Latin America during the summers,” Potemkin says, “and what awakened in my soul wasn’t just the beauty of the landscapes […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Philip Kapleau
Roshi Philip Kapleau, founder of the Rochester Zen Center, was buried on Sunday at the Chapin Mill Retreat Center, the Zen Center’s site in Batavia. Roshi Kapleau, who wrote The Three Pillars of Zen, one of the seminal books on Zen practice, was 91 and died from complications of Parkinson’s Disease. Originally trained as […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
We suffer much
I’m standing in the back of a camioneta with 15 Mexicans, heading to remote mountain villages in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, when a thought as clear as any I’ve ever had grabs my attention: “What in the hell am I doing here?” I’m in the back of that camioneta because I’d written about […]
Posted inCulture
Traveling ‘hard,’ on the road
Notch Miyake grew up in Hawaii feeling “very enclosed.” He wanted to break out and travel. A stint in the Navy temporarily satisfied this wanderlust, but college, a business career, and family obligations put further travel plans on hold. He worked for Xerox in Rochester, eventually leaving to start his own optical coating business. […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Do you know Goa?
Do you know Goa? “Which part of India did Francis Xavier arrive at in 1542?” If there are esoteric questions in the air and small groups of people with pensive looks on their faces huddled around tables, then it must be Trivia Night at the Old Toad Pub. “Most English pubs have trivia nights […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Do you know Goa?
Do you know Goa? “Which part of India did Francis Xavier arrive at in 1542?” If there are esoteric questions in the air and small groups of people with pensive looks on their faces huddled around tables, then it must be Trivia Night at the Old Toad Pub. “Most English pubs have trivia nights […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Do you know Goa?
Do you know Goa? “Which part of India did Francis Xavier arrive at in 1542?” If there are esoteric questions in the air and small groups of people with pensive looks on their faces huddled around tables, then it must be Trivia Night at the Old Toad Pub. “Most English pubs have trivia nights […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Tell me a story
Rafe Martin creates entire worlds out of simple words, or, as he puts it, “sounds on air.” He’s not one to run around on stage during his storytelling performances, preferring to simply sit or stand in one place, using gestures or a change in tone to plant his audience — of children and adults — […]
