Talk about pressure. Less than a week after he was tapped by President Bush to head the Environmental Protection Agency, the administration’s faltering clean-air policy forced Acting EPA Administrator Steve Johnson into the spotlight. On March 9, the president’s Clear Skies legislation stalled in the Senate Environment and Public Works committee. Time for plan B. […]
Krestia DeGeorge
Posted inNews & Opinion
Washing away the blue-state blues
“I’ll never believe that Kerry didn’t take Ohio.” That’s Mary Ellen Blanchard speaking and tonight’s a Thursday, the night she and a half dozen to a dozen local self-described liberals congregate at Monty’s Korner to talk politics and down a few drinks while they’re at it. Today Democrat Wade Norwood has announced his candidacy for […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Turning Main Street’s vital corner
When Renaissance Square is built — and more than half of the needed $230 million in funding is already lined up — it will have an immeasurable effect on Rochester’s downtown. For good or ill, the project will alter the character of downtown’s architecture. Both of the finalists for the design of Renaissance Square — […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Burned out
Peter Christ will be the keynote speaker at the annual convention of the Rochester Libertarian Party on Saturday, February 26, at the Park Place Hotel (formerly the Radisson), 175 Jefferson Road. The convention begins at 11 a.m.; the program starts at 12:30. A business session begins at 2. Admission is $30, including lunch. Information: www.rochesterlp.org; […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Pushing big changes, in black and white
Can a newspaper make a difference? To answer that question, we’ll be watching our neighbors to the west. On January 2, The Buffalo News inaugurated a year-long focus on the future of the paper’s city and region. They’re calling the special report “Why not Buffalo?” That report — which sports the sub-headline […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Growing, growing… gone? The ‘rural’ county
Thirty years ago, people driving to Rochester from the south would have seen a landscape of mainly farms, fields, and woods. Now, most of that bucolic countryside is little more than a memory, replaced by shopping malls, tract housing, and the odd mix of commercial accretion that follows suburbia. US Census Bureau data […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Leap of faith
Walking into the lobby of HOPE Initiatives’ Anson Street offices, there’s little to identify the place as home to a religious group. Faux-marble paneling frames a receptionist’s window, and off to the side sit a few chairs for visitors. The room’s walls are devoid of the symbols that often distinguish religious groups from their secular […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
The state of Monroe
When County Executive Maggie Brooks declared at the outset of her first-ever State of the County Address that “the state of our county has greatly improved,” she said she did so “with a clear vision for our future.” But what exactly that vision is was unclear: Very little of what Brooks addressed was new. There […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
The state of Monroe
When County Executive Maggie Brooks declared at the outset of her first-ever State of the CountyAddress that “the state of our county has greatly improved,” she said she did so “with a clear vision for our future.” But what exactly that vision is was unclear: Very little of what Brooks addressed was new. […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
The incredible shrinking district
When the city school district held a series of public forums last fall to put together a list of school-closing criteria, almost nobody showed. That surprised officials at the time, but no one’s surprised by the amount of attention being paid now that those criteria are being implemented. Facing permanently declining enrollment, the district embarked […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Help on the ground: a local perspective
Framed prominently on the wall behind Tom Cray’s desk is an excerpt from Tim O’Brien’s novel The Things They Carried. The quotation describes what Vietnam soldiers carried, ranging from the mundane to the monumental, the literal to the figurative: “They were afraid of dying, but too afraid to show it. They carried the emotional baggage […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Refighting Vietnam (in Rochester)
During last year’s presidential election, many political analysts felt the dialogue sometimes seemed unable to break free of issues surrounding the decades-old conflict in Vietnam. Perhaps that’s because our nation hasn’t finished wrestling with the ghosts of that controversial war. And now that struggle is defining the way we react to Iraq. Just ask anyone […]
