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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Voters’ guide 2002
Welcome to City‘s 2002 voters’ guide. In this issue, we meet most of the candidates for seats representing Rochester and its surrounding suburbs in the New York State Senate and Assembly. Next week, we’ll see what Congressional candidates vying to represent parts of Monroe County have to say for themselves, and make more fun of […]
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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. […]
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Lackawanna: terror of the unknown?
During World War I, Buffalo was gripped by what one authority (quoted by the late UB sociologist Ed Powell in his Design of Discord) called “a mounting and diffuse anxiety” over “German spies and plotters.” In July 1918, a Buffalo publication advised readers: “Do not wait until you catch someone putting a bomb under a […]
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Shooting down UFOs, stamping out Bigfoot
Paul Kurtz debunks urban legends and pop-culture myths
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School buses: take a deep breath, or not
The wonderfully named author Jerry Mander tells an anecdote about the environmental effects of air travel. A Boeing Corp. physicist told him that “the pollution from the take-off of a single 747” is like “setting the local gas station on fire and flying it over your neighborhood.’” A sobering image, especially when you consider there […]
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Rhinos and Red Wings and Rattlers, oh my
As any African guide will tell you, it’s not a good idea to taunt a Rhino. But it seems the members of the Greater Rochester Sports Authority haven’t been on a safari in quite some time. And if they don’t placate both Rochester’s Rhinos and Red Wings, there could be a stampede out of town. […]
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Full steam ahead
Buoyed by an influx of state funding, fast ferry service between Rochester and Toronto is now on the horizon. Thanks to $14 million in state loans and grants — $4 million more than ferry proponents had previously expected to receive — the project is moving forward even without funds from Canadian officials. “To launch […]
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Officer down, citizen dead
Even after years of Fox TV’s Cops, an amateur video shot during an incident at a Wegmans supermarket can make an impression. The video records less than two minutes of an arrest at the market August 31. It shows Rochester Police Department officers pinning Lawrence Rogers, a northeast Rochester resident who was clad only […]
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County social service cuts: too much, too fast?
The county giveth and the county taketh away. Furthermore, it can do so without warning or regard to the wider implications of its actions. That’s the hard lesson the heads of local social service agencies say they have learned in the wake of County Executive Jack Doyle’s decision to cut county funding for their […]
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War of the words
County Executive Jack Doyle has been getting an earful from people unhappy with his proposed social service cuts. And in an interview with WXXI radio broadcast on August 14, Doyle responded with a mouthful of criticism. Regarding social service agencies with which the county contracts to provide services, Doyle told WXXI: “Most of their […]
