Readers feedback 6.9.04
Colgate’s decision; panhandling debated
Renaissance speak-out
Last month, members of the public could pay $20 to have lunch and hear visitors from other cities sing the praises of large projects they say have revitalized their downtowns. The event was hosted by the Renaissance Square Corporation, which is planning the $230 million complex that is to house a bus terminal, performing arts…
Democracy… later?
Internet streaming, for the time being, will be the only way Rochester-area residents can watch or listen to the award-winning independent news program, Democracy Now! The show, hosted by journalists Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, is broadcast on more than 225 Pacifica, National Public Radio, and community stations throughout the country. But WXXI won’t…
Caught in the middle
The RochesterSchool District has cut teachers and other staff and is closing one school. And it still faces a budget shortfall of as much as $36 million, unless state aid closes that gap. With less than a month to go in this school year, district officials aren’t sure they’ll offer summer-school programs. The reason:…
Family valued
‘Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban’ We’re big fans of the Harry Potter books, and of the five, The Prisoner of Azkaban is the best. It has the most depth of character and genuine gothic quality. So when Chris Columbus started making HP flicks, this was the one we were waiting for (goth makes…
Sewing stories
We don’t often get to experience the stunned awareness in realizing that what stands (or hangs) before us isn’t really what it seems. Recently, for us, it was realizing that what looked like an actual dress stretched out and pinned to the wall was, in fact, a digital photograph — complete with all the requisite…
For one brief, shining moment
Geva Theatre Center has a hit on its hands with Camelot. It’s a beloved story. Despite the show’s basic drawbacks, the large cast sings and performs well. And the King Arthur is worth the price of admission by himself. Four years after their incomparable My Fair Lady, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe came…
Suffer the little children
The child’s point of view often lends a special combination of innocence and insight to narrative, which explains its use by writers like Mark Twain, Henry James, Graham Greene, and William Faulkner. Even when it concentrates on children, the cinema, however, generally shows children from an adult perspective. The subjects are often drenched in buckets…
Also playing…
An Israeli film with no mention of politics, Broken Wings concentrates instead on the members of a family as they cope variously with the absence of the father, who died nine months previous. The cluttered texture of life is shown in a way you don’t often see anymore in American films, and it’s interesting to…
A feast for the senses
A strange phenomenon is going on this weekend: Synaesthesia 2. Synaesthesia is an involuntary condition experienced by some, such as 20th-century classical composers Scriabin and Messiaen. When they heard a sound or musical pitch, they would automatically see, in their mind’s eye, some particular color. This variety of synaesthesia is sometimes called “chromesthesia” or “color…
Trumpeting new ideas
The leading trumpet players of the last several decades coaxed no shortage of distinctive sounds out of the instrument. Miles Davis was known for evoking extraordinary pathos. Wynton Marsalis can make it sing with astounding clarity. And Jon Faddis can play in an upper register so high that you might wonder if the notes are…
Too much jazz
When Oscar Peterson walked out on the Eastman Theatre stage Saturday evening, the Rochester International Jazz Festival audience responded with a tremendous ovation. Peterson appeared frail as he walked to the piano, but as soon as he began to play, all concern disappeared. Although the stroke that befell him a decade ago has slowed…
‘Lipstick Sunset’
The Real McKenzies seemed a little more focused on drinking than playing their show a few weeks back at The Club at Water Street. The B.C. band was positively wild and sounded like a party threatening to boil over. A mohawked, kilted cat bounding around the stage while playing the bagpipes is really something to…
Body count
To honor the war dead and fill an information gap in US mass media, City Newspaper will run weekly lists of American/”Coalition” soldiers and Iraqi citizens killed during the ongoing occupation of Iraq. The totals: 825 American soldiers, 111 “Coalition” soldiers, and approximately 9,000 Iraqi soldiers and 11,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed in Iraq…
A court’s eugenics revival
Some men in their 60s and 70s are suing the state of Massachusetts for branding them “morons” as children and locking them away in the Fernald State School, a hideous institution where they were abused and fed radioactive oatmeal as part of a science experiment. A Boston Globe story describes the men as “among…
Merge and meld?
Merge and meld? Voters may seem to have squashed any thoughts of government consolidation last November, but cold, hard budget facts may force the issue back into public debate. Consolidation on a service level came up last week, for instance, at a City Council hearing on Mayor Bill Johnson’s budget proposal. Patricia Malgieri, CEO…
