To the streets: scenes from the protests
Anyone physically close to the Rochester crew that marched through New York City last week knows how determination smells — musty and rank, like a high-school locker room. While many of the 5,000 delegates to the Republican convention stayed in swanky hotels, ate at posh buffets, and saw a Broadway show, many more people…
Of anger and chocolate milk
Some sports fans are disgusted when players fight, but they really ought to appreciate its significance. When Montreal’s Nevio Pizzolitto punched Rochester’s Lenin Steenkamp in the face as they headed to the locker room during the Rhinos’ 2-0 win on August 27, it indicated passion. I don’t care whether Pizzolitto cheap-shotted Steenkamp, or Steenkamp provoked…
Watching the wealthy at play
Although William Makepeace Thackeray called Vanity Fair “a novel without a hero,” the makers of the famous motion picture of 1935 entitled their film Becky Sharp. They named it after the book’s major character, who provides a central focus, the protagonist if not the heroine of the vast, sprawling work. In Mira Nair’s new adaptation,…
Also playing…
While the principles of art and warfare might appear to share little common ground, one could argue that the most sophisticated examples of both do use at least one radically similar technique. The “indirect approach,” (later called Fabian Tactics), first put to use by the great Theban General Epaminondas to defeat the indomitable Spartans, has…
Are we fit to vote?
It’s going to be worse than I had expected, this period of vitriol masquerading as a presidential election campaign. Voters should be so appalled by the Republicans’ demagoguery that they flock to Kerry. But that doesn’t seem likely to happen. There was confidence beneath the taunts and muscle-flexing at the Republican convention last week.…
Reader feedback 9.8.04
Health care and budget cuts, casinos and racism
Body count 9.8.04
To honor the war dead and fill an information gap in US mass media, City Newspaper will run weekly lists of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians killed during the occupation of Iraq. The totals: 983 American soldiers, 131 Coalition soldiers, and approximately 11,793 to 13,802 Iraqi civilians have been killed in Iraq from the beginning…
Frank Horton
A staunch Republican, he represented a political center that has nearly disappeared. Former Rep. Frank J. Horton served residents of Monroe, Cayuga, Seneca, Wayne, and Oswego counties from 1967 until his retirement from office in 1992. He died Monday, August 30, in his Virginia home, at the age of 84. Many remember Horton…
The race for Amo Houghton’s seat
A glance at New York’s 29th congressional district reveals a stark lack of symmetry. At the bottom — etched in bold, nearly straight lines — lies a block of rural counties, stacked four wide along the Pennsylvania border. Extending from this, like a hand grasping northward, a crooked, zigzagging piece of the district reaches toward…
‘Bush is leading us toward facism’
The events of September 11 didn’t turn 29-year-old Jeremy Glick into an activist; he’s been one all his life. Glick, a star of Robert Greenwald’s documentary, “Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism,” lost his father in the destruction of the WorldTradeCenter. He has since become known for his outspoken criticism of the Bush administration. …
Family valued 9.8.04
The soul of reading Many books have fed me over the years. The books I knew and loved as a child took root in my soul, where they’ve lived for a lifetime. And now, when I see these books, it’s like finding a lost love, or reconnecting with a soul I knew in another life.…
