MORE
THAN MEDICINE
Dr.
Allen Power, Associate Director of St. John’s Nursing Home,
has never been able to keep music out of his life. Even as a pre-med student at
the University of Rochester in the early
’70s, Power flirted with the idea of jumping tracks and pursuing music.
Nonetheless, he decided on gerontology.
“I
wanted to use science in a way that gave me lots of personal interaction,” he
explains.
Fortunately,
as some local nursing home residents, their loved ones, and fans of acoustic
guitar already know, music plays a primary role in enriching Power’s
interaction with his patients. A passionate proponent of the Eden Alternative
(a progressive movement that emphasizes, among other things, a holistic rather
than strictly medication-based outlook on geriatric health), Power makes music
that deals predominantly with issues facing the elderly.
Power’s
work resonates because he adeptly jumps moods. A given tune might communicate
whimsy, stubbornness, vulnerability, or resignation about mortality.
(Apparently, Power struck a chord with Peter, Paul & Mary, who have covered
one of his songs in concert.) Power embodies the potential for generosity in
the arts; ultimately, his music tries to heal and restore self-worth — the
lack of which is a major challenge in his day job.
“We
not only have a youth-oriented culture — a youth-obsessed culture, I would
say,” he says, “but unfortunately older people have also bought into it. It’s
hard to empower elders to rediscover their worth.”
His
nursing home performances can be a hoot (he doesn’t get heckled per se, but the
crowds can certainly keep him on his toes), but there’s a muted urgency in the
air when he plays out in front of audiences who can easily sense that the
lyrics he sings will soon enough apply in some way to themselves. Luckily, his
affable, reassuring delivery usually puts his audiences at ease. www.alpower.net
—
Saby Reyes-Kulkarni
PREEMPTIVE
STRIKE
It
might seem early in the 2006 gubernatorial race to you. Not to Mike Long.
Last
Wednesday, the Conservative Party boss announced his choice for the state’s top
office: former upstate Assemblymember John Faso. The
move came just a week and a half after the party’s
annual conference in Albany, at which
Faso and other Republican hopefuls courted the Conservatives for their
endorsement. (That endorsement is significant, since candidates seeking to run
on a party line for which they’re not registered need that party chair’s
approval.)
Long’s decision puts
him at odds with State GOP Chairman Steve Minarik,
who is supporting former Massachusetts Governor William Weld, a moderate
Republican. (At a meeting of the state’s GOP county chairs earlier this year, Minarik held a straw poll, which Weld won. But plenty of
those chairs opted out of the vote or didn’t show at all.)
It’s
been decades since a Republican won statewide office in New York without the
Conservative Party’s blessing. Perhaps Long looked at the polls — which
predict Spitzer by an avalanche — and made a calculated decision to pull the
state GOP rightward. Still, there’s an element of Mutually Assured Destruction
in play here. Like every party in New York, the
Conservatives have to field a candidate who’ll bring in a minimum number of
votes (50,000). Otherwise they lose their official party status and their line
on the ballot (and with it the weighty cross-endorsing influence they wield).
If Faso tanks, Long’s own political power could be a
thing of the past.
On
the other hand, Long can’t be ignorant of the position Minarik’s
in. “Precarious” doesn’t quite do it justice. Last year, when he became state
GOP chair, Minarik inherited a state Republican Party
that was seemingly directionless. Despite controlling the governor’s mansion
and the State Senate, the statewide GOP was marked by little cohesion and
plenty of public infighting (in stark contrast to the tight ship Minarik runs at the county level).
On
top of that, Minarik was handed the Sisyphean task of
finding candidates to beat Eliot Spitzer and Hillary Clinton. If he can do
that, he’s a hero and he’ll be off to Washington to be the
next Karl Rove. If not, he may be sent back down to the political bush leagues
from whence he came. It doesn’t bode well for him that he’s taken to feuding
publicly with some top Republicans, including the man who paved his path to the
state chairmanship, George Pataki. One sign that Minarik
may recognize his own feet of clay is that he’s hedged his bets by holding onto
his chairmanship here in MonroeCounty.
If
Long is weighing all of this, perhaps he thinks he can force Minarik to line up behind the more conservative Faso by
playing to Minarik’s hopes of uniting both
right-of-center parties around a single candidate. And playing on his fears of
losing badly.
One
particular sentence in Faso’s letter to his party members sounds an awful lot
like a shot across Minarik’s bow and supports the
theory of political brinksmanship. After calling Faso the “best chance” to
unite the two parties, Long adds this: “But if the Republicans decide to break
with the Conservatives and field a different candidate for Governor, John Faso
is committed to waging an active campaign on our issues, on our line right
through the November election. Let the critics know this is not an outcome we
seek, but it is also not an outcome we fear.”
—
Krestia DeGeorge
A LAKESIDE VILLAGE
The city is shrinking; the suburbs are growing. It’s not new
news, but that reality must shape how land around the port in Charlotte
is developed — an initiative that has gained importance since Rochester
canceled its beleaguered ferry service almost two months ago.
Two groups — Sasaki Associates, the company charged with
designing the development plan, and ZHA, Sasaki’s marketing consultants —
presented their findings to a packed audience at the TerminalBuilding Thursday night. Sasaki
principal VaroujanHagopian
presented three diagrams illustrating what could be done with the 30-acre
space. While all of them create a mini village between Lake
Avenue and the river, with housing, retail, and
office space, they differ in the amount of residential and commercial space and
the size of the marina. All three include a 600-car parking garage near Lake
Avenue.
Development could start at the site in as early as 18
months, Hagopian said, but he stressed that the site
will likely take up to 15 years to complete. There will be no “instant
village,” said another Sasaki principal, Alistair McIntosh.
A huge challenge facing the Rochester
market, said ZHA vice president Sarah Woodworth, is the low appreciation of
housing throughout the region over the past several years. “Right now, Rochester’s
metropolitan area ranks 200 out of 235 metro areas in this country in terms of
housing appreciation,” she said.
The good news, however, is that Rochester is seeing a
resurgence of interest in downtown living, as evidenced by the popularity of
luxury housing options at Sagamore on East and Corn
Hill Landing, said Woodworth, who thinks Charlotte could support about 800 new
housing units.
Aside from developing residential spaces that reflect market
trends, Woodworth said the city must decide what to do with the terminal
building relatively quickly. Investors, she said, are unlikely to take a risk
here without a clear idea of what will happen with the terminal. Sasaki
representatives met on Friday with four developers interested in developing the
area.
Many in the audience at the Sasaki presentation were
skeptical of the proposals, which they worried would reduce access to the river
and river views. One person recommended creating a boardwalk along the
waterfront, which, he said, would attract retailers while maintaining the river
views. Others were concerned about increased commercial development.
Sasaki representatives said that while they recognize the
value of preserving the waterfront, they have to consider costs and
feasibility. A waterfront promenade, for example, is a very expensive venture,
they said. And they added that they’ve tried to maximize views of the lake and
pedestrian areas.
“Yes, we are making the current open space smaller,” Hagopian said, “but we have to create some bodies in here
during the wintertime as well. We’re trying to create an atmosphere to draw
everybody in here at all times, and that’s what the market is telling us is
viable.”
— Sujata Gupta
PHILCHESTER
Once upon a time, when Rochesterians
wanted to brag, our favorite show-off was Wegmans. But that was then. Now we’ve
got Philip Seymour Hoffman!
When the Fairport native won a Golden
Globe award for his role in Capote, a
WHEC-10 reporter was camped out at a Fairport watering hole, ostensibly to get
crowd reaction. The indifference was deafening, but that didn’t curb the
media’s worship. As a lead-up to the Academy Awards, the D&C has been doing a daily career retrospective called “Phil’s
Film Files.” The Insider devoted much
of an early-February issue to him: interview, cover portrait, and all. WHAM-13
is holding a Philip Seymour Hoffman look-alike contest. Hoffman’s face
dominated a caricature grouping on the D&C’s
“Living” section. And at the George Eastman House’s annual Oscar party —
this year claiming to be “the place” to cheer on our favorite local boy — you
can don a “Vote for Philip” button. (God help us if he doesn’t win.)
Young adults are fleeing, Metro
Rochester is in last place in the state’s job-creation ratings — but we’ve
got star power!
JAZZED UP
You can’t blame the Rochester
International Jazz Festival (scheduled for June 9-17) for wanting to keep
its line-up under wraps for a while. There’s nothing like the knockout punch of
a news conference packed with names that make jazz fans salivate.
But you also can’t blame jazz fans for checking Pollstar.com
— the concert website — from time to time. We’ve been checking and, if
early indications hold up (things can change in four months), the festival is
shaping up wonderfully. Among the most interesting acts listed on the site so
far:
McCoy Tyner, one
of the greatest pianists in jazz history; Wayne
Shorter, a brilliant saxophonist and a key creative force in Miles Davis’s
mid-1960s quintet and in the 1970s-80s fusion group, Weather Report; local hero
Joe Locke, one of the world’s top
vibraphonists; the Charlie Hunter Trio,
whose leader is one of the most innovative guitarists in any genre; and two of
America’s best party bands, Roomful of
Blues and Little Feat. Also
listed: Karrin Allyson, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Asylum Street Spankers, and Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey.
This article appears in Mar 1-7, 2006.
