WHAT’S THAT ‘WWOS’?
A new public art exhibit is introducing people to a newspaper
that encouraged readers to question authority and think for themselves. No, notCity. It’s the Liberal Advocate,
which, along with The Reflector, was an example of 19th-century “freethought press” published in Rochester
and Palmyra by Obediah
Dogberry. Never heard of Dogberry? The Obediah
Dogberry Society is aiming to change that.
The Society is an informal group headed up by Bleu Cease, a
local artist-activist who first learned about Dogberry about a year and a half
ago when he read a research paper about him published by the Rochester Public
Library. Cease was struck not only by the outlandish name (a pseudonym,
actually, employed by Abner Cole) but by Dogberry’s
wit and forward thinking. Through his publications, Dogberry championed
education and the free exchange of information, and frequently questioned the
evangelicals that called Palmyra home
back in the 1800s. He notably got into trouble by daring to rib Joseph Smith
and the Book of Mormon.
Much of Dogberry’s work has been lost in time, but through
the new multi-venue, multimedia exhibit, Cease is putting the publisher’s words
back in the public consciousness. You might have seen billboards featuring
Dogberry’s quotes on Winton Road,
Atlantic Avenue, State
Street, and other areas in the city. A walking
timeline has been installed on South Avenue.
A “WWOS (What Would Obediah Say?)” plaque has been
put up outside the Visual Studies Workshop on Prince
Street (featuring the alternate spelling of
“Obadiah” — he used both). An Obediah Dogberry
Society newspaper box sits outside the Reynolds Arcade on Main
Street. And several artists have contributed to
the exhibit A Collective Portrait of Obediah, now hanging at RoCo.
The far-reaching exhibit was Cease’s
idea, and he’s responsible for putting it together, even going so far as to pay
for the various billboards out of pocket (he declined to say how much they
cost, just that he “got a great deal”). He has some experience with this type
of thing, having created the Propaganda Box, which played political
documentaries at various locations around the city during the 2004 presidential
election.
The idea “just kind of swelled on me,” Cease says after
reading about Dogberry. And given some of the publisher’s ideas — “The union
of the military and religious character is one of the most popular ideas of the
time” appears on one billboard, for instance — Cease thought that Dogberry’s
take was appropriate given the state of things.
“Certainly there are potentially those parallels” between
what Dogberry railed against in his time and what’s currently going on in the
world, Cease says. “And that’s the idea of asking such a blatant question: What
would Obediah say? That approach to engaging with
history is a direct question as opposed to engaging history in an objective,
removed way…. We’re looking to engage it in a way that will trigger someone to
raise a question and do some more research and jar someone’s mind a little bit.”
Most of the exhibit pieces will be up until September 10;
visit www.obediahdogberry.org for a map or more information.
— Eric Rezsnyak
WATERFRONT DINING
Charlotte may
soon house a new riverfront bistro.
City officials want to lease the River
Street train depot at 490
River Street to Mark IV for conversion into a
“76-seat white table cloth restaurant with a bistro atmosphere and bar seating
for 25,” wrote Mayor Bob Duffy in his proposal to City Council. Mark IV and the
DiMarzo Group would foot the cost of the project — around $260,000 — and
then sublease the depot to a restaurant owner.
If the proposal is approved by City Council’s Parks, Public
Works, and the Environment Committee at its August 17 meeting, it is expected
to be on the agenda of the August 22 Council meeting.
Other applicants for the site were representatives from
Pelican’s Nest Restaurant and Mario’s Via Abruzzi Restaurant, as well as Gibbs
Marine Group for boating services. Mark IV was selected because it did not have
any contingency issues.
Renovations would begin later this month or early next, with
a projected December opening.
— Sujata Gupta
CURFEW STILL LIKELY
For a while, it looked as if a three-month curfew for
children 17 and under was a sure thing. But when city councilmembers met in
special session last week to vote on it, they held the item in committee,
pending further review. Councilmember Adam McFadden, who has been researching
curfews for a couple of years, says that measure could still pass sometime this
month.
McFadden says his primary concern is ensuring that the
curfew doesn’t become a way of harassing urban youth.
Under the current proposal, police could pick up youths
violating the curfew and take them to a center operated by the Hillside Family
of Agencies. There, the youths would be screened for possible disturbances at
home and other problems. If caseworkers found nothing amiss, parents or
guardians could take their children home. Hillside would
also provide transportation for children who needed it.
McFadden’s ideal is to replicate the curfew system in Minneapolis.
That program, he says, is funded by the city, county, and school district. Rochester
city school district officials and county representatives have expressed their
support of the curfew, says McFadden, but the three parties are “nowhere near”
reaching an agreement on how to operate it together. The three-month pilot would
cost the city about $62,000.
Charles Reaves, commissioner of the Department of Parks,
Recreation & Human Services and the man who would oversee the curfew, says
the city is working with school district officials to create identification
cards noting a child’s year of birth. If the trial curfew passes within the
next few weeks, however, there won’t be enough time to create a comprehensive
identification system. Police officers, says Reaves, will just have to ask
children their age and address.
The pilot program, Reaves stresses, would be a test run,
enabling city officials to make changes before adopting it as a more permanent
program.
— Sujata Gupta
DEBATABLE?
Unless something changes,
the only debate between the two Democratic candidates for governor was held
last month, in New
York City.
Plenty of people would have
liked to have seen more, and underdog Tom Suozzi, is capitalizing on that
frustration. He’s taking his pitch for more debates to cities across Upstate
New York in hopes of gaining the public’s support — at least for more
debates, if not his candidacy.
In Rochester last week, Suozzi made just such an appeal. He and
his opponent, the heavily favored Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, were both
invited to a dozen or so debates, including one to have been hosted this week by
WXXI and the D&C’s Voice of the Voter project.
“We are still working on proposals
and sorting out dates,” Spitzer spokesperson Christine Anderson told City
Newspaper. “Following the first debate, Eliot has already agreed to debate his
primary opponent again August 30.” (Suozzi’s camp chafes at calling that event
a debate since the candidates will be in different cities and won’t debate each
other directly.)
It’s typical for incumbents
and heavy favorites to decline debates; there’s often little to be gained and a
lot at risk. Conversely, for insurgents like Suozzi, there’s nothing to lose,
whether it’s in debating Spitzer or calling him out for refusing to debate.
Here last week, Suozzi said
Spitzer is “saying ‘no’ to the people of Rochester and Upstate New York.”
Language like that is easily
ignored as campaign bluster, but Suozzi does strike a chord when he presses his
rival to deliver on policy issues.
“Eliot Spitzer has no
specifics; he’s not been held accountable,” says Suozzi. That’s a bit of an
exaggeration. Spitzer has come out with some policy statements. But the AG has
also earned a reputation for being coy with reporters, at times refusing to
answer direct questions on certain issues (see “Eliot Spitzer, New York’s man of mystery,” July 5).
Coupled with his decision
— at least so far — not to accept any other debates, that’s played into
Suozzi’s hands. It’s a gift the Nassau County Executive hasn’t passed up.
“We can’t expect an
unaccountable candidate to be an accountable governor,”
he told Rochester reporters last week.
— Krestia DeGeorge
WAR GAMES
If Congressman Randy Kuhl
thought he could make headway against his Democratic candidate Eric Massa by
raising the war in Iraq, maybe he should have thought again. At least, that’s
what Massa’s
campaign is saying.
Kuhl is completing his first
term representing the 29th district, which runs from Rochester’s southern suburbs to the Southern Tier. And he’s
just returned from a congressional trip to Iraq. The Massa camp views the trip as an attempt to make the war a
major issue.
“We welcome that,” says Massa.
Massa’s a retired Navy officer, with 24 years of active duty
in places like Beirut (the last time around), Kuwait, and the Balkans. And he brought his former boss to Rochester to stump for him on the eve of Kuhl’s return from
the Middle East. That boss? General Wesley Clark.
Clark appeared with Massa at a campaign press conference in front of the
Veterans’ OutreachCenter. But he also criticized some of the Bush administration’s policies that
affect veterans.
“The VA has been
consistently under-funded,” Clark said, adding: “There are problems in the VA that we
haven’t even begun to address.” Chief among these, he said, is the department’s
lack of preparedness to help vets cop with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
All the talk of struggles
veterans face, like PTSD, eventually came around again to the subject of Massa’s campaign.
“He’s seen the consequences
of combat,” said Clark. “He’s not going to be a phony patriot, wearing a
flag symbol and cutting benefits to vets.”
The Kuhl-Massa race recently
cracked the ranks of the National Journal’s 50 most competitive races in the
House of Representatives, at 47th by mid-July.
— KrestiaDeGeorge
This article appears in Aug 9-15, 2006.
