STUPID.STUPID.
“But the ferry was a risk worth taking. It cost what it
cost. The biggest problem isn’t the cost, it’s that
the cost wasn’t anticipated. And because of that, the cost came as a shock,
first to public officials and then to the public.” (“Some Lessons from the
Ferry Report,” August 2.)
Do you really believe the ferry was a risk worth taking?
Have you been jonesing so bad to get to Toronto
that both a route by land or air was out of the question? What, by god, is so
attractive about Toronto?
And for Canadians, why Rochester?
To see a run-down city, void of life? No need to nitpick about cultural
highlights. But man, when the school budget shortfall was roughly the same
dollar amount as the cost of the ferry, you’d choose boating over education?
No wonder this place is a joke. We should have just bought a
monorail, and then people could have circled the city without actually
engaging. Who, who, who, in their right mind would think a ferry would be
salvation for swillburg? The biggest problem wasn’t
the cost of the ferry, it was the idea of the ferry.
It was a stupid idea. Stupid.Period.
Bill Ribas, Northfield Gate, Pittsford
COMPEER ALSO PROVIDES MENTORS
Thank you for Tim Louis Macaluso’s story about children of incarcerated parents
(August 9). This article did a tremendous community service by helping
raise awareness of the many families drastically affected by incarceration.
At Compeer, we are well aware of this growing issue. In the US
alone, 2 million children currently have a parent in prison. Here in MonroeCounty, an estimated 13,000
children have a parent behind bars. Statistics show that these kids have a 70
percent chance of ending up in prison, too.
In addition to the obvious disruption in the parent-child
relationship, these young people — as portrayed in your article — often
face enormous economic, social, and emotional burdens. Mentoring programs have
been successful in helping lead them on a path toward a brighter future, by
reducing first-time drug and alcohol use, improving relationships, and reducing
the likelihood they will turn to crime and violence.
That is why Compeer — in collaboration with the CatholicFamilyCenter
— is committed to serving these children through our Mentoring Children of
Promise program. This program links volunteer mentors with children who have a
parent in a state or federal prison. Compeer matches get together weekly,
sharing quality time doing everyday things, from going to the library and
walking in the park to attending school, community, and sporting events.
Our program’s mission is to improve these children’s ability
to function in school, to improve their self-esteem and socialization, and to
instill a sense of purpose and optimism about the future. Anyone interested in
becoming a mentor should call Compeer at 546-8280 or visit our website
(www.rochester.compeer.org).
Dana Frame, executive
director, Compeer Rochester
MORE IS NEEDED
I appreciated Tim Macaluso’s
article, “Children of the Incarcerated” (August 9). The Children’s Center at
Sing Sing Correctional Facility, established by the
Osborne Association, operates on the premise that meaningful contact between
incarcerated fathers and their children can have a positive impact on both.
Inside the center, fathers can hug and hold their children, read books and play
computer games with them, and help them make key chains out of colored string.
La Bodega de la Familia on Manhattan’s
Lower East Side combines case management, direct
service, and faith in the prospect of redemption in a program to foster family
reunification when prisoners return to society. Walk-in services and a 24-hour
crisis hotline are available to returning prisoners, their children, and other
relatives. The parole department has assigned six parole officers to work
exclusively with Bodega clients and their families. Bodega case managers
accompany parole officers to pre-release visits at the prisons, and parole
officers join case managers at family meetings.
The Oregon Department of Corrections works closely with
other state and non-profit agencies known as the Children of Incarcerated
Parents Project. Oregon inmates
have access to parenting classes and special visits where they receive feedback
from a family therapist.
Mothers at Oregon’s
Coffee Creek Correctional Facility are permitted to participate in an on-site
Early Head Start program, where youngsters spend twice-weekly, three-hour
stretches with their mothers in a pre-school-like setting.
A Girl Scouts Beyond Bars has been established at this
prison, allowing mothers and their daughters to participate in bimonthly troop
meetings inside the institution. Outside the prison, the corrections department
and the Portland Relief Nursery provide case management and family support to
children, their caregivers, and their parents upon release from prison.
Rochester is
fortunate to have a program such as Project Cope that arranges for adult
volunteers to be mentors for children of an imprisoned parent. There is a need
for more of the kind of projects described above, but as Nell Bernstein points
out in her book “All Alone in the World: Children of the Incarcerated,” “they
exist in piecemeal form, scattered across the nation, serving a small
percentage of the families who need them, and often with no reliable source of
funding from one year to the next.”
Considering that children of an incarcerated parent are 10
times more likely than other children to become incarcerated themselves, all of
us should support the creation of programs designed to prevent this from
happening.
Macaluso’s article concluded with
a portrait of Carlene Covington, who is trying to remain clean and sober, to
improve her relationships with her children, and to prove wrong a prison
guard’s prediction of recidivism. I wish Covington
every success in her effort.
Joel Freedman, North Main Street, Canandaigua (Freedman is a volunteer
writer for the Judicial Process Commission’s newsletter, Justicia.)
WORSHIP WITH FRIENDS
If DaynaPapaleo
(“Put Your Faith in the Internet,” August 16) has been led to the
Quakers by the Belief-O-Matic website, then she
should use the Internet or
to find Quakers (AKA the Religious Society
of Friends) right here in Rochester.
Or she could even look us up in the telephone book.
We don’t make and have never made oatmeal and have not
dressed or otherwise looked like the guy on the oatmeal carton for more than a
century. But we still believe in peace, simplicity, tolerance, respect,
equality, forgiveness, truth-telling, and the other good things that Jesus of
Nazareth, Emily Dickinson, Gandhi, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, and all the
other great exemplars of love have taught us. Essentially, we start with the
idea that there is that of God in everyone, from which we conclude that it is
evil to kill for any reason. The rest of our faith grows from that kernel.
I hope we have the opportunity to experience that of God in DaynaPapaleo some Sunday at 10
at 84 Scio Street. (After
Labor Day, make that some Sunday at 11.)
Ken Maher, Wellington Avenue, Rochester
NOT JUST ACOUSTIC
“Chicks With Picks” (August 2) is another example of the
good work your paper does for the local music community. However, you have
unfortunately helped perpetuate the stereotype of woman guitar players as acoustic
folkie singer-songwriters. Writing songs and singing them requires great talent
and hard work, and as I’ve seen some of the women featured in the article
perform, I can personally vouch for their great ability. This is a different
talent, though, than using the guitar as a primary instrument to, for lack of a
better term, really rock.
Women are trained from the start of their musical lives to
let themselves be pigeonholed on certain instruments or in certain types of
music. There’s no reason at all why women can’t be awesome guitarists. About
half of my guitar students are girls, and all of them,
even those as young as seven, have already been playing Metallica,
The Ramones, Cream, Green Day and Nirvana, and the
more experienced students are becoming fluent in blues and jazz. Just as plenty
has been done in sports to dispel the myth that women can’t be real athletes,
it’s important that we show young woman musicians that they can think of
themselves as hard-core guitar slingers, and not just folkies. If you really
want to showcase women with guitars in their hands, please don’t keep them
pigeonholed as acoustic singer-songwriters. How about for your next music
article, doing one on the women in Rochester
who really kick butt on guitar?
Paul Blackburn, Garson Avenue, Rochester
FOR CITY COURT
In an election year in which congressional and statewide
politics have been taking center stage (“Still a Mess: NY’s Leg,” August 16),
City Newspaper readers should not overlook the Democratic primary race for
Rochester City Court Judge. Debra Amadio Crowder is a homegrown lawyer in
private practice who focuses her efforts on both criminal and civil matters.
She is clearly the more qualified and experienced Democratic candidate for this
job.
With more than 13 years of legal expertise in both the
private and public sectors, Crowder’s accomplishments are well suited for the
diverse nature of the caseload that comes before City Court. Her impressive credentials
extend well beyond the legal framework. Crowder has an unwavering commitment to
social justice and the democratic process. This is illustrated by her
dedicating her professional career to representing victims of domestic violence
and the unfortunate and to mentoring troubled youth. If Crowder gets elected,
we all win.
Ove Overmyer, East Main Street, Rochester(Overmyer is events coordinator for the Crowder campaign
committee.)
WRITING TO CITY
We welcome and encourage readers’ letters for publication.
Send them to: themail@rochester-citynews.com or The Mail, City Newspaper, 250
North Goodman Street, Rochester14607.
Our guidelines: We don’t publish anonymous letters — and
we ask that you include your street name and city/town/village. We don’t
publish letters that have been sent to other media — and we don’t publish form letters generated by activist groups. While
we don’t restrict length, letters of under 350 words
have a greater chance of being published. We do edit letters for clarity and
brevity. And in general we don’t publish letters (or longer “op-ed” pieces)
from the same writer more often than about once every two months.
This article appears in Aug 30 – Sep 5, 2006.
