Comment moderation

I have enjoyed the comments and encourage them. Unfortunately, some people have been spamming the comments and for the time being all comments will be moderated and require blog administrator's approval before they are published on the Brockporter Online News Magazine.

Comments are still welcome and encouraged, and all points of view will be honored as long as they are stated in a civil, courteous way.

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Lakeside to hold public meeting next Thursday, 02/28/13, at 6:30 PM at Sweden Senior Center

 From 13WHAM web site on 02/21/13:

 

Brockport, N.Y.- Lakeside Health System will hold a neighborhood meeting next week to address the community’s concerns and questions over the hospital’s reorganization.

Last week, Lakeside announced it plans to close its Emergency Department and eliminate 61 inpatient beds within the next two months.

The Lakeside Health System Board and Acting CEO James Cummings are working on a plan to transform the health system from an acute care hospital and emergency department to an outpatient diagnostic and treatment center.

The goal is to restore Lakeside's financial stability so that it can meet the community's health care needs for the long term.

The neighborhood meeting will be held at the Sweden Senior Center on Thursday, February 28 at 6:30 p.m.

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King Street Stories - Lakeside shuts down, Holley Squirrel slam, Castaneda uses a bully pulpit, having guns in the house make it more likely you'll die from them, and Suzie gives her Valentine chocolate to the food shelf

It’s been quite a week on King Street. After all the hoopla last year stirred up about the competition between Unity and Lakeside which led to the blossoming of “Support Lakeside” bumper stickers all over as if Lakeside were some sort of sports team being cheered on by its fans, the CFO, Jim Cummings,  announced that Lakeside would be closing its emergency department on April 15, and its inpatient beds on April 22. Lakeside has been badly mismanaged the last several years and finally called it quits and threw in the towel and the recriminations have reverberated around the area, but if anyone knows anything about the health care system in the United States this was an event waiting to happen sooner or later. In a rapidly changing health care delivery environment, a health care entity must either adapt and adjust or die, and Lakeside has been terminally ill for many years. Its passing is still sad, and Brockporters are grieving the loss of a significant community institution.

            The barbarians in Holley engaged in their killing of squirrels which brought outrage and embarrassment to the people of the Brockport area because of the objections of the tree huggers around the state, the country, and the world. One report was that over 40,000 people signed on line petitions condemning the event and State Senator George Maziarz, who represents the people in this district, said to think of it like a fishing derby and maybe it won’t seem so decadent. The Holley Fire department said they haven’t been making enough money with their annual fireman’s carnival and so they had to come up with other fund raising events and killing squirrels was the best they could come up with. One woman said that going into the woods and killing animals is bonding time between parent and child when grown adults teach their children to imitate their murderous past time. Frank Benetucci said that it seemed sinful to kill animals just for the sport of it. “After all”, said Frank, “You don’t eat em, you don’t do anything with their pelts. Maybe you cut off their tails to display as some sort of trophy, but basically its just the blood thirsty thrill of the chase which involves a grown adult and maybe their kid with guns just killing animals for the hell of it. Holley has been known as the home of Neanderthals, red neck gomers, and degenerates,  but this is the icing on the cake. Now the whole world knows about the limited intelligence,  sensitivity and moral turpitude of Hollyites.”  How much of this low class stigma spills over on Brockporters remains to be seen. 

            Kevin’s in rehab and the amount of emergency vehicles stopping in front of his apartment house on King Street has significantly decreased in the last week. A fire truck, an ambulance, or a police car has not been called to the house in over a week now which is some sort of record. Americans love their beer and alcohol, and often times aren’t aware of the high costs their indulgence involves. Americans used to laugh at comedians like Foster Brooks who did foolish things while intoxicated. It’s not all that funny any more and Americans’ sensitivity to the suffering of people for whom alcohol creates significant health, financial, legal, and social problems has increased. The alcoholic behavior on King Street is significant every day of the week but especially on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights. Those who would like to dissolve the Brockport Police Department could make a more viable argument if they also would argue to turn Brockport into a dry community and remove all alcohol outlets within the Village limits.

            Apparently, the Suburban News reporter, Kristina Gabalski, gave Mayor Connie Castaneda an exclusive interview and allowed the Mayor to use the Suburban News as her bully pulpit in the February 17^th, 2013 edition. The Mayor rattled on about things like fire district taxes, the application for a grant to study village dissolution, and a referendum to dissolve the Brockport Police Department. Somebody claiming to be Keith Ryan, the Publisher of the Suburban News, made comments on The Brockporter defending Gabalski’s journalistic efforts and when his denial of partiality was met with scoff and derision said that he was being bullied and engaged in retreat. Whoever this person was, he also commented that people should not voice their opinions but run for political office as if this were the only way for anyone who cared about democracy to participate in their governance. One person opined that this article is the Mayor’s attempt to surface “trial balloons” of issues she can use when she runs again for Mayor this spring. In other words, some Brockporters think the campaign has already begun, and the question remains whether the Suburban News is knowingly colluding to support the mayor or did it get manipulated by a cunning politician? The person who says he is Keith threatened to call the F.B.I. if anyone misappropriates his identity, but there is no way to tell if the person making the threat to prosecute anyone stealing his identity as the Suburban News Publisher is, in fact, the Suburban News publisher. So, it is difficult from the vantage point of King Street to tell who is who and what is what and whether there is any truth at all in anything that Kristina Gabalski and Connie Castaneda come up with.

            Research findings were disseminated this week that 30,000 Americans die from gun violence every year, 20,000 of which are suicide. Public health data indicates that having a gun in the house increases the likelihood that one of the occupants will die from gun violence as compared to occupants in homes without guns. The counter intuitive fact is that possession of guns make it more likely that the gun owner will die from gun violence not be protected from it. Smart people know this and want to limit access to guns while people who operate more from their amygdala than their frontal cortex obtain guns and raise the likelihood that they will die by them.

            Suzie Capella got a box of chocolates from Bart Donovan for Valentines Day and at first was touched but then confused because she had told Bart that she was dieting trying to lose some of her 223 lbs. Suzie didn’t know whether to just say “thank you” or to throw them out. She decided to give them to the Brockport Food Shelf. She said she thought it was the loving thing to do.

            And that’s the way things have been on King Street this week where the men went off killing little mammals for the fun of it, the women were crying over the closing down of Lakeside, and the kids were searching for dad’s keys to the gun safe to show their friends the Bush Master automatic rifle dad got for Valentine’s day from mom which can still shoot 10 rounds because she bought it before the new law took effect which dictates magazines are now limited to 7.

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Brockporter Thought For The Day - Be generous in tipping your server

From The Week, 02/15/13

 

Hey, cheapskates—the waitress you shortchange today might shame you on the Internet tomorrow, said Sierra Tishgart in NYMag.com. Consider the case of Pastor Alois Bell of St. Louis, who recently dined at an Applebee’s in a party of 10 and found that the restaurant had added an automatic 18 percent tip. Instead of ponying up the $6.29 gratuity on her itemized check, Bell wrote, “I give God 10%. Why do you get 18?” She then gave the server a tip of zero. The server showed the receipt to fellow waitress Chelsea Welch, who posted a photo of it to online community board Reddit. The receipt went viral, Bell’s signature was identified, and thousands of netizens targeted the minister for abuse. Even though Bell admitted her note was a “lapse in my judgment,” she demanded that Applebee’s fire Welch—and last week, it did. If you can’t call out cheap, self-righteous customers on the Internet, “then where can you?”

......

 

 When you eat at a restaurant, “tipping is not optional.” Restaurants like Applebee’s typically pay the hardworking waitstaff $3.50 an hour, and the gratuity is considered part of our salary. Without the tip, I can’t pay my bills, and I’ll never save enough to go to college. But even though tips are how waiters get paid in America, many customers think it’s fine to stiff them to save a buck or two. So next time you go out to eat, remember this about the people who serve you. “We work hard. We care. We deserve to be paid for that.”

Editor's note: On Sunday, 02/10/13 at the Brockport Unitarian Universalist Church, Rev. Peggy Meeker gave an excellent sermon on "Ethical eating". During her sermon she mentioned the low pay and difficult working conditions of restaurant staff from the dishwasher to the bus boys to the servers. The first principle of seven which Unitarian Universalists covenant with one another to affirm and promote is the inherent dignity of every person. The second principle is to affirm and promote justice, equity, and compassion in human relations. These are principles that apparently a pastor in St. Louis does not practice. Be generous with your server.

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The Brockporter Book Of The Week - The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

From the Amazon web site:

Even among authors, Jeffrey Eugenides possesses a rare talent for being able to inhabit his characters. In The Marriage Plot, his third novel and first in ten years (following the Pulitzer Prize-winning Middlesex), Eugenides describes a year or so in the lives of three college seniors at Brown in the early 80s. There is Madeleine, a self-described “incurable romantic” who is slightly embarrassed at being so normal. There is Leonard, a brilliant, temperamental student from the Pacific Northwest. And completing the triangle is Mitchell, a Religious Studies major from Eugenides’ own Detroit. What follows is a book delivered in sincere and genuine prose, tracing the end of the students’ college days and continuing into those first, tentative steps toward true adulthood. This is a thoughtful and at times disarming novel about life, love, and discovery, set during a time when so much of life seems filled with deep portent.

I loved Jeffrey Eugenides Pulitzer prize winning book, Middlesex, and so I was looking forward to The Marriage Plot which I finally got around to reading. It is a coming of age story of three college seniors who are leaving the artificial cocoon of college life to join adult society.

The developmental task of young 20 somethings is to find a mate and procreate and yet our postmodern life has made the achievement of this task more complicated. This major life challenge is not as easy as it used to be because people have so many more choices than our grandparents did. Marriage is no longer primarily an economic institution but one sought out for its emotional and psychological satisfactions. As 50% of  people in first time marriages and 65% of people in  second marriages find out love (infatuation) is not enough to build a lasting relationship on.

Madeline, an English major, struggles between choosing Leonard or Mitchell two people who are quite different. Leonard is a biological science major who also has manic depressive illness, now days called bi-polar, and Mitchell is an introverted religious studies major who asks the big questions and approaches life with a degree of earnestness and introspection more typical of a medievalist than a young man in 1980s America. 

Madeline chooses Leonard and chooses wrong. Leonard becomes a lost soul, and Mitchell comes to his better senses and realizes that love is not enough to build a life on.

This book reads along enjoyably depicting college life at Brown in Rhode Island,  and the character development of the three main characters is very interesting. The dynamics of bi-polar illness are intimately described allowing the reader an appreciation of the impact the illness has on the person suffering from it as well as the impact on relationships and families.

The Marriage Plot is well worth reading if you are interested in the dilemmas and drama of young serious love which can have an impact on a life time.

Editor's note: The Brockporter Book Of The Week is a regular feature of the Brockporter Online News Magazine which appears most Fridays. If you have a book review you would like to share please send it to davidgmarkham@gmail.com

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The Brockporter Movie Of The Week - Safe Haven

Nicholas Sparks writes these romantic, dramatic, soap operish books and now he is producing movies based on them. His latest is Save Haven a story about a young woman, Katie, who escapes an abusive relationship with her cop husband and flees to an east coast Carolina Village on the ocean. Katie very cautiously starts her life over and meets Alex, a widower with two children, and guess what? That's right, they fall in love.

Meanwhile, psychopath cop husband tracks her down and tries to kill her and guess what? Alex, the new boyfriend saves her.

The movie does have a nice ending which this review won't spoil for you, but it takes an hour and 50 minutes to get there.

Elements of the plot seem a little far fetched and the story line is sparse. For example, Katie, on the lam seems to have no family, no friends, no history other than her relationship with the psychopathic cop.

The creative tension in the movie is driven by Katie's secret of her past abusive relationship and the developing love story with Alex. On a five point scale I'd give this movie a 2.5 or a 3. It's okay, but if you've got something better to do, go do it rather than waste your money and time with this movie.

The movie is playing at the Strand Theater in Brockport, NY.

For more information about Safe Haven, click here.

Editor's note: The Brockporter Film Of The Week is a regular feature of the Brockporter Online News Magazine which appears most Fridays. If you have a film review you would be willing to share here, send it to davidgmarkham@gmail.com.

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The Brockporter Thought For The Day - Supposing this money was spent on the poor? What would Jesus do?

From The Week, 02/15/13:

"The total amount of money spent on the 2012 elections, from the bottom to the top of the ballot, was a record $7.3 billion, the Federal Election Commission said this week. Candidates spent $3.2 billion, parties $2 billion, and outside political committees $2.1 billion."

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