While sitting in Dolci Bakery today, I was reading Artvoice’s “Anxiety of Influence” article (Artvoice, March 21). I was just getting to the end, feeling inspired to maybe stick around after graduation, or even to come back home after completing graduate school. Minutes earlier, I was talking with my girlfriend, who works at Dolci, about how broke we are; my last debit card transaction was declined due to insufficient funds. I was reading Artvoice to find a free event that we could both enjoy later this evening. I mentioned that I was too broke to even go to a kegger on campus, which is obviously a wretched notion as a college senior.

Then, about 15 minutes later, my girlfriend returned from the front desk with a $10 bill in her hands; on it, somebody had written, “Go to the Kegger!”

Now, I know that attending a kegger isn’t really the most important thing in life, most of us could probably benefit from abstaining from such activity. But, it is the things like this, the unquestioned generosity of Buffalo’s citizens, the common people, not the politicians, that make this place home. It is the strangers that I have never met that will make the next few years away from home perhaps the most difficult I will ever know. There is no “one influential person” in this city, because it is the city of good neighbors.

Peace,

- Dan Radwan, Canisius College 2013

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