City of Trees

by Jay Burney

Buffalo’s urban forest has suffered tremendous damage as a result of last October’s surprise storm. How we clean up and approach a repair and restoration of this forest will characterize our community for generations to come. Will Buffalo ever again become the “City of Trees”? Here is why it should.

Letters opposing the auction of some 200 artifacts, sculptures and paintings going back some 3500 years—some having been cited as priceless—by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery reflect a city’s soul-wrenching sense of uncommon loss.

by Rob Brezsny

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): A Capricorn reader recently accused me of being too upbeat and utopian. He said that your tribe needs “more gristle and bone and sinew.” He suggested that I travel to the Sudan or Iraq, and expose my tender perspective to scenes of blood and fire. In lieu of carrying out that proposal (which was impossible given my limited funds and time), I instead watched three war movies before composing your horoscope. Here it is: I dare you to give your highest hopes and most idealistic dreams a trial by fire that raises those hopes and dreams to a higher octave.

by Chuck Shepherd

New York City has more than 400 soup kitchens but nothing else like the Broadway Presbyterian Church’s, where master chef Michael Ennes presides three days a week, turning leftover restaurant ingredients into gourmet meals. In fact, one pre-Christmas meal included octopus, as well as day-old bread from Le Bernardin restaurant. Ennes told London’s Independent that he is motivated by the chance to help troubled people get “real nutrition,” but he also likes serving “famous” homeless people, such as diners who claim to be, among others, George Bush, George Washington and Jesus Christ.

Testing the Job Market

by Geoff Kelly

Maybe the Common Council is being thrifty; maybe the councilmembers are living in the past. In any case, they were all still using 2006 desk calendars at Tuesday’s meeting.

Events at Studio Arena

by Anthony Chase

Events unfolded quickly last week as Studio Arena Theatre, in response to a financial crisis even more dire than most people realized, took drastic action to save the theater. Most notably, 14 employees were abruptly laid off.

An Educated Heart by Mairéad Byrne

by Rosa Alcalá

Can we separate world events from more intimate affairs? The language of mass-media from poetry? In her chapbook An Educated Heart, Mairéad Byrne puts into dialogue the 2003 invasion of Iraq—as experienced through the mediation of headlines and news stories—and the pain of personal difficulties, as these infiltrate our language and everyday actions.

Scatology of Jazz

by Marjorie Norris

Film Alive

by M. Faust

Dream palaces,” they used to call movie theaters, back in the day when someplace like the Shea’s Buffalo was only moderately more ornate than your typical theater. The phrase went out of usage in the 1960s, when cookie-cutter multiplexes started becoming the norm. But the phrase is still apt, especially when you compare the experience of seeing a movie in a theater with that of watching it at home or on a handheld device like an iPod.

The Up and Coming

by Donny Kutzbach

While we spent the last couple issues of 2006 looking back at the best music of the year, we figured why not a moment to peek into the potential of 2007? While many artists and labels are still solidifying key factors in the releases for the year in front of us—titles, street dates, etc.—there’s enough info for the first quarter to get the buzz going.