Timber!

by Buck Quigley

When President Bush declared western New York a federal disaster area following last October’s freak snowstorm, he opened up the prospect of FEMA money to help municipalities recover from the effects of the storm. With that he touched off an urban logging operation in Buffalo, paid for by federal dollars and benefiting only a few private contractors.

The Death of Brand America

by Michael I. Niman

H illary Clinton is making “Restoring America’s Standing in the World” a cornerstone of her campaign. Former president Bill Clinton, stumping for his wife, told a Cedar Rapids, Iowa audience, “You want to restore America’s standing in the world overnight? Elect her in 2008 as President of the United States.” Dennis Ross, papa Bush’s former State Department Director for Policy Planning, just authored a book entitled “How to Restore America’s Standing in the World.” Peter Singer, Director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution, argues in a Salon.com piece, that, “The deep and rapid deterioration of America’s standing in the world is one of the greatest challenges the United States now faces.” Barak Obama drew applause last month in Keokuk, Iowa when he promised the crowd that if elected president, he would end the Iraq War and improve America’s standing in the world.

by Chuck Shepherd

■ Africa’s largely primitive Hadzabe people, down to their last 1,500 members after surviving thousands of years of disease, famine and encroaching civilization, fear their final blow will be the recent deal that Tanzania made to turn the tribe’s prime hunting grounds over to United Arab Emirates royalty for private safaris. The land comprises 2,500 acres near the Serengeti Plain, and some Hadzabe (who still make fire by rubbing sticks together) are resigned either to fight the “invaders” (with bows and poison-tipped arrows) or to migrate to towns for survival, according to a June Washington Post dispatch from Tanzania’s Yaeda Valley.

by Rob Brezsny

CANCER (June 21-July 22): To celebrate your ramble through the most wildly independent phase of your astrological cycle, I’m offering you three inspirational quotes. The first is from poet e.e. cummings: “To be nobody but yourself in a world that is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle that any human being can fight.” Your second shot of motivation is from Clarissa Pinkola Estes: “If you have ever been called defiant, incorrigible, forward, cunning, insurgent, unruly or rebellious, you’re on the right track. If you have never been called these things, there is yet time.” Lastly, here’s a Hindu proverb: “There is nothing noble in being superior to some other person. The true nobility is in being superior to your previous self.”

Many thanks to Bruce Fisher for the marvelous article “Choosing Icons” (Artvoice, July 5).However the missing “icon” in the story, right up there with Wright and Slawinski, is Father Gerenscer, undoubtedly the heart and soul of Calasanctius, the school he founded and led for gifted children on Windsor Ave.

Way More West: New & Selected Poems by Edward Dorn

by Ben Lyle Bedard

Too much poetry focuses on the beautiful, the lyrical, the sublime moments of our lives. Though you’ll find all this in Edward Dorn, you’ll just as often find political invective, sharp satire and a critical wit. Dorn is a poet of refreshing originality and honesty, and this new collection of his work highlights his unique and complex vision of America.

Casino Jesus

by Lou Rera

No one wears electric blue sharkskin suits anymore. His is impeccably tailored, shines like the iridescent body of a garbage fly. The suit fit glove tight. His slight frame resembles Prince with Larry King sunken shoulders. He looks weedy, sprouting up from ankle high–side zipper boots. His hair–slick–gunmetal black is Zevonian perfect. His birth name is Jesús DeCicco Dominguez. On the strip he’s known as Casino Jesus.

Deli Done Right

by Bridget Kelly

Marco’s Sangwiches are the best sangwiches you’ll ever have. I went to the Hertel Ave. location on a sunny Tuesday afternoon, discovering only after I’d ditched my car down the street that there is a parking lot for deli patrons at the doctor’s office next door. Inside I was greeted by two clean-cut, cheeky but polite teenage boys. When I asked one what his favorite sangwich is, he told me to forget about it, which perplexed me—he’d been so polite!—until I looked closer at the menu.

Something Moor

by Thomas Dooney

Perhaps it is because of his bearing: Strong but approachable. Perhaps it’s the way he speaks: Articulate, both vocally and verbally.

Rising from the Ashes

by Ben Perrone

A retrospective of Adele Cohen’s (1922-2002) work is now showing at the Burchfield-Penney Art Center. This is the second major exhibition of her work at the Burchfield-Penney; the first show was in 1981. This show launches a book on her life, titled Adele Cohen—A Life in Art, published by the Burchfield-Penney and the Poetry Collection at the University at Buffalo.

The Name Game

by Jim Corbran

Those of you who are now or ever were out there in the dating world know how difficult it can be to please that certain someone you’re smitten with. Smitten with today, that is. Tomorrow you may meet another “someone special” and need to change your spots—pretend, for instance, to be interested in, say, soccer; or Meryl Streep movies; maybe you’ll go so far as to “like” cats, if that’s what it takes.

by Donny Kutzbach

I’ll be the first to admit that I am a drive-carrying member of the iPod nation. There’s an amazing freedom to having 15,000 songs in your pocket at all times. Still—in my scabby but still pumping rock and roll heart—there’s something that can never top a stack of LPs or a pile of 45s. You can call it purist, you can call it dinosaur, but I gotta call it the truth. In these days of easy online music availability and the slowly ringing death knell of the compact disc, I’m buying more records than ever. While others are amassing digital libraries on their computer, I find myself still collecting the music that really matters in the ever-superior analog domain of vinyl.

by Amy Alkon

I’m college educated, with a professional job that pays well. My boyfriend of two years does manual labor, makes much less money, and has poor financial prospects. He’s a simple guy, and we may not have many deep conversations, but he’s loyal, good to me in many ways, and we’re sexually compatible. He’s 43, and I’m seven years older, but I look pretty good. He’s very tall, in very good shape, and very good-looking. The problem: Whenever some of my girlfriends come to the house, they’re so distracted by his looks that they stare at him a little obsessively. This is the one significant issue interrupting our relationship. How can I stop worrying about this and find peace of mind?