I've been thinking of my old home town in Southern California this morning, and Batavia.

If it seems odd that I would be thinking of two towns 3,000 miles apart, thank Bill Kauffman.

Yesterday, I sumbled upon a pair of essays Kauffman wrote in 1991 about Batavia. Here's Part I, and here's the Conclusion of "Back to Batavia."

For Kauffman, Batavia has gone to ruin -- grand old buildings destroyed, venerable local stores shuttered and chains, corporations and big media pulling residents away from a pace of life that was seemingly more connected, more rooted.

Everywhere In Batavia I found small independent businesses in retreat. The Tops grocery chain has opened a super store on West Main, and all those little corner grocers, where at three o'clock the kids liberated from school, bought pretzel sticks and Bazooka Joes and Red Hot Dollars, all those Lamberts and Wandryks and Says and Borrellis are gone, gone, gone. Mr. Quartley just died, and the Platens are hanging on, barely. And now Tops has a pizza oven, and a Domino's just opened in the K Mart Plaza, so Pontillo's and Arena's and Ficarella's and Starvin' Marvin, you'd better dig in and fight. Or maybe it would just be easier to sell out, pack the wife and kids into a U-Haul, and slink down to Florida—to a trailer-park reservation with all the other white Indians.

Kauffman calls himself a localist.  I knew very little of Kauffman before we launched The Batavian, but in an odd way -- a way I'm sure he would find very odd indeed -- he might be our godfather, or at least a good touchstone of what we need to be about.

One of Kauffman's complaints is that modern New Yorkers know little of their regional literature, so rather than assume that Batavians know who Kauffman is, let me supply some background. 

Kauffman was born in Batavia in 1959 (which makes us roughly the same age). He is a writer of books and essays, mostly on politics, social and cultural issues from a conservative/libertarian bent (which makes us roughly aligned, though there seem to be many specifics on which we diverge).  His most famous book seems to be Dispatches from the Muckdog Gazette, which is about Batavia. His most recent book is Ain't My America.

Kauffman believes in small town America, and in Batavia.  I've spent my entire journalism career working for small town newspapers.  Community journalism is all I know and all I care about.

I've never said this about myself before, but I guess I'm a localist, too; albeit, one lacking the true small town roots of a Bill Kauffman.

As we've said before in The Batavian, community journalism long ago lost its small town soul.

Kauffman's own analysis isn't far from our own:

The daily newspaper has passed from the Griswolds and the McWains—fine old Republicans, how gentle that Main Street Harding hauteur seems now—to a chain. The chain sent a team of journalism school, degreed outsiders to Batavia, where they patiently instruct us in contemporary etiquette. (Let's get some foreign titles in the video store! What Batavia needs is a nice Mexican restaurant!) The editorial writers are all looking to move up and out, so the paper's leaders feature plenty of "Outlaw Pit Bulls" and "Dwarf-Tossing a National Disgrace" and "A Plan for World Peace" and nary a "Save a County Courthouse."

Yes, The Batavian is owned by a corporation that runs chain newspapers, but the goal of this project is to give back to community journalism its soul.  While neither Philip nor I currently live in Batavia (for myself, I wouldn't mind seeing that change some day, but it doesn't seem at all a realistic possibiility now), the future staff writers of The Batavian will be residents (and we hope native Batavians). 

See, I know what it's like to watch a small town lose itself in its quest for glory and riches.

That old home town I was thinking of this morning was El Cajon, a suburb now of San Diego, but once a two-hour stage coach ride from the big city, so it developed its own identity. 

We didn't move to El Cajon until I was 14, but I knew the town well because most of our extended family lived there.

My dad moved us to El Cajon so he could start a business.  He put me in the same high school he had attended.  Eventually, I would get my first daily newspaper job in El Cajon, and I would start my first entrepreneurial enterprise in El Cajon (an online community news site in 1995, which is in some ways the precursor of The Batavian.).

By the time I launched that online site, the El Cajon of my youth, the quaint small town of the 1960s through early 1980s that I knew, was gone.

The old buildings on Main and Magnolia, gone.  Empty shops dotted what was left of Main Street.

All in the name of urban renewal.

Batavia went through that, too.

Kauffman:

Batavia responded to the demise of Route 5 with an act of parricide unequaled this side of Rumania, where the demonic Ceausescu once waged war on pre-Communist architecture. The city fathers rushed headlong into urban renewal, whereby the federal government paid Batavia to knock down its past: the mansions of the founders, the sandstone churches, the brick shops, all of it (even Dean Richmond's manor, which had become an orphanage financed by Miss Edna, the city's legendary madam with a heart of gold, may she rest in peace.)

Batavia tore out—literally—its five-block heart and filled the cavity with a ghastly mall, a dull gray sprawling oasis in a desert of parking spaces. The mall was a colossal failure, but it succeeded in destroying the last vestiges of our home-run economy. J. C. Penney and Wendy's were in; the Dipson Theater and the Dagwood Restaurant were out. As our chamber of commerce might put it in one of their doggedly goofy brochures, Batavia had entered the global economy.

The mayor who stole El Cajon from me was Joan Shoemaker, who envisioned turning El Cajon -- a smoggy valley populated by factory workers and cowboys -- into the La Jolla of East County, with boutiques, quaint book stores (not that disheveled and dusty 50,000 Books I shopped in throughout high school and college years -- inset picture of now closed bookstore) and "white tablecloth restaurants" (a phrase that will be acid in my ears until I'm an old man).

It's been two years since I visited El Cajon.  Except to see my grandmother, I have no desire to go back.

The city has slipped completely into poverty and waste and ruin.  Joan Shoemaker's vision of an "East County La Jolla" has vanished behind trash on the streets and graffiti on the walls of her strip malls.  A city that once was home to modest people earning a modest living raising their families in quiet and security has been overrun by Section 8 housing and Dollar Tree stores.

Batavia is nothing like that.

And here is where Kauffman and I diverge.  There is still much about Batavia that is local.

Downtown is full of good, locally owned restaurants and stores. While pedestrian traffic is often light, it is not non-existent and plenty of people still seem to frequent the city's core.

Yes, City Center is pretty much a monstrosity, but there is still something left of old Batavia on Main Street. (I wonder if any of the former city leadership who led the charge to destroy all those grand old buildings are still around, and if they would own up to the failure of the project?) (And I should mention, the BID has done a great job with downtown, and expect to see that group yet make something useful out of City Center).

As somebody who comes from 3,000 miles away, a transplant to Western New York who thinks the region is just great and plans to spend many decades living here, I've got to say that I see no reason Batavia can't have a very local present and future.  We hope The Batavian can help encourage a vibrant localism.

And I've got to say, I'm glad I've learned about Bill Kauffman. He is my first open window into literary and historic New York.  In California, I had a grand collection of regional books, and I had explored the state thoroughly.  When I left California with an idea that I would never return, I donated those books to Matt Welch, then an editor with the Los Angeles Times and now editor of Reason Magazine (where Kauffman used to write).  Those books sit on some shelf in the Times building, I'm told. I trust they're in good hands.  Now it's time for me to learn more about, and embrace, my adopted state.

For a visual look back at old Batavia, here is a collection of pictures and one of postcards.

The departure Wednesday of the city's finance director was announced jointly with the news that the IRS had placed a lien on a city bank account owing to a "reporting error" in payroll that would have been handled by the finance office. Within hours of both announcements — following a closed-door meeting that morning — City Manager Jason Molino said that any penalties owed from the lien were revoked because the error had already been rectified.

Lickety split, Batavia was in... and out of a mess.

Yet, articles in the Daily News yesterday and today raise a few questions about the issue that still haven't been answered by the city. Molino refused to specify the error. He also said that connecting the departure of former Deputy Finance Director Shelly D'Alba with the IRS lien would be a mistake.

For sure, we must keep in mind the delicate nature of a "personnel matter" and not go smearing a city employee — with or without all the facts. There's never any excuse for slander. But that doesn't mean we don't deserve to get at the truth of the thing, find out what's going on without naming names and pointing fingers.

In an article in the Daily News today, City Council President Charlie Mallow said that "the city received several notices, sent to the person handling that" (the payroll error discovered by the IRS). And, more straightforward, reporter Joanne Beck writes: "D'Alba would have been the person to handle the filing."

In an earlier article, Molino said that his office had only recently found out about the error discovered by the IRS. That begs the question: If the city manager only found out about the problem once the IRS placed the lien on the account, what happened with the "several notices" that were sent to the city, some dating back to last spring?

Mallow said he could not speak on behalf of the city manager. An e-mail and a telephone call to Molino made earlier today have not yet been returned. Mallow did caution, however, against "connecting the dots" and relating matters that may not be directly linked.

In the same article, Mallow spoke optimistically of the current state of the city. Residents should not be worried by the recent departures. The city is in transition. Not everyone will stick around through such drastic changes, he said. Besides, the position of public works director has already been incorporated into the workload of the assistant city manager. An interim police chief should be appointed within a couple weeks. And an interim fire chief should soon follow. As for the new vacancy of deputy finance director, the city will have to wait and see, he said. For now, the responsibilities of that position will fall to the city manager and assistant city manager.

Mallow told the Daily News: "It's good to shake the apple cart about. There's no cause for concern at all. Strategic changes are planned."

There was no mention in the article of what "strategic changes" have been planned to deal with the glut of empty positions. So we asked Mallow if he could explain the connection. His response: consolidation.

"Our workforce is getting older in the city," he said. "In the next five years, we'll have 30 people who can retire. So we're at a very good point to consider consolidating."

Grants have come through to study the possibility of consolidating, merging positions, sharing responsibilities with the county and the city. Mallow feels strongly about the issue, and seems to see it as the city's way out of a future financial crisis.

"In the next five years, we'll have 30 people who can retire," he said. "So we're at a very good point to consider consolidating."

That could mean big changes for the city. Mallow:

"There might be an elimination of city borders, but that requires the town to buy in and that our finances are in order. We're pulling out of our financial problems. But a big glut of money will be needed for retirements, and insurance for our employees is something that needs to be taken care of."

In the meantime, it seems the city staff simply needs to get settled, the real responsibilities of each employee pretty clearly defined, and the public notified of just who does what down at City Hall.

Previous related posts:

• IRS lien already "corrected"...
• IRS placed a lien on a City Hall bank account
• News roundup: "Secret" meetings at City Hall

From the Daily News (Friday):

• Reporter Joanne Beck wrote an article about the several vacancies in City Hall — police and fire chiefs, public works director, finance director — with commentary from City Council President Charlie Mallow, who says that there is "no cause for concern." The Batavian is following up on a few questions raised by the article and will publish a post about the issue later this afternoon.

• Building permits are going up in the town. They are (in brief):

• For a home between 1,201 and 2,000 square feet: Up from $250 to $350, beginning June 2.
• For home additions, such as a garage, up to 325 square feet: Up from $50 to $100.
• For commercial structures up to 1,000 square feet: Up from $250 to $300.
• Swimming pools: Up from $25 to $40 (above-ground) and $50 (in-ground).

• Daily News intern Kristen Kotz wrote a fine profile of a priest, a native of Bolivia, who has been assisting and preaching to migrant workers around Batavia for 23 years. He is the Rev. Ivan Trujillo. It's a nice article. Check it out.

• The 35th annual Batavia Pageant of Bands kicks off this afternoon. The article says the first competition — in jazz — starts at 2:00pm "in the auditorium," though there is no mention of which auditorium. There is a chicken barbecue later this afternoon in the High School Cafeteria, so I assume the competitions are at the High School. See the article for a complete listing of shows.

• Batavia Boys Soccer Boosters are hosting a fundraiser to benefit the high school team and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation at Applebee's, 8322 Lewiston Rd., Sunday from 8:00 to 10:00am. Proceeds from the breakfast will be split 50-50 between the two groups.

• Chamber of Commerce officials expect an increase in tourism in Genesee County this summer season. Kelly Rapone is the tourism and marketing director for the Chamber. She spoke at the county's Ways and Means Committee Wednesday, saying that high gas prices and a weak economy will not hurt tourism to the area.

For the complete stories, the Daily News is available on local newsstands, or you can subscribe on BataviaNews.com.

You know it's summer when carnival season starts. This year  Elba marks its 72nd Annual Onion Festival on Friday August 1st through Saturday August 2nd. The giveaway this year is a 2008 Red Ford Mustang or $18,000 in cash. The winner need not be present when the ticket is drawn on August 2nd.

Donations for tickets are as follows: $1.00 for each single ticket,$2.00 for 3 tickets,$5.00 for 7 tickets or $10.00 for a whole book of 15. These are available from any Elba Fire Dept member or write to elbamustang@yahoo.com for additional tickets. See you there !!

BataviaFuneralHomes.com contains the following message to the media:

To the Media:

The Byron-Bergen community has again experienced a great tragedy. Our community grieves over the loss of the Reis Family. On behalf of the surviving Reis family, I would like to present you with a few requests.

The memorial service is to be held at 1 p.m. Saturday at the Byron-Bergen High School in the Gymnasium. The family has asked that no video cameras or flash photography be used inside the building before, durring or after the service.

For your advance information, there will be no casketed remains present at the service.

They've also posted the following obituaries:

• Cheryl Reis
• Timothy Reis
• Emily Reis
• Virginia Reis

Marianne Clattenburg looks at her city and sees all the benefits you would find in a metropolis — a symphony, appreciation for the arts, great restaurants — yet there is very little of the violent crime and squalor that makes big city living a risk. It's a perfect fit.

"I have a strong belief that we have a strong community and a very nice place to live and I want to keep the quality of life we've had," she says. "I'm guarded about how we cut things, what we cut."

Marianne joined the City Council in April of last year, took the seat for the Second Ward vacated by her predecessor who had left town. She was then elected to the position in November. So why would this mother of two and grade school teacher want to take on the often burdensome chore of running a city?

"I was afraid that with the taxes and budget where it was that we would cut so much from Batavia that the quality of life would not be the same," she says. "You have to have a certain quality of life in the city, otherwise there's no impetus for living in the city. You have to have that feeling of what you want the city to be and living there as a positive experience."

Marianne calls herself a moderate. She isn't so naive that she doesn't realize a city needs to spend money to get the kind of services that make it liveable. But that doesn't mean that there isn't some fat to be trimmed.

"It's just like the private sector has been doing since the downsizing of the '80s," she says. "We want to try to do the same with a smaller government."

No surprise, then, that Marianne supports consolidation, for the most part.

"New York has those issues of overlapping of government services," she says. "That's a testament of how old the state is. Over the years government has just grown and grown."

Marianne teaches the third grade at St. Joseph's School. (They hatched these chicks, here to the left, just yesterday.) She has only been there full-time for a year, though she has been teaching since 1982 as a substitute, while she raised her two daughters, both now in college — one for psychology, one for pre-law.

Now that she has done "all the mom stuff," as she says, it's time to step up and tackle the public business. Namely, consolidating, shrinking things down without sacrificing those things that make Batavia great.

"Sometimes consolidation isn't the panacea that you think it's going to be, but I'm sure there areas where consolidation is the way to go," she says. "The tax base is not what it used to be in Batavia, and everybody knows that. We have an aging city, aging water system."

"Where there's a willingness to do it, there has to be openness to pursue it."

The Times-Union reports on a trucker fuel protest and includes a quote from a Batavia-based drier.

Bill Sutton, a trucker from Batavia in western New York, said his truck gets 5 to 5 1/2 miles per gallon. The 300-mile trip to the Capital Region costs him $300 in fuel alone.

He’s avoiding the Thruway whenever possible because “tolls are just ridiculous,” he added. “Do I eat or drive the Thruway?”

A reader comment seems to take direct aim at Sutton's quote:

So to protest high gas prices, truckers took their gas-sucking rigs on a joyride down the Northway? Okay, now it makes sense to me. . .

And you have to wonder, if the more stop-and-go of long-distance non-Thruway driving, and probably longer distance to travel, is Sutton really saving money?  I suppose that depends on how long his routes are.

Yes, high gas prices create serious reverberations throughout the economy, but are the politicians in Albany really in a position to do anything about it?

UPDATE: More from Sutton in this article:

Bill Sutton, of Batavia, said he spent $70,200 on fuel last year when the average cost per gallon of diesel was $3. He expects to spend close to double that total this year. His truck gets about 5.5 miles to the gallon.

“I’ve worked more weekends already this year than I did the last five years together,” the 43-year-old Sutton said. “I was in Florida last weekend. I’m working harder than ever trying to keep up with the bills.”

He said he bought his tractor and hauls trailers for Path Truck Lines which has several offices, including one in Schuylerville.

“I’ll be going to Schuylerville this afternoon and then to Fort Miller to pick up an oversized load of concrete for delivery first thing in the morning near Rochester.”

He said he’s been an owner/operator for 10 years, and when he bought his truck diesel was about $1 a gallon.

“A truck costs $137,000 and I have a mortgage on this,” he said. “Fuel is costing me $3,000 a week. A new set of tires is $4,500. I change my own oil every five weeks and that’s $175 because it takes 10 gallons of oil.”

He said shops charge about $250 to change the oil on a rig. His front tires last 150,000 miles and his back tires about 320,000 miles.

“I change the front tires every fall at a cost of about $850 plus installation,” he said. “If fuel goes to $6 a gallon, I don’t think I can hang on.”

A few changes to The Batavian this afternoon.

The most visible is the "Submit News" button on the upper right of the home page.

While posting to a blog or leaving a comment requires site registration, we recognize that not everybody who might have news to share wants to register with the web site.  This form is a way for you to submit news either as a non-registered user, or when you don't want it to be part of your blog.

News can be anything from a crime you witnessed in your neighborhood to a civic group event announcement.

The "Submit News" also gives you the ability to send in anonymous news tips, if you need to remain anonymous for any reason.

Keep in mind, that if you submit anonymous news, we won't just publish it without verification, and if we can't contact you (leaving off contact information is an option), it may be harder to verify the tip.

The other important change can be found at the bottom of the web site, in what we call the "footer," where we added links to our Creative Commons license, our privacy policy and our terms of service (which include the rules we ask all users to follow when participating in The Batavian).

There are lots more changes coming to The Batavian over the next months, even of the next years.  A good web site is never a finished web site.

GenFireWire.com has a collection of 30 photos from Monday's apartment fire in Byron that claimed four lives.

The photos show both the devestation of the apartment building as well as the efforts of area firefighters to battle the blaze.

From the Daily News (Thursday):

• City Manager Jason Molino told the Daily News that the city has narrowed the field of candidates to two for the position of interim police chief. There is no mention of the names of the candidates in the article. The position of fire chief will be vacant as of this weekend. Current Chief Larry Smith retires Friday. Molino said that the city has not yet chosen a temporary candidate to hold the position until an interim candidate is appointed followed by a permanent replacement. Aso vacant is the position of code enforcement officer, which will likely not be filled until later this summer.

• A report of the departure of Deputy Finance Director Shelly D'Alba is reported today. That story was covered by WBTA and The Batavian yesterday. Also reported on the front page is the upcoming technology conference at Genesee Community College, first noted on The Batavian some weeks ago. Go to the GCC site for more information.

• The town approved pursuing state permission for a pair of water districts last night. Some financing could come through federal grants and loans for rthe two districts: about 14,830 feet of main for the Rose Road district at a cost of about $658,000; and about 11,300 feet of main for the Alexander-Pike district at a cost of about $1,175,200. In other business, the town approved "a shared services agreement with the town of Byron for code enforcement officer coverage when needed," writes reporter Roger Muehlig.

• Genesee Community College student Briana Coogan-Bassett was awarded the Virginia Carr Mumford Scholarship from the Batavia Society of Artsits. For more about Briana and other artists featured at the art show at Richmond Memorial Library, check out the article by John Loyd.

• Batavia Blue Devils girls track won their seventh straight title in the Monroe County League Division III. The Blue Devils beat East Ridge 129-12 yesterday to go to 35-0 in the league.

For the complete stories, the Daily News is available on local newsstands, or you can subscribe on BataviaNews.com.

Well we are off....seems like only yesterday when I was taking down the remnants of forgotten Christmas lights left on trees outside and now it is the official first weekend of the 'summer season".  I spent a good time this morning working and preparing and packing to go off to our summer place....a small, modest camp near Warsaw.  It seemed like I was packing more than usual.  Could be because I need heavy, warm things in my travel sack....not the usual shorts and sandles.  Let's see....if it gets down to 40 again tonight....How many pairs of socks will I need?  All this and I LIKE camping.

I do admit that camping now is not like it used to be.  The kids and I would rough it with three tents...two people in each, and sleeping bags.  I still would enjoy that type of camping but I am not sure that my back, bum leg and sciatica would appreciate it.  So, we are more gentile now.   We have our home away from home....of course complete with all the electronics, TV, furnace, hot water, microwave, CD/VCR player and lets not forget the "garden tub".  I did say "NO" when it came time to pay for the Jacuzzi Tub.   Seemed to be the height of decadence at the time and it would mean I would have to remove my fantastic skylight.... Now I am not so sure......hmmm? 

So today I go off for the first of several family rendevous of the summer.  Bag packed, extra socks, sweatshirts and long johns......not a swimsuit to be seen... and a car full of stuff that is good to eat as well as the much needed chocolate, marshmallows and graham crackers.  I do intend on eating well and often this weekend.  I will need the calories to combat the cold.  The rest of the family will drift in over the next two days....a few today, a few more tomorrow....and finally....just when I have cleaned my last corner of the camper, put out all the camper stuff and planted the last annual flower they all will appear.  Oh... let's not forget the cord of firewood I ordered that needs to be stacked.

I declare when all is said and done...I still love to camp in my own little corner of paradise....I just wish this year paradise was going to be a bit warmer.  Oh and the next time Jacuzzi Tub is mentioned with its18 pulsating jets....Hit me on the head if I say "no thanks".  It is the least you can do.....  It wouldn't be camping without it.

Have a safe and wonderful Memorial Day Weekend.....and remember.....it is important to reflect on those that have sacrificed so that we can have what we have..... Give thanks to them all.

Walk the Villages kicks off in Batavia at United Memorial Medical Center Friday at 6:00pm at the Jerome Center, 16 Bank St. The program, begun in 2005, is meant to encourage residents to get out and walk their communities, both to get out and exercise and to see what our area has to offer.

The six communities of Akron, Batavia, Clarence, Kenmore, Le Roy and Williamsville offer walking routes that promote downtown businesses, historical architecture, and local attractions. The program is free and self paced. Participants may fill out certificates at local merchants to be eligible to win prizes. Last year, nearly 3,000 people participated in the Walk the Villages program, of that almost 80% of the participants walked in communities other than their own.

At the Batavia Kick-Off event, free refreshments, health screenings and giveaways will be available. Live music will be performed by the local band, Buffalo Road Show. Registrants for the Walk the Villages Program will receive the new 2008 Community Guide and may sign up to participate in a free fitness study centered on the Walk the Villages.

Call (585) 344-5415 for more information.

Eighty-four years of anything is worth boasting about. Let us, then, boast on behalf of the Batavia Concert Band, which kicks off its 84th anniversary season June 25 in Batavia's Centennial Park.

The Batavia Concert Band’s repertoire is wide-ranging in origin, period and style: Sousa-style marches, Broadway show tunes, classical adaptations, fun songs for kids of all ages, big-band and swing numbers, popular songs from hit musicals and movies, rock favorites arranged for concert band… and everything in between.

The Band consists of forty to fifty brass, woodwind and percussion players ranging from talented local high school students to 50-year veterans. Many have professional experience, and the rest are advanced amateur musicians. All love to play.

The Batavia Concert Band has been performing here since 1924, except for a reprieve during World War II.

Its regular season concerts all start at 7:00pm, Wednesday evenings, in Centennial Park, unless it rains, and the band moves to the Genesee County Nursing Home. (See below for a complete season schedule.) All concerts are free to the public. Light refreshments are often available.

Call Bob Knipe at (585) 343-5991 for more information.

Check out WBTA for these and other stories:

• No working smoke detectors were found in the apartment complex in Byron that burned down Monday, according to the Genesee County Sheriff's Office. A family four died in the fire that looks to have started in their kitchen, possible near the stove.

• Smoked "Kuta Fish" and "Boney Fish" purchased from the African Caribbean Market on North Clinton may be tainted with botulism, according to the Department of Agriculture and Markets. No problems have yet been reported, but the fish should be thrown out.

• Local law enforcement will be holding a child safety seat inspection between 10:00am and 2:00pm — WBTA reports the date of the event as "next Saturday," which we assume to mean two days from now.

What is a blog?  The short and sweet answer is it's nothing more than a piece of personal publishing software.

Another short answer from a different point of view is a blog enables a means of self-expression.

What it is mainly is a way for anybody -- from the professional to the person who just has something to say -- to communicate in a real, personal voice.

Blogging refers both to the technology that makes personal online publishing easy and to an attitude about media.

At The Batavian, we blog.

To some traditionalist, the idea of mixing journalism and blogging is something like mixing holy water and gin.

We ask, why?

Up until the second half of the 20th Century, when journalism finished its full transformation from a trade to a profession, the craft and art of media revolved a lot around personal expression.  Writers could write, and readers generally knew the bias and predilection of either the reporter or the publication where the news appeared.

Blogging allows media to get back to its more uninhibited roots.

Why should you blog? Because blogging give you a chance to add your voice to the media mix.  You know stuff. You have opinions.  When you come into possession of new information, you have just as much right to share it with the public as any journalism-school graduate.

It doesn't matter if you won a seat on the City Council, drive a snow plow, operate your own store, sell insurance, arrest thugs or push paper -- it's highly likely you know things or can share things that others will find useful or interesting.

That's what blogging is all about -- allowing for a form egalitarian communication.

At The Batavian, we make it easy for you to blog. 

First, sign up for an account -- more than 100 people already have.

Second, look for the link on the left rail of the site that says, "Create Content."

Third, click on the "Blog Entry" link of the "Create Content" page.

Fourth, write a title, add some tags (I usually do this after I write my post) and then go to the big text box a little lower on the page and start writing.

Fifth, after you've said all you save to say, click publish.

Once you've written your post, a member of The Batavian staff will see it the next time we log onto the site (contrary to rumor, we do eat and sleep sometimes, so we may not see your post right away), and if we find it of sufficient public interest, we'll "promote" it to the home page.

What should you write about?

Well, you can use your blog on The Batavian for purely personal expression -- stuff about your family, pets, garden, dating life, etc.

Or you can write about issues of current interest, either in Batavia or abroad.

You can also use blog posts to promote things your civic group is doing. 

You can also share other bits of news you happen to learn and believe to be true.

We don't have too many restrictions on what you write about.  We do ask that you avoid being nasty and mean, using foul language and engaging in unfair attacks on other people, either by name or as a group (such as racist rants).  In a few days, we'll publish more on our "official" rules.

BTW:  If blogging for The Batavian isn't your style, go to wordpress.com and start a blog.  If you do, let us know about it, we'll follow it (and when we add a blog roll, we'll link to it), and when you write something we find interesting, we will link to that blog post.  And we hope you'll do the same for us.

So, what are you waiting for? Start blogging.  It's fun, easy and can help make Batavia a better place to live and work.

UPDATE: BTW, for those who don't know ... Blog is short for "web log."  A log being a form of personal journal, or a place to record things.  Some of the first blogs (going back to 1999) were just a collection of favorite links with maybe a comment or two.  Of course, blogs have become much more than that, but link blogging is still popular.

Previous Related Posts:

• Now you can blog on The Batavian
• All about me getting to know you
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In an interview with David Sylvester around 1970, the Irish painter Francis Bacon quipped: "You can be optimistic and totally without hope." He was always amazed when he got out of bed in the morning, he said, yet he pursued his work with an almost belligerent perseverance, short-circuiting his own mastery of design by warping and mutiliating his subjects on canvas. By way of an explanation, he said he wanted to pull images straight off his nervous system, wanted, really, to bypass all the interference of judgment and meaning and get right down to the guts and gore of his art.

No matter. Artworks as brutal and pungent as Bacon's don't need the explications of their maker. They tell their story without him — or they at least relate the absence of any tale.

This morning, I came upon a houseful of artworks that stood just as resolutely on their own two feet. They spoke quite well without voice. Nonetheless, I found myself as fascinated by the narratives that spawned the paintings as I was by the paintings themselves. So it went today with the artist and musician Brian Moore.

This is Brian's latest painting. He's not done it with it yet. It's titled Jungle, and you may be able to guess why. Brian's a Rochester native who now lives in Batavia. He has toured the country in an indie-rock band, studied fine art at college, founded his own recording studio — Red Booth Recording in Medina — produced his own albums, worked for a Web site about horses, painted, sculpted and just generally got by, though he hasn't yet reached his goal of settling down and brewing up a family life. For someone who considers painting a secondary activity, he's damned good at it. Real damned good.

"I worked so hard at doing the music," he says, painting "became a sort of release... something I didn't have to take so seriously."

Unlike Francis Bacon, Brian gets at the guts and gore of his painting through hashing out (sometimes for a long time in advance) a narrative that takes shape in his mind before it all comes spilling out. At one point today, he called it mental throwup. His paintings couldn't be more filled with meaning before they hit the canvas.

"An idea starts subconscious, almost as if there's a movie or a storyline," he says. "Then I find one image that represents it."

Let's leave any interpretations of Jungle up to you for now. Instead, let's take an earlier work of his, called Cancer. (This is a section of that piece to the left here.) Brian composed it out of spray insulation, a goopy, intestinal looking stuff that he then painted once it dried.

Cancer most literally means what it says and came out of Brian's own grieving over his friend's death from an agressive melanoma some years back. By giving form to that pain and loss, Brian found at least a little release.

Not that all of his art comes out of the tragedy of living. Another work made of the spray insulation was a commissioned piece that was a straightforward task of re-interpretation.

Folks from the George Eastman House in Rochester asked Brian to build them a replica of Treebeard, a character from the Lord of the Rings trilogy, in honor of that year's Oscar celebration. Brian told me the story of constructing the mammoth sculpture in his parent's garage that winter, and how he installed a sound system in the creature's chest that continuously played the white noise of flowing water, sometimes interrupted by the  booming voice of the character speaking lines from the film. He laughed as he remembered the spooked reactions of people at the Oscar party when they heard this lumpy bearded thing suddenly barking at them.

Brian spoke a lot about his music, which should rightly be noted as his number one passion — though he said that he feels the same sort of energy whether he's painting, writing lyrics, singing or recording someone else's music. That would make sense. It was his music, not his painting, that took him across country twice. His music settled him in Ocean City, Maryland for a summer. His music brought him through rural Kentucky and into the heart of New York City. Maybe most importantly, these days, music pays the bills, and that means he gets to live the life he chooses.

Brian's current band Live for the Day will be headlining the Battle of the Bands show at Water Street Music Hall in Rochester this Friday night.

But let us get back to the paintings, for a moment, before I go cook dinner. Of all the great works Brian introduced me to this morning, I may have to say Frogman appealed to me the most, maybe because there is a little frogman in me, though I won't admit it to often.

You may not be able to see it, but this piece is not only made of paint on the canvas. Brian has mounted a table, draped with a gold velvet tablecloth, onto the painting. Atop the table are a pair of wine glasses — one full, one empty — and two place settings, for dinner. The empty glass tells us that frogman has already finished his wine, and that tells us he has likely been sitting there for a while.

After Brian told me the story that became this painting and the story the painting now tells, whether we see it or not, I fell in love with it even more. It sounded like a tale J.D. Salinger might have concoted if he let his humans become a little more... I don't know... animal. (Or maybe more like the Argentinian surrealist Julio Cortazar.) It goes like this: Our hero here, if we may call him that, is a gentleman who was born with the head of a frog. It's no mask. It's him. His wealthy aristocratic parents kept him forever locked up in the house to keep his freakishness from the world. But evenually, frogman makes it outside. He puts on a disguise and ventures out, meets a woman, falls in love. He invites her back to his place. Only, she never shows up. And that is where we find him, sitting, waiting, drinking his wine and contemplating his isolation (which is as if he were stranded in a hut on the top of a mountain). Beautiful.

Check back with us for a future video discussion about Brian's piece Jungle and (possibly) the premiere of Live for the Day's music video now in production.

City Manager Jason Molino told us a bit more about the announcement made by the city earlier today that the Internal Revenue Service had placed a lien on a City Hall bank account. Molino said the lien was the result of a "reporting error," and that the city's cash flow and debt were not affected.

"Payroll taxes are filed every three months," he added. "When you file a report with the IRS, the payroll needs to be equal to what was reported."

In the case of the payroll reported for the second quarter last year, the report was in error: that is, the numbers didn't match. Molino said that it was a one-time mistake.

"We've done the paperwork to correct the error," he said. That means that any financial penalties that may have been levied by the IRS would be revoked.

Molino said he could not comment further on the departure of Deputy Director of Finance Shelly D'Alba — also announced today following an executive session of the City Council this morning — including whether D'Alba was fired by the city or resigned.

The amount of the lien was not readily available, said Molino, though it should be provided to The Batavian soon.

Related posts:

• IRS placed a lien on a City Hall bank account
• News roundup: "Secret" meetings at City Hall

From WBTA earlier this afternoon (following reports that the City Council "hastily" met in an executive session this morning to deal with a "personnel issue"):

The Internal Revenue Service placed a lien on a Batavia City Hall bank account due to an error in a payroll tax report. The error, which occurred in the second quarter of last year, was recently discovered by city hall management and has now been corrected.

City Manager Jason Molino told WBTA that Deputy Director of Finance Shelly D'Alba "is no longer emplyed by the city," though there was no indication of whether D'Alba was fired or resigned his position. Also, though D'Alba was in charge of filing the payroll tax reports, Molino cautioned that "it would be wrong to link D'Alba's departure from City Hall to the payroll tax reporting error," writes Dan Fischer. The result of the lien was "human error," according to Molino, indicating that there were no criminal acts.

Get the full story at WBTA, plus an audio file of City Manager Jason Molino explaining the situation.

And so it begins and ends again.  When you think of it that is what happens in our lives.   Each and every day something begins, something else ends and we deal with more and more things that are in the middle.   I sometimes wonder if my life was a book how I would create the chapters and exactly how many of them there are exactly.... who knows.

This week I started Directing and Producing the 2008 Summer Youth Theater Show - JESUS CHRIST, SUPERSTAR.  It will be held this year at Batavia High School in August.  This is a real treat for me because once upon a time, I was Jesus in Superstar and it was an amazing experience.   My wife played Mary Magadeline in fact.  Now it comes full circle.  I am working with 70 plus young people to bring this classic to the stage.  I find that all truly amazing.  So that was this week's beginning. 

The ending was the successful vote for the propositions and the City of Batavia School Budget.  This was my friend Dick Stutzman's last budget, he retires in July.  Dick and I have been through a ton of budgets and we were successful with most all.  If the public knew all the work it took to put to together a $39 Million budget, you would understand.   We have succeeded here because of the due dilligence of Dick Stutzman, first as our Assistant to the Business Administrator, then as the Business Administrator and finally as our Superintendent of Schools.  Batavia City Schools have been so lucky to have this wonderful caring veteran working daily on the behalf of our students. One thing I can say about him is that he always participated, always was willing to learn and share and always worked hard for the children.  He cared for this district.  If you see him - pass along some thanks.

And now to the future.  A little vacation the end of this month, the end of the long Primary Season that will bring us our nominees and more late nights and trips to the south of Warsaw to relax and have fun...doing summer stuff.....which reminds me.... The average temperature for the month of May is like 65..... Have we hit that yet....????  Who knows...that is probably in another chapter.

From the Daily News (Wednesday):

• Genesee County Sheriff Gary Maha told the Daily News that investigators "are looking at an electric stove as the possible cause" of the fire that charred an apartment complex in Byron early Monday morning, claiming the lives of a family of four.

• Batavia native Dan Burns got to tee off with "golf legend" Tom Watson in the Pro-Am for the Senior PGA Championship at Oak Hill Country Club in Pittsford Tuesday. The tournament begins Thursday and runs through the weekend.

• Reporter Paul Mrozek writes: "The Genesee County Economic Development Center is spearheading a $1 million "life sciences" initiative that will pay students and teachers to attend college this summer." Teachers will take courses at the University of Buffalo in biology and bioinformatics. Students (aged 16-19) will attend courses at Genesee Community College in "career planning, cell biology and biotechnology." They can earn up to seven college credits and be paid about $7 per hour to attend the courses, according to the GCEDC. Teachers will be recruited from schools in Genesee, Wyoming, Livingston, Monroe and Steuben counties. Interested students should call GCC at (585) 343-0055 for more information.

• University of Buffalo head football coach Turner Gill will be the guest speaker at the Iroquois Trail Council Boy Scouts of America BoyPower Dinner May 27 at Batavia Downs Race Track. The 7:00 o'clock dinner will be preceded by a "social gathering" from 5:45 to 6:45pm. Tickets for the event are $130 per person, $1,200 per table or $250 per couple. Call the Boy Scout office at (585) 343-0307 to reserve yours.

• Memorial Day observances Monday in Batavia:

• Genesee County Park and Forest (Vietnam Veterans of America): 7:00am.
• Williams Park on Pearl Street: 8:00am.
• Batavia VA Medical Center at 220 Richmond Ave.: 8:30am.
• United Memorial Medical Center on North Street: 9:00am.
• Upton Monument at Main Street and Route 63: 9:30am.

A parade will start at the Aldi's parking lot at East Main Street and Route 33 and continue down East Main west to Main Street and Harvester Avenue. It will be followed by a ceremony at the Veterans Plot at 11:00am.

• Genesee Cancer Assistance's Festival of Hope will start at 5:30pm June 6 at Batavia Downs on Park Road. The group hopes to raise $50,000 this year. Call Patricia Arnold at (585) 345-0417 for more information.

For the complete stories, the Daily News is available on local newsstands, or you can subscribe on BataviaNews.com.