Less than one week, now, to the one and only Ramble Music and Arts Fest in Jackson Square. But for those of you who just can't wait — and I wouldn't blame you — make sure you check out the Ramble Web site, which is chock full of goodies, such as the message board for Ramblers to gather and wax nostalgic about past years or talk about how geeked up they are for this year's superstar lineup.

You can also find a list of performers, photos and videos from past Rambles, other news and... well... anything you want to know about the Fest. So go check it out.

In the meantime, here's another video as part of our Countdown to the Ramble. This one is of the Cheer Daddies performing (aptly) "Stormy Monday." We'll feature another video every day of the week until Saturday, when The Batavian will be on the scene at Jackson Square to shoot some of our own footage of this year's Fest. Expect to see the fruits of our labor sometime next week.

Genesee County sheriff's deputies were kept busy on the roads this past weekend.

• Thomas J. Foster III, 20, of Clarendon, was charged with driving while intoxicated Friday night after he was stopped for speeding on Route 19 in LeRoy, Genesee County sheriff's deputies said.
• Deputies joined with Corfu police to set up a DWI checkpoint in the village Friday. Six motorists were charged with driving while intoxicated: Kelly A. Honsberger, 39, of Clarence Center; John E. Mielko, 51, of Lancaster; Jeremy L. Snover, 31, of North Collins; Dwight A. Clark, 25, of Cheektowaga; Corey R. Blair, 28, of Rochester; Marcella M. Kaminski, 55, of Depew.
• Chantal M. Labelle, 42, of Rochester, was charged with driving while intoxicated early Saturday morning after she was stopped on Route 33 for making an unsafe lane change, sheriff's deputies said.
• Dennis J. Mills, 45, of Varysburg, was charged with a felony count of first-degree aggravated operation of a motor vehicle Saturday morning following a traffic stop on County Line Road in Darien, sheriff's deputies said. The charge was a felony because Mills was driving with a license that had been revoked due to prevous DWI convictions. He was also ticketed with drivig while ability impaired by alcohol, moving from the lane unsafely, failure to submit to a breath screening device, consumption of alcohol in a motor vehicle and speeding.

Note: All of rhe above arrests were reported in published releases from the sheriff's office.

Check out WBTA for this and other stories:

• Darien Lake State Beach Park will remain closed pending further water tests that will continue today. The park was closed this past weekend because of high bacteria levels.

So... we've ticked off the first two "things" that made Genesee County famous: John Kennedy and the Thruway. Number 23 went up on the Holland Land Office Museum Web site today, and it looks like we've moved from pavement to people to edibles with Kutter's Cheese Factory taking up the next rung in the ladder. (If you have no idea what we're talking about, check out our post from last week that discusses the "countdown" in a little more detail.)

Opened in 1947 on Route 5 in Pembroke, Kutter's was soon supplying stores all over the area with its cheese, explains Patrick Weissend, director of the Holland Land Office Museum.

Kutter's core of cheeses include cheddar, muenster, colby, edam, gouda and havarti. In the 1960s, writes Weissend, the business expanded to include some sour creams and cottage cheeses. These days, they've even got a Kosher line of dips and cheeses.

After the Kutter sons retired, the place was bought by Yancy's Fancy. Says Weissend: "Today, they employ 45 people who make 30,000 pounds of cheese 24 hours a day, five days a week."

Be sure to visit the Holland Land Office Museum's main Web site, and then check out the special countdown page to get much more interesting information than what we include here.

Hmm. I wonder if we can get a little contest going to see who can guess the next on the list. Hmm.

From the Daily News (Friday):

• Genesee County "officials" told reporter Paul Mrozek that the investigation into the murder of Janet Kirkup will focus on Darien or Pembroke. Robert Kirkup recently confessed to the murder of his wife, Janet, during a cross-country trip in 1992, and it is believed that her body is buried somewhere near a campsite in Darien. Genesee County District Attorney Lawrence Friedman said that the cause of death "may be strangulation." The search for the body has not yet begun.
• Batavia Downs celebrated the grand opening of its new restaurant, Grandstands, on Thursday. Reporter Tom Rivers was there to get some color and chat with the officials about the Downs' continued success. In a sidebar to the story, it's reported that the Downs recently warranted a check from the state for $286,274, "money that will be used to offset some proerty taxes." It sounds as if the money goes to the communities: to the county, the city and the town. The city is supposed to get nearly $500,000, and the town should receive a little more than $175,000. I wonder how that works. Where does that money come from? Tom Rivers and Paul Mrozek write that the state gives money to "host communities with video gaming centers." Doesn't that sound strange? Hey, community, good job promoting gambling, here's some cash to do with what you please. Am I being too cynical or misunderstanding this?
• "Officials" from Genesee and Orleans counties had "the beginning of a discussion" about potentially creating a regional jail. It seems people are interested in talking about it, but little else is really decided at this point.

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

Batavia's Public Market will open for the season tomorrow at 9:00am in the Center and School streets parking lot. It will run every Saturday from then through October 11, from 9:00am to 2:00pm.

Belladessa's & Jackson Street Grill will be there with pizza and hots. Vendors will provide everything from produce and bread to cookies, cupcakes, pies, coffee, flowers, pottery and more. Batavia's Public Market accepts "NYS Farmer's Market Checks."

Call (585) 344-0900 for more information.

The Batavian will be out and about most of the day today. Right now, I'm working on a user guide to bring around to all of the funeral homes in Batavia. Once that's finished, I'll make the rounds so we can start to see regular obituary postings of area deaths right here on The Batavian.

That being said, I was hoping that our readers could help out if they see, hear, experience, think up or taste any news today. If you do — post it! Put up a photo, a blog post, a comment, a video, whatever you can. Otherwise, just be aware that I may not be posting as frequently today as usual. Though you can be sure to find the Daily News roundup on the site this afternoon.

Thank you for your understanding.

Your pal, Philip.

Forty-two-year-old Raymond J. Radley, of Pavilion, was arrested and sent to Genesee County Jail in lieu of $10,000 bail late last night, sheriff's deputies said. Radley was charged with first-degree coercion, a felony charge, and second-degree harassment. Deputies were told that Radley kicked a woman in the head, then took her cell phone so that she could not call for help. The attack happened during a domestic dispute at Radley's home on Cook Road in Pavilion.

Note: The above arrest was reported in a published release from the sheriff's office.

Check out WBTA for this and other stories:

• Richmond Memorial Library will be closed today and tomorrow as the facility undergoes electrical upgrades. The doors will be back open Monday.

I love baseball, so with a certain amount of pride, I walked into Dwyer Stadium today and snapped this photo of The Batavian sign out in right field.

We're proud to be a 2008 sponsor of Batavia's legendary minor league baseball team.

This summer, we're also a sponsor of the BID's summer concert series.

We're looking at a couple of other sponsorship opportunities over the next couple of months.  If your group or organization is putting on an event and need local business sponsors, let us know, because we'll certainly consider it (we can't sponsor everything of course, but we have some money left in the budget for a couple of more sponsorships this summer).

Community Leader #1: "I'm eager to see the Daily News today to find out what they say about the youth football program."

Community Leader #2: "Why? I've already found out all I need to know on The Batavian."

I'm hiding the identities of the two people in the conversation because it was just casually mentioned to me, but it's been on my mind all afternoon.

That's exactly what we want people to get about The Batavian.  We're timely and complete and trustworthy.

Philip has done a great job of covering the controversy surrounding where youth football should be played, and we've gotten useful and informative comments from people on the posts to help supplement the coverage. 

We're not a big believer in people relying on just one source of information for news -- that's why we always encourage people to subscribe to the Daily News and listen to WBTA -- but we also want to be as complete as possible (which is why we also tell you about the Daily News and WBTA coverage).

The other aspect of the conversation is the value of word-of-mouth promotion.  That's something you can't buy, so it's great to hear about people spreading the word about the work we're doing.

We're very happy with the results of our advertising in the Genesee Valley PennySaver and on WBTA, and I just did a post about our community sponsorship efforts.  Without that advertising, it would be hard to get the word-of-mouth marketing going.

Still, if you think The Batavian is good for Batavia, good for Genesee County, please tell your friends, neighbors, co-workers.  There is strength in numbers, and the more people who visit the site the better for our business, but just as important, the better for the community conversation and the better for keeping all of us better informed.

Post our web site address in your school bulletin or group newsletter.  And let people know they can send us news, too, or post it themselves.

If you're new to The Batavian, follow this link for previous posts about who what we do and why.

From a press release issued by Genesee Community College:

Two Genesee Community College students in the Tourism & Hospitality Management program have been awarded scholarships. Dana Landers received a $500 scholarship from the New York State Business Travel Alliance and Nicholas Bennett received a $1500 award from Destinations of New York State.

You can find more information about Dana and Bennett at ReadMedia.

In a press release issued by the campaign for Congressional candidate Jon Powers this afternoon, Powers criticizes his rival Jack Davis for his close ties to "Big Oil" — including Davis' financial disclosure that he owns $35 million in "oil and energy stocks."

"We now know Jack Davis has up to 35 million reasons to vote against lower gas prices.  Exxon Jack is no different than George Bush and the politicians in Washington, DC who are already bought and paid for by the oil companies.  Western New York needs a Congressman who will look out for their interests, not Exxon/Mobil's bottom line" stated Powers Campaign Manager, John Gerken.

Powers released his own energy policy that says the candidate would support legislation that would reduce carbon emissions by 20 percent by 2020. He also says that oil companies should be required to install bio-fuel pumps at 25 percent of their stations and that the country should get 25 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2025. Rather than giving so much in tax credits to oil companies, Powers wants to provide "tax credits to investors who empower scientists to develop renewable energy."

For more about Powers' energy policy, download the full document here.

UPDATE: Note, Davis has been invited to respond. 

The Batavian picked up a story from the Daily News earlier about Robert Kirkup, a 68-year-old man from Big River, California, who was extradited to Genesee County Jail following Kirkup's recent confession to the murder of his wife during a camping trip back in 1992.

We thought to poke around a bit more online to see if we could dig up some more details on Kirkup, why the 16-year-old cold case was reopened and how detectives got a confession out of a man who admitted nothing for so long.

WHEC News-10 NBC in Rochester had the story posted on its Web site.

The Michigan State Police opened an investigation into the disappearance of Janet Kirkup because at the time, the Kirkup’s were living in Jackson, Michigan. Eventually Robert Kirkup moved to Big River, California, which is located in San Bernardino County. Until this June, Janet Kirkup’s whereabouts and the circumstances surrounding her disappearance were unknown.

After Robert Kirkup relocated to Big River, California, the Kirkup’s daughter, Susan Waller persuaded the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department to interview her father into the disappearance of her mother.

While being interviewed by officers from the Sheriff’s Department, Kirkup revealed that he was responsible for Janet Kirkup’s death. Members from the New York State Police Troop A Violent Crimes Investigative Team flew out to California and interviewed him. The investigation revealed that in August of 1992 while camping in Genesee County, Mr. Kirkup killed his wife, Janet Kirkup. 

The Press-Enterprise of Riverside, California, explained that the murder of Janet Kirkup may have been solved thanks to the renewed efforts of cold-case homicide detectives in San Bernardino County's sheriff's department. Ontario, California's Inland Valley Daily Bulletin profiled the detectives and their two most recent successes earlier this week.

I like this time of year and I always feel that with the summer comes wonderful times of outdoor activities that all can enjoy in this area.  I also like the idea of High School Graduation and seeing the culmination of all the students who are going out into the real or collegiate world.  I really like the summer...I never complain it is too hot, always dress reasonably comfortable and work on our Summer Youth Theater Program.  The summer for me is indeed a very creative time.

In preparation for the summer vacation and the 4th of July weekend, it also becomes a time to say "so long".  Many people come and go through our lives but this year, I need to pass on some kudos to two wonderful people that have served this area for quite some time.  I know that they are not actually gone, in fact they are all moving onto different roles in other communities or at home.  It is just the idea that Batavia will miss them.  It is the idea that they served our community so well... it is the idea that they truly loved our schools and our children.

This is the last graduating class for Superintendent Richard Stutzman.  At the time of his appointment he was a radical choice that shocked some people.  In his words, Dick was always a "bean counter" that cared more for the dollar and cents and the bottom line.  We need those types of people in a successful education setting.  They are the ones that rein in the tide of spend, spend, spend and to put reality back on the plate before projects and programs go out of wack and costs escalate.  Dick was a champion "bean counter" who had spent time in the classroom at his Mt. Morris Central School. 

The Board of Education at the time decided we were not seeing anyone with Mr. Stutzman's abilities in the mix of candidates for the job.....so we asked him to step up and become our Superintendent.   Dick Stutzman turned into the best person ever for this district.  He truly became an advocate for all students and prudently turned our City of Batavia School District into a First Class Educational Facility that is one of the TOP 15 High Schools for Technology through the Prometheum Corportation.  Winning awards and providing training for schools from across the United States and doing it all with a sense of student caring and an "education for all" attitude. 

All I can add is, "Mr. Stutzman - Thank You" ..... you truly are a champion in the field of education. 

Bette Rung has always been involved with Batavia City Schools.  She attended Robert Morris and the old East School (where the Salavation Army Citadel is now.) and she continued working in the district as the Administrative Assistant to the Superintendent of Schools.  She worked for three different men and was also the Clerk for the Board of Education.  Bette was and still is a huge proponent of our School District.  She was always efficient, kind and helpful.  She was also a friend.  There have been many times when my health has not permitted me to be as involved as I should be with the City Board of Education.  Mrs. Rung was right there for me, bringing me information, making sure things were getting signed and issues were being addressed. 

Mrs. Rung has also retired and to those who know her, they will tell you of her dedication to the children of this district.  She has worked with three superintendents, hundreds of Board of Education Members, thousands of staff members and over 50000 children.  She is truly an angel for this district. 

Mrs. Rung, my personal and professional gratitude.  Your kindness will always be cherished, your caring will always be appreciated and your concern for our City School District will always be remembered. 

As these two close the door on one career and look at the future, I wish them luck, love and much health.  I pray they will stay safe and free from care and I hope, and just for one brief moment that they will stop in and say hello.   It is hard to forget those that have left such a huge imprint on one's life.....all we can do is remember the gentle impression and be grateful that you met, you worked together and you did well.

Mr. Stutzman and Mrs. Rung...... you did well..... Happy Retirement!

From the Daily News (Thursday):

• A 68-year-old California man who confessed June 17 to the murder of his wife back in 1992 was extradited to Genesee County Jail on murder charges. Robert Kirkup's wife, Janet, went missing in 1992 when the couple was traveling across country in a mobile home, and an investigation into her disappearance went "cold" in 1999. Detectives in San Bernardino County in California reopened the case on June 10 and took Robert Kirkup into custody following his confession. It is now believed that Janet Kirkup's body is buried somewhere in Genesee County.
• A story on the front page about United Memorial Medical Center potentially losing IDA funding was reported yesterday on The Batavian — including a link to full coverage of the issue by the Buffalo News.
• The New York State School for the Blind held its graduation and student awards ceremony yesterday. Amanda Benoit, David Roberts, Andrew Hershelman, Amy Mae Snyder and Catherine Truesdale got their diplomas, and dozens of others were honored with awards.
• Reporter Roger Muehlig does a good job writing up the current exhibit at GO ART! in Batavia. The show is titled Artitude and features works in pen and ink, watercolor, colored pencil and crayon by members of the Genesee County Mental Health Association's Social Club. You can see the show at the cultural center at 201 E. Main St., Batavia. The gallery is open from 9:00am to 4:00pm daily.

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

Daily News reporter Joanne Beck paid a visit to Dwyer Stadium yesterday, but she wasn't there for a ball game. She was there to get a closer look at the outfield turf, a plot of grass that has been the center of a controversy over the past week here in Batavia.

At Monday's City Council meeting, Ben Bonarigo stood up and asked the city to let youth football play one more season at Dwyer before it relocated to Kibbe Park at a cost to the city that would not exceed about $19,000. His recommendation was immediately followed by a heated, hour-long debate among Council members, none of whom seemed to agree on even a single detail. (For more details about the meeting and the recommendation by City Manager Jason Molino to relocate the program to Austin Park, check out our two earlier posts.)

At the core of the debate is a simple disagreement between Bonarigo, who is a member of youth football's board of directors, and Council President Charlie Mallow. Bonarigo says that if youth football stays another season at Dwyer, the outfield will suffer no great hurt. Mallow says just the opposite.

Beck writes that if Council approves youth football's request to stay at Dwyer for one more season, "Mallow has no doubt the city will pay another $10,000 next year for field repairs."

We asked Charlie to explain a little more his choice of $10,000 for the city's share of field repair costs. Why that much? He wrote to us in an e-mail:

The city is responsible for the first $10,000. From what I remember it cost the Red Wings $40,000 plus for this season's patch repairs. I expect the city's liabilities to be at least what they were last year. In talking to the baseball people, anything less would not be believable. We can not open ourselves up to escalating costs of field repairs any longer.

Bonarigo countered at the meeting Monday that there is no way youth football would cause so much damage that the city would need to spend that kind of money and that even after the repairs, the field is in the same shape this year as it was last year.

And really, that's what it has come down to: Charlie says this, Bonarigo says that. My question — and I would hope it would be everyone else's question, too — is: Who do we believe?

In Beck's article today, she quotes Muckdogs General Manager Dave Wellenzohn and Red Wings General Manager both saying that Bonarigo is wrong. Wellenzohn says flat out that the "overuse" of the field from youth football "will bring us back to square one," and square one would mean an investment by the city of at least $10,000.

With the quotes from Wellezohn, Mason and Red Wings CEO Naomi Silver, the overall tenor of the article seems very much in support of Charlie's view that: "Council is wasting taxpayer dollars." And it's an argument that should warrant some credence.

Why pay $10,000, $20,000 or even $10 for youth football when that money is not spent on other youth programs, Charlie asks? Why does youth football get special treatment? Or is it special treatment? WBTA seemed to ask the opposite question in their next-day coverage of the meeting Monday: Would one more year of youth football really be that bad?

Unfortunately, Beck also writes that "Bonarigo was unavailable for comment." The Batavian put in a call to Bonarigo's office this morning to take up some of these questions, but he was not in. He should be back later, so we hope to get a comment from him then.

Genesee County sheriff's deputies reported several arrests this week:

• Twenty-year-old Oakfield resident Jeffrey M. Johnson is in jail on $10,000 bail following a charge of first-degree rape levied by Genesee County sheriff's deputies Wednesday. Johnson has been accused of having forcible intercourse with a female acquaintance at his home in Oakfield. The investigation is ongoing.
• Michael B. Collier Jr., 16, of Albion, was charged with third-degree burglary Wednesday, sheriff's deputies said. Collier is suspected of being involved in a burglary at Monroe Tractor on Oak Orchard Road in the town of Batavia that happened in the early morning hours between Tuesday and Wednesday. He was sent to Genesee County Jail in lieu of $5,000 bail. Additional charges are pending further investigation.
• Mark C. Johnson, 46, and his son, Scott R. Johnson, 18, both of Oakfield, were charged with unlawful possession of marijuana at their home Wednesday, sheriff's deputies said.

 Note: All of the above arrests were reported in published releases from the sheriff's office.

Check out WBTA for this and other stories:

• The county Legislature approved the $31 million budget for Genesee Community College last night. Also approved at the meeting was the purchase of 17 bulletproof vests for the Sheriff's Office at a cost of $24,038.
• The Muckdogs lost 3-1 to the Jamestown Jammers to drop back below .500 for the year. They'll be in Mahoning Valley tonight. Batavia went 2-1 in their last series against the Scrappers earlier this week.

Great art not only makes allowances for the accidental, it thrives on it. Great artists don't despair at their mistakes. Not always. Nor should they. A rip or a stain, say, provides an occasion to seek out a more subtle meaning in a work of art; and an artist enough in tune with the work might recognize the serendipity in the unforeseen and use that chance to elevate the minor to something more. It's the moment when art becomes metamorphosis, when the creator and created act mutually upon one another.

It's how you know you're in the midst of it all and not just painting by numbers or connecting dots.

I can't say whether it was intentional or not — I believe not, and that's all the better — but Karen Reisdorf was right there in that metamorphosis, inside what the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty calls the fission of Being. Her exhibition of nine paintings currently on display at Pieces Gallery on Main Street is a testament to that.

She has titled the series of mixed-media paintings: The Key. Each started out as a dribble of black paint and turned into an expressionistic depiction of a Greek myth: Pandora, Cupid and Psyche, Orpheus. This one below is titled: "Midas (His Gift)."

Karen never intended for the different parts that make up each work to be brought together as they are. If you look closely at them, you'll see that they are made of a hodegpodge of materials: part plexiglass, part newsprint, part paint, some straight-up pigment and some splotches of colored encaustic.

But it didn't start that way.

She was quite literally sloshing some paint around on squares of plexiglass about a year ago. Her smears, blotches and whips of color began as expressions, as inked remnants of gestures that, as they worked their magic on her over several months, ended by insisting that they be recognized as more literal forms.

She confesses: "I was literally staring at them for six months, wondering what they were going to be."

Fed up with her waiting, they spoke up, and what began as a quite subjective experiment in abstraction turned into a cry for autonomy by the works themselves.

So she set about creating an atmosphere for the original drippings of black paint, adding a splotch of encaustic here, a dusting of gold pigment there. Her ventures into Greek mythology helped her to decipher what the paint was telling her but make no mistake: the works said what they were, not the other way around.

Take "Apollo and Daphne," for example. Karen says flat out that she wanted that piece to be Cupid and Psyche, tried to make it Cupid and Psyche, wished for it, fought for it, but the paint refused to yield to her advances. It told the story of Apollo and Daphne, not Cupid and Psyche, and she couldn't change that.

As she says: "I tried to turn it into Cupid and Psyche, but it wouldn't become that."

It was Apollo and Daphne, and it would only be recognized as such.

"Narcissus was the impetus for the show," she says.

That was the "splotch" that first spoke to her to say: This is what I am. It's one of my favorite pieces, one of those that contain the two elements I most like about Karen's work: the brutality of her expressionistic paint whips subdued, re-imagined in a context and so taken out of their primordial chaos. "Cupid" may achieve this the best. "Pandora" pulls it off in reverse.

It's up for interpretation whether Narcissus is an ironic or an apt beginning to the project. For those unfamiliar with the myth, Narcissus is a young boy who falls in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. Meanwhile, a nymph named Echo falls in love with the boy. In the end, both lovers fail to move their beloved with their mute yet ardent affections.

So... was Karen seeing herself in the works all along? Or were the things themselves staring back at her?

The myth of Narcissus and Echo brings up another prominent theme in Karen's show: love. Karen says the making of all the paintings was a "purging of unrequited love" for her. In a way, then, she is Narcissus and Echo, though she transcends both in the act of creation — by fusing myth with her own emotions, by fusing paint with plastic with newsprint with wax, by cheating accident to make something more.

It makes sense then, when she tells me: "It was a cleansing."

She fulfills the vision of Merleau-Ponty: "Seeing is not a certain mode of thought or presence to self; it is the means given me for being absent from myself, for being present from within at the fission of Being only at the end of which do I close up into myself." That is what I think should truly be meant by artistic vision.

"The eye accomplishes the prodigious work of opening the soul to what is not soul — the joyous realm of things and their god, the sun." —Merleau-Ponty