Opinion
Mary Anna Towler on February 21st, 2012
The Rochester school district is planning yet another new high school, to try - again - to help students who have done poorly in the schools they're in now. The new school would focus intense attention on its students. The school day would be longer. So would the school year. I'm reading
Opinion
Mary Anna Towler on February 14th, 2012
This article has been updated. The foreboding sense that we're headed toward war in Iran keeps returning, like a bad case of the flu. The threat seemed to subside after George Bush left the White House, but now it's back. And the presidential election campaign is adding its own tension
Opinion
Mary Anna Towler on February 7th, 2012
Let me say first that this is not a simple issue. I wish the Republican presidential candidates weren't pretending that it is. And let me say, too, that I admire a lot about the Catholic Church. It has been a leader in human rights in many, many areas. Catholics have
Opinion
Mary Anna Towler on January 24th, 2012
Newt Gingrich now stands a good chance of being the Republican presidential nominee. I'm not sure politics can get any weirder than this. Gingrich is a long way from sewing up the nomination, obviously. But last week was quite a week. And Gingrich's rise - his win in South Carolina,
Opinion
Mary Anna Towler on January 17th, 2012
Our little burg feels like a glass half empty, half full right now, and you can see that reflected in the national focus on us over the past few weeks. On the half-empty side: the threat of a Kodak bankruptcy is still in the air, and the national news media
Opinion
Mary Anna Towler on January 10th, 2012
Oh, me. With the national news media hinting at bankruptcy for Kodak, it's a somber time here. So I was hoping our full-speed-ahead governor would announce something big in his State of the State address last week. I was hoping he had exciting ideas for popping up the state's economy -
Opinion
Mary Anna Towler on December 27th, 2011
The plan to demolish an old building on the site of Genesee Brewing Company has me conflicted. The building in question is a massive structure. Imposing. A little weird. And it's unique, for sure: in appearance and in location. Brewery officials say that they have no use for it and haven't
Opinion
Mary Anna Towler on December 20th, 2011
In withdrawing combat troops from Iraq, it would be nice to think we had taken a big step toward a more rational defense policy. And yet we are still at war in Afghanistan. And we don't seem to have learned much from the war we've just ended. As the troops headed home last
Opinion
Mary Anna Towler on December 13th, 2011
Rochester, and an important field of health care, lost a real giant late last month with the death of Frank Williams. A bright, caring, and exceptionally visionary man, Frank was an expert and a trailblazer in caring for the elderly. His long, distinguished career included serving as medical director of
Opinion
Mary Anna Towler on December 13th, 2011
The Republican Party's search for a presidential candidate has been so entertaining that you kinda hope it'll just go on and on. All the show needed was to have Donald Trump jump into the middle of it, preening and puffing and once again promoting Celebrity Apprentice. (New season starts February
News Blog
Mary Anna Towler on February 21st, 2012
The latest news on what Newt Gingrich is correctly calling a roller-coaster ride: Mitt Romney is now leading in Michigan, according to one poll. Real Clear Politics says Romney's leading Santorum by 2 points in a new Mitchell/Rosetta Stone poll. Santorum's still slightly ahead in Michigan in the RCP poll average,
News Blog
Mary Anna Towler on February 20th, 2012
Worth a read: Bill McKibben's "Why Not Frack?" in the current New York Review of Books. McKibben reviews two books on the topic - Seamus McGraw's "The End of Country" and Tom Wilber's "Under the Surface: Frack, Fortunes, and the Fate of the Marcellus Shale," plus Josh Fox's film, "Gasland." As is
News Blog
Mary Anna Towler on February 17th, 2012
I have to admit: I'm conflicted about the push to have the Democratic Party include a same-sex-marriage plank in its platform when it holds its convention in September. And I'd love to hear from some local gay-rights advocates. Is this a good idea? I'm not at all happy at the rate states
News Blog
Mary Anna Towler on February 16th, 2012
Following up on my column this week on Iran: Do read Fareed Zakaria's Washington Post column today, "How History Lessons Could Deter Iranian Aggression." Zakaria delves into something I didn't touch on - and that I'm wrestling with: what if the Israelis do need to attack Iran now if there's any
News Blog
Mary Anna Towler on February 15th, 2012
We've been chuckling in our newsroom about recent articles about Rochester in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. The two papers have been writing about the post-Kodak condition of our little town, and they've been painting a dramatically different picture of our little town. The Times cheerfully
News Blog
Mary Anna Towler on February 13th, 2012
Hoo boy.... The Republican presidential contest just keeps getting more interesting. Public Policy Polling is reporting that Rick Santorum led Mitt Romney by 15 points in a survey conducted February 9 and 10. I'm not making too much of that; it's just one poll, and according to Real Clear Politics, a
News Blog
Mary Anna Towler on February 10th, 2012
So now we wait to see how far President Obama will back down on contraceptive coverage. Many media sources are reporting that the administration will announce some kind of compromise later today. That's a terrible mistake. As I wrote earlier this week, by insisting that its women employees be denied
News Blog
Mary Anna Towler on February 9th, 2012
The draw-down of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan seems to be popular with Americans, as well it should be. But apparently that doesn't mean we've learned anything from our involvement there. Nor, apparently, have we learned anything about politicians making up excuses for invading other countries. Many of us are
News Blog
Mary Anna Towler on February 8th, 2012
Jiminy Christmas! For anyone hoping for an Obama victory in November, the Republican presidential competition is proving to be an awful lot of fun. Yesterday, everybody seemed to think that Mitt Romney had the nomination locked up. The most the three other candidates could accomplish, everybody thought, was to tarnish
News Blog
Mary Anna Towler on February 6th, 2012
The New York Times seems to have a warm spot in its heart for Rochester. In their coverage of the Kodak bankruptcy, Times writers have been careful to note that we've replaced many of the jobs that we've lost with the decline of Kodak. And Friday's Times carried an op-ed
This author hasn't reviewed any movies.
This author hasn't reviewed any restaurants.
Content © Copyright 2012 - City Newspaper. All Rights Reserved.
