Progressive Wednesday

This Wednesday: Reviving Niagara

Problem:

The first years of my memory are of Niagara Falls. We lived on Orchard Parkway in a tiny second-floor house apartment. And as I grew up in the surrounding area, I learned to think of my hometown as the honeymoon and suicide capital of the world.

I grew up with daredevils risking life, limb, and the lives and limbs of their rescuers, by plummeting in various contraptions over the Horseshoe Falls. I saw news reports of poor fools who fell and drown to their deaths on kayaks and jet-skis as they tried to conquer the cataracts. I watched national television coverage of the lawsuits connected to Love Canal, a neighborhood that was the site of one of the worst toxic-waste-dumping scandals in American history.

My first job, as a bakery assistant, was in Niagara Falls at the headquarters of Di Camillo Bakery, a family business still thriving in this city. And I watched as department stores and jewelry stores and restaurants evaporated from Main Street, turning the road into an assortment of seedy bars, adult novelty stores, and boarded up buildings, each empty as the pockets of the homeless wandering the city. And I watched as the factories closed their doors, and added good, hard-working souls to the unemployment lines– ¦.

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Make Progress:

But I also grew up next to a place where people teem to see one the natural wonders of the world. And I grew up in an area where my relatives worked the bluest-collar of jobs, but managed to put lasagna on the table (we're good Italian-Americans, after all). And I grew up where my grandfather landed after traveling the Atlantic to move to America, the same city where my father was raised and remained, the same city where my sister got married. And I grew up next to one of the marvels of electrical science, the Niagara Power Project.

And so I believe in this place. And I love this place. And it's time we all helped this treasure of not just New York, but of America, and not just of America, but of the world. We're ready, if you are, to make progress in Niagara Falls.

• Buy
• Sign
• Give
• E-mail
• Eat

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Editor’s Note: Below you’ll find photos of some of our favorite locations in the city of Niagara Falls.

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The Little Italy neighborhood and business district.

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The genius that is the Niagara Power Project. To learn more about it, click here.

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Di Camillo Bakery, where they make the best Italian bread you’ll ever eat.

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The Niagara River in autumn (if it wasn’t obvious from, you know, the leaves).

Monday Morning Motherhood: Surrounded by Words

The extra room in my apartment is filled with box upon box of books I haven’t unpacked yet, simply because I have no place to put them. My daughter’s toy box contains a mix of dolls, toys, and books. They’re piled on top of the book case, on the floor, and next to my bed. My dresser, bedside table, and their respective drawers are all filled with books. Fiction, non-fiction, poetry — all genres are welcome and included.

My love of reading, and the written word in general, began when I was young. First grade, to be exact. I spent much of the school year at home, sick. I missed 40 days of school due to illness, then was forced to take half-days when I returned. Because of the numerous doctors appointments I had, we developed a routine, my mother and I. We would go to the pediatrician, then to The Book Corner in Niagara Falls, where I was allowed to pick out 2-3 books I wanted. I would invariable have begun reading one of them in car by the time we arrived home. I still remember the way I felt every time we entered The Book Corner. My mind would race and begin to fill with ideas of what I wanted to read, what I would choose. The whole store seemed filled with wonder, with possibilities.

Luckily, whether by nature or nurture, my daughter has inherited my love of books. Everyday she is excited to tell me what book they read at school, and not a night goes by without the request for a story — or six. Her current favorites include: Goodnight Gorilla by Peggy Rathmann, There’s a Monster at the End of This Book by Jon Stone, and Curious George by H.A. Rey. And thanks to birthday, Christmas, Easter and “just because– presents from her grandparents and great-grandparents, her collection of books is rapidly approaching the size of mine. The time we spend together, cuddling and reading her books is magical; I’ll almost be sorry when she can read them herself. I’ll miss the way her eyes light up when we’re reading, and she starts the next line before we turn the page, and the giggling that ensues when we read something silly.

I can’t imagine my life or home without books. Yet, all over this beautiful world, our nation included, there are homes where books are in short supply or simply non-existent. I will never forget the look on my daughter’s face when she first learned this — it happened when we were in Wegmans this past weekend, doing our grocery shopping.

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Continue reading ‘Monday Morning Motherhood: Surrounded by Words’

This Wednesday: Reviving Niagara

Problem:

The first years of my memory are of Niagara Falls. We lived on Orchard Parkway in a tiny second-floor house apartment. And as I grew up in the surrounding area, I learned to think of my hometown as the honeymoon and suicide capital of the world.

I grew up with daredevils risking life, limb, and the lives and limbs of their rescuers, by plummeting in various contraptions over the Horseshoe Falls. I saw news reports of poor fools who fell and drown to their deaths on kayaks and jet-skis as they tried to conquer the cataracts. I watched national television coverage of the lawsuits connected to Love Canal, a neighborhood that was the site of one of the worst toxic-waste-dumping scandals in American history.

My first job, as a bakery assistant, was in Niagara Falls at the headquarters of Di Camillo Bakery, a family business still thriving in this city. And I watched as department stores and jewelry stores and restaurants evaporated from Main Street, turning the road into an assortment of seedy bars, adult novelty stores, and boarded up buildings, each empty as the pockets of the homeless wandering the city. And I watched as the factories closed their doors, and added good, hard-working souls to the unemployment lines– ¦.

.

Make Progress:

But I also grew up next to a place where people teem to see one the natural wonders of the world. And I grew up in an area where my relatives worked the bluest-collar of jobs, but managed to put lasagna on the table (we're good Italian-Americans, after all). And I grew up where my grandfather landed after traveling the Atlantic to move to America, the same city where my father was raised and remained, the same city where my sister got married. And I grew up next to one of the marvels of electrical science, the Niagara Power Project.

And so I believe in this place. And I love this place. And it's time we all helped this treasure of not just New York, but of America, and not just of America, but of the world. We're ready, if you are, to make progress in Niagara Falls.

• Buy
• Sign
• Give
• E-mail
• Eat

- – - – -

Editor’s Note: Below you’ll find photos of some of our favorite locations in the city of Niagara Falls.

- – - – -

The Little Italy neighborhood and business district.

*

The genius that is the Niagara Power Project. To learn more about it, click here.

*

Di Camillo Bakery, where they make the best Italian bread you’ll ever eat.

*

The Niagara River in autumn (if it wasn’t obvious from, you know, the leaves).

Reviving Niagara: Buy

Buy:

For 80 years, The Book Corner has called Niagara Falls home. Since it's inception in 1927, the store has moved twice, but has remained in the Falls. It's the largest independent bookstore in Niagara Falls (and all of Western New York for that matter), and at 10,000 square feet it's one of the biggest privately-owned bookstores where we've ever dropped a dollar. I've been in more bookstores than I can count, and I've never seen anything quite like this. The store has a googolplex of used books for sale (I once snagged a first-edition of Lives of a Cell by Lewis Thomas at a price far under its “value– ), and they feature one of the most complete collections of books about Niagara Falls that you'll ever see.

Now, unless you live in Western New York, this Wednesday we're not going to recommend you hop on an airbus to Buffalo just to check this place out. Though, if you're a book-lover like me and happen to be in the area, it's worth more than a look-see.

But here's the deal (or the “dealio,– if you prefer): The Book Corner is one of the few businesses surviving on Main Street in Niagara Falls, and Main Street in Niagara Falls is to roads as Bob Hope is to comedians: it's dead. Okay, that's hyperbole. It's dying. No, that's not right either. It's working toward a serious reincarnation, and The Book Corner is a ray of hope.

So, what we're asking you to do is plain as paper and quite simple: please order your books from The Book Corner. Find them however you want online — Amazon, Powells, Barnes and Noble, Borders — but place your order through The Book Corner. They'll even gift-wrap the book or books for nothing, nada, zilch — in other words, for free, my peeps. If you want, you can also order books they have in stock through AbeBooks and get free shipping.

And if you're trying to find an out-of-print book or a book whose title is fuzzy, turn to Pete and Jeff Morrow. Skilled as librarians, they'll find your tome of choice. I've placed several orders through the shop for poetry books that were either out-of-print or printed by an obscure press, and they've dug and hunted and found me what I was after.

But don't just take our word for it, you can read some reviews by clicking here or here. Or you can take the New York Times’ word for it – “ they describe The Book Corner as “a beacon of light in the pall of the blight.– And lest we forget, you can take a tour of this fantastic store by playing the video below. So much to read, so little time– ¦

Reviving Niagara: Sign

Sign:

This one might be a little confusing for those of you reading in Texas or Taiwan, but stay with us here because we know that, as progressives, you believe in being a good steward to the environment.

The Robert Moses Parkway is a small roadway in Western New York. A portion of it — which stretches from Lewiston to Niagara Falls — has been changed from a four-lane highway into a two-lane 40-miles-per-hour road. This section is barely used. It's rundown. To call it “maintained– would be insulting to the word “maintained.– It's ugly. It's all-but useless since there are plenty of other ways to get from Niagara Falls to Lewiston and back.

One of the main reasons folks come the American side of Niagara Falls is because of the enormous state parks. Ecotourism best describes the hundreds of thousands of travelers to this area. So an area organization, Niagara Heritage Partnership, has started a petition to remove 6.5 miles of the Robert Moses Parkway and turn it into a bike path and a hiking trail with socially responsible development. (To learn more about the Robert Moses and the Niagara Heritage Partnership, click this sentence.) Basically, they'd like to return the area to its more natural state, and attract even more folks interested in the environmental beauty of the Niagara region. In addition, removing the parkway would reroute folks through areas of the city that could use some rerouted folks. There’s an added conservation benefit: since the roads need to be salted come the frigid Western New York winters, this would reduce runoff into the Niagara Gorge.

So, all you've got to do, is electronically sign the petition that they've set up online (just click this sentence). Right now, they've got 69 organizations supporting their proposal, including the Sierra Club, Buffalo Audubon Society, Niagara Frontier Wildlife Habitat Council, and 22 different block clubs of the city of Niagara Falls. They have over 2,000 signatures from concerned and conscientious citizens. Now all they need is you.

Reviving Niagara: Give

Give:

In 2005, 2.1 million kids under 18 were arrested in the United States, this according to the U.S. Department of Justice. To put that in perspective, 2.1 million is equivalent to the entire populations of Detroit and Dallas combined.

Since Niagara Falls is an American treasure, we should all — regardless of the place we currently call home — want to do anything we can to help reduce the overall crime rate in this city and to help the children of this area, many of whom will become adult citizens of the city or county.

Donating to a national organization is good, hell, it's great, and it's important because without funding these fantastic privately run organizations, we'd have a choice: go without the services or rely even more on the government, which, to the eyes of Progressive Wednesday, always seems to be lagging behind. It's like a dog race – “ we're greyhounds and the government is a miniature Dachshund.

Okay, before our canine simile gets away from us, let us focus on this simple two-part action. We'd love it if you'd be willing to help out our local chapter of the Police Athletic League. How? You can download their donation form by clicking this sentence. Or you can, maybe for this entire week, use GoodSearch.com as your search engine of choice. By clicking this sentence, you’ll be able to make Good Search work for Niagara PAL. Each time you conduct a search, you'll raise money for the PAL in Progressive Wednesday's hometown.

So why PAL? And why our PAL? Here's why:

• In 2006, Niagara PAL had 19,000 participants in their various activities and programs.
• PAL helps girls and boys participate in baseball, basketball, bicycle safety, football, soccer, softball, and wrestling.
• Niagara PAL participates in conjunction with D.A.R.E., the Girl Scouts, Special Olympics, Cerebral Palsy Recreation Group, and offers counseling and tutoring to kids.
• Niagara PAL also runs, amongst others, two other programs of note: Police Week, and Kidz and Kites.
• One the hallmarks of Niagara PAL is a project called “Every 15 Minutes,– which is a presentation shared with local high school seniors about the dangers of drinking and driving (the name comes from the statistic that every 15 minutes someone dies in an alcohol related car accident). The intense program actually includes visits to an ER and a funeral home. The students also write “final letters– to their parents as if they'd died, and parents write their teens' “obituaries.–
• Niagara PAL also doles out scholarships based on community service, financial need, academic standing, and attitude.

At the heart of PAL is this: “Juvenile Crime Prevention accomplished by creating better relations between police, citizens, and community youth through a myriad of interactive programs that include the youth in positive endeavors, athletic and non-athletic, within the community structure. The ultimate objective being Juvenile Decency.– And it's hard to argue with that.

Reviving Niagara: E-mail

E-mail:

We hemmed and hawed. We confabbed and powwowed amongst our entire staff. There were moments of hullabaloo and others of brouhaha. And we think we've got the best minute-for-minute way that folks can help boost tourism to Niagara Falls (excluding, of course, cajoling your best buds and extended family to hop a flight or maybe take a road trip our way). Below you'll find a letter to the editor that we encourage you to alter depending on your facts, feelings and location[1], then copy, paste, and mass-email the sucker to the following travel magazines:

• National Geographic Magazine: ngsforum@nationalgeographic.com
• National Geographic Traveler Magazine: traveler@nationalgeographic.com
• National Geographic Adventure Magazine: adventure@ngs.org
• Road & Travel Magazine: editor@roadandtravel.com
• World Hum: tips@worldhum.com
• Love Tripper: editors@lovetripper.com
• Travel-Travel-Travel: editor@travel-travel-travel.com
• CNN Traveler: dan.hayes@ink-publishing.com
• Vacations Magazine: contact@VacationsMagazine.com
• Family Fun Magazine: letters.familyfun@disney.com

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Dear Editor:

I recently visited Niagara Falls, New York, and I left stunned by the beauty on display on the American side of this natural wonder of the world. While the Canadian side boasted kitschy pseudo-museums, trinket stores, and family unfriendly gentlemen's clubs, the American side focuses on the gorgeous environment through the state parks, a helicopter ride, Terrapin Point, the Flight of Angels balloon ride, Cave of the Winds, Maid of the Mist, Niagara Falls Observation Tower, and Prospect Point. On the American side, I was able to stand just feet away from all three of the cataracts that together make Niagara Falls. I also hiked down to Devil's Hole State Park to watch the Class 5 rapids stampeding through the gorge, a breathtaking site in and of itself.

I'm asking that you write an article about this location, encouraging your readers to make a trip to the side of the Falls most suited for families, honeymooners, eco-tourists, and anyone who’s never stood right next to the mighty Niagara.

Sincerely,

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Instead of entering all the addresses into the email as you normally would do, we recommend placing one address in the address bar, and adding the rest as BCC, also known as “blind carbon copy.” You might also send a variation of the letter to your newspaper of choice (you can find a complete listing of newspapers by clicking here). But if you could do us a favor: please don’t send these letters to the good folks at the Niagara Gazette, Lockport Union-Sun & Journal, Tonawanda News, The Journal-Register, The Grand Island Record, or The Buffalo News. We're pretty sure they know about the grandeur of the Falls. Thanks.

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Editor’s Note: You can contact Travel and Leisure by clicking this sentence.

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[1] If this is going to work, we really need folks to personalize the letter, if only a smidgen (and yes, we just wrote the word “smidgen– ). Obviously, if you live in the Niagara area, then you can center the letter around that fact.