Issue 30: Comfort

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Taking Shelter Adam Weekley on avoiding, and creating, uncomfortable art.

Urban Renewal Righting wrongs, correcting mistakes, and moving in.

Between Homes Law Eh Soe's path to freedom began with a camera and the truth.

Comfort complimentary

ISSUE 30

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Issue 30 COMFORT

12 Issue Contributors 15 Letter from the Editor 18 The Conversationalists Interview by Ben Siegel Installation artist Adam Weekley. 22 Suggested Serving Interview by Patrick Simons Denise Cerreta's community cafés. 24 The Recipe Column by Lauren Newkirk Maynard Dinner with friends. 30 The New Renewal By Mark Byrnes Making a case for urban density in America's cities, by righting wrongs, correcting mistakes, and moving in. 42 A Man and His Camera By Ben Siegel Law Eh Soe came to Buffalo in 2008 from his war-torn home of Burma as a refugee. He also came with a brave portfolio. 56 New England Home Magazine Short fiction by E.R. Barry A knock on Elisabeth Ward's apartment door, and a scratch at her window, proposes big questions. 61 #ComfortIs Short fiction by Margaret Finan A tiff among titans.

ACKNOWLEDEGMENTS

Keith Harrington, Projex

Eva Hassett, The International Institute of Buffalo

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ISSUE CONTRIBUTORS

BLOCK CLUB MAGAZINE EDITORIAL STAFF

PUBLISHER PATRICK FINAN [email protected]

EDITOR BEN SIEGEL [email protected] CREATIVE DIRECTOR BRANDON DAVIS [email protected]

PHOTOGRAPHER STEVE SOROKA [email protected] DESIGNER JULIE MOLLOY [email protected] DESIGNER TIM STASZAK [email protected]

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT PATRICK SIMONS [email protected] COPY EDITOR SCOTT MANCUSO

Margaret Finan pg. 61

Margaret is a student, writer, and editor of Block

Club's design and creative blog, Clubhaus. She

studies psychology at the University at Buffalo

and spends a lot of time thinking about human

memory.

Max Collins pg. 18

Max is a photographer and artist based in Buffalo

who studied fine art and journalism at the Univer-

sity of Michigan. To sum up his work: he pastes

photos on things.

Mark Byrnes pg. 30

Mark is based in the Washington, D.C. area and

is a regular contributor to The Atlantic's urban-

centric blog, The Atlantic Cities. Born in Buffalo

and a UB graduate, he's constantly looking to see

how cities are evolving, always hoping that the

best examples are coming from his hometown.

E.R. Barry pg. 56

E.R. is a lecturer in the College Writing Program

at Buffalo State College. She leads new tutor

training sessions at Literacy Buffalo-Niagara and

serves as a founding board member of Give for

Greatness. In her spare time, she writes down the

stories that get stuck in her head.

Lauren Newkirk Maynard pg. 24

Lauren is an editor at UB and has written for a

variety of local publications, including this one.

She cooks for friends, and for anyone else who

will listen.

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Beware your teddy bear. Listen to your bowl of ice cream. Don't ignore that mac and cheese.

They're talking to you. They need a break, or a break-up.You used to be best buds, and before that, acquaintences.

You'd call when you needed a helping hand, or wanted to snuggle, or just a night in on the couch. They were there for you, whenever you needed them. Never fail.

But this friendship isn't healthy. You've taken more than you've given; and in the process, you've destroyed what made them special.

This is the danger of comfort. We might not see, or care to admit to, the contention in our comforts; not when we're licking the corners of the quart or gnawing on the blanket we've held onto since childhood.

Our comforts have their time and place, and when it's good, it's really good. There should be no shame in craving rich, velvety, cheesy macaroni. There should be no embar-rassement in sliding into your favorite sweatshirt.

These comforts offer the ideal relief; the temporary es-cape that only certain textures, smells, sounds, tastes and emotions can offer.

If you listen carefully, they'll tell you that things will be all right. That you're just fine, if you sit here and ignore whatever else is going on. The ice cream, it's just a detour.

We're not always good about getting back on the main road. We stay on that detour for far too long, and convince ourselves that it's the actual route.

The traps of comfort are obvious, even before we open the freezer door. We know what temptation awaits us, but our fear for what comes next impedes our own strength.

We see this in our civic home as well as in our personal home. Our weakness for playing the underdog cloaks our strengths in a warm cocoon; under this blanket, no one can tell we have muscles.

Just as there's a time for blankets and a calling for frozen treats, there's also a time for push-ups and carrot sticks. Doesn't sound fun, but you know you'll feel better.

Sometimes you have to warm yourself up and throw away the tattered blanket. It's got holes in it now, the dusty rag.

Comfort comes in all shapes, sizes and textures. It can show up where and when you least expect it, and it can dis-guise itself as something less appealing. It can knock you over the head in your sleep and it can show its responsible, necessary face when you need it most.

Comfort can be your best friend, or your sworn enemy. Like a true friend, it knows what role it's playing; it's just waiting for you to figure it out.

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SHELTERTAKING

IT ISN'T HARD TO FIND THE DISCOMFORT IN ADAM WEEKLEY'S ART;

EVEN IF IT TAKES HIM A WHILE TO SEE IT.

Interview by BEN SIEGEL

A dam Weekley’s installation art wears its heart on its sleeve. His spaces typi-cally involve three-dimensional animals, stuffed to a comfy touch; one installation

included bee nests as cushiony chambers. They represent potentially anything to the viewer, but to Weekley, who is wont to keep backstories to himself, they speak vaguely of a childhood in West Virginia rippled with the discomforts of time and place. The confinement—and envelopment—of space is key to his work, as we discussed one unseasonably warm November day at a quiet bakery.

BCM What makes you uncomfortable in art?

AW Performance art makes me really uncomfortable. I really like to make things, but I don’t necessarily like any attention paid to my person. And with performance art, way too often I have anxiety about being singled out, about attention being drawn to me, whether I get it or not.

It’s hard for me to watch people do embarrassing things. That’s the most uncomfortable thing in the world to me. I feel like I have to turn away.

[There was a] performance art group called Kamikaze that had these events; they were mortifying for me. I went all the time, but I would always make sure to sit as far back as I could. I refused to sit anywhere near the front because you’d be called on. I needed as much space between me and them as I possibly could find.

BCM So it’s a matter of sharing physical space?

AW Yes. If there’s a chance that I’m implicated at all, then I’m super uncomfortable. I don’t want to be implicated and I don’t want to be pulled in. I don’t want that chance moment. That makes me absolutely crazy.

BCM Because what might happen?

AW I’m the same way when a camera gets trained on me. Any sense of natural behavior goes out the window. I can’t smile correctly. I just don’t like the attention. So openings for me are really anxiety inducing. I enjoy people looking at the work and talking about it, but I don’t enjoy being the center of attention in that way, especially for that period of time when I’m on. I’m exhausted by it.

Initially, teaching for me was stressful but that went away. I adjusted and became pretty comfortable with it.

BCM What about performance art about an uncomfort-able topic?

AW I love that.

BCM Your work reminds me of performance art, actually.

AW People often look at my work and think that there’s a performance aspect to it, because I make costumes and [there are] props, and it looks like a stage set; it looks like something is going to happen. But there has never been any impulse in me to ever do a performance. It feels like by doing that it would make everything silly. If I put on this bear suit and walk around it would be silly, and it isn’t supposed to be silly in that way.

BCM And do you take that with you when you leave?

AW I think about a lot of my favorite comedians who say things that make me incredibly uncomfortable that make

Weekley’s work has been seen throughout Western

New York, including the Castellani Art Museum in

Lewiston, as part of Beyond/In Western New York 2010.

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me feel offended. I very rarely feel offended, [though] there is some offense that I don’t take comfort in. But when I watch someone like Sarah Silverman, especially when I first started seeing her shtick, I found an incredible amount of comfort in it. Because I guess it feels like it diffuses tension.

BCM Look at it, laugh at it, and get it out of the way.

AW Yeah, because then anything you’ve thought suddenly becomes fodder. There’s real tension release from those things being said, or attention being brought to them.

BCM That’s the catharsis, when discomfort liberates truth.

AW Absolutely, I agree completely. I think acknowledging something like that is uncomfortable, and then the release that comes with that acknowledgment.

I often don’t realize the amount I’m revealing when I’m making something, when I’m working on a big body of work. In the process of making it, I start to realize what I’m saying.

BCM I had an experience with a piece of creative writing I had written that began as something light and humorous, and wound up being poignant and dramatic. And I felt like a cheat because I didn’t intend for it to happen when I started.

AW You respond [differently] to things. It’s one of the things I guess I learned in grad school, and I always try to get my students [at Villa Maria College, where Weekley teaches fine art] to understand that. If they like or don’t like something during a critique, understand how to [accept] what you’re responding to, negatively or positively. Don’t just walk away from it, but try to figure out what it is. That’s the way to figure yourself out, in some ways.

When I look back on television shows that I loved, or books I really like, the themes are all there. And a lot of it really has to do with discomfort. If I think about something like

"Roseanne"—which I was obsessed with—it was this bench-mark in my psychological development, right? I remem-bered thinking, What is this? I’ve never seen anything like this. Why does this house look like the houses my friends and I live in? That show was all about dealing with super uncomfortable things, and dealing with things that were taboo for a sitcom—or any show—to deal with.

BCM Are you a cynic?

AW Yes. Absolutely.

BCM Can you accept comfort?

AW Absolutely. Yes.

BCM And what is comfort to you?

AW If something is bothering me, if I’m stressed out or have anxiety about something, all it takes is my dad telling me it’s all right, and I’m completely comforted. It’s unbeliev-able how quickly that [happens]. So I take a lot of comfort in my folks, my dad specifically.

BCM That’s a trust thing.

AW Yeah, I’m really lucky in that way. In some ways, home is both a comfort and incredibly uncomfortable. So when I go home to my home state, to my hometown, I can’t stay for very long. It’s incredibly uncomfortable to be there. But all of my work is about my childhood. I don’t want to ever feel like my work is worn super hard on my sleeve, like autobio-graphical, but in the end it really is. It completely is.

I remember struggling with trying to be less, sort of, nos-talgic or less reminiscent, or sentimental. But it just doesn’t work for me. I can’t function with those kinds of reigns on, in terms of my work. It all comes with a healthy dose of cynicism because it was an incredibly uncomfortable time.

But on the other hand I find some comfort in it.

[When I moved to Buffalo in 2001, from New York City]—which I find incredibly comforting now, and I love—one of the things that was tough to get used to was the change in geography. I missed having hills, I missed being enveloped by the landscape, so the flatness of the landscape here made me feel very exposed.

BCM Are you conscious of that in the kind of work that you make, and in its medium?

AW Yes. I mean, I became incredibly conscious of it when I built a hibernation chamber. [Laughs.]

BCM You could look at that and say that you’re ultimately fearful of the discomforts that you’re not addressing.

AW Sure. Yeah. [Laughs.] No, no, no, absolutely. When I made the beehives and the bear, it was about gluttony, over-doing it. It was kind of the same thing. I feel like I’m kind of psychoanalyzing myself initially, and then I come to the end and I go, Ugh, look at what I’ve just done. It’s put through so many filters by the end that [I feel protected]. It’s removed far enough from me that I no longer feel like that.

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BCM And it’s also way more complicated than that.

AW I mean I think that for me, you don’t grow up gay in West Virginia and not learn to not only watch everything around you, almost like a sociologist, really early on, so that you start to mimic or model the behavior you’re supposed to follow. And you also learn to constantly investigate your own motivation and feelings, and not share them. I came out of [my upbringing] feeling very aware. I might have accepted a lot more things at face value had it not been for that. If you’re not forced to constantly ask questions, you just accept things and it’s much easier.

[As Adam and I are talking about being challenged, we are joined by a third party. A yellow jacket has flown through the open door, which our table is seated beside, and swarms around us for a few minutes.]

AW Bees make me incredibly uncomfortable. Somebody said to me once [about my work], ‘You must have had a really bad experience.’ And I have, several. I have had aw-ful traumatic experiences with animals, so that’s all there as well. To this day I still won’t go to movies where I think animals are going to die. And I can watch people die forever, I don’t care.

BCM [The bee leaves, leaving in its wake a curiosity and inspiration for our conversation.] This leads me to my next question: is all good art painful?

AW No.

BCM Discomfort is different than pain, though they’re not mutually exclusive. We think about art as being— [It's back.]

AW We should kill this thing. This is nuts. It’s the middle of November. I can’t believe it’s here.

BCM What is it telling us?

AW I don’t know. Here it comes again. [It leaves for good.]

BCM Do you think catharsis is necessary in your art?

AW I think the art that I respond to unanimously is cathar-tic. I think there’s an element of pathos in it, usually humor too. My work is hopefully full of humor at least on some level, but also pain and catharsis.

If I can’t be self-deprecating, if that gets taken away, then I can’t do it. I just can’t. I don’t know how to do that, how to be all business. I think there has to be a mix of the two. I don’t think I would even address these things, even subcon-sciously, unless it was with an element of humor to temper it.

BCM Are there topics that are off-limits in your art?

AW Probably not. But that’s only because it’s so veiled. It’s all about me; I never expose things about other people. In that way I don’t think anything is off-limits, even though I don’t always know what it is when I’m going into it. It’s never been too much [to handle].

I guess I feel much more protective of other people’s stuff than my own. I’ve certainly been uncomfortable with feel-ing exposed, but never to the point where I didn’t show it.

BCM I don’t think your work is particularly vague, but there’s a randomness to it. Do you care that people hear you, especially if they can’t connect the objects to a personal narrative?

AW I care that I’ve communicated something. But again, I don’t think I’ve set out to tell a very specific kind of story. Sometimes I do.

BCM I’m thinking about artists whose medium allows them to be provocateurs, putting something out there and leaving the room, which is different than a songwriter or essayist who is sharing something probably more literally of them.

AW I definitely do want them to see my point of view in some way. I want them to get some idea of my observations or conclusions that I’ve drawn.

One of the things that I really like to do is present things that are really beautiful and approachable, hopefully, and then have the viewer get close to them and sort of maybe have that moment where they start to realize this other layer that’s in front of them, and be implicated in it, and then feel uncomfortable.

I want to elicit some sort of discomfort in them, in their understanding of these ideas about desire, beauty, a lot of other things. That’s a big part of what I want to do, I hope I do.

My work is hopefully full of

humor on some level, but

also pain and catharsis.

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Suggested servingInterview by PATRICK SIMONS

W hen Denise Cerreta opened a small café in front of her Salt Lake City acupuncture clinic in 2003, she had no idea what it would turn

into. Her expansion into food service was informed by her notion that her patients might also benefit from communal gathering, in keeping with her holistic principles. Soon after, Cerreta decided it was time to close her clinic and focus solely on the community-driven café. In what she described as a “Field of Dreams moment,” Cerreta became inspired to let customers pay her what they felt their meal was worth. One World Café, the country’s first pay-what-you-can kitchen, was born. Customers could pick their portion size, and pay accordingly. If you thought your meal was worth $7, you could leave $7; or you could volunteer an hour of time of service in the kitchen. Cerreta’s concept inspired others around the country to

open their own similar community cafés. Cerreta consult-ed with many of them, advising on her pay-what-you-can model. Her consulting travels kept her away from her Salt Lake City location for too long, though, forcing her to close One World Café last year. To date, she has assisted the opening of more than 30 community cafés across the country. Cerreta shares with us how and why she makes this work, and why the model is within reach here in Buffalo.

NAME One World Everybody Eats Foundation

LOCATION Idaho Falls, Idaho

DEBUT Foundation, 2006; Café, 2003

FOUNDERS Denise Cerreta

WEBSITE oneworldeverybodyeatsfoundation.org

CASE STUDY

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Why is the pay-what-you-can model important to the sustainability of this idea?

The community café [filled] a niche that really no one was providing, so if you think of a soup kitchen or a food pan-try—which are fine—those are handouts. Usually people that are really chronically down-and-out, or if you’re just, lets say, new to food insecurity, and you go to a soup kitchen, it’s not like you’re eating with your neighbors.

It just can be very depressing. And I’m not trying to say any-thing bad about a soup kitchen. We’re really standing on the shoulders of that.

We [provide] just a little different twist. Let’s say you have a $3 budget and what you got cost $5, you could pay $3; that’s okay, you didn’t get the $12 thing. So that’s shared responsi-bility. The people that want to volunteer [do so] to give time to their community, or they earn vouchers for meals. They [might not] have money but they have time, and so they’re helping with the cost of running the café.

I think at the end of the day, yes we’re feeding people, but we’re really building community, and people are getting to know each other and [are] eating together and sharing food and sharing the responsibility of the café. It’s very powerful.

Taking it from Salt Lake City and spreading it to the entire country. This is important.

I really don’t take ownership of the idea. It just came to me. I can say I didn’t talk myself out of it. So that really assisted me to more of a stewardship than an ownership [role]. I think that’s the message that we want to send, [this] atmo-sphere that has been cultivated, [in which] everybody helps everybody and shares information—this we’re-all-in-this-together [model]. It’s been really great.

You serve good food. It’s local and organic. How and why do you sustain that, given what your ingredients cost?

I have eaten organic for, I don’t know, 30, 40 years. It was very important for me that I serve healthy, as local as possible, as organic as possible, food in the café. And most of the people who have been drawn to the concept have also had those shared values. But I’m open to a lot of different ways that people want to embrace the model. I don’t de-mand that people do organic or local if we’re going to help them. But most of them do, and it’s healthy food. It’s not processed food; it’s whole food.

More than 101,000 people rely on services pro-vided by the Food Bank of WNY each month, and Buffalo has been ranked the third-poorest city in the country. How can the pay-what-you-can model make an impact in Buffalo?

The concept, I believe, will work anywhere. Again, it’s that shared responsibility of the community. People are eating out, and you have good food and good service, they should eat at the community café, because they know just by eating, they’re helping somebody else eat. They’re not having to pay any more, they’re not having to do anything different, but have their meal at that particular venue.

I think it can work, but one café cannot handle all the people in Buffalo that are food-insecure. The hope would be that it can inspire some other people to maybe open a similar café, or a mom and pop to say, ‘You know what, I’m gonna create a pay-what-you-can soup on the menu every day, out of my leftovers.’ The hope is that it can inspire. Or somebody might say, ‘I’m gonna make a bowl of chili and I’m going to invite my neighbors over. I know she’s a single mom and she’s got three kids.’ You just hope it can snowball in different ways.

The foundation offers people the comfort of be-ing treated with a particular kind of respect, and the comfort of eating a healthy meal. Do we need to re-think how we help those in need?

I think we do. If you flip the coin and you had to go to a soup kitchen for your meal every day, it’s important not to isolate people, not to put a stigma on people and not to serve food that you and I wouldn’t want to eat. Even though it’s a blessing—everybody needs to eat, or they’re not going to live. We know this.

So anything is better than nothing, when it comes down to that. I’m going to be the first person to dive into a dumpster if I have to. But with that all said, I think it’s important to give people a different option to be part of something, to be able to say, I’ll do dishes for an hour, or I’ll do a shift for five hours and I’ll earn five vouchers. I can come during the week.

Nobody knows who’s who. They don’t know who paid, who earned their meal, who overpaid, who underpaid. Nobody knows. Everybody is just eating together, so it sort of levels the playing field.

illustration by TIM STASZAK

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VIEWS

The recipe DINNER WITH FRIENDS.

by LAUREN NEWKIRK MAYNARD

T he night before the potluck, my kitchen is filled with steam and the sauce is all wrong. There is no question about what to make, it being two weeks after Thanksgiving. I am de-

termined that turkey tetrazzini, that sheepish afterthought, will be elevated into “delicious enough for dear friends” territory. The best part about it, other than it serving a crowd, is that it takes several endearingly fussy steps to make and, as my neighbor (a former chef) observes later, does not involve mayo.

This dish is for a friend who is dying, and for his partner, who is not. I am not certain that either of them likes turkey tetrazzini.

But right now the sauce is wrong, and I know it. It’s Saturday at 9 p.m. I’m sweating, the pots are sweating, the walls and coffeemaker and oven door are beading up.

Dry sherry isn’t anywhere to be found, but it is in the recipe. Earlier, I sliced an onion and some mushrooms be-fore sautéing them in an embarrassing amount of butter. I shredded leftover turkey, then chopped it into chunks, minced fresh thyme, grated a hunk of Parmesan and rolled a lemon between my palms. I put a heavily salted pot of wa-ter on to boil and broke a fistful of linguine in half.

It all seems right, but it isn’t. It’s all horribly, horribly wrong. I put down my knife and the kitchen wobbles, its axis upturned as the turkey slides off the counter. Steam gathers behind my glasses, refracting the overhead light into a cloud of doubt and grief.

Tradition holds that the butter and flour I’m whisking to cover the pasta, turkey, mushrooms and onion need sherry. My vision still blurred with something, I substitute three tablespoons of sherry vinegar. The roux suddenly tastes like a pickled shoe. I add sugar, but it’s too late.

I throw it out and begin again, wiping the pan clean and clicking the gas back to medium-low. One scant teaspoon of vinegar this time, a touch of lemon and nutmeg, and the room stops spinning.

This meal must be perfect for my friends. They need this to taste so good that they forget how bad things feel right now.

I stir the finished sauce into the pasta, put it in the refrig-erator and go to bed.

Marty has a brain breaking down into shards of past and present. A photographer, he has spent the last five years with my friend, Courtney, as if the two of them are the only ones in the frame. Friends and family are welcome, of course. But really, it is only ever her.

He and I have just met, in lifetime terms. The inexorable arms of Buffalo connections wound their way around us, and I liked him instantly. Courtney fell in love with him, she recently told me over wine, during a trip to Quebec City. They met years before at RIT, when they were grad students. They have always been great friends.

Marty makes images in his studio, on the fourth floor of the Tri-Main Center, a converted windshield wiper fac-tory just a few blocks from my house. He’s been working on some sort of book project involving photos of people I know, many I don’t. I’m not sure if it’s finished; I haven’t even asked Courtney about it. I didn’t think I needed to yet.

How do you write about someone you have only recently come to know? How do you recount a story that’s just begun? Rather, how do you start a friendship at the end, without childhood memories or the context of place, family, school or work?

Two Septembers ago, my husband and I rode our bikes with Marty and Courtney through 30 miles of cornfields, past gritty urban gardens, on a fundraising tour of Buffalo’s farmland. It was such a great time we decided to do it again this year.

We didn’t know about his symptoms then. Now we did. As the sunlight faded, we all converged on a farm in

Alden for beer, pulled pork and live music. Marty bobbed along the tables and helped himself to coleslaw and baked potatoes. He ate two plates of pork, and then Courtney got him seconds of herb-buttered corn on the cob. Eventually our hosts ran out of food.

After dinner everyone took a walk through rows of pur-ple artichokes and deep green kale. We marveled at the col-ors, and at the late afternoon light that swept up and under building storm clouds.

“No one works with light better than Marty,” Courtney said later, twisting her wine stem. “His work is always light-ed perfectly.” He prefers black and white, and it is all he ever wants to shoot…

She is an artist, too, with a career in photography and

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film. She sets up Marty’s camera for him now. He shoots. She develops. They capture the available light, and there is plenty.

The next day, I set the oven to 450 half an hour before the meal. Then I make the sauce again, no mistakes this time, pouring it over the tetrazzini in case the pasta had soaked up the previous attempt. I toast breadcrumbs in butter and sprinkle them on top, and then bake it off.

The kitchen and I do not sweat.Twenty minutes later, I carry the hot casserole across the

street to my neighbors’ house, where the five of us put down our dishes and stand back. There is a simple fennel salad dressed in light vinaigrette and shaved cheese. A platter of meatloaf contains precisely diced carrot, with tomato sauce on top. Buttered egg noodles are for nine-year-old Ruby (and for her father, Jethro, who fears emulsified dairy). The best store-bought white cake comes layered with thick choc-

olate frosting. Along the wall are several bottles of wine, all of which will be gone in a few hours.

I watch Courtney from across the room as she takes a few slow breaths in front of the wood fire. Flames lick up behind the glass into her red hair. We fall into our chairs and she teases Marty, kisses him. He closes his blue eyes. Shasti, my good friend and Jethro’s wife, opens a bottle of wine, and Courtney makes a toast to now.

At one time or another, life pushes us all into a world of flame and darkness, broken sauces and burnt ends.

Marty’s eyes widen as he watches Courtney heap his plate with food. We hold our breath. He stuffs an enormous fork-ful into his mouth and grins. A laugh ripples down the table, and with a clink of wineglasses everything is imperfect and right again. Jethro thanks me for not using mayo. We eat leftover turkey, knowing cake awaits.

illustration by TIM STASZAK

With a clink of wineglasses, everything is imperfect and right again.

174 Buffalo St., Hamburg 648.6554daniels-restaurant.com facebook.com/danielsrestaurant

DANIELS RESTAURANT

E V E R Y T H I N G

MADE from SCRATCH

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FOR COOLCOUPLES

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The scene visible from Andrew Kulyk's 14th floor glass-enclosed condo is a sight to behold. Office workers, students and panhandlers merge here, heading to wherever they have business, or wherever they might find business. They walk in and out of downtown Buffalo's most famous buildings, going about daily life on foot.

It is like another world to Kulyk, a 54-year-old bachelor, self-deported from a land of single-story homes and car-cen-tric streets. His new home downtown is higher than that, denser than that, and based on his view, more diverse than that.

The difference is not lost on him. He may miss some things about his old neighborhood, but Kulyk seems to think he got out of the suburbs just in time.

“Save for the first house I bought, at age 22, a double in Cheektowaga, this was by far the most exciting moving experience in my life,” says Kulyk. “It was a seminal mo-ment.”

While the promise of “downtown living” has been met in small spurts since the city’s mid-century economic decline, there's a sense that things are different today. Buffalonians are envisioning their next home purchases and future neigh-borhoods in ways hardly imagined by recent generations.

Locals like Kulyk are choosing to opt out of the “normal,” popular residential decision Americans have long made, leaving the lifestyles of space and separation for one that emphasizes amenities and convenience.

"Cities are places that connect employment to labor, prod-ucts to markets, artists to audiences, ideas to capital—peo-ple to people," says Chuck Banas, an urban planning consul-tant in Buffalo who has helped to revise the city’s outdated planning codes. He is an advocate for a denser Buffalo; a smarter Buffalo. He knows it requires more than just proper urban planning, though. It takes a shift in thinking.

"Unfortunately, for the last several generations, Ameri-cans have had an oddly dysfunctional relationship with the notion of the city. Partly as a result of the noxious side ef-fects of the Industrial Revolution, cities in America started to be looked upon as dirty, polluted places of chaos and cor-

ruption, rather than as enginges of civilization. By mid-cen-tury, the uptopian cultural ideal arose that seemed to offer the best of both worlds: a house in the country, along with an automobile to connect you to the city and other daily destinations," says Banas.

This concept of the dirty city infiltrated policy and fund-ing decisions that would further separate, decentralize, de-construct and in some eyes, destroy.

"The national experiment in suburbia was on," says Banas.Half a century later, the decline of the suburb has begun.

Old urban visions are being renewed, and the promise of suburban bliss is becoming increasingly false.

Downtowns, even some in cities with shrinking popu-lations, are seeing a wave of residential growth. According to the 2010 Census, America's downtowns saw big jumps in population since 2000, with some of the biggest metro areas (those with over 5 million people) seeing a combined growth rate of more than 13 percent. Sixteen million people were living within two miles of their City Hall as of 2010. When increasing the radius to four miles, it goes up to over 54 million, slightly more than 20 percent of America's total metro area-based population.

Buffalo has been admittedly slow to the trend (the cen-sus tract that covers most of downtown has fewer residents than in 2000). But it is rearing its head. Along with a devel-oping sense of residential life, urban and suburban dwell-ers are taking advantage of their downtown (and heavily populated outer urban rings), as being good for more than just an occasional night at the arena or theater. It is a place they’re seeing with new eyes, a place where stores are setting up shop, where decaying monolithic structures are seeing new opportunities, and where people, slowly but surely, are now calling home. They are embracing its idiosyncrasies and benefiting from an infrastructure long waiting to be put to full use once again.

"A city isn't simply an abstract concept," says Banas. "Cities are made of brick and stone, glass and steel, asphalt and concrete, grass and trees. Just as a play needs a stage, civic life can only be enacted in a physical setting."

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Kulyk's move from the ground floor to the 14th floor represents more than just a physical shift, though. His last home may be just seven miles away, but his new life is worlds apart. He senses a new trend on the horizon.

“The idyllic suburban lifestyle is crashing down to Earth. People don't want to drive almost a mile to fetch a quart of milk,” says Kulyk.

Rise and FallBefore the cul-de-sacs, before the developments, before

the gates, we lived in cities, because, quite simply, we had no other choice. Before the 1930s, the average American could not afford his or her own property, private transportation, or personal green space. But technology and a rapidly grow-ing country allowed us to pursue the next frontier: the vir-gin and verdant suburb.

That land was vacant, green and open, even if it wasn’t exactly available. (Consider the surviving farms visible from I-90.) It was undeveloped land awaiting the public’s imagi-nation; modeling clay ready to be shaped into new living places, free from the tyranny of history and compact set-tings built by past generations.

The earliest wave of suburban growth came in the late-19th century, when richer homeowners could afford to trade off inconvenience for park-like property. Suburbs like Parkside and Kenmore grew in popularity thanks to trolley lines that extended out past city limits, providing available escape before the mass-produced automobile would make that easier. A visit to the Darwin D. Martin complex on Jewett Parkway, outside of a dense downtown but now eas-ily considered an urban setting, reveals not a testament to city living, but instead, an all-encompassing escape from it. (Today, the Parkside neighborhood it sits in is a tree-lined, residential alternative to city life as planned by Frederick Law Olmsted in the 1880s.)

The suburbs were a hit, especially with those who could afford them, says Al Price, an associate professor of urban planning at the University at Buffalo.

“Because [commuter suburbs] had become popular, we then began to see the formation of class-specific suburbs, which establishes a market type and then becomes the American ideal,” says Price. “At that point, it was America's vision of the ‘good life.’”

But urban populations continued to increase around the country during the first half of the 20th century, with homeownership still uncommon and most couples living in a flat owned by their parents or in-laws. After World War II however, America's industrial capacity had increased and its workforce changed.

“The new normal that comes out of the 1950s is that households now have two wage-earners, which means a new demand for labor-saving devices like washing machines and refrigerators,” says Price. It created a “revolution of rising ex-pectations,” where an increasing number of Americans saw these products and lifestyles as more than objects of aspira-tion, but an achievable, short-term goal.

These changing expectations, assisted by new govern-ment policies that favored new highways and single-family home construction, took suburban growth to a scale hardly imagined by those who made the first wave of migration to neighborhoods like 19th-century Parkside.

“The original inner-ring suburban house was about 800 square feet. Now it’s 1,700 square feet, even though the av-erage family size has dropped,” says Price. “And it's not just the houses. You can't fit a Cadillac Escalade into a 1950s garage.”

Well before the 21st century, the suburbs had become the standard form of American life, a representation of a coun-try in constant pursuit of newer, more spacious visions of personal comfort.

But for something to grow, something else must shrink. Enter: the American city.

Northeast and Mid-Atlantic cities responded to this exo-dus—and with it the perception that they were incapable of handling changing times—with big infrastructure.

Expansive expressways and highways would feed into

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each other along multiple downtown points. Some of these roadways tore through neighborhoods that didn’t have enough political clout to fight off such projects, devastat-ing surrounding property values after completion. These new roadways transformed downtowns into places that functioned for suburbanites first and foremost, fostering a 9-to-5 culture. As a result, downtowns became ghost towns after business hours. The ensuing nighttime silence was a harbinger of crime, the opposite of the pleasant tranquility created in, and for, the suburbs.

Office towers were designed to funnel workers in and out at predictable hours, sometimes providing cafeterias and underground parking so that workers would never have to bother stepping foot in downtown. Some of these projects included the creation of superblocks whose buildings ab-sorbed intersections, limiting pedestrian activity and fur-ther sterilizing the once chaotic outdoor activity that most tend to associate with healthy urbanism.

These were mostly benevolent ideas from some of the country's best planners, architects, and developers at the time, all searching for solutions to perceived obsolescence. But in attempts to revitalize our cities back to the impor-tance and vibrancy they once had, we kept building the things that were destroying them. By trying to please sub-urban tastes through these projects, cities only validated the idea that their days of relevance were past. Suburbs kept growing while the cores they extracted from continued to slowly destroy themselves in order to better emulate their new superiors.

The City's ComebackThe success story of a city is dependent on a myriad of

factors, but none more crucial than its accommodation of density.

“The natural advantages that cities have are density, di-versity and proximity, and they are no less important today than in ancient times,” says Banas. “The life of a healthy city is conspicuously lived outdoors, on its streets and in its

public spaces. It is the face-to-face encounters in this arena, both planned and spontaneous, that generate the social, civic and economic life of a city, and are the source of urban residents’ tremendous advantages in productivity, innova-tion and quality of life.”

At some point, urban re-development shifted toward these ideals, the goal being not just practicality for the sub-urban office worker, but also quality of life for urban and suburban families.

Waterfront-focused developments in the late 1970s, like Baltimore's Marketplace and Boston's Quincy Market, fo-cused on creating quirky retail environments that, through urban design, gave users a sense that they weren't just shop-ping or eating but experiencing a place that was culturally and historically significant.

In the early ’90s (with the trend initiated a couple years prior at Buffalo's Pilot Field), downtown stadiums became more than a place to watch a game. They were retro-de-signed, sport-inspired theme parks with food and entertain-ment options that brought in crowds with no rooting inter-est for what was happening on the field.

With these kinds of projects immediately seen as regional destinations, they did more for reviving downtowns than any office tower could. They helped show the country that cities could be a lot more fun in a postmodern era than any suburb, providing new attractions with their history, some-thing the suburbs didn't have, as a backdrop.

Combined with small-scale, neighborhood-focused revi-talization, crime began to decrease, and the diverse, some-times offbeat charms of the postmodern city were becom-ing more embraced. The downtown hub was on its way to becoming another urban neighborhood instead of an inter-changeable part of the daily workflow.

WASHINGTON, D.C.One of the most impressive urban comeback stories takes

place in Washington, D.C. It saw double-digit percentage growth in population every decade from its incorporation until the 1960s. Hurt by sprawl, race riots, and a drug epi-

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demic, the district's image became tarnished, its population dropping throughout the rest of the 20th century.

Thanks to a combination of continued regional growth and a new wave of development-centric mayors, the district began to reverse its population woes. D.C.’s population in-creased in the last decade, the first period of growth since 1950.

As a result, historic commercial districts like U Street, which saw some of the worst damage done during the 1968 race riots, were revived. Inconceivable to D.C. dwellers of the ’80s and ’90s, U Street has since become the go-to spot for a night out, so successful that it now has to tackle the escalating issue of gentrification, an ever-present symbol of a city’s evolution.

In the 1990s, Metro expanded its Green Line service, opening stops along the parts of D.C. most hurt by the ’68 riots. Since then, demand for residential and commercial space (and their rents) has increased. Entire blocks and their storefronts have been restored, the neighborhood’s darkest days relegated to stories, its physical reminders hardly pres-ent as evidenced by an under-construction luxury condo complex on 14th and U, one that has been using a man dressed as Louis XIV for its marketing campaign.

Crime is down, and while gentrification is on everyone's mind, the U Street corridor still remains a diverse combina-tion of apartments, social service centers, clubs and immi-grant-owned restaurants.

Talks of the neighborhood's renaissance have since be-come passé, with some of the most dynamic, small-scale revitalizations today taking place along H Street, another corridor impacted by the riots. Further away from the city's Metro service and downtown, its change has come more slowly but a new streetcar line is in the works, and with it, an anticipated parallel to U Street's evolution.

Not lost in the story of D.C.'s revitalization is the 1997 opening of the Verizon Center. It saw the city's NHL and NBA teams return after decades out in the suburbs.

But the building did more than that, it fit (just barely) into the city's street grid, accommodating a metro station

underneath it and leading to the restoration of the commu-nity around it. What was once seen as a seedy area is now a loud combination of restaurants, stores and apartments, with heavy use from both locals and tourists.

A similar formula is underway on the southern end of the city's Green Line, with Nationals Park helping to turn aban-doned industrial land into award-winning public space, apartments, offices and hotels. The stadium opened in 2008 for its MLB team, the Nationals. The area has moved at a much slower pace due, in part, to the national economic climate, but also a previously poor perception of the area.

It’s a neighborhood that a downtown worker from the suburbs would have rarely come in contact with before the stadium’s opening. But its turnaround from someplace seedy to someplace fit for comfortable residence represents a big shift for future re-development.

THE RUST BELTAnd it's not limited to cities like D.C., where consistent

regional growth has supported urban revitalization efforts. Shrinking Rust Belt cities like Cleveland and Detroit are seeing their downtowns change, adding more than just re-gional entertainment draws like stadiums and casinos. Of-fice and residential projects are being designed with a focus on urban design, in turn generating more demand for fu-ture residential and retail growth.

Cleveland’s population totals took one of the deepest hits of any Rust Belt city in the last census, but its downtown still managed to grow at a healthy clip, graduating from its status as a work and entertainment district into a popular place to live as well. Its growth has led to more frequent lo-cal reports of pent-up loft demands and now, perhaps the biggest sign of a change, a multi-phased, $500 million de-velopment called Flats East Bank, which should bridge the physical gap between Cleveland’s Warehouse District, Flats neighborhood, and waterfront, separated from each other by an elevated highway and underutilized industrial land.

After a string of office and residential tower renovations, and re-openings, plans have been unveiled in downtown

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Detroit for a Z-shaped parking garage and retail facility. That may sound mundane but “The Z” is a surprising step forward for a famously car-centered city.

The new building will zigzag around existing structures on a mostly flattened lot used for surface parking. Adding retail along the street for its growing number of city dwell-ers and workers suggests its downtown may be ready for the next step, with development focused more on filling in the gaps, rather than on creating them.

These gaps are the clean-ups that Banas says we have been trying to clean up for decades.

“For the last 60 years or so, we in the United States have been actively and steadily attempting to suburbanize our cities, undermining their natural advantages,” says Banas, who quotes former Milwaukee mayor John Norquist: “We started to see cities as problems to be solved, rather than as resources to be nurtured.”

Progress in Buffalo, Detroit and Cleveland makes the case that if struggling Rust Belt cities can turn around the value and popularity of their cores, so can any other American city. This is the next big opportunity, the chance to right past wrongs, and install new ideas.

“Fixing our cities amounts to undoing the big mistakes,” says Banas. “We need to promote the human scale that cit-ies need to thrive, and re-establish a healthy relationship between people and the automobile. Essentially, we need to give cities back to their people.”

DOWNTOWN BUFFALOBack home, a quick survey of downtown Buffalo’s revital-

ized building stock and the cranes around the inner harbor and medical campus would suggest that the long-maligned city is turning a corner.

Most locals would tell you the same but the census num-bers still fail to paint such a picture. The census tract that envelops Buffalo's central business district has lost 7.5 per-cent of its population since 2010. Five of the seven census tracts that touch it also saw population losses.

But there’s still an increasing sense around the region

that city living is no longer a last resort but in fact the most exciting option. The nightly sidewalk buzz of busy shops and cafes that one expects out of a traditional downtown isn't prevalent yet but believers are proliferating, moving in, and waiting to see their risky investment through.

“There are pockets of community coming about around downtown,” says Kulyk, who moved into his condo almost three years ago. “It seems to be snowballing.”

Sean Sikorski is part of the new generation of downtown dwellers. Twenty-five years old and raised in Lancaster, his decision to move downtown is still regarded as a unique one among his Lancaster constituents.

“Most of my friends think I'm crazy for wanting to live here," says Sikorski, who lived in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood for a period of time while working for a large financial company.

He says he became hooked on the idea of big city living. He knows Buffalo can't replicate that experience, but like most of his neighbors, he's still hoping for a more vibrant downtown soon. Old buildings may be seeing new life, but car culture still prevails with developers convinced that new urbanites want as much parking as the suburbs so many of them came from.

“I park in a surface lot behind my building that takes up an entire city block” said Sikorski. “I'd sacrifice it to see a nice building be added with a first floor filled with retail space.”

As much progress as downtown has seen over the last de-cade, a new residential culture forming into a truly urban neighborhood remains mostly as an ambition. Those who call downtown Buffalo home still can't casually walk into their nearest pharmacy or coffee shop—if one exists—on a whim, the kind of walkable luxury that makes mixed use districts so coveted.

“There's a Tim Horton’s, Subway and Rite Aid on Main Street one block from my apartment. All three are closed after 5 p.m. on weekdays and closed on weekends,” says Sikorski.

And the act of grocery shopping, one of the best indica-

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tors of amenities and transportation in your community, still feels decidedly suburban here.

Downtown dwellers must still make a 2-mile drive to Tops on Niagara Street. Some even prefer the highway-as-sisted trek to the Wegmans six miles away.

Younger urbanites might see that as a deal breaker, but older Buffalonians, like Kulyk, even more accustomed to the suburban grind, are willing to endure the inconvenience.

Kulyk says it's still surreal at times, especially when he thinks about the initial phases of Buffalo’s precipitous de-cline and the rise of the suburb that came with it.

“There were race riots going on at the time, the neighbor-hood wasn't safe to walk at night, and we were downwind from the smokestacks of the local steel plant which turned the skies orange at night. So to be in the suburbs, with a lawn and a backyard pool, and shopping center a short drive away, and streets that were safe was like a dream come true,” says Kulyk.

While the suburbs were seen as an escape, many inner-ring suburbs ended up succumbing to the same problems that doomed America's cities. Kulyk saw that firsthand in Cheektowaga, making downtown an even easier sell.

“[Cheektowaga] is encountering the same social ills of in-ner-ring suburbs across the country: decaying housing stock and falling home prices, crime and other social ills exported from the inner city, and lack of growth opportunities.”

The Suburb's AnswerFor now, the suburb still reigns for most of America, es-

pecially in D.C., where the great majority of the region’s nearly 6 million residents have decided to live outside city limits. But construction around the suburbs suggests a change in culture.

With all the tales of renaissance inside the district, sub-urban builders want to maintain their own growth and as a result, are building an increasing amount of “lifestyle cen-ters” or “urban villages,” developments that resemble small

clusters of faux urbanism placed onto sprawl enveloped landscapes.

In 1993, the Charter of the Congress for New Urbanism (an intellectual school of urbanism built upon the founda-tions of traditional neighborhood scale and feel) was signed in Alexandria, Va., a prominent suburb of D.C. The follow-ing decades have given the region a steady stream of new kinds of suburban developments that reject cul-de-sacs and strip malls.

Walkable, urban places are burgeoning in the D.C. area, with more than 40 such developments occurring in the re-gion with half of them being built outside of the district's boundaries, according to the Center for Real Estate and Urban Analysis at George Washington University.

David Kitchens, of Northern Virginia-based architec-ture firm Cooper Carry, offers insight into this new under-standing of suburban structure. Kitchens was involved in the planning on Bethesda Row, an urban village inside a traditional suburb in Montgomery County, Md., 20 miles from downtown D.C.

“Our local governments can no longer practically afford to fund the infrastructure it takes to move us these long distances from home to work and back and meet our daily needs for survival. Many have come to realize that it is bet-ter to live closer [together], pay more for a smaller, more compact dwelling, live closer to work and spend more time with family and personal interests than living your life in the car,” says Kitchens.

To be urban is to constantly exist as a messy combination of people, backgrounds and histories, adapting to compli-cated layers of physical infrastructure and cultural tradi-tions. To plan for and contain a monocultural existence, built-up to the sidewalk with apartments on top, is merely fake urbanism.

Those cultural shortcomings are not the only downfall of such developments. Lifestyle centers are not built next to each other but take on an almost trivial placement, some-times guided by transit infrastructure but mostly just seen as an opportunity for one developer who would have built

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a strip mall on the same land 20 years ago. As a result, true neighborhoods cannot form, with multiple lifestyle centers rarely within walking distance from each other.

“An island is a good way of describing it,” says Price, at UB.Public space is also an issue. In most cases, the land that

composes the developments is privately owned: every side-walk, every dog park, every fountain, every public square. There is no democratic representation for it. There may be a community organization that organizes events and dis-cusses tenant issues, but the land still belongs to one single corporation, and not to taxpayers.

And now the trend may be arriving in Buffalo, with New York-based and Buffalo-born architect Jay Valgora putting together plans for a land swap in Amherst that, if every-thing goes as planed, will include a so-called "urban village" on what is currently a golf course.

“Real town centers and cities are coming back,” says Val-gora. “People want to live in walkable communities again—this is the biggest trend of our time. Young people don’t want to be isolated in fragmented suburbs.”

Symbolically, it may help provide a connection to one of the region's most controversial land-use decisions, the building of the North Campus of the University at Buffalo in Amherst, an isolated vision designed as its own commu-nity, desperately dependent on car access.

Even if the project contains a walkable, bike-friendly path to the university, it will rely heavily on car traffic in order to maintain successful retail space. The university al-ready has its own facilities and services, used roughly eight months of the year, with plans in place for more amenities.

As for the rest of Amherst, they won’t be within walk-ing distance of the urban village. Bus service to the space is limited, if not non-existent. Which means in order to op-erate an economically successful development, it will have to supply parking so that any office, resident, restaurant, or store could even conceive locating in it with any hopes of attracting people.

Even if Valgora wishes for the development to become a self-sustaining economic hub of urbanity, it will have to

accommodate suburban tastes, meaning he’ll need to make the same compromises architects and planners made all over American downtowns in the last century.

Around the CornerThe notion of a suburban “village center” in 2013 points

to a need for something more engaging, more substantial, ultimately more real than what is currently there. It gives voice to a suburban incapacity for personal connectedness. Even if projects like Valgora’s may strive to innovate for a new model of suburban potential, its success or failure comes down to an X-factor that is hard to find outside of urban centers, and impossible to manufacture elsewhere.

“High density alone cannot produce urban vitality,” says Banas. “It is the quality of the neighborhood that mat-ters—the diverse choice of housing types reflecting a mix of incomes; the mix of residential and retail uses; the varied public spaces; and a fine-grained human scale.”

This is not just a note about suburbia, however.“Large, monolithic buildings deaden the street. Tall

towers become nothing more than vertical suburbs. Mono-cultures of housing and income destroy the complex web of urban life,” says Banas.

For a city like Buffalo, where the change has slowly pro-liferated downtown, new pioneers like Kulyk know it’ll be worth the wait. “It's already the right decision,” says Kulyk.

“I'm a happier person now.”Happier, not only because of his particular living quar-

ters or proximity to coffee. Kulyk’s “happier” speaks for a bigger picture of progress in 2013; a chance to make smart changes for the next iteration of America’s downtown.

Banas, not surprisingly, is optimistic.“As a medium-size city, Buffalo has both an urban and

metropolitan scale that’s the right size for the apparent challenges facing this nation and the world. It may be that Buffalo, along with other similar cities in the Rust Belt and elsewhere, will become models for innovating the sustain-able, resilient city of tomorrow.”

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A MANAND HISCAMERA

by ben siegel

with photos by law eh soe

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Law is a refugee from Burma, one of roughly 8,000 living in Buffalo. He came here in 2008, three years after his mother arrived. Until then, he hadn’t seen his brother in 21 years, a typical circumstance of living in a refugee camp, where an estimated 99 percent of refugees never leave.

If he feels the tug of refugee life, he does not show it. He is spiritually present on two sides of the globe, simultaneously comforted by two kinds of homes, challenged by two concepts of peace.

He is quiet, but when he talks, he says some-thing. When he speaks of one home or the oth-er, you can’t immediately determine which one he means. But it doesn’t matter; his complexity is part of his intrigue.

“When I hold my son, I feel like when he looks at me, I see my country,” says Law of his new-born son. “You know, my country is great, but he is a U.S. citizen, and he will have food and education; all that I didn’t have. He will have more convenience here than in Burma. But I pray, I want to see him do something great, to make something wonderful for the people. The people from Burma.”

This is more than a statement of longing. It is a declaration of mission.

Law’s work in Burma as a photojournalist is one of treason there. The profession is es-sentially illegal, unless you’re working for the state-run newspaper. If not, if you’re instead a

spiritually driven, poetically spoken, patriotic countryman like Law, you’re a champion for peace. These two voices do not mix in a country like Burma.

Cultural comparisons between the United States and the Southeast Asian country are hard to avoid; they exist on two clocks. Burma has been in a perpetual state of civil war since 1948, the result of ongoing colonization and ethnic imperialism upon its many ethnic groups and territories. Sixty million people live in 14 states and regions, comprising roughly 65,000 villag-es separated not only by geography but ethnic and religious identity.

The ruling junta—a military dictatorship—has been blamed for the country’s impover-ished economy, declining illiteracy rate, wide-spread hunger, and near-absent education and healthcare services. Economic sanctions by the United States against the Burmese government have trickled down to the people, who already suffer from a lack of basic freedoms and ac-cess to a free marketplace. The average annual income is $300, according to data from the United Nations.

Those figures are damning enough. But as the general population suffers, the military showers itself with the money not being spent on its people.

Images of their wealth are put on display within the country, but with a state ban on free

Law Eh Soe’s English is either poetically

clear or understandably broken. You never

know what you’re going to get.

“When I wake up, I feel the sun here,” says

Law, 41. “But I feel the moon in Burma. My

heart is still there.”

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speech and press, images of the lives affected by that greed have not.

A landmark shift toward democratic process, rein-forced by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit in December 2011, the first by any statesperson in 50 years, and President Obama’s recent diplomacy efforts, has begun to relax the military’s extreme rule, includ-ing press censorship and free elections. Critics on both sides of the oceans that separate these sanctions are skeptical of the sudden change of heart. Democracy is not imminent, though with moving progress feels within reach.

Before 2011, before any suggestion of free-press re-form, there was a dire need for images of the Burmese people, their daily life, and indeed of their oppressors, to be seen by the world. For some journalists, victims

of the state’s rule, it was a matter of life and death.“I saw so much injustice. Torture. The government

killing the rebels, and the rebels killing the civilians. For me, I do not care about the government side or the rebel side,” says Law. His frustration is felt, but so is his philosophical nature. “How did we become victims?” he asks, not so rhetorically.

Law attended university after high school. He had to wait four years to attend, however, due to the gov-ernment’s closing of all schools and universities during a particularly contentious uprising. He says some of his friends lost interest in pursuing school in that wait; others became drug addicts. He kept his focus.

“I simply wanted to do something for my country, and my people. So I had a dream: I wanted to be a pho-tojournalist,” says Law. He had taken up film photog-

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raphy in the intervening four years. The high cost of film and the country’s laws against free speech made the hobby an expensive one. But the path was rein-forced by his studies in law at university.

“My thesis was [on] free press. That made my pro-fessors mad. I had to stay [an extra year at university] because I was debating with them about my thesis,” says Law.

His father was angry at the prospect of his son earn-ing and not using a law degree. But the undercurrent of physical threat loomed.

“He was very happy when I got a law degree,” says Law, who says his father wanted him to become a judge or laywer. “He was very proud. He attended my gradu-ation in Yangon. I said, ‘I want to be a photojournalist.’ He was silent. Very angry.”

His father was also a photojournalist, but for the state-run media.

“My father is my hero. He inspired me. But his work and my work are totally different,” says Law. “My father wanted a stable life. He simply did what he had to do. It did not bother him. But for me, I wanted to do something different.”

LEARNING (previous page): Children practicing

English in a village's community school room.

TRADING (above): A woman awaits delivery of

market goods for trade on the town's river.

Opening photo by Steve Soroka; projection by Keith

Harrington/Projex

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With limited options, many of Law's friends become workers for the government. Not Law.

“Sometimes, as a human, I don’t know where I’m going or what my goal is. But whenever I see injustice, the people’s situation in Burma, I say to myself: you have to do something, you have to do something,” says Law.

He did. He became the first Burmese pho-tojournalist since the junta’s takeover in 1962 to work for an international press agency. His photos of the 2007 Saffron Revolution—in which Buddhists monks, ever a symbol of di-vine neutrality, broke precedent by protesting the government’s treatment of its citizens—were purchased for $1,000.

Law’s photo of a Buddhist monk holding his food bowl upside down made waves, and was picked up by major news outlets around the world, including Time Magazine, CNN, the BBC, The New York Times, and Al Jazeera. It epitomized the measures at which the monk, peaceful in his fasting protest, would have been defiant enough to break the church’s passive code. It is a statement of civility, or the lack thereof.

But it is another photo taken during the monks’ protests that shifted the boundaries of Law’s personal code. The photo shows a group of kneeling monks and armed military, some 50 feet down the road and behind a fence. It does not indicate an immediate showdown, though danger is implied. On the sides of the street are other photojournalists: one presum-ably American, and another from Japan, who suffered a cruel fate.

“They killed [him],” says Law. “I was at the same location with him. That evening the gov-ernment killed him…,” Law pauses to make air quotes, “‘accidentally.’” The imminent danger

this posed to him—and the film in his camera—put feelings into action.

“I know that they killed him intentionally. That’s why it was not safe,” says Law. “I did not want to leave Burma, but I had to. They attempted to arrest me three times. They came three times. And then I ran.”

America’s relationship with Burma is touchy. Diplomatic relations with the Burmese govern-ment are controversial for some, but a relief for others. There is limited visibility there of American workers, which made Law’s meeting a high-ranking political attaché serendipitous.

“Whenever I was taking photos, she was always there,” says Law. “She said, ‘You are very brave.’ I said, ‘No, no. I just do what I’m sup-posed to do.’”

She gave Law her card, effectively granting him access to her services. Law ran for his life, in his words, hiding in remote rural areas. He heard gunfire headed presumably in his direc-tion. His camera was a giveaway, as if the mili-tary needed one. It was two weeks before he called the diplomat.

“I had no idea what I would do in my future,” says Law. “I called her, she told me to run to Thailand. They arranged for me to leave.”

Law’s departure also meant an arrival.Law and I first meet on a sunny, mid-October

day. We sit at Sweet_ness 7, the West Side coffee shop in the immediate vicinity of where many resettled refugees live. It is not uncommon here to see women in veils, families walking in packs, and large bags of food carried unceremoniously on heads. It is a common, welcoming, warming sight. Some have opened businesses selling their native food and goods.

“Sometimes it feels that a very big village from Burma moved to Buffalo,” says Law, who works for that proverbial village at the Interna-tional Institute of Buffalo, one of four refugee resettlement agencies here. He works as a liai-son and interpreter for newly resettled Burmese refugees.

His photos have given him work here, too. Last summer, CEPA Gallery exhibited a show

BIKING (previous page): Milk crates and other

posessions are attached to bikes for transport.

READING (left): A villager reads the state-run

morning paper, still a source for news.

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of his work documenting the Saffron Revolution and of the Burmese countryside. A documentary short was made of Law’s story, and has subsequently won awards and entries in international film festivals. In October, he was invited to speak at a screening of the documentary and the opening of an exhibit at St. Bo-naventure’s journalism school.

“I always dreamed, when I was little, to come to the United States to study. But I never [thought] I’d be a refugee,” saw Law. “Life has totally changed. You have food, and you have shelter, and you have friends, but nothing is [like] home.”

His loyalty back East is resolute, though he sees the other side of the coin, where the comfort to express his feelings is allowed and encouraged.

“I always dreamed to become a photojournalist, but [in my] 40s, I want to stand as a writer also.” He is currently working on an essay in his native language. And with this stroke, the pendulum between his two lands continues to swing.

“I never feel Buffalo is my second option. I think of it as my hometown, too. Sometimes we do not have options in our life, but I always feel in an optimistic way.”

The question of where home is, or isn’t, is ultimate-ly not up for debate. It is in both places, physically. It is in Law’s heart, naturally. This is a balancing act beyond the reach of those who have not tipped its scales.

But when Law translates this dichotomy in his lens, the image comes back as clear as ever.

“Some people say, ‘Oh you are great. You did great things.’ But I simply want to ask: Where does courage come from? Where does strength come from? This is the only answer I have for my heart. How much do you love your country? How much do you love peace? How much do you love justice? And how much do you love freedom?”

GRIEVING: A mother, and refugee, mourns the

absense of her own during a Mother's Day celebra-

tion in Buffalo.

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A DESIGN, MARKETING AND PUBLISHING STUDIO WITH A HYPERLOCAL FOCUS.

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SHORTS

A crisp breeze sailed through the kitchen window of Elisabeth Ward’s Manhattan apartment. It cut through the residual summer heat that hung around her neck

and cooled the beads of sweat that dotted her temples. She reached up to push the window closed and listened for a mo-ment to the whistling of the air as it pushed through the cracks in the warped wood. She smiled. A change in the sea-son was always a relief.

Elisabeth gently tugged her wedding ring off of her finger and set it in a small blue china bowl on the windowsill. She pulled her yellow rubber gloves over her hands and turned the handle on the faucet to ‘hot.’ The few dirty dishes that sat on the counter—two side plates, two tea cups and sau-cers, a few forks and knives—were needlessly and neatly re-arranged for a few moments as the water heated up. When steam began to rise from the sink, Elisabeth tested the water temperature against her right wrist. Deeming it hot enough, she plugged the drain, squeezed soap into the water stream, and gently placed each dish into the foaming bath.

The cleanser’s citrus smell announced itself every few mo-ments before retreating into the freshly scrubbed wooden countertops. The familiar, caustic scent was pleasing to Elisabeth, who loved that kitchen more than any other room

in the apartment. She drank her morning coffee in the en-tryway, admiring the way the sunlight poured in from the window that overlooked the terrace, illuminating the muted cerulean walls and stark white cabinets. On the countertop beside the sink sat her pride and joy, the potted heather she trimmed and fussed over every evening before bed; its tiny purple blooms, cropped up among inhospitable green leaves, reminded her of the dandelions that grew inconceivably be-tween the concrete sidewalks on Park Avenue.

When the dishes were washed and dried and tucked away in the sideboard, and the floors were swept and mopped and buffed glowing, and the pork loin was salted and peppered and pounded flat, Elisabeth reclined on the couch in the sit-ting room with that week’s issue of New York Magazine. On Thursdays, she read the Culture section.

The apartment was quiet. In the City, of course, a quiet room was still full of sound. Thirty-one floors down, car horns wailed, whistles sounded, and voices yelled out to one another. Inside, televisions blared, phones rang out, and shoes scuffed up and down the stairwell. In Manhattan, life went on and would never stop going on. This knowledge was a great comfort to Elisabeth. When she felt lonely, the soundtrack of living would wrap its arms around her and soothe her, cooing sweet songs and caressing her thirsty skin.

New England Home Magazine"The woman was already inside her apartment.

Assuming there was now no easy way to make her leave again,

Elisabeth opted instead to appear hospitable.”

by E.R. BARRY

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illustrations by JULIE MOLLOY

Suddenly, a knock at the door. Elisabeth started. In four-teen years of marriage, she had spent each and every weekday alone in that apartment. In fourteen years of marriage, her husband had never returned home from work before the stroke of 5:30 p.m. In fourteen years of marriage, he had never forgotten his key. And in fourteen years of marriage, she had never had a visitor.

Elisabeth’s blood, heavy with adrenaline, sank swiftly to-ward the earth and pressed her body against the couch, the thumping of her heart against her chest marking the long sec-onds that passed before the knock sounded again.

“Hello?” a woman’s voice yelled. “Anyone home?”Elisabeth crept to the door and held her fluttering hand

over the deadbolt. She peered into the door viewer and saw through the fish-eyed lens an attractive young woman—about her age, she guessed, maybe younger—with a duffle bag in her hand and a bag of golf clubs standing dutifully beside her.

“Hello?” the woman repeated, leaning in to press her ear against the door.

Elisabeth still did not answer. In her head, she turned over possible scenarios. Each of them ended in doom.

“Elisabeth, it’s Caroline. Bob’s niece. Did he tell you I would be visiting?”

“Caroline?” Elisabeth repeated. Bob did have a niece named Caroline. But she had never seen a picture of the girl. In fact, she didn’t even know how old she was. And visiting? How on earth could Bob have failed to mention that his niece would be coming to visit?

“Yes! So he did tell you,” Caroline sounded relieved. “I’m sorry I’m so early. You probably weren’t expecting me until next week. Well, the craziest thing happened—hey, can I come in?”

Still hesitant, Elisabeth turned the bolt and opened the door for her unexpected guest.

“Lizzy!” Caroline threw her hands in the air and wrapped Elisabeth in an embrace.

“So swell to finally meet you. I’ve been dying to come visit for years. Too bad we couldn’t have been invited to the wed-ding, eh?” Caroline winked and nudged Elisabeth in the side before hoisting her bag over her shoulder and pulling the golf clubs inside the apartment. “No, don’t worry about that. I’m just kidding. Terrible sense of humor I have, I know.”

The woman was already inside her apartment. Assuming there was now no easy way to make her leave again, Elisabeth opted instead to appear hospitable. “Can I take your coat?” she politely asked.

“Thanks!” Caroline handed her a moth-eaten trench coat

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and a peacock green silk scarf. She sat on the couch and pulled her boots off. “Sorry about the golf clubs. It’s a long story.”

Elisabeth hung the coat and scarf over a hook next to the door. The smell of cigars wafted from the khaki fabric of the coat as she smoothed it down.

“That’s no problem,” she promised. “I can easily tuck them back there, behind the bookshelf.”

“You sure they won’t be in your way?”“I’m sure.”“You say that now, but in a week you’ll be all, ‘Caroline,

I’m going to throw those clubs out the window!’” Caroline laughed and leaned against the couch with a loud sigh.

“I’m sorry, a week?” Elisabeth fretted. She moved quickly to the kitchen and mechanically filled a teakettle with water.

“Didn’t Bob tell you?” Caroline called from the other room. “I have some auditions lined up. He said it would be all right if I stayed on your couch for the week. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Of course,” Elisabeth insisted. “You are family, after all. You can stay in the guest room, though. Don’t be silly.” She checked the time—12:42—and thought briefly of calling Bob before deciding against it. He would most likely be out of the office at this time. Lunch meetings were a mainstay in his line of work, and he could be counted upon to order his plate of oysters at the Four Seasons before the hour was up.

“I just love this piece!” Caroline appeared at the kitchen entryway holding a ceramic figurine Elisabeth and Bob had purchased on their honeymoon. “When were you in Brazil?”

“A few months after we were married,” Elisabeth answered, setting the kettle on the stove and lighting the burner. “I found that in one of the artisan markets. I guess I just liked it—she’s so authentic looking.”

“Authentic is an understatement. This is a representation of an Icamiaba woman. Extremely important to indigenous South American culture. What a find,” she turned the figu-rine over in her hand, running her fingers over its features.

“Hey, look at that little guy,” Caroline added as she ges-tured toward the kitchen window. “You know him?”

Elisabeth followed her gaze and saw a cat sitting casually in the windowsill. Not only was a cat in the windowsill a highly unusual occurrence, but this cat was staring at her.

“No. I have no idea. How on earth would a cat get up here?” Elisabeth wondered.

“Oh, right. Thirty one floors up. That is odd… must belong to a neighbor,” Caroline suggested.

Elisabeth considered the likelihood that one of her neigh-bors would break the building’s strict “no pets” policy. “No…” she decided, redirecting her attention to the figurine in Car-oline’s hand. “What is that you were talking about? Ickah…”

“Icamiabas,” Caroline corrected. Her face lit up as she be-gan to explain. “They were these absolutely ferocious war-rior women who totally dominated the Amazon rainforest around the time the Europeans came to visit,” she empha-sized to visit with a wink. “A tribe of fiercely independent women. I think it’s more legend than anything else. But the spirit is very real. Look at the way the artist has captured the power in her figure. Beautiful,” Caroline handed the piece to Elisabeth.

Examining the figurine for perhaps the first time since she purchased it, Elisabeth asked Caroline how she knew so much about it.

“Oh, you know. Traveling. This and that,” Caroline smiled. “I actually lived in Brazil for a year. It’s a long story.”

“How old are you?” Elisabeth ventured.“Twenty-six.” Caroline hopped up to sit on the counter

next to the sink. Beside her, in the window, the cat closed its eyes and dutifully lifted its chin to the sun as it peeked out from behind a cloud.

“Twenty-six,” Elisabeth repeated. “I remember twenty-six.”Caroline laughed. “Well I should hope so. Couldn’t have

been more than five years ago.”“It feels like more than that,” Elisabeth remarked. “How do

you know how old I am?”

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“Your age was a hot topic around our house for quite a few years, dear aunt,” Caroline said with a wry smile.

Elisabeth blushed and turned away to pull two teacups out of the sideboard.

“Oh… I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I just thought we could all have a good laugh about it now and be good old friends. Sure, it was completely weird at the time. But the family doesn’t care anymore,” Caroline assured her.

“Well, I wish I could say the same for my family,” Elisabeth muttered as she placed two teabags in the waiting cups and draped the strings over the sides.

“Still mad?” Caroline jumped down from the counter.Elisabeth stiffened. “We don’t talk,” she admitted.

“What a shame. People can be so closed-minded. It’s all legit now, so what’s the point in holding grudges? What a waste of energy, don’t you think?”

Elisabeth agreed. “I made my choice. I’m happy with it.”“Course you are. Bob’s a real gem,” Caroline pulled a pot

holder down from the basket on top of the fridge just as the kettle let out a whistle. “How about I’ll take care of the tea. You go have a seat. I’ll tell you right now, there’s no way I’ll be waited on hand and foot for a whole week. So you can just get the idea out of your head.” She shooed Elisabeth into the next room.

Elisabeth weakly surrendered to the suggestion. Under normal circumstances she would never dream of allowing a guest to serve herself. It made Elisabeth short of breath. She shuffled into the living room and stared at the golf clubs, qui-etly accusing them of causing all this.

“Here we are! I found everything myself. Even the honey,” Caroline set the tray down on the coffee table and took a seat on the chaise. “Funny thing about kitchens. No matter where I am or who I’m staying with, the kitchen is always self-explanatory. You’d be surprised how uncreative people are about where they keep their cookie sheets and forks.”

“You stay with other people often?” Elisabeth asked, sitting on the couch.

Caroline nodded as she offered Elisabeth a cup of tea. “For the past five years, that’s pretty much how I’ve gotten by. I moved out when I was twenty-one. Wanted to see the world. A lot like you, I guess,” she smiled. “What you’re looking at in that bag over there, that’s about all I have. In terms of worldly possessions, I mean. I’ve got a lot of other stuff going on.”

“Yes, well. I have a lot of worldly possessions. As I’m sure you’ve noticed,” Elisabeth laughed and gestured around the living room. Seeing it all through the eyes of a stranger, it suddenly looked like a set from an issue of New England Home Magazine.

Caroline smiled and brought her cup of tea to her lips.

“Yes. It is nice. Not many stories to tell, though,” Elisabeth continued.

Caroline squinted and leaned in to examine Elisabeth’s face. “You really are a stunningly beautiful girl, you know that?”

Elisabeth blushed again.“You are. You’re symmetrical. That’s a rare thing,” Caroline

declared.Elisabeth cocked her head. “Symmetrical?”

“It explains a lot, seeing you. A face like that, no wonder you wanted out,” Caroline said.

Elisabeth picked a piece of lint off her trousers.“Don’t ever look back,” Caroline offered. “There’s nothing

for you there.”Later, when Caroline had gone to lie down for a nap, and

that happy quiet had returned to the apartment, Elisabeth tidied up the house in preparation for her husband’s antici-pated return. It was a different routine on this day than it had been the day before. There were new items to be stashed away, new smells to be deodorized, and new thoughts to distract her.

Back in the kitchen, she dropped two wet teabags into the trash bin and placed two empty teacups neatly, side by side, at the edge of the sink. She stood there for a moment, noticing the tender pink and blue flower buds etched into the bottoms of the china cups. The twelve-piece set was a wedding gift from Bob, along with the promise of swanky dinner parties, his high-profile clients and their wives among the guests, and she, his jewel of a wife, keeping them all fed and entertained after taking in a play or an opera midtown. In fourteen years of marriage, she had never hosted a dinner guest. Ten sets of plates, bowls, and cups sat untouched in the sideboard, pristine as the day they were made. And in the top drawer of her bedroom bureau sat the pair of opera glasses she had purchased on one of her first shopping trips as a newly married woman in the big city, wrapped in a mis-matched sock and never worn.

Her wedding ring. She had forgotten to put it back on. She found the ring still nestled in the little blue bowl on the windowsill, squeezed it over her finger, and spun it into place.

Caroline would be gone soon, she reminded herself. But that cat.She looked to the windowsill, where it still sat, licking its

paw. Without a thought, she opened the window, picked up the cat, and set it on the kitchen floor. It looked up at her and mewed.

Elisabeth’s eyes darted to the clock on the wall. 4:06. Time to put the pork in the oven.

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BRIEF ENCOUNTERS

@OPRAH My followers. Gotta ask you, what is comfort? Want to know what it means to you. Tweet back. #ComfortIs

@OPRAH #ComfortIs curling up after a long day of work at the O Magazine office, turning on OWN. #blessed #OWN

@OPRAH Want to bring in a few strong females who also know a thing or two about comfort. Shooooout out! @Paula_Deen @MarthaStewart @InaGarten

@MARTHASTEWART @Oprah H'hmm. Hello.

@PAULA_DEEN #ComfortIs sausage lobster #gumbo. Lobsters are all stuffed with smaller lobsters. Put some butter on it, y’all! Mmm.

@MARTHASTEWART @Paula_Deen. Oh. Paula’s joined. How nice.

@MARTHASTEWART #ComfortIs my beautiful stain resistant carpet, exclusively at @HomeDepot, clickhere.

@OPRAH @Paula_Deen omg. Mouth is watering, LOL. Reminds me of the time I climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro with the wonderful @JaneFonda, I am very #blessed

@INAGARTEN @Oprah I’ve always found the solution to life’s discomfort is a cookie from East Hampton bakery, #Bouge, owned by dearest #homosexualfriend

@OPRAH #ComfortIs rising up to challenge. Live and demonstrate tru service. Personal power. Reminds me of the time I gave away 94 free cars, #blessed

@MARTHASTEWART #ComfortIs my new line of ice cube freezer trays. Exclusively at @HomeDepot, clickhere.

@INAGARTEN One of those days! Just cannot decide what to cook for Jeffrey’s dinner tonight. Cooking 3 dinners for him to pick from.

@INAGARTEN One thing I learned working as a former White House nuclear policy analyst is that you can never have enough backup plans.

@PAULA_DEEN @InaGarten @Oprah @MarthaStewart lol y’all look at us #strong #ladies

@PAULA_DEEN #ComfortIs twice baked bread crumble mac and cheese pizza. Twice fried in #butter, y’all.

@OPRAH @Paula_Deen M&C pizza so tru! Like time I transcended consciousness with #theSecret on retreat with @CondoleezzaRice and @GayleKing #blessed

@MARTHASTEWART @Oprah How nice.

@MARTHASTEWART #ComfortIs exquisiteness, farm land, inclusive luxury, Chinese silk #drawerliners

@MARTHASTEWART #ComfortIs my new paint line, exclusively at @HomeDepot, clickhere.

@INAGARTEN People come from all over the world to summer in East Hampton but my favorite season is autumn! (in Paris!) #comfort

@INAGARTEN Read my blog here to learn more of my wild times with friends, life in East Hampton, cream-colored #kitchensecrets and more

@SANDRALEE @MarthaStewart love the paint line! painted my kitchen ice blue, sooo beautiful, matches my favorite winter #tablescape, perfect for winter #cocktailtime

@SANDRALEE @MarthaStewart Send me your email would love to share some recipes

@MARTHASTEWART Exclusively at @HomeDepot, click here.

@INAGARTEN Nip in the air in East Hampton! A little too crisp for my liking.

#ComfortIsby MARGARET FINAN

716-649-3600716-649-3600www.hamburgdoor.com5659 Herman Hill RoadHamburg, NY 14075

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Sauces are simmering,Pans are sizzling...Slip on an apron and roll up your sleeves

for our hands-on cooking classes.

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Date post:	31-Mar-2016
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Issue 30: Comfort

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