Corners, Corona and Days in the Neighborhood

[captainsblog]

"Unscathed" is probably the best way to describe the workweek just past.  Nothing spectacular in any of my multiple trips in and out of courthouses; I settled one of them late the day before court, but then, I "settled" another one almost three months ago that I've been driven crazy on trying to get the "settlement" performed, so I'm holding no breaths here.

As I left the last of my court appearances in downtown Rochester Thursday morning, I was reminded of how far that city still needs to rebound. For my first decade practicing law there, and probably most of the century before that, the city’s “Four Corners” stood as the region's center of business and especially banking. From One West Main clockwise to One East Main, each housed a branch of one of the city's homegrown institutions: Lincoln First. Monroe Savings. Security Trust. Home Federal. All local pillars of the community and the economy.

By 1990, all four had been merged or failed out of existence. And in the 30 years since, every one of their successors has pulled up stakes and left the famous corner. Not even a Tim Horton's could survive holding down one of them as of a few years ago.

Walking back to my car, I saw the last trace of the last of them: Bank of America had ripped down its red, white and blue sign after being the final bank to leave, revealing the green logo of its predecessor:



 It reminded me of the fake commercial I wrote for them during their brief stay in the local banking world:

At Fleet, we want to be your friend, not your enema.

That corner branch is now vacant, as is the former Home Federal/Empire/M&T/Timmy's across East Main from it. A health care plan now occupies the onetime home of Monroe, also subsumed long ago into M&T (which now oddly has a branch in the off-the-corner First Federal Savings headquarters building I worked in for almost a decade).  And Lincoln First?  Chase-d off the corner ages ago,  the building now home to a number of legal aid agencies for the needy, now named for one of their onetime champions:



The namesake of that edifice is the U.S. District Judge who, when I started, was one the only one stationed in Rochester. There are now four; until the day I took that picture, there were five. Judge Telesca, who admitted me to practice before the local federal Bar in 1985 and who only retired last year, passed away last week at the age of 90.  His successor as Chief Judge of the District, Frank Geraci, made the court's announcement:

“Today, the world lost a champion for justice.” Geraci said that Telesca understood that the courts were a vehicle for citizens to receive a prompt and fair disposition of their disputes, and he says the judge’s motto was “Dignity in and Dignity Out,” meaning that all litigants needed to be respected throughout the proceedings.

Geraci said that “patience was not one of his virtues,” and wrote that Telesca “expected everything to happen yesterday.”  Geraci said that the settlement in the Attica proceedings was just one example of his ability to bring parties together.

I only had a few cases with him over the years. One, most famously, involved a hard-drinkin' Nawlins man named Billuh. ("Not William. Evah. It's Billuh.")  Judge Telesca scheduled us for trial first thing Monday morning. My then-partner and I spent the weekend with him preparing (us: organizing documents and going over direct testimony; him: checking out where all the downtown bars were).  That morning, the Judge once again brought the parties together, and we settled the case before 10 a.m.  Billuh knew which hotel bars were already open, and on our return to the office (which blessedly did not require driving anywhere), we issued strict instructions to not allow either of us to answer a phone call or send out a document of any kind.

Telesca was a Ronald Reagan appointee. That his name now adorns a hive of Legal Aid offices is a sign of how things have changed in a generation. For that was back when Republicans still supported justice, and not selling out the federal judiciary to 30-year-old ideologues who've never argued a motion.

----

The biggest news of the week in the bigger world has been the Coronavirus, and the foolishness of our Fearless Leader in dealing with it.  Small numbers of suspected cases have appeared in this region, a SUNY Brockport dorm has been nominated to house quarantined study-abroaders, and businesses are running or completely run out of just about anything to fend it off- including common sense.  The gym I go to apparently didn't get the memo, so they're continuing to run their annual "Bingo card" event where you check off squares for one thing or another and turn in your "winning" card for a chance at the "grand prize," which this year is, wait for it,....

a cruise.

----

Returning to the Old Things theme, we spent part of yesterday watching Nazis and Mr. Rogers.

JoJo Rabbit is a very dark comedy-drama by the director of Thor:Ragnarok, a Maori Jew who of course cast himself as Hitler (as in the imaginary companion of the title 10-year-old).  I'd had fears that this treatment might Hogans Hero-ize the Nazis as a bunch of bumbling dumbkopfs, and while there are moments of that (casting Rebel Wilson and Sam Rockwell made it hard not to have them), there was still enough real terror in the story to make it well balanced.  I also got around to Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, the Fred Rogers-based feature film with Tom Hanks which is definitely NOT Won't You Be My Neighbor, the Fred Rogers-based documentary of a year earlier.  It's actually more about a writer than about the television star, although Tom Hanks definitely nails the performance.  The source material is mainly a profile that an Esquire author did about Rogers in 1998, near the end of his 30-plus-year television run; I was encouraged to find a copy of it online, and I now encourage you to read it as well.  Toward the end of the online piece, they include a copy of the issue cover with That Smiling Face on it; its production is prominently featured (with Hanks retrofitted onto it) throughout the film. Yet on the actual November 1998 cover, Mr. Rogers is only one of many listed on that "New American Heroes" special issue.

The next one down was Woody Allen. Also starring: Ted Williams.

In fairness, there were several others who've managed to remain heroes lo these 20-plus years later (two of them, John McCain and Congressman John Lewis, having joined Rogers in failing in recent years). But few have remained as heroic, and as immutable, as Right Said Fred.

Mister Rogers' Neighborhood was much a part of my childhood wheelhouse; I missed the Sesame Street phenomenon by a year or two, but still hung in with King Friday and Lady Aberlin just for the caring and positivity until long after it was cool.  There's not much replicating the show itself in the film except for its opening and closing scenes, which faithfully form a framing device for the plot by showing Hanks-as-Rogers coming and going from the "neighborhood" as he did thousands of times.  I got pretty wibbly still remembering those moments, from the traffic light in the living room (ironic, Rogers being color-blind) to the rituals of putting on and taking off the sweater and sneakers. 

He left us with important messages- and even all these years later, you can still bank on those:)