Dispatches from the City of Good Neighbors....

Three of them, to be precise:

*Teeth.

Today, on the edge-of-the city Main Street Campus of UB, was my long-awaited evaluation for an implant to replace what got yanked a few weeks back. My own dentist provided a wax impression and a panoramic x-ray to help evaluate, and I filled out a full medical and dental history.

But, in the end,...

NO IMPLANT FOR YOU!
 

The UB dentist concluded I really don’t need it where the tooth was removed, and, all rumors to the contrary notwithstanding, I’m not boneheaded enough (back there, anyway) for it to be anchored.

On the other hand, they CAN screen me for some of the more cosmetic issues I’ve acquired over the years. So I may be back there. Everyone was prompt, professional and kind.

One thing I did get out of it was seeing two of these  architectural fiddlybits from the building’s previous life as UB’s Norton Union.




Almost all the rest of now-Squire Hall has been glass paneled over, but it’s nice to see they left these to remember ol’ Charlie by. 

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*No Teeth.

Another third of the French Connection is no more:(

Back when the Buffalo Sabres were young and good, they had three amazing Quebecois anchoring their top line: their first-ever (and 1970's #1 overall) draft pick Gilbert Perreault, left wing Rick Martin, and right shot Rene Robert, acquired in 1972 from Pittsburgh. Martin died in 2011 when he was two years younger than I am now, but Rene Robert has now joined him in Hockey Heaven at the age of 72.

All three remained active Sabres alumni, as the surviving centerman still does. As the old fight song once put it, You know we've got the French Connection, and where there's a Gil there's a way!
 

Watch on YouTube

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*Primary (People of) Color

Yesterday was Primary Day, or more precisely the end of Primary Season, here in New York. Thanks to the blessing of early voting, we got in and quickly out of the polling place last week. We only had one contest on our D party ballot- that for county sheriff between an endorsed nearby town's police chief, a lost-cause BLM organizer, and a local college chief of campus safety named Kim Beatty. She wound up overcoming her lack of endorsement and handily defeated the other two, and now gets the chance to become the first female and first Black to hold this contentious countywide office. She will be helped by the Republicans getting into some rare infighting themselves, as their endorsed candidate also lost to a renegade who will now be on the ballot on the GOP line; he has been denounced by the Trumpernutters as a RINO. The endorsed Republican will still be on there as a Conservative candidate, and there's also an independent on the ballot,  formerly of our town's police department, who is also catering to the ammosexual crowd by promising not to enforce state gun control laws that he personally doesn't like. So Kim's got a decent, um,.... no, I'm gonna throw away my SHOT.

But that wasn't the biggest upset. The City's four-term mayor Byron Brown, its first and only Black mayor, faced an insurgent challenge from a local woman of color with backgrounds in nursing and community organizing. Hizzoner chose a Delaware Park Rose Garden strategy of doing his level best to ignore her, including refusing chances to debate her.   I had funny feelings during the week of early voting that this approach might backfire on him; nobody was talking him up, and the city's teachers union, as good a get-out-the-vote machine as any, came out for his opponent. And by all accounts, she won!  Mr. Mayor has so far refused to concede, but almost every absentee ballot would have to be cast for him to make up the difference.  He has no other party line in November and nobody else is running on one, so unless he tries to pull off a write in campaign or hires Sidney Powell and her Kraken to "find some votes," the color of this city won't be Brown but BLACK LIKE INDIA WALTON.

If he feels he's been kicked in the teeth, though? I know a good dental clinic just inside the city limits;)