Stories & Events for Social Connection

By Seamus Gallivan

• Doubling down on public media in the face of fascism
• Musings on Music: Two jazz fests this weekend
• Featured Events: 20 this week, always encouraging submissions!
• Listening Links: Catching up with Ezra Klein

Welcome to the Buffalodown, thank you for your attention!

Special thanks and welcome this week to our new paying subscribers – more in the past week than we’ve had in many months, truly sustaining!

While paying subscribers are indeed needed to sustain Reconnecter and this here Buffalodown, over the coming weeks I’ll also be encouraging everyone to continue or if feasible increase our support of additional outlets such as public media in the wake of attacks by Trump and his Republican cult on the First Amendment-protected free press, including recent cutting of funding to NPR and PBS.

We in Western New York and Southern Ontario are fortunate to have such a formidable duo of Buffalo Niagara Public Media’s (BTPM) TV and radio outlets, each with a rich history of original programming in addition to airing renowned national programs – one of the latter for music lovers that’s now endangered is Austin City Limits.

Since rural affiliates are most vulnerable to these cuts, NPR is shifting its remaining funding to support them. Locally speaking, according to Jim Heaney of Investigative Post (more about IP in the next Buffalodown), BPTM “received $2 million last year from the Corporation For Public Broadcasting, which serves as a pass through of sorts for federal funding. That’s a good chunk of BTPM’s $17 million annual budget.

“Tom Calderone, president and CEO of Buffalo Toronto Public Media, told WKBW 7 News, ‘the loss of the federal funding is enormous, and it isn’t a quick fix, like, let’s do a pledge drive and we’ll get it all back.’”

Heaney opened that piece by saying, “Central to the playbook for dictators dismantling democracies is neutering the press.”

We the People are all endangered by this attack on our First Amendment freedoms. Please do your part to fight back – I just doubled my sustaining support of BTPM and hope you’ll join me.

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 Musings on Music

Two jazz fests this weekend

Buffalonians are basking in abundance over two tenured jazz festivals in July – and now the newer Orchard Park Jazz Festival featured here last week, what a wonderful lineup! – beginning this past Sunday with the first weekend of the 30th annual Pappy Martin Legacy Masten Jazz Festival, which has become a weeklong celebration including a spirited performance in Larkin Square last night by students and teachers from the Pappy Martin Legacy’s Love Supreme School of Music.

This Saturday brings the 21st Queen City Jazz Festival, presented by the Colored Musicians Club in front of the downtown Buffalo Library while the club remains under construction.

Both are free and open to all; both are presented by beloved local nonprofit organizations; both feature Buffalo-based as well as touring artist; both have expanded their programming beyond the days of the festival. Need I say more? Please say hey if you see me there!

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Events in the Week Ahead

Thanks to all who’ve submitted their events! Welcoming submissions with a flyer and link to seamus@reconnecter.org.

Visit and subscribe to The Buffalo Hive for the comprehensive community events calendar we’ve been calling for!

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Listening Links

Another shout out to “The Ezra Klein Show” by The New York Times – while summertime in Buffalo has me falling behind on episodes, these three that I listened to over the past week are still essential listening for deep-dive understanding of complex subjects.

Our Lives Are an Endless Series of ‘And’ – “This is a bit of a strange episode. It’s an attempt to explore the difficulty of everything we’re supposed to feel in a day. We’re in a time when to open the news is to expose yourself to horrors — ones that are a world away, others that are growing ever closer, or perhaps have already made landfall in our lives. And then many of us look up from our screens into a normal spring day. What do you do with that?”

   The Emergent Trump Doctrine – “Trump has been making some foreign policy moves I didn’t entirely expect. He seems determined to get a nuclear deal with Iran. He’s been public about his disagreements with Benjamin Netanyahu. He called Vladimir Putin ‘crazy.’ And he keeps talking about wanting his legacy to be that of a peacemaker. 

   “So what, at this point, can we say about Trump’s foreign policy? What is he trying to do, and how well is it working? If he succeeds, what might his legacy be?”

Ehud Olmert on Israel’s Catastrophic War in Gaza – “Ehud Olmert, the prime minister of Israel from 2006 to 2009, recently published a searing opinion essay in Haaretz, one of Israel’s most influential newspapers: ‘Enough Is Enough. Israel Is Committing War Crimes.’ He joins me to discuss why he believes Israel’s war in Gaza can no longer be justified, what he finds missing in Israel’s current political leadership and why he has not yet given up hope for a two-state solution.”

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Thank YOU for reading this far and being part of it all – extra thanks to everyone supporting this work with a membership at www.reconnecter.org!

Please share with friends to sign up for next week’s Buffalodown, and reach out with any feedback, all ideas welcome!