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Articles by Joe Nacca
GUEST APPEARANCE: The sky is falling — again
The Sword of Damocles: That sword of myth, hanging by a horsehair, point down, threatening instant death to the person standing (or sitting in the original story) beneath it. Most people’s lives are imperiled by their own metaphorical Swords of Damocles. Some swords are personal and local. Others shared and global. Of the first kind was Enzo, the neighborhood bully of my youth. Enzo was a few years older than my best friends and me. A few pounds heavier. And a few points lower on the IQ scale.
GUEST APPEARANCE: Trump should get a local PILOT
As summer draws to a close, so too has the meet at Saratoga Race Course. Once again, I had the good fortune to drive up to the Spa in company of Formula One Charley and Geneva Dave. Charley employed his usual enthusiastic driving skills while Dave and I pondered various matters of current and historical interest. Our ride this year was enlivened by an unusual emergency event as we entered Ballston Spa.
GUEST APPEARANCE: The answer is blowing in the weeds
For a long time, I didn’t consider myself an unusually inquisitive sort. My friend Terry’s chuckle and head shake were my first indications that perhaps I was. We’d be talking about some current event and I’d often (always?) suggest that there was another layer beneath the surface. That might have been the latent journalist in me, always seeking out the story beneath the story. Then again the trait may have derived from my years of playing golf.
GUEST APPEARANCE: I coulda had an A
Socialism is the political flavor of the day. Not so much the National Socialism associated with the Nazis (the real ones, who exterminated millions of Jews and overran neighboring countries) but a homegrown brew called Democratic Socialism. Understanding socialism probably begins with some knowledge of Karl Marx, the great uncle of Groucho Marx, who hosted a popular TV show in the ‘50s.
GUEST APPEARANCE: Thinking for yourself
Race tracks (the horse racing kind) serve as great places to do more than lighten one’s wallet. The generous amount of time between races allows for welcome socializing, which is often the genesis of profound philosophical insights and novel suggestions. It was on a warm July day at Finger Lakes Race Track that my buddy Big Al once informed me that Shakespeare had written a famous play about the hamlet of Dundee. Needless to say, Al was a little short on the details.
GUEST APPEARANCE: Seeing red
Like so many Americans, I’ve come relatively late to the game of soccer. In my youth, baseball, football, and basketball were the sports that counted. Hockey began to make some inroads in the mid-1950s at which time Rochester became a member of the American Hockey League. My uncle pointed out the irony that the team was called the Rochester Americans even though all the players were Canadian. Of course, soccer presents its own curiosities.
GUEST APPEARANCE: Wanted: Accountability for tax breaks
The Inquiring Taxpayer noted with some pleasure that the Ontario County Industrial Development Agency was in the news recently. It’s the sort of pleasure that one gets from running the tongue across a sore tooth. Over the years I’ve written numerous columns with regard to OCIDA. Mostly critical. Some friends have asked me why I bother. Hey, if Jeremy Harper can spend 89 days counting to 1 million, I can devote some time to a slightly (barely, I fear) more useful endeavor.
GUEST APPEARANCE: Working to solve or knot
Watching tournament golf on TV is a relaxing experience. Unlike when watching an NFL game, let alone hockey, the viewer can either enjoy the “action” or take a nap as the mood strikes.
GUEST APPEARANCE: If you can't say something good ...
To some extent “growing up” is a journey toward cynicism (some of us prefer to call it a healthy skepticism). A journey to a place beyond the homely teachings pressed upon us in childhood. Remember being told that “if you can’t say something good about someone, don’t say anything?” A more limited version was, “Don’t speak ill of the dead,” which allowed some leeway regarding the living.
GUEST APPEARANCE: Looking back
I more or less grew up with gambling. On many a long summer day, I would wander into my grandfather’s saloon at the corner of Saratoga Avenue and Costar Street in Rochester. My grandpa and several neighborhood old-timers would be playing Hearts beneath a fan revolving so lazily that even the flies were unbothered. I would stand by my grandfather’s side pretending to be intensely interested in the flow of the game. My grandfather pretended to be intensely unaware of my presence.
GUEST APPEARANCE: 'Fly Me to the Moon'
In 1964, Frank Sinatra released his classic rendition of “Fly Me To The Moon,” which version quickly became associated with NASA’s Apollo lunar missions. Thankfully, Old Blue Eyes felt no compulsion to include a verse about President Lyndon Johnson’s political misadventures. The editorial board of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette apparently could not overcome a similar compulsion in their editorial (Finger Lakes Times, April 9) ostensibly dedicated to praising the Artemis II space flight.
GUEST APPEARANCE: Voting from the 'Great Beyond'
Reader alert: It has become routine for my family members to roll their eyes and say “not that one again” when I spin one of my jokes. Feel free to join them. It’s the one about the elderly gentleman who tells his children that when he dies he wants to be buried in Chicago. So that he can keep on voting. The conduct of Chicago politics has long been suspect. Chicanery at the polls has been a fact of American life forever. Suspicion of such has been an even bigger fact.
GUEST APPEARANCE: History lesson
You’re probably familiar with the old bromide asserting that “those who forget history are condemned to repeat it.” By most accounts, the caution originated with Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana. I question the “condemned” part. It implies that the past is totally negative. Most likely we would do well to repeat the many instances of bravery, magnanimity, and genius that populate history.
GUEST APPEARANCE: Doors: back, front, and refrigerator
Billionaires are not much in favor these days. Class warfare-stoking politicians make their populist bones by targeting them as the super-rich who “rig the system” for their own benefit. Billionaires are a safe target. They’re relatively few in number (less than 1,000 in the entire country) and not prone to violence. To my knowledge, I’ve never been personally acquainted with a billionaire.
GUEST APPEARANCE: Rites of spring
“Pitchers and catchers are reporting.” For baseball fans, especially those residing in wintry climes, those magical words herald spring’s arrival. Or at least the promise of such. Forget the first robin, the peeping crocuses, or, for the more rationally disposed, the vernal equinox. It’s those pitchers and catchers limbering up in the Cactus and Grapefruit leagues out West and down South that evoke visions of warmer and more pleasant days. Even Pirates fans dare to dream.
GUEST APPEARANCE: The truth about Greenland
In the age of hyper-partisan politics, there is no lack of subject matter for the armchair expert/columnist. And, to be sure, the internet makes many of us “experts.” A click of the mouse and you get four selectively curated out-of-context quotes that “prove” Charlie Kirk was racist. Another click gives ample “proof” that the protests in Minneapolis are funded by George Soros. Start with a bias and the path to confirming it is well paved.
GUEST APPEARANCE: It’s all Sam’s fault - Crave the comfort of a scapegoat? He just may be your guy
If “politics” is primarily concerned with getting elected, “governance” involves performance afterwards. To a large extent, getting elected has become an end unto itself in modern day America. Governance is largely ceded to unelected bureaucracies. Nevertheless, the urge to lambaste “politicians” for bureaucratic inefficiencies serves the same release valve function as screaming a curse word.
GUEST APPEARANCE: Liberals, conservatives, and the Brooklyn Dodgers
Not long ago, a Finger Lakes Times letter writer lamented the absence of Conservative columnists in these pages. A subsequent letter writer identified yours truly, along with George Will, as an example of that endangered species: a Conservative columnist. A few observations are in order. First off, we need to make a distinction between politics (the art of getting elected) and governance (the art of governing). Unfortunately, the two have drifted into different orbits.
GUEST APPEARANCE: The Inquiring Taxpayer’s Christmas concession
Christmas may well be the most treasured holiday and holy day for a significant portion of the planet’s population. The Inquiring Taxpayer takes a peculiar delight in the role that taxes play in the Christmas narrative. Had Caesar Augustus not called for a census throughout the Roman Empire, Joseph and Mary would not have traveled from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Augustus needed to know how many people lived in each province in order to adjust his tax levies accordingly. Things are much improved today.
GUEST APPEARANCE: Where's Waldo?
As every newspaper columnist knows, or should know, the quickest way to shrink your reading audience by at least 50% is to mention Ralph Waldo Emerson in the opening sentence. That said, God bless the remaining 10 of you. Emerson was a 19th-century poet, essayist, lecturer and thinker of some renown. That renown has since been eclipsed by that of his friend and fellow New Englander, Henry David Thoreau.
GUEST APPEARANCE: And then I was king
Horse racing is often referred to as The Sport of Kings. And yet there seem to be no kings or other royalty among the 25,000 attendees at Keeneland Race Course (Lexington, Kentucky) on this unseasonably warm October Saturday. I’m here doing research for a future column in the Finger Lakes Times. My work requires me to read the day’s Daily Racing Form, which offers no hint that this very day is No Kings Day.
GUEST APPEARANCE: Moments of moral clarity
A bunch of guys are playing basketball. Black guys. White guys. Most of them seem to be regulars. “Nice shot, Tony.” “Play a little defense, Charley.” “C’mon, Gus, that was a foul.” Some of the players move well. Probably played some hoops in high school, maybe even college. It is the McBurney YMCA on W. 23rd St. in Manhattan. I’m not one of the regulars. Kind of drift up to the gym from the weight room now and again. If nothing else, I take up space under the basket.
GUEST APPEARANCE: Taking heart - Poet Robert Frost can provide lessons even today
A kind reader from Clyde has sent me a couple of notes in response to Finger Lakes Times essays featuring poems by Robert Frost. I’m well reminded that a hoary-headed columnist could do much worse than to renew his acquaintance with a few timeless poems and to share the renewal.
GUEST APPEARANCE: Here a MAGA, there a MAGA
Every so often, my longtime friend Big Al bursts into one of my columns. “Bursts” is a verb that fits Big Al perfectly. Al and I grew up in a very Italian neighborhood on the West Side of Rochester. Current radio newscasts refer to it as the Edgerton Neighborhood. As in, “One man was killed and another critically wounded in the Edgerton Neighborhood last night.” Things change. I don’t know that Big Al ever shot anyone, but he wasn’t beyond roughing someone up.
GUEST APPEARANCE: 'Gerryocracy' and the mythical North Shore Project
OK. So, suddenly the city of Canandaigua’s renaissance no longer hinges upon giving a “necessary” 30-year property tax break to a private, for-profit company willing to develop a worthless piece of land across from an ugly little lake. It no longer hinges upon granting “assessment certainty” (a guarantee that assessments on the developer’s apartments could not rise by more than 1% annually) to that same for-profit company.
GUEST APPEARANCE: 1980: Wasn’t that the year … ?
Ask any golfers with a modest degree of skill (I write as one whose degree of skill illustrates “modest”) to list the greatest influences on their game and the answers are likely to be similar. A parent or other relative. A friend. A golf coach. Lessons. A teaching aid (equipment). Practice. I doubt that anyone will identify the U.S. Golf Association. The USGA is the governing body of golf in this country.
GUEST APPEARANCE: The more things change ...
Time: 8 a.m., Tues., Aug. 5, 2014. Place: Governor’s Office, Albany, N.Y. Present: Gov. Andrew Cuomo and an aide, Sheila. Sheila: How’s the coffee and bagel, Your Excellency? (Both chuckle). Gov. C: Good, Sheila. But could you get me some Sweet ‘n Low. Trying to drop a few pounds. And tell Jim (governor’s chef) to lighten up on the cream cheese. Sheila: Check. Gov. C: Sheila, I think we should take a ride to Canandaigua today. Sheila: Canandaigua? Gov. C: Yeah. It’s in the Finger Lakes Region. Near Rochester.
GUEST APPEARANCE: Big Al tackles tariffs
Saturday, June 7, was Belmont Stakes Day. Having been on site in 1973 when the amazing Secretariat set a race record that still stands, I consider the Belmont Stakes to be something like a high holy day. This year, my place of worship was the local simulcast facility at Finger Lakes Gaming and Racetrack. Not totally unexpectedly, I ran into my old buddy, Big Al, who, along with Charley “Knucks” (whose menacing fists explain the nickname), was planning to cash in on a couple of sure things.
GUEST APPEARANCE: 'Nothing Gold Can Stay' - A thank you to his father
It’s a new season. No more dusts of snow falling from tree limbs to shoulders. The early morning sunrise that not all that long ago greeted you with sheets of white now greets you (on some days at least) with sheets of gold. Home lawns, golf course fairways, open expanses of parklands — they shimmer and dazzle. Everywhere is gold. And quiet. Awaking birds chirp. You think that Eden might have been like this. And then. It’s mid-afternoon. The gold has been replaced by green.
GUEST APPEARANCE: Go easy on the SALT - or not!
Did you ever wonder what would happen if a progressive tax system and a flat tax system collided? I didn’t think so. Call it a sign of derangement, but the Inquiring Taxpayer cannot help pondering such things. Lest you stop reading, I’ll spice this up a bit. With salt. Actually, SALT — as in State and Local Taxes. SALT is one contentious element in the 1,000+ page “big, beautiful” tax bill crafted by President Trump and House Republicans. As I write, the bill has now proceeded to the Senate.
GUEST APPEARANCE: The sales game - Political parties try to sell their brand
You’re in the market for auto insurance. You see an Allstate ad on television. You are comforted by the safe hands that swaddle Allstate customers. You’re enticed by the promise of affordable premiums and prompt claim service. You’re sold. An hour later, amidst a flurry of ads promising relief from erectile dysfunction, bags under your eyes, and sleep apnea, you are hit with auto insurance pitches from Progressive and Liberty Mutual.
GUEST APPEARANCE: Killing the goat - and other obsessions
Vasily and Levin were peasant neighbors who, of course, did not get along (without friction there’s no story). To be more specific, Vasily had a burning envy of Levin’s good fortune. That envy had metastasized into a general hatred. Getting past Levin’s pretty wife, industrious children, and annual bumper crops, what really got Vasily’s goat was his neighbor’s like-named animal.
GUEST APPEARANCE: The right recipe - and more
Once upon a time (c’mon Nacca, you gotta be kidding!) there was a restaurant owner whose business was starving for customers. The owner gathered his staff together and announced that in order to survive, the restaurant needed to come up with a signature dish. Two enterprising workers put their heads together and wrote up an innovative recipe for “Stuffed Artichokes Kanchi.” They presented their work to the owner, jubilantly announcing, “We’ve saved the restaurant.” “Not so fast,” said the owner.
GUEST APPEARANCE: There’s no 'I' in 'government'
A prevailing mantra in the competitive sports realm is that there’s no “I” in “team.” Some modest rearrangement of letters does reveal the presence of a “me,” but I can’t imagine my having had the nerve (in locker room language “nerve” might be replaced by a specific male body part) to make that point to Coach Repko, my high school football coach.
GUEST APPEARANCE: Open letter to Kathy (aka Gov. Hochul)
Kathy, This is Joe. I received an email from you on February 6. First off, I’d like to thank you for reaching out. And I enjoyed the informality of your simply addressing the email to “Joe.” That said, I admit to having a few questions.
GUEST APPEARANCE: Let them eat equity
That the English language is so often non-phonetic has been a source of endless frustration for school children and adults alike. When trying to spell a word, we are usually well-advised to “sound it out.” This advice is invariably accompanied by the warning that there are exceptions. Exceptions such as the “ph” in the word “phonetic,” which sounds like the “f” in “fill,” which sounds like the “gh” in “enough” but not like the “gh” in “ghost.” The hole mess mite drive one krazy.
GUEST APPEARANCE: My New Year’s list goes awry
This is the time of year that beckons for a “list” column. I considered honoring the reader with a brief description of my 10 best golf shots of 2024. But even after consulting with my regular playing partners, I could come up with only four shots worthy of mention, two of which involved tee shots that ricocheted from tree limbs into the fairway. Next up was a list of my 10 best newspaper columns as rated by my family members. But they were all too busy.
GUEST APPEARANCE: Talking politics - Not! But talking governance? Yes!
The warning to tread carefully when discussing matters of religion and politics is familiar to most of us. While religion does remain a fatally divisive element in portions of the world, it’s been awhile since I’ve seen a Presbyterian and a Roman Catholic throwing fists on the golf course in a dispute over transubstantiation. They are more likely to become heated over the reluctance to concede a putt — either one foot long or three feet, depending on who’s telling the story — or over politics.
GUEST APPEARANCE: The last of the 'Code Talkers'
Truth often arrives in the simplest, most direct terms. Perhaps this is an odd admission coming from one who asks readers to indulge his sometimes wordy meandering through the thickets of property taxes and overbearing government. For simplicity, our 30th President, Calvin “Silent Cal” Coolidge, set a high bar. He was once, or so the story goes, accosted by a perhaps inebriated guest at a White House reception.
GUEST APPEARANCE: The war on poverty - An early battle
Truth be told, I was not born with a skepticism toward government spending. Family archives (“baby’s first words” and the like) indicate that “tak is” (taxes?) was no more than the fifth word out of my cherubic mouth. Perhaps the most formative period of my life was the year-plus that I spent as a member of Volunteers In Service To America. VISTA was a weapon in President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, declared in 1964. That ongoing war, of course, remains the longest in American history.
GUEST APPEARANCE: A 'Community Honor Roll'
You may not be interested in taxes, but taxes are interested in you. Just as television fare exists in order to serve as a platform for advertising, likewise many U.S citizens exist in order serve as platforms for federal, state, municipal, and school district tax exercises. At one level, the average citizen is clearly meant to remain oblivious as to the workings of the tax leviathan. The Treasury Department recently proposed a 603-page rule regarding business tax liability.
GUEST APPEARANCE: Big Al storms Saratoga
Another summer and another two-week sojourn to Saratoga Springs. A highlight this year was seeing sometime local trainer and all-the-time fellow Giants fan Jeremiah Engelhart win the Union Avenue Stakes with his 3-year-old filly Tricky Temper. Especially pleasurable was cashing a ticket or two on the race, which, despite all the blather about attending the races to have fun, is the true high for those of us who fancy ourselves as semi-skilled handicappers.
GUEST APPEARANCE: Walking into the woods
Talk about unusual ways to celebrate July 4. On that day in 1845, Henry David Thoreau journeyed into the woods near Concord, Mass. His purpose was not to secure a prime spot from which to view the annual fireworks display at Walden Pond or to mingle with visiting tourists. In fact, there were no fireworks to be seen or tourists to observe. Which is exactly why Thoreau went into the woods and built a small cabin in which to live. He wanted no distractions.
GUEST APPEARANCE: Are suckers born or made?
That profoundest of philosophers, circusman P.T. Barnum, is credited with originating the Theory of Recurring Opportunity: “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Succeeding practitioners of philosophy have since spent endless energies debating whether suckers are in truth born or made. I side with the latter school. On a recent summer evening, as I was enjoying the Mets’ thrashing of the Yankees, my pleasure was enhanced by the opportunity to pick up 28 easy dollars.
GUEST APPEARANCE: A soldier’s diary
I got lucky on D-Day. Elmer Nacca was a second-generation Italian immigrant. Like so many young men of the WWII era, he rushed off, at the age of 22, to enlist in the U.S. Army eager to save the world from Nazis, Fascists, and Communists. His only request was that he not be sent to Italy, where he might have to fight family relatives. It was a request that the Army was happy to accommodate. Welcome to France, Elmer. Welcome to Normandy. My father rarely spoke about that day.
GUEST APPEARANCE: Teaching the children well
Choosing among candidates vying for a position on the Canandaigua City School District board of education usually rises to the intensity level of deciding between a small or medium coffee with your Meal #1 at McDonald’s. Typically, every candidate promises to support the teachers and students of the district and to be a prudent custodian of the budget. Expressions of affirmation and good will abound. A few letters to the editor offer heartfelt endorsements to various individuals.
GUEST APPEARANCE: Threats to democracy - both local, not-so-local
Call me small minded. Or naïve. Or partisan. I lay claim to little bits of all three attributes. Any one of which may account for my railing against the local assaults on individual freedom while overlooking a larger threat to democracy. Not so much the Russian invasion of Ukraine, though, with good cause, President Biden has labeled it as such.
GUEST APPEARANCE: This is insane - Public school funding 'uphill both ways'
Some of this “when I was a kid” stuff is creative exaggeration. However, it is fact that my friends and I walked a Rochester city mile in all sorts of weather to P.S. 30 on Otis Street.
GUEST APPEARANCE: Trying to get untracked
“He has a one-track mind.” That’s an expression I used to hear frequently but less often these days. It has an earthiness lacking in more abstract terms such as “monomania” or “fixation.” A friend of mine hardly ever sends an email without mentioning the Italian burger offered up by the Green Front Restaurant in Canandaigua. It seems a bit accusatory to label him a monomaniac or to charge him with having a fixation. Saying that he has a one-track mind is a much friendlier tease.
GUEST APPEARANCE: 'STAR' gazing
In his novels, Charles Dickens creates a cast of characters whose eccentric behavior provokes both laughter and a knowing nod of the head. Richard Carstone, of “Bleak House,” has a typically Dickensian point of view with regard to personal finance. When Richard is repaid a ten pound loan, he considers himself ten pounds to the good.
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