Democrat and Chronicle from Rochester, New York • Page 9

State Local news DemocratandChronicle.com SECTION DEATHS 2B 6B WEATHER TOWNS, VILLACES 3B TUESDAY, MAY 8, 2001 DEMOCRAT AND CHRONICLE DAILY DIGEST County redisricting plans will face scrutiny tonight Oil mm sJ If you go The public hearing on the proposed redistricting plan begins at 6:15 p.m. today in the fourth-floor chambers of the Monroe County Legislature, 39 W. Main St. If you want to speak, contact the clerk of the legislature's office at 428-5350. POD that has tempered Democratic criticism of the plan, although the Democratic minority is expected to introduce its own plan and try to amend the Republican one.

Democrats have complained about the way the Republican plan splits up towns and communities. One area of concern has been the GOP's plan to cut up the Charlotte neighborhood of the city so that area would end up in three legislative districts. BY STAFF WRITER JAMES GOODMAN Tonight, Monroe County lawmakers are expected to consider a plan to redraw the boundaries of their legislative districts. But final approval could be delayed until next week if the plan is amended. State law requires a seven-day wait before a significant amendment to such legislation can be finalized.

Legislature President Dennis Pelletier, R-Odgen, expects the Republican majority to offer an amend- U.S. CENSUS MAPPING OUR FUTURE ment to its redistricting plan but would not disclose any specifics of the amendment. The public will have an opportunity tonight to comment on the Republican re-districting plan. The public hearing, at 6:15 p.m., will be conducted at the beginning of the meeting of the full legislature. The Republican plan, which must take into account population shifts Lack of donors spurs some to lobby for national database.

BRADD0CK BAY MARSH CATCHES FIRE found in the 2000 census, avoids putting any two incumbents in the same district for the 29 seats of the County Legislature. And BY STAFF WRITER MICHAEL CAPUTO Sen. Charles Schumer lobbied at a Rochester hospital yesterday to combat a growing shortage of donated organs by instituting a computerized national registry of possible donors. While Schumer said his bill has bipartisan congressional support, the Bush administration has not committed to a national registry but wants to study the idea. The Schumer measure also bypasses the issue of replacing the regional ap-' proach of distributing organs with a national system, something that would aid New Yorkers in need of organ transplants.

The concept has been so controversial, however, that it has stifled any improvement of the system, Schumer said. "We're not mixing it up in that fight. We want to get this part done first," he said during a news conference yesterday at Rochester General Hospital with those who work at organ donation procurement and patients who are in need of life-saving transplants. Behind the Schumer proposal is the growing waiting list for those who need kidney, liver, heart and lung transplants. About 76,000 patients nationally are waiting for organs, more than triple the number in 1990.

In New York, 7,500 people need organ donations, which is also triple the waiting list in 1991. Currently there is a regional system for linking patients who need organ transplants with harvested kidneys, livers, hearts and ti- i 1 Charles Schumer was in town to lobby for a national organ registry. lungs. It is run by the United Network for Organ Sharing, a private, nonprofit agency that works under contract with the federal government. Patients within one of 11 regions get first crack at available organs in that region.

New York state is a region unto itself under this system. Schumer said his bill would create a federal database administered by the Department of Health and Human Services that would make it easier for people to become donors by allowing them to register online. The bill would also authorize $15 million for a five-year campaign to convince people to register. But last month Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said a registry would be costly and of questionable effectiveness. Thompson is spending his time lobbying for national donor cards that would give transplant coordinators a stronger case for proceeding with donations.

Families of potential donors have had success challenging the current methods of designating donor status, which include driver's licenses and unofficial cards. Schumer said he's DONATIONS, PAGE 4B I Lake Shore Fire Department Capt. Mike Brinkman targets hot spots at Braddock Bay State Wildlife Management Area. Hamlin, Hilton, North Greece of cathedral detailed David Gantt believes 49 sailors should be pardoned. Sailor pardons draw emotion ALBANY -A resolution calling for pardons for 49 African-American sailors imprisoned for refusing to load munitions onto ships during World War II brought a rare display of emotion on the Assembly floor last week.

Assemblyman David Gantt, D-Rochester, got emotional speaking in favor of the measure, which asks New York's congressional representatives to seek pardons from President Bush. "I did get a little choked up because I think this is an injustice that needs to be corrected," Gantt said. The 49 sailors refused to load munitions at Port Chicago in California after an explosion on July 17, 1944, killed 320 sailors, including 202 African-Americans. Black sailors were given the duty of loading bombs onto ships because the military considered the work too dangerous for white sailors. The resolution, by Assemblyman Charles Nesbitt, R-Albion, Orleans County, unanimously passed the Assembly.

Sen. George Maziarz, R-North Tonawanda, Niagara County, is sponsoring the resolution in that house. No word yet on when the Senate might vote on the measure. THINGS TO DO Tuesday for Tots: featuring Mrs. McPuppet.

9:30 a.m. today. Strong Museum, 1 Manhattan Square. $4 children; $3 and $2 museum members. 263-2700, ext.

314. Reading a Landscape: 7:30 tonight. Memorial Art Gallery Auditorium, 500 University Ave. Free with gallery admission. Call to arrange for sign interpreter.

473-7720. Avon Symphony: works by Bach, Dvorak and Clebanoff. 7 tonight. Auditorium, Avon Middle School. 226-8212.

The Train (1964): 8 tonight. Dryden Theatre, George Eastman House, 900 East Ave. $4 members and students. 271-4090. WHAT'S INSIDE SUBURBS: For a Buckman Heights class, a temporary new school was an adventure, 3B.

COMING UP File photo The Horses on Parade exhibit will kick off today, and the fiberglass, life-size horses will be placed on the streets through Thursday. Later this week, we'll look at the works of art and the funds they are expected to raise. a NEWS TIPS: Call Metro Editor Bob Finnerty at: 258-2252 Outside Monroe County at: (800) 767-7539 ft 1 W' DISTRICTS, PAGE 4B i JAY CAPERS staff photographer responded to the fire. decided upon yet, said Barbara Kelley, co-chair of a committee overseeing the planned renovations. The committee plans to make a preliminary recommendation by the beginning of 2002.

Construction could begin in 2003. The changes will most likely include adding a baptismal font and reducing the separation of the congregation from the altar area, bringing the cathedral within the current liturgical model, said Joan Workmaster, diocesan director of liturgy. Two more education sessions on church architecture are scheduled for 7 p.m. today and tomorrow at Nazareth Academy, 1001 Lake Ave. learned men can be as nurturing, loving and caring as women can be.

"Where we are right now, yes, a majority of the country knows women can do what men do, but they don't know that men can do what women can," she said. "We keep going on raising our daughters more like our sons, but fewer have the courage to raise our sons more like we raise our daughters until then it will seem unnatural for them (our sons) to have the full circle of human emotions." In addition to discussing her life and struggle for equality, Steinem gave a scathing critique of the past presidential election. "Bush is not the president, he is the resident," she said, citing Al Gore's popular vote win and Florida election irregularities to resounding applause from many. "Our system is ancient and inefficient at best and is very, very easy to corrupt." lesson on church architecture. About 200 people showed up for the first of three evenings of lectures by the Rev.

Richard Vosko, a liturgical design consultant who has become both an expert in planning cathedral renovations and a lightning rod of criticism. Several area Catholics held signs in protest outside the high school along Lake Avenue, and a few tried to interrupt Vosko. Nonetheless, Vosko explained that the Second Vatican Council in 1963 encourages active lay participation in the liturgy akin to how the early Christians commemorated Christ's Last Supper. And because church architecture has 1V A 4 tmm I lectures at Auditorium and Barnard fire crews also gone hand-in-glove with liturgical practice, Sacred Heart Cathedral, which was originally built in 1911, is overdue for changes. "It was built for a different liturgy, by a different people, in a different time," said Vosko, who has worked on more than 200 church buildings in the United States and Canada.

A group of people who identify themselves as part of the Sacred Heart Preservation Committee argue that Vosko misrepresents church law and plans renovations that destroy the character of cathedrals. "It's all New Age. It's all nonsense, psychobabble," said Steve Jost of Irondequoit. No changes have been her own realization that the way things were wasn't the way they always had to be, and credited her father with teaching her that men also can be wonderful parents. "I was raised by a father who loved me, loved my company and listened to me," she said.

"From him I Needs BY STAFF WRITER JAY TOKASZ The breaking of bread among friends in early Christian homes gave way to rites in massive basilicas styled after imperial courts and cathedrals that stretched to the sky. In Rochester, the Roman Catholic diocese has its own version, Sacred Heart Cathedral. Now, the diocese, like others before it, wants to fashion a cathedral renovation embracing liturgical changes that harken back to those early Christians. Yesterday at Nazareth Academy, a controversial Albany priest who has been hired to help in the process gave a 90-minute history Steinem BY STAFF WRITER MEAGHAN M. McDERMOTT "Who says Rochester is a conservative town?" asked feminist icon Gloria Steinem last night as she took the stage of the Auditorium Center to a thunder of applause and whistles.

Steinem's lecture was the fourth in the Unique Lives Experiences series. The 67-year-old feminist is still passionate about securing equal rights for women, but that passion is tempered with realistic expectations. "It's important to realize that having spent at least a century to gain a legal identity having been chattel before that it's not suprising we may spend a century gaining legal and social equality," she told the crowd. "We're only 30 years in here, and I don't know how to break it to you we've got 70 to go." During her hourlong lecture, Steinem used personal anecdotes to illustrate DANESE KENON staff photographer Students at School 5 giggle as a firefighter pretends to squirt them with water yesterday. School 5 students remember a friend SHAWN DOWD staff photographer Feminist, writer and activist Gloria Steinem at her lecture last night at the Auditorium Center, part of the Unique Lives Experiences program.

BY STAFF WRITER PATRICK FLANIGAN Students at School 5 con tinued the tradition of keeping alive the memory of classmate Deja Graham yesterday when they do nated four bags of stuffed animals to the Rochester Fire Department. It was the school's second gift to the department since the March 2000 house fire on Garson Avenue that took the life of Deja, a 10-year-old fourth-grader. "Now we have another act of kindness from this school," said Fire Chief Floyd Madison, telling about 25 students that School 5 was establishing itself as the Fire Department's "top school." "You set a shining example of what folks can do," he said. The department gives stuffed animals to children affected by fires or emergency medical situations, said Lt. Dan McBride.

Fourth-grade teacher Lorraine Williams organized the campaign as part of the United Way's Day of Caring. Writh a $50 gift from DiPaolo's Bakery a neighbor of the North Plymouth Avenue school students raised $165. Many also donated their own stuffed animals. Last year, students donated smoke detectors. "When kids help other people, it makes them feel good about themselves," Williams said.

larger issues, such as how social pressure turned her from a free-spirited little girl to a conformist young woman adhering to traditional gender roles. "I went from assuming I could be a writer, a horse trainer, to assuming I would have to marry it," she said. She briefly touched on.