Hi

Hier sind, fuer Englischleser, Ausschnitte aus einem Artikel ueber ein College Dorf in Upstate New York, mit etwas zum Thema barfuss in USA, und auch, wenn man so will, zum Thema barfuss fuer alte Leute.

Praise, Ire for Tycoon's Town Renovation

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By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: October 13, 2007

Filed at 1:44 p.m. ET

AURORA, N.Y. (AP) -- On the eastern shores of Cayuga Lake lies a tiny village of enchanting beauty and charm. Early settlers called it the village of constant dawn and it evokes that feeling today -- historic, lakeside mansions dusted in a kind of timeless glow, a red-brick inn with gleaming white porches, ivy-clad buildings rising from the stately lawns of Wells College.

Even the village market, where exquisitely perched baskets overflow with ripe tomatoes and eggplants, seems almost too good to be true.

For some who live here, it is.

''How polished we are now, how shiny,'' says village historian Sheila Edmunds. ''But at what cost?''

The village of 700, listed on the National Registrar of Historic Places, was anything but shiny six years ago. Paint peeled off old mansions, the inn struggled to stay open and the college struggled with enrollments.

And then a wealthy benefactress swept in, bringing money and promises and a stirring vision of the future. She bought some buildings and tore others down. She moved houses and businesses and trees. She buried power lines. She spent $2 million on a lavish refurbishing of college interiors.

She rattled the village to its core.

''It wasn't restoration,'' says music teacher Karen Hindenlang of the changes, which tore apart old friendships and rankled neighborly goodwill. ''It was a descent to madness.''

Rowland promised not to seek -- or take -- any return on her investment. But she took no questions either, so as villagers wandered home that evening, they were left to ponder.

Was this woman's vision the right one for them?

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In July 2005 a giant octopus, mounted on a pickup truck, floated down Main Street during the annual Aurorafest parade, each tentacle stamped with the name of a building that Rowland's foundation had acquired.

The octopus' creator, Tudy Kenyon, revels in her role as good-natured village eccentric, bouncing around in her bright blue Jeep with a ram's skull on front and anti-Rowland stickers on the back. Small and wiry with bobbed white hair and a husky voice, the 77-year-old came to Aurora from Pittsburgh in 1950s to go to Wells. She loved the place so much she never left.

At 6 p.m., Kenyon heads, barefoot, into the Fargo bar. She spends the next hour and a half sipping ginger ale, hailing the regulars, lamenting the tavern of the past.
The place crackles with conviviality but regulars say its heart has been lost. The old beer signs are gone along with the old bartenders, the deer's head has been moved to the back room, and the beloved smoky dinginess is a thing of the past. There's a pretty new porch outside and a spiffed up menu inside, and children now eat with their parents in the corner booth.

''The Fargo was the one place that was ours and she had to take that too,'' says Stanley Zabriskie, 56, another barefoot regular and descendant of one of the oldest families in town. (His brother is a village trustee and his sister-in-law, the clothing store owner, is one of Rowland's biggest cheerleaders).

Freundliche Gruesse Otto