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Fredonia deserves a voice at meetings

At the last village of Fredonia Board of Trustees worship session there was an item to review concerning citizens addressing the Village Board at their public meetings. Nothing was decided at the worship session, but it appears a motion may be made at the next Village Board meeting on Monday to suspend or prohibit Fredonia residents from addressing the Village Board at its public meetings. Allowing residents to speak before their elected representative at Village Board meetings has been a longtime practice in Fredonia, as well as all other municipalities in Chautauqua County and ...

State won’t go forward if it’s stuck in reverse

I recently ran into my old friend Gary and have since been discussing everything in the world with him. We remember growing up in Chautauqua County, and it was a great place to be. We had family farms and industry and businesses. Dunkirk and Jamestown were little economic power houses. Sixty years ago, we still had a good education system. Churches were alive, and life centered around family and friends. Kids played sandlot football and survived without adult supervision. We went hunting and fishing and went parking with our favorite squeeze. It was a great place to grow up. ...

Sunday suppers with friends – senior version

Sunday has always been my favorite night for dining with friends. This preference goes way back to an early learning experience. During my college years, I worked summers in a fancy – but consistently busy - Cape Cod restaurant. The Sunday night patrons were always my favorite. The crowds ...

Keeping a scorecard to find sports on TV

Last week, amidst all the news coming out of Iran and the Persian Gulf, and the latest Graham Platner scandal, an event occurred in Washington that might have held the attention of sports fans across the nation. It was a hearing held by the House Judiciary Committee called to examine whether ...

Words matter in coverage of the news

Headlines are often the first thing readers see and, in some cases, the only thing they will read. They make the reader focus on a specific part of the story, allowing the reader to make a quick and immediate judgment. Most of the time, journalists create something that is perfect for online use, to get on top of the Google search page, or that quickly sums the story up in a short, attention-grabbing way. Usually, there is less focus on wording in the headline than in the story itself, but headline word choices matter more than people may think, and they can have a lasting impact on ...

Living on the Great Lakes

Growing up around here you get so used to living around the Great Lakes that you don’t appreciate them. Recently, in reading a book about the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, it hit me again about how significant this watershed is. The Great Lakes make up 80% of the freshwater in North America and over 20% of all the freshwater in the world. When Alexis De Tocqueville visited the United States in 1831, he described the Great Lakes as one of the wonders of the world—and he only saw the smallest of the lakes, Lake Erie. I remember, as a kid, our parents taking us to go ...