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It’s the season for snow, not rain

Let’s pick up where we left off 148 weeks ago. Not even you, faithful reader of this column, will recall that we were well into March 2023. By turning on the snow machine then, Mother Nature appeared to be trying to make up for a lack of snow during the preceding winter. “No,” we told Mother Nature that day. Winter sports enthusiasts of all ages need snow in December, January, and February. But in March, it was too late to make up for what hadn’t fallen from the sky when we needed it. ≤ ≤ ≤ Fast forward to this winter. Children are looking forward to building snow ...

A small frame for life’s big picture

Our family has cut way back on Christmas presents in recent years. We all still enjoy filling some desires from the grandchildrens’ wishlists. Honestly, they are the only ones who really need anything. But I have a problem, and it is probably a hangup going back to my childhood. I want everyone to have a package or two under the tree. A few years ago, we set a modest limit, so the gift shouldn’t be big, fancy, or expensive. It just has to be wrapped and tagged “to and from” so everyone gets to feel special. We are such a small family that giving each other a small gift is ...

Court is wild card in tariff talk decisions

On April 2, the Trump administration citing the  International Emergency Economic Powers Act declared a national emergency on tariffs. At the time the administration announced reciprocal tariffs on imports from several nations. Reciprocal tariffs work this way; essentially, if Country A taxes Country B’s cars at 10%, Country B would impose a 10% tariff on Country A’s cars in return, creating a “tit-for-tat” system.  Targeted nations included China, Canada, Mexico. Japan, European Union, Vietnam, India, South Korea and Taiwan, which had all imposed much higher tariffs on ...

Finding truth with Fredonia water

Recent claims that Fredonia’s December Boil Water Order and the water main breaks are somehow the fault of the Save Our Reservoir group and the pending environmental lawsuit set for this month, would be laughable, if the situation were not so serious. The most recent boil order was reportedly the result of a piece of failed equipment and the failure of plant management to have spare parts on hand to address predictable equipment failure. This occurred after Trustee Paul Wandel promised months ago to investigate the Standard Operating Procedures of the plant in order to prevent future ...

For Old Times’ Sake

An old friend of mine, pretty much of the same vintage, sent me an email suggesting that the words of Auld Lang Syne (roughly translated as meaning “for old times’ sake”) might be an appropriate topic for a column at New Year’s. I will give it a try. Most of the research I have done attributes the song to the Scottish poet, Robert Burns in 1788. There were other similar songs written prior to that, but he made it famous. The other person who made it famous was Guy Lombardo and his band, the Royal Canadians, who started playing it on New Year’s Eve in this country in ...

There’s still time for resolutions

We can thank the ancient Babylonians for our tradition of New Year’s resolutions. Going back to c.2000 B.C., they celebrated the new year during a 12-day festival called Akitu which began the farming season. The gala included resolving to pay debts and returning borrowed farm equipment; obviously, theirs was an agrarian society. Over the centuries, the occasion evolved into today’s guilt trips. Most of us resolve to do something that we felt guilty of doing or didn’t do but should have done in the recent past. And we go public, making resolutions to people who might hold us to ...