Breaking News

Commentary

After loan, create city advisory board

I have been watching Dunkirk’s fiscal struggles with great interest. As a former mayor of the city, current businessperson who has significantly invested in Dunkirk and a current candidate for Chautauqua County clerk I am passionate about finding a solution. There certainly are reasons to be against the $13.7 million loan and they have been pointed out. I also understand why Mayor Kate Wdowiasz wants to take on that loan and the challenge of restoring fiscal responsibility to Dunkirk. Neither solution is perfect. I for one did not want to see a control board introduced in ...

Government spending engine going full throttle

U.S. taxpayers are now $36.5 trillion in debt, meaning every citizen, newborn or elderly, owes creditors (big banks controlled by those evil billionaires) $110,000. Death is the only escape, but when you die, you pass this burden to your children and grandchildren. The debt with which you are willing to burden your children to pay for your freebies and unicorns today says much about your morality, as does your desire to make your fellow citizens subsidize your desires through government sponsored extortion. We add billions of dollars in new debt every day because some people feel ...

Threats to U.S. science can hurt us all

In 2012 I packed up my possessions and left Jamestown to pursue a career and life in scientific research. My destination was Arlington, Texas, halfway across the country, where I had enrolled in the graduate program in biology at the University of Texas, Arlington. Aside from some short vacations, I had spent almost my entire life in Chautauqua County, as a student at Falconer Central School and Jamestown Community College, or in New York State more broadly, finishing my bachelor’s degree from SUNY in Syracuse. At the time I was so excited to live somewhere new, meet new people, and ...

Life is great. Cheese makes it better.

Truer words were never spoken. That quote by author Avery Aames sums up my lifelong love affair with cheese. After I stopped eating school cafeteria lunches, good old American cheese became a thing of my past. In college, I met a few French students who knew the cheese world. It was all new to me, but oh, what a discovery that new world was. Gruyere, blue, and brie? Sacre bleu! Where had you been all my life? When it was first explained to me that blue cheese was essentially mold – but in wedge shape – I gulped a bit. Then I smelled it. I still was not so sure. But the first bite ...

Politics is sour milk for upstate farms

Once again that huge, elitist tail that is New York City is wagging the sad emaciated body that is upstate New York. You may have read in a recent OBSERVER article that Democratic Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal who represents the Upper West Side of Manhattan and part of Hell’s Kitchen has teamed up with Democratic State Sen. Jabari Brisport who represents the 25th Senate District in Brooklyn to push legislation that would prevent the Department of Environmental Conservation from issuing new permits for Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations or CAFOs that have 700 or more cows. New ...

The importance of Esprit De Corps

The importance of “esprit de corps” hit me recently as I was watching the workers on the sewer construction job now being built north of Stow on the west side of the lake. These French words refer to team spirit, to people respecting each other and working together for a common purpose. The construction workers on this job work as a team without a lot of shouting or being “bossed” around. They just do their jobs and expect those around them to do the same. It is obvious that they respect each other and like their jobs. One may be on a backhoe, another laying out the route ...