Memorial Day is a time of remembering. The holiday began with a desire to remember and honor all our soldiers who have died. Flags of our nation are flown at half staff until noon. Veteran organizations and many families take time this day decorating their graves with ornaments and flags and ...
Editor’s note: This is the first of two articles. In this article of REBT, I will be dealing with lifetraps as they relate to chemical dependency. A lifetrap is a pattern that starts in childhood and reverberates throughout life. It began with something that was done to us by our families ...
A photograph of a mallard male has sat on my desk waiting for my thoughts and observations ... apparently for a few years. The iridescence on his head is obvious in the picture, what I felt made him so spectacularly special. I have tried many times since to get more pictures but the birds ...
The second session with Anna and Pedro was telling. She was surprised that he’d come to the first session. He knew that their relationship was in trouble. Her patience was waning. Her major complaint referenced a lack of communication. She talked freely, he was quiet. That Pedro opened up ...
The OBSERVER’s view, “Tradition allows for struggles” (May 16) asserts: “In this day and age, we don’t need neighborhood schools.” The argument presented suggests that Dunkirk’s four elementary schools should be reduced to one, following practice in Chautauqua County central ...
People my age tend to judge the younger generations based on what we recollect as a universal set of values from “back-in-the-day.” Of course there is always the risk of romanticizing the past. Memories can be selective without our knowing. Time is a prism through which images of the ...
Memorial Day will soon be here, and Armed Forces Day has just passed. Many of us recall the words of John F. Kennedy when he said “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to ...
The Federal Energy Regulation Commission (FERC) determines your electric bill, sets taxes on gasoline, regulates hydroelectric dams and the water behind them, and governs the building and operation of natural gas, oil lines, and high-voltage electric transmission lines. The agency was created ...
This is in reference to the new pier improvements, I would like to introduce some ideas from my point of view. What is the city thinking? I feel as a city resident, fisherman and boat owner for the last 35 years, I can offer some insight into what is currently taking place. First, we ...
I often watch or listen to the Village Board meetings on TV or YouTube as was the case of the May 6 meeting. I then read with interest Mayor Athanasia Landis’ comments in the OBSERVER (May 8). While I was watching the meeting, I wondered why the mayor would make such comments about a ...
Roy’s younger years were rife with chaos and change. As an orphan in depression-era New York City, he bounced around from foster home to foster home until, at the age of 12, he was reclaimed by his birth father, George Sebouhian and his large Armenian family. For much of his life up to that ...
It stands as the most basic tenet of Christian faith: the 10 Commandments. And over the centuries the Commandments have been misinterpreted, misconstrued, modified, rationalized, declared antiquated or just plain ignored. Yet they still stand, even though they are attacked as an ...
The recent article in the OBSERVER about the May 1970 Kent State shooting and the impact that it had on the Fredonia State campus brought back memories for me of that time nearly half a century ago. When the Kent State shooting occurred, I was days from the conclusion of my year in Vietnam. ...
I really thought he was pulling my leg. For all his endearing qualities (and I’ll happily attest there are many), I couldn’t count an outrageous sense of humor as being among them. But he told me he worked for Quaker Oats shooting rice out of a gun to make the puffed rice cereal we ...
This is to publicly thank and commend attorney Sam Drayo Jr. for his many years of dedication to the Village of Fredonia, and for his continued service in that capacity. A bit of history is in order. The following anecdote comes from the The Fredonia Censor, a weekly newspaper published from ...
Most universities have a general education program. This program requires that college students take classes in a smorgasbord of subjects outside of their major and supporting fields. They often must take classes in English, foreign language, gym, hard sciences, history, math, social sciences, ...
We’ve written verse, Some good, some worse, Of singing men and frogs. We’ve written ’bout the angel choirs In many monologues. Now that it’s spring, We thought we’d sing, A song of bright new promise, Of fertile rains, and growing pains, With summer ’most upon us. As ...
I continue to think that the Washington, D.C., Democrats are so poor, constantly on a hate campaign against the President of the United States and constantly against any ideas that the president has. Even if it makes sense, they don’t seem to care about this country. The only thing they ...
A New York state senator claims that opposition to the Green Light Bill, legislation providing a driver’s license to undocumented aliens, suffers from “an education problem.” As a former state Assemblyman, I agree. The legislators supporting this bill failed to educate the public on its ...
“Maker of memories, molder of dreams” — the opening line of a poem I wrote for my mother long, long ago. My mother has been gone for almost seven years now. It seems like last week. It seems like forever. My mother wasn’t perfect, but who is? I learned a lot of life’s lessons from ...