Resourcefulness appears to be one of the common threads that run through the tapestry of life. I remember well the frigid, blustery and wind driven snows during the winters of my youth back in the Depression days of the mid 1930s. Our family farm home was located in the Boston Hills of ...

Editor’s note: This is the first of two parts. There have been thousands of self-help books dealing with shame. In our field of chemical dependency, this is a key thinking or feeling pattern that can hold clients back in recovery. The simple definition of guilt or shame is “guilt is I ...

The State Senate Republicans are suffering from a serious brain drain. The recent announcements that State Sens. Joe Robach and Richard Funke will join half a dozen other Republicans in retirement are a challenge to the powers of the upstate delegation. However, new faces that reflect the ...

On Friday, the state Office of Mental Health Behavioral Health Services Advisory Council decided to keep the Irving facility open for the time being. While the facility’s census has remained high despite misinformation in the community regarding a closure date, the Brooks-TLC ...

We have gotten into a rut at restaurants. At one, we order breakfast, no matter the time of day; and we always order the same things. At another, we have our favorite things. When visiting certain franchises, it doesn’t matter; we have particular dishes at each place. Hubby and I recently ...

Where to start on the theatrical display presented by those involved in leadership at Brooks-TLC and Kaleida? Administration, in their attempt to close a much needed facility with essential services, has created quite a problem. It started with the closure of the nursing home and the situation ...

Shhhh. Please don’t tell them. It’s a secret. You know as well as I what happens when you start thinking of a replacement. Perfectly dependable day after day, the minute it suspects, it goes haywire. My home was built in 1996. (How strange it feels now to write a date that doesn’t ...

Several news stories caught my attention in the last few weeks. First, recently much has been made of the fact that 100 years ago last Friday, Jan. 17 Prohibition became the law of the land. This followed the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1918 followed in ...

Every political entity, whether on a national or local level, has its movers and shakers as well as its detractors and destroyers — our city on the shores of Lake Erie is no different. As I have watched much of what is happening in Washington this past week, I have found many similarities ...

You no doubt remember the old line attributed to Ben Franklin when he was asked what kind of government the Constitutional Convention had created: “A republic, if you can keep it!” Well, I’ve noticed an interesting thing in recent years: It’s got bipartisan appeal. Last fall, for ...

The wind turbines are getting out of hand. Now the state of New York wants those turbines in Lake Erie to be called a wind turbine farm. Even some of the people who were in favor of these turbines are having second thoughts because of the constant noise and the danger it presents to anyone ...

I came home from playing another exciting five-hour session of Dungeons & Dragons at my brother Gareth’s house this past Friday, Jan. 10, to discover that one of the most influential rock’n’ roll drummers of all time had passed away at the age of 67. To me, Neil Peart was more than a ...

A Google search for “paying school lunch debt” reveals a long list of recent news stories about good Samaritans paying off the school lunch debt of children whose families cannot afford it. A Fredonia man paid off $2,000 in school lunch debt in his area, helping 140 families. A Rigby, ...

I am a Democrat, so it might seem strange for me to be concerned about the future of the Republican Party in Albany ... but such is the case. Though the Republican Party is dominant here and in many upstate areas — as a statewide political force, it is in decline. Today, the Republican ...

Union membership has declined by 50 percent from 1983 to 2016; in 1983 it was 20.1 percent, in 2016 only 10.7 percent. Membership in 2016 was 14.6 million. In 1983 there were 17.7 million union workers. This decline reflects Republican ideology favoring ownership and owner’s influences. ...

Too late to learn new things? Never! I love words. I keep a special spiral notebook of words new to me. Once, of course, I’ve looked up their meaning so both can be recorded together. Many words appear once and then disappear. The New Yorker seemed to enjoy making up (well, I ...

I noticed an unrecognizable number displayed on my telephone. Along with countless others, I received robo calls sporadically. Was this another or real? I said hello and a voice inquired if I was Marshall Greenstein. Who’s this please, I asked. “My name is Karl. Are you Marshall ...

There are some interesting issues related to women in high tech industries and academia. Institutional leaders don’t want to discuss them. When a diversity program at Google solicited feedback, one of the people who attended it, James Damore, wrote a memo entitled “Google’s ...

Al Gore really started something about 25 years ago when he used his public loudspeaker to scare us all into global warming. As I recall, we were all going to be under water by now. I’ve always been a doubter, because in our history the world has always had temperature ups and downs, due ...

This time of the year, particularly — December, January, and February — we remember with special fondness our friends, and “auld acquaintance” is not forgotten. Friendships are a treasure of unsurpassed value. It has been said that “A friend in need is a friend indeed.” This was an ...