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Edibles with a shelf life of 25 years

It began during another cleanout day in the garage. We expect to be moving within the year and are trying to purge everything we don’t use. It’s a nightmare. The dictionary defines purge: “to get rid of whatever is impure or undesirable; to cleanse; to purify.” Well, anything stored ...

Major consequences in this election

The Democratic Party is not the same party it used to be. The Socialists are taking over your party. You have Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Kamala Harris, Hakeem Jeffries, Hasan Piker, and Abdul-El-Sayed who have taken over the moderate Democrats. They are all socialists-communists. They can’t beat us on the battlefield, so they decided to bring our country down from within. Look what’s happened to California with Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Gavin Newsom in control. Both Barack Obama and Joe Biden said Iran can never have a nuclear weapon, but never did ...

The continuing importance of public education

Recently, a friend gave me a book, “Sketches of the History of Chautauque County” written by Emory F. Warren and published in 1846. It traces the earliest history of our county including the establishment of school districts. Each school constituted a district. In 1835 the New York state Legislature passed a law to provide funding for books in school libraries around the state. “School District Libraries have thus become objects of profit and a just pride to all,” wrote Mr. Warren. “The choicest productions in literature and science are placed in the hands of every person who ...

We need a new generation of community leaders

From an early age, my father taught me the importance of giving back. As a postman in our city for nearly 30 years, he saw the needs of our community that often went unnoticed—from seniors living in isolation to families waiting for housing support. He taught my brother and I that community isn’t something we simply live in; it’s something we help build. One of my earliest memories is accompanying my dad alongside an older gentleman he had befriended while delivering mail to Heritage Village. The man had no family in the area, no real connections outside of the group home he ...

Real world gets lost in internet imagery

“We interrupt this program to make an announcement from Jersey City. Jersey City has just fallen.” This was the dire message broadcast to the world on the night before Halloween in 1938. The Martians had invaded earth. It was really a line from the script of Orson Welles’ radio version of H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds,” and perhaps the first real fake news in media history. The broadcast, with its state-of-the-art sound effects and compelling voice actors, was so convincing that folks across the country fled from their homes in belief. People in cities ran to the hills. ...

Taking a road trip back in recalling the game of Slug Bug

Who remembers playing Slug Bug during long car rides or school bus field trips as kids? Some people called the game Punch Bug. As a fan of alliteration and rhyme, as most youngsters still are, I always referred to the contest as Slug Bug. Pretty simple game. The first person to see a Volkswagen Bug calls out Slug Bug and has free reign to punch the person sitting next to them in the vehicle. This silly game passed the time during long car and bus rides much like singing 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall or the more genteel The Wheels on Bus did. Unless a fight broke out, parents and ...