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When Things Look The Same

Life can sometimes get complex when things look the same. The other day, for example, my wife went to the lecture at Chautauqua and took a rollator...essentially a walker with four wheels that helps out when you have a limp or a bad leg. When she got home that day, she realized that the walker she brought home from Chautauqua was not the one she had taken to the lecture. Just think about it. There are a number of people at Chautauqua who use these devices—and, except for differences in color, they all look pretty much the same. Result—you can bring one home that may not be the ...

There’s Hope For Jamestown Yet

I’ve come back to visit my roots and am staying in a friend’s home on Lower Swede Hill. I grew up in Jamestown, graduated from JHS, and then went off to college. Like most of my friends, I settled elsewhere. I’ve lived in Tacoma Washington since 1974 and visited Jamestown only infrequently. During this visit, I was dismayed at the empty downtown, abandoned houses, and crumbling manufacturing facilities. Jamestown is no different from thousands of small, once-prosperous American cities, be they timber towns, mill towns, mining towns, or farm towns. At one time they were ...

State’s Hostility Toward Fossil Fuels Continues

CHAUTAUQUA—Suppose that you want to lay and connect a natural-gas line. According to press reports: Under longstanding New York law, a natural-gas utility may not charge you for this if the connection is within 100 feet of an existing natural-gas line. Yet now some protest that it’s wrong to make existing customers subsidize new customers. Hmmmm. This subsidy has continued for decades? Why the protest now? Moreover, government frequently subsidizes—or requires subsidies of—economic activity? Why protest this one? ♦♦♦ Somehow, just somehow, one suspects that ...

The Separation Of Church And State

It was drilled into me at an early age that part of being an American was the belief in the separation of Church and State. Of course, the foundation of that belief goes back to the earliest history of the country when immigrants came here from Europe to escape religious persecution. That principle was codified in the Constitution of the United States with the words: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof....” Having said that, it worries me that today some are beginning to equate religious affiliation with ...

It’s Too Early For NY To Build Nuclear

Ohfergawdsakes. First, PJ Wendel and now Kathy Hochul want to build a ‘mini’ nuclear power plant in Dunkirk or someplace else in New York. I have three questions concerning the wisdom of jumping on the Small Modular Reactor (SMR) bandwagon: 1. Where are there SMRs installed and operating in the US or the world? 2. What is the expected cost of the electricity from a nuclear plant? 3. What will you do with the highly radioactive spent fuel? The answer to question 1 is nowhere. There are no operating SMRs anywhere in the US, and it will likely be 10 years or longer before any ...

A Favorite Patriotic Song

“Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord; and the people whom He hath chosen for His own inheritance.” Psalm 33:12 One of my favorite patriotic songs is “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.” Years ago, when I was in grade school, we had a program of all patriotic songs ranging through the wars at that time. We loved to sing those old songs. My neighbor and girlfriend got to be the Statue of Liberty. Since I was the narrator, I got to stand by her in front of the American flag as we sang. I think we also read the poem by Emma Lazarus that is on the Statue of Liberty. I remember ...