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Emerging From A Lockdown

I’ve just emerged from a lockdown that lasted several years. Not the kind we all discovered when the pandemic hit in 2020, but a far more extended one caused by my wife’s terminal illness. We were able to keep Sue at home where she could be, and was, in the care of angels: Hospice of Northwest Ohio professionals, and our own family, the people who knew what was happening and how best to care for her. She wanted it that way, and so did I. It wasn’t easy, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way. After she passed away on June 17, I discovered an entire new community of ...

Chautauqua County Is Home To A Highway With A View

The other day, early in the morning, as I drove east on I-86, a spectacular vista appeared as I neared Exit 12. The clouds were low, in the distance fog had settled over the Conewango Valley, and yet I could still see the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains off in the distance down past Clarks Corners. It made me realize again just how beautiful the drive is along I-86, the Southern Tier Expressway. When it comes to this road, I go way back to the days when it was still a “pipe-dream.” There was a Route 17 Association which for years had been lobbying Albany for a four-lane ...

Business Support Needed To Bring Back Air Service

Sadly, it has been four years since Jamestown was served by a commercial passenger air carrier. Before that time, based on more considerations than we could describe and/or explain here, we had moved on to regular use of the Buffalo airport. We have become comfortable doing so, even during winter weather alerts when we leave the evening before and stay at a motel nearby. But comfort in doing something that just seems somehow to not fit always leaves us uneasy, and it leaves us longing for the uncountable number of times when all we had to do was get dressed, drive 10 minutes up airport ...

Liking Small In A Big World

It has been the bane of my life to have lived through a world in which everything small became big. The grocery stores, the farms, the department stores, medical practices, pharmacies…everything, it seems, that I know, has become big. When I was a kid, there used to be some small grocery stores on the southside of Jamestown. I could ride my bike from the farm down to the store on Brown Street in less than ten minutes. Bob Bergman also had his Red & White grocery on the corner of Barker and Broadhead Streets. My Mom would send my sister there on her bike. Bob would have the ...

Local DMV Doesn’t Set Policy

It has been reported lately in the news that some people are upset with the regulations that require one to submit documentation to the DMV to prove that the name on a birth certificate was legally changed to the name being used today, in order to obtain a Real ID compliant driver’s license. In many cases, this is a marriage certificate that would prove a legal name change at the time of marriage. People married multiple times would need to produce multiple marriage certificates as well as divorce decrees. It has been argued that this is discrimination against women as men are ...

Keep The Focus On Going Forward

Debate about illegalities in the 2020 presidential election in particular – and American elections in general – needs to keep the focus. Some in government or in the press have repeatedly and publicly missed the focus. The House Republican Conference in the U.S. House of Representatives has just removed as its chair a person who has – repeatedly and publicly – not only missed the focus but also taken the debate off track. The now-former chair’s reason – whatever it may be – for these mistakes is irrelevant to the need for a new chair. Let’s get this back in ...