When I looked up the meaning of “surreal,” it seemed to me like a good description of our current economy — unreal, strange, dreamlike. Here we are with double digit unemployment, car sales down, the hotel, hospitality and travel industries on their back, airlines with few ...

For years, health care systems across the United States, including UPMC, have been pushing for telemedicine integration, which connects patients with medical specialists remotely through a secure internet connection. While state legislation and regulations have been slow to catch up with ...

Finally, there’s a bit of good news in the fight against COVID-19. The Food and Drug Administration issued an “emergency use authorization” for remdesivir, an anti-viral drug that could help coronavirus patients recover faster. The medicine isn’t a silver bullet, but it’s the ...

A decade ago, more than 50 percent of the electricity consumed in the United States came from coal-fired generating plants. But by 2016, coal’s No. 1 status had been replaced by natural gas. At the same time, the deployment of renewable energy sources has grown dramatically in recent ...

I took an unintentional hiatus from writing my column for a while. Life got a little hectic due to many things, including the pandemic we’ve all been living through, so I apologize for not writing sooner. I hope this finds you all safe and sound, dear readers. Over the past few months, ...

I remember walking into grocery stores back in April, seeing long gray lines of empty shelves in the paper goods section, and muttering, “Those stupid hoarders! “The world is going to hell in a hand basket and they scarf up a six-months supply of toilet paper when, in a true emergency, we ...

There was a recent editorial in our newspaper about the importance of reopening the schools. It touched on a couple of points that I thought should be repeated. First, this is probably the most important issue we will face during the coronavirus pandemic; and secondly, even if you don’t ...

Michelle Malkin’s rant, “ Mask Mandates Are A Public Health Menace” (Sunday, July 18-19 ) presents a new low for The Post-Journal’s opinion page. Not only is this piece by Malkin factually wrong, but it is also dangerous in that it tries to persuade people to go against all health ...

Imagine you are attending your favorite high school sporting event, football. You’re sitting in the stands with your family, ready for the game to begin, snacks in hand, excitement in the air. The teams start to enter and your excitement quickly turns to hurt as you see the picture of an ...

Justice is a theme in every religious and moral tradition, a part of the human experience, and an ideal in every society, but what is justice? The Bible gives examples, but they are similar to other traditions: do not spread false reports, do not help a guilty person by being a malicious ...

Regional Editor John D’Agostino on July 10 labeled the Chautauqua County Democratic Committee as being in shambles and having no message, voice or face. We do have a voice and face in 2020 and his name is Richard Morrisroe, our candidate for Chautauqua County executive. As the opinion ...

Being the baseball fanatic I am, I have many great memories of annual Sunday Yankees/Indians doubleheaders Dad took brother Lou and me to as kids. There we got to see some of our favorite childhood Cleveland players we cheered for in the 1960s. A ride that takes just a little over two hours ...

A fellow who wrangles cattle out West is a “cowboy.” A geezer who chases chickens hereabouts could be a “chicken boy.” That would be me. We keep up to 30 chickens for eggs, meat and enjoyment. At this time of year, our free-range chickens zoom in on my wife’s blueberry bushes. They ...

Segment two offers a glimpse into some reported history of Maxwell’s, Max for short, work history. A dairy farmer turned P.A., Max’s work schedule was lengthy and challenging. I wondered if the years had taken a bit out of his endurance. I’m reminded of a radio interview I heard years ...

It’s census time, which means reapportionment time is coming. Reapportionment occurs each decade and involves redrawing legislative-district lines, including for Congress. Although new congressional-district lines will take effect for the 2022 elections, it’s time to look ahead to our ...

The political divide is typically envisioned as left versus right, with the Democrats on the left and the far left being socialism, and Republicans on the right, with the far right being fascism. While there are obvious and significant inadequacies with that paradigm, if we accept that ...

I like seeing clever solutions to worldly problems, and I think the Chautauqua Harbor Hotel nailed this one. Before the hotel opened, but when the structure was intact, local seagulls thought they’d found a new place to party. The roof at the hotel was inundated with birds and they were ...

My niece posted pictures she took while she was picking cherries with her dad. That evoked strong memories for me. We often went near Forestville to pick cherries. When we moved to Hickory Heights there were a lot of cherry trees growing here. They did not produce much, but I usually got ...

What on earth? It takes a lot to get me to budge on a hot summer’s day when I’m finally able to sit and sip — my time to relax. This was particularly worth the effort but, even from a foot away, I still had no idea what I was seeing. My first quick guess was some kind of bird ...

The above title comes from a George Gershwin and DuBose Heyward 1934 aria, used in the 1935 opera, Porgy and Bess. (This summer, the livin’ might not be as easy as past ones.) As we enter the real part of summer (though COVID-19 actually created a spring/summer vacation, but kids have ...