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Stress Levels Remain High For Downtowns

Downtowns are nowhere near the hub of activity they were some four decades ago. Longtimers here have lamented that fact for many years. Brooklyn Square, a community gathering place for shopping and food filled with energy, was one of those casualties. In the 1970s, the federally supported Urban Renewal program took down some 150 buildings, displaced 125 active businesses and about 100 families that were the heart of the city. Its unique and treasured spirit was forever lost. In Dunkirk, residents remain so angry they could spit when they reflect on a similar scene. Neighborhoods in ...

Write Your Obit? If You Don’t, They Will

I have definite views about obituaries. I have company. Some journalists, funeral directors and history buffs love to read obituaries of total strangers. We get more than information. Obituaries provide snapshots of bygone times: Graduations from long-closed schools, jobs at factories and downtown stores that no longer exist, etc. But most Americans have enough to do with getting through each day instead of gleaning obituaries of people they never wanted/needed to meet. Obituaries have changed in the six decades or so that I have been an avid reader. That is not surprising. America ...

Key Needed To Open Up Lock

We met Bernie, a married man who reports a history of mental and emotional abuse from his wife. We’ve not met her, and, therefore, only have Bernie’s information. His wife, I understand only conceptually requested he seek therapy. Due to the immediacy of Bernie’s plight, treatment must focus on mental and emotional survival. Bernie’s early presentation of physical rigidity called for a delay in gathering personal history, customarily a source of inquiry. He was locked in physically from an accumulative effect of rule-out domestic violence. Ordinarily, we find cases of domestic ...

Cavalier Is Not The Same As Incorrect

Please imagine the sustained uproar — especially from those opposing President Trump, and particularly those in the press — if the president had said to black people not voting for him, “You ain’t black.” Now cut the word black, and substitute brown, red, yellow, or white. Please imagine the sustained uproar then. Now substitute any religion or subset of a religion. How about Jewish? Muslim? Buddhist? Hindu? Greek Orthodox? Catholic? Baptist? Presbyterian? Lutheran? How about women? men? Or pick any ethnicity. The justifiable reaction may include these: ¯ Mr. ...

The Essential Worker

On the eve of my junior year in high school, my mother returned to the job she’d held before she became pregnant with me, at age 19, and married my father, who was also 19. At age 36, Janey Schultz was once again a nurse’s aide at the public hospital in our small town of Ashtabula, Ohio. Today, we would call her an essential worker. Back then, she had set off an earthquake in our working-class family. Mom had spent the previous 16 years raising four kids, and it was a mark of pride for my father, a maintenance mechanic at the local power plant, that he could support our ...

After Events Now What?

No decent person can support George Floyd’s mistreatment, or the mistreatment of anyone else, at the hands of police officers with the sworn duty to uphold the law. The Minneapolis authorities moved quickly, and Derek Chauvin was fired from the Minneapolis police department, placed under arrest and charged with second-degree murder and other charges. The three officers who were with him were also fired and charged two counts of aiding and abetting — one for second-degree murder and one for second-degree manslaughter. Peaceful protest in any cause is as American as apple pie, but ...