Thumbs up to three Sherman women who took it upon themselves to put together Sherman Day 2017. Chrissie Paul, Michelle Swabik, Vicki Rater and Cathy Crane put the event together after the retirement of the former village clerk who had organized the festival for several years. Too often, festivals and events are looked upon as someone else’s job. It’s good to see there are still civic-minded people in our midst who will take on the work and responsibility. “It’s about people connecting with people,” Rater said. “If you have the urge to see somebody in Sherman, that’s the day to do it. Chances are, you are going to run into someone you have not seen in a long while.”

Thumbs down to those who refuse to stop using their cell phones while driving. While New York has banned the use of handheld devices for drivers since 2009, a dozen people have been killed in the state and 2,784 people injured in cellphone crashes between 2011-15, according to the Institute for Traffic Safety Management and Research. We hope the state doesn’t compound the problem by using a device known as a textalyzer, a device that allows police to detect if a cellphone was used moments before a crash. Gov. Andrew Cuomo has asked his Traffic Safety Committee to evaluate pros and cons of the technology. While we still believe use of a textalyzer is an undue invasion of privacy, it wouldn’t even be under discussion if people would just put their phones down while they’re driving.

It’s easy to speak of the ills of social media, but thumbs up to Facebook and the quick work of local 9-1-1 dispatchers for saving a Steamburg woman’s life recently. On the morning of July 27, around 10 a.m., Steve McAninch, a senior dispatcher with more than 30 years of service to the Chautauqua County Sheriff’s Office, answered one of the more unusual calls of his career, one in which a strong Irish accent warned him of a local woman in trouble. “I asked, at one point, how do I know this isn’t a scam?” McAninch said. “The (caller) replied, ‘you’re just going to have to trust us.'” The voice belonged to a member of Facebook Security out of Facebook’s European Headquarters in Dublin, Ireland. Apparently, someone reported to them that a 24-year-old woman had posted threats of harming herself on her Facebook page. It took two hours of work to pinpoint the woman’s location, but police found her in time to save her life.