Water is one of the things we depend on. We simply expect it to be there. We rarely think about what it takes to deliver safe and abundant quantities of that precious liquid to our taps, not even when paying our water bill, until it’s not safe to use. The same is true about other ...

Most Americans like to travel. It is part of our DNA. We have a big country, and it has always been accepted that we can cross state lines without customs barriers or border controls. This has changed with COVID-19. Now, you have to be careful if you leave the state and travel to a state ...

I will never forget the evening of November 5, 2019. It was Election Night and the returns were in. I was going to be the next State Senator for the 57th District. I was overwhelmingly grateful to the voters of our region for trusting me to represent them in Albany and I immediately began ...

If one thing has become clear during this election year it is that the center in U.S. politics has all but disappeared. It’s been said that politics is a blood sport but never before has the rabid and blind passion of the sports fanatic manifested itself so acutely in the political ...

President Trump rightly calls appointing Supreme Court justices one of a president’s more important duties. Activist justices lean toward basing decisions on their own policy preferences, while originalist justices lean toward basing decisions on the meaning of law as written. The ...

The election is closing in, and voters will have to make choices, not only for the presidency of the United States, but also for various senators, representatives, and other officials at the national, state, and local levels. It would be nice if there were clearly good guys and bad guys, but ...

Conservatives have every reason to love Ronald Reagan. He cut taxes hugely on high incomes. Once a union leader, he became a ruthless union-buster. He warred endlessly against welfare. But the darling of the Right made one sharp Left. His landmark Tax Reform Act of 1986 called for equal taxes ...

It used to be that “voting time” meant a day certain, the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Now, with early voting and voting by mail—that time has started already. I have no problem with making voting easier. The average voter turn-out in America in my lifetime has ...

The only way anything has ever survived this world was because it was cared for and nurtured. That goes for babies and the Honda sitting in your driveway. It also goes for the sauce you made last Sunday and the flowers you planted in your window box last summer. And so, too, does it apply to ...

ERIE, Pa. - Here and there this campaign season one sees an unusual lawn sign. It appears to be not from a candidate’s campaign but from persons acting independently. It urges voting for a particular presidential candidate. The candidate is President Trump. Yet none of these are ...

I might have enjoyed making my living as a long-haul big-rig truck driver instead of as a journalist — except for the long haul, big-rig 18-wheel tractor-trailer. I relearned that last week during a drive to and from South Dakota, 16 hours out and 18 hours back. Younger daughter Natalie ...

There is a good country/western song I was listening to on the radio the other day sung by Billy Dean about a couple that has split up but who still want to remain friends. It goes: “There ain’t no good guy, there ain’t no bad guy. There’s only you and me and we just ...

For a number of years I have been involved with and advising various people and organizations in several countries in Africa and other parts of the world. The primary reason is because I was using Facebook and posting my writing and other items for a number of years. The technology allowed me ...

Let’s pick up where we left off last week. Joe Biden, the Democrats’ 2020 presidential candidate, rightly says he’d be “the most progressive” — read: liberal — president in American history. That understates the point in at least two ways. First, he’d likely be even more ...

I have come full circle about Halloween. As a little kid, I hated it. I was scared of going out after dark, wearing a “costume” of one of Dad’s too-large jackets plus a cheap dime-store mask. As a young adult, I enjoyed Halloween. I liked getting the kids dressed up, and accompanying ...

It is amazing to me to contemplate that there are seven and a half billion people in the world, and yet none of them are identical. Even identical twins, though they may share genetic material, cannot live in same body, experience with the same eyes, ears, and other senses, or have the same ...

Last week, in this space, I criticized the first Presidential debate as being neither a “debate” nor “Presidential.” This week was a bit different. I thought that Vice President Mike Pence and Senator Kamala Harris had a generally civil, though partisan, discussion about the ...

There is just something about a Sunday that just does it for me. It’s the comfortable way it greets you with a warm embrace and a hot cup of coffee. The way the air feels on a Sunday is just so much more inviting than a droll Tuesday or finicky Thursday. There’s church to be had, big ...

What will we do if and when a COVID vaccine becomes available? I do not know whether I will accept such a vaccine. But a brush with pseudo-influenza last month was a sobering reminder that flu and COVID are both killers. I did not actually “have the flu” last month. I did have a ...

I must admit that I don’t stay up late anymore watching TV. I made an exception to that rule last Tuesday night and watched all 90 minutes of the Presidential debate. It was a sad spectacle, really. It was neither a debate nor Presidential. It was an attack dog event put on by an ...