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A Lot Happening On Chautauqua Lake

If you live on the west side of Chautauqua Lake, you know that the season at Chautauqua Institution has arrived because the traffic on Route 394 has doubled. It is not just people traveling to Chautauqua for its programs, it is people from Chautauqua heading for Lakewood to shop and buy groceries. You just have to get used to the traffic. It is best to slow down when you get on the road, and to expect that it may take you a minute or two longer to get to your destination. This is especially the case as there are now stoplight restrictions related to construction work on the ...

Nuclear Chickens Come Home To Roost

In 2019, with great fanfare, then NY Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), which Democrats claimed would usher in a new economic era in which New York State would lead the world in Net Zero (carbon free) electricity generation, and create a thriving new economy. A mere 6 years later, the bloom is off that particular rose. Excelsior denied. Cuomo also signed legislation to eliminate our existing Nuclear plants, which were clean, safe, low-cost producers of Net Zero power. Why would Cuomo want to take Nuclear power off-line and ...

How Times Have Changed!

I got a message on Facebook that said – and I am paraphrasing here- If you grew up in the era where you went out each morning and did not come home until dark you grew up in the best of times. I think that is true. When I think back to the way it was when I grew up, I am in awe of the things we did. When I got up, I had chores to do first. When they were done, I was allowed to do whatever struck my fancy. I had many neighborhood friends – boys and girls. We all played games together. In the evening when the weather got cooler, we often played kick the can. Someone raided their ...

A 10% National Sales Tax

In 2025, the United States has essentially imposed, for the first time, a 10% national sales tax on the wholesale value of everything imported into our country. Even agricultural products that we do not produce in the United States are now faced with a minimum 10% tariff, which ultimately is paid by each of us when we buy that agricultural product at the grocery store. That 10% tariff, therefore, winds up being similar to a 10% national sales tax at wholesale. The minimum 10% tariff is paid to the Federal Government’s Treasury. It is, therefore, essentially the same as a 10% ...

When Things Look The Same

Life can sometimes get complex when things look the same. The other day, for example, my wife went to the lecture at Chautauqua and took a rollator...essentially a walker with four wheels that helps out when you have a limp or a bad leg. When she got home that day, she realized that the walker she brought home from Chautauqua was not the one she had taken to the lecture. Just think about it. There are a number of people at Chautauqua who use these devices—and, except for differences in color, they all look pretty much the same. Result—you can bring one home that may not be the ...

There’s Hope For Jamestown Yet

I’ve come back to visit my roots and am staying in a friend’s home on Lower Swede Hill. I grew up in Jamestown, graduated from JHS, and then went off to college. Like most of my friends, I settled elsewhere. I’ve lived in Tacoma Washington since 1974 and visited Jamestown only infrequently. During this visit, I was dismayed at the empty downtown, abandoned houses, and crumbling manufacturing facilities. Jamestown is no different from thousands of small, once-prosperous American cities, be they timber towns, mill towns, mining towns, or farm towns. At one time they were ...