Local Columnists

The holiday season starts so early nowadays. For at least two months we’ve been surrounded by lights, music, rich foods and pitches that shout, “This ...

I walked outside into the chill, crisp air and gazed upwards at the stars. This particular night was cloudless and moonless and from my vantage point ...

Because of the impasse over President Trump’s proposed border wall, the American people face the very real prospect of a government shutdown starting ...

When I watch TV it’s most often a football game, classic movie or “Law & Order” reruns — preferably older “Law & Order,” with characters like Logan, B...

What is compassion? George Vaillant, in his book, “Spiritual Evolution,” gives persuasive evidence that to be human is to be compassionate. Evolution,...

Cattaraugus and Allegany County school superintendents are all too familiar with dwindling enrollments and the shrinking tax base in our rural schools...

Picture these nightmare scenarios. You’re repairing a farm combine when you suffer a deep gash down your arm. Or maybe you slice your hand while simpl...

Have you seen the TV commercial where the kid opens up a gift and yells, “I love you, Santa!” in a very loud and excited voice? The narrator then focu...

“Kris, I have bad news,” Mark launched his 2012 post-Thanksgiving call to me abruptly. “Very bad. Do you remember when I visited you last March and I ...

Almost two years into Donald Trump's presidency, it is high time to take stock of the decisions that he has made. Trump has, by almost all accounts, p...

Class is not about money or status. It’s not fashion or power. It’s an attitude — with behavior that supports it. Unfortunately, not a lot of people c...

There’s two proposals before the state Senate that are getting many on the pro-gun side of the debate riled up. Now, before “everyone” gets outraged j...

’Tis the season to make a wish list — or several. For kids the sky’s the limit; for adults the focus more often centers on real, practical and tangibl...

I’d been invited to my sister’s house in Ischua for Thanksgiving. Since I’ve been home, my presence on this day has been dependent on weather and road...

“Diversity,” as defined by Webster, is “an inclusion of different types of people (races, genders); composed of different elements.” Over the decades ...

Lost in the hail of barbs and recriminations that the talking heads unleash on President Trump on a daily basis is the fact that he recently made a br...

Call it my Ralphie moment. You know the scene in “A Christmas Story” in which Ralphie and Randy are in Higbee’s department store to see Santa? The mot...

Several years ago, when stressed because I couldn’t do more for my mother, who was suffering from lung cancer and dementia, I blurted out to a friend,...