Local Columnists

Five years ago Casey Jones and Lila Ervay started the City of Olean Neighborhood Preservation Committee (CONPC) with a primary focus on litter control...

World War II began for my dad, John McElfresh, in the lobby of The First National Bank a couple of days after Pearl Harbor. He was waiting to take the...

As we head into Mother’s Day weekend, I recently became aware that today marks the end of National Teacher Appreciation Week and that we are in the mi...

The sound of its horn in the cold darkness signaled the approach of the train. A minute or two later, the huge engine rumbled into view, and soon the ...

T his past week I noticed a news item reporting that another coyote had been tranquilized and captured in New York City — in Queens — a few days after...

The 64th annual National Day of Prayer is set for Thursday this year. The theme for 2015 is “Lord, Hear Our Cry,” emphasizing the need for individuals...

Can we conduct a text interview? Um, no. One of my greatest journalism pet peeves is when someone asks me if I can interview him or her via text. Each...

Several weeks ago my wife and I were blessed to have a couple who were former seminary classmates come to visit us. They are now missionaries in Mexic...

No one should have to survive the trauma of sexual abuse alone. In the Southern Tier, sexual assault survivors can turn to the Sexual Assault Forensic...

A lot has happened in three short years. Less than three years, actually. In August 2012, I covered my first Olean school board meeting, filling a vac...

I’ve once again started a home search, and I thought to myself, what better place to look than in the area I report on, Allegany County? Living there ...

It was eerie outside Shannon Pepper’s charred apartment. I had been in there before. I remembered how it was decorated — a little dark for my taste. I...

E SPN’s Mike Golic summed things up pretty well while discussing the sad case of the Little League all-star team from Chicago having its U.S. title st...

It would’ve been fascinating to be inside Brian Williams’ head the night he went on air before millions of NBC Nightly News viewers to issue a half-he...

M y wife related a story she saw the other day about a man, in his later 50s, with a killer 28-mile, round-trip commute from his Detroit home to his j...

L et’s face it, village elections are often a snoozer. The same individuals typically seek office term after term, and maybe six dozen people in the v...

A good friend with a dry sense of humor asked Wednesday, “So, how do you feel about terrorists attacking the French version of The Onion?” He was, of ...

W hile some people in the audience during Monday’s Allegany County Board of Legislators annual reorganization meeting appeared jaw-dropped as legislat...