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Many still wonder why Youngsville, not Eisenhower

One has to wonder what is the driving force behind the Warren County School District wanting to close a school and shift other students. Well, like many things in life, the answer to this is money. The district has made the claim that it is in a bad financial situation. How did the district get here? When looking at this, it is hard to believe that an entity with a $91 million budget would have this issue, but when looking deeper, it is easy to see how this happened. How bad is this situation? Why Youngsville and not Eisenhower? The district at one point stated it will go broke ...

View from Hickory Heights: Buyer beware!

Today I share a personal experience with you. We were trying to refinish my kitchen floor. It was done about ten years ago, but needed a new coat of finish. My son came up one Wednesday and gave it a light sanding. He planned to apply a coat of finish on Saturday. We knew what we were doing so we had an expected outcome in mind. It looked beautiful when it was done. My son left for home, but left his equipment since he planned a second coat. A couple hours into the drying process I looked at my floor. It said it needed four hours of drying time. What I saw was not what I expected. ...

The years pass but the impressions still remain

The 1964 death of Kitty Genovese profoundly affected my life. I never met the young woman, but her name has lived in my heart for 60 years. So, when CBS Sunday Morning mentioned her name last weekend, it got my attention. Big time. I sat straight up in my recliner. The show airs a short history piece each week. This past Sunday, the segment highlighted the February 16th anniversary of 911, our emergency number. Much of the urgency toward creating a centralized crisis line was fueled by the high-profile rape and murder of Genovese in New York City. In March of 1964, the New York ...

Making whine from sour grapes

We in Chautauqua County know all about grapes and wine, and for more than 150 years we supplied the world. But now we have a new product from individuals in CHQ who have perfected the art of Making Whine from Sour Grapes. The Sour Grapes were grown in the soil of the November election, where the Left’s “sharp-as-tacks” candidate got beat by a convicted felon, simply because the felon’s policies didn’t insult working Americans like policies of the Left. Hope now exists to eliminate the Marxo-Fascist parasite we have endured for 12 of the last 16 years. Whine-makers ...

View from Hickory Heights: Fact of longer lives

In one of my old cookbooks, I found this quote about the length of a human life. It is dated 1898. “The average of human life is about 33 years. One quarter die before the age of six, one-half die before reaching 17. To every 1,000 persons only one reaches 100 years of life. To every 100 only six reach the age of 65 and not more than one in five hundred live to eighty years of age.” This got me thinking about Social Security and the impact our age has to do with it. When the Social Security Act was passed in 1935 those age expectancy rates had not changed much. FDR signed it into ...

Rounding Third: An evening with Jonathan Winters

The fog hung over the airport, in fact all of San Diego Bay was socked in. Visibility for takeoff or landing was zero. It was 1967, and I was commuting to my stewardess job in Los Angeles from San Diego. I needed to arrive at American Airlines LAX operations before 0700 to work the first morning flight to New York City. That foggy evening, I was a ticketed passenger despite wearing my stewardess uniform. As I stood at the end of the check-in line, I heard laughter at the counter ahead. Then I saw him. Jonathon Winters, the world-class comedian, had just checked in, received his ...