Over the last several months the Warren County School District Administration has been trying to sell the residents of the Western and Eastern attendance areas on the necessity to close Youngsville and Sheffield High Schools pinpointing a Qualified Zone Academy Bonds loan taken out on the ...
Recently, as a guest performer at the Sportsmen’s Tavern in Buffalo, I was introduced to the audience as a songwriter and a middle school English teacher. The welcoming response was mostly about the teaching part, as one patron shouted “Oh no!” and another, “God Bless you!” Middle school teaching is not my first rodeo. I spent many years as a nearly-broke musician on the margins of educational institutions in order to make ends meet. From subbing in high schools to adjunct teaching in numerous colleges here and in Colorado, I racked up a pretty unimpressive resume of low ...
I do not know about you, but I remember when I got my first job vividly. The day after I turned sixteen, I went downtown to apply for a job for Christmas. Mind you, my birthday is in September, but I did not want to miss the opportunity. I went to Sidey’s department store. I went to the office and asked for an application. This was a family-owned store with all members of the family in residence there at one time or another. The girl at the desk handed me an application to be filled out. I went off to the side and filled it out. I was then asked to wait while a member of the family ...
Editor’s note: This column was written at Thanksgiving 2006. Thanksgiving weekend, for me, is the first gift of the holiday season. Now that the arrival of a grandchild has changed the family Christmas venue to Boston, Thanksgiving is at our house. It’s a much easier deal. I find myself, however, not wanting to let go of all of our Christmas traditions – or the feelings that go with them. While my daughter, Alix, and her family are at the beginning stages of creating their own traditions, we are keeping a condensed version here. One just can’t throw out forty years of ...
I grew up in the 1950s, north of gritty Youngstown, Ohio, close enough to see the nighttime red sky from the open hearth steel making furnaces. Many of my classmates’ parents spoke broken English. The ‘50s were boom years. America was the sole industrial nation standing after World War II. Jobs were plentiful. Our governments invested heavily in our infrastructure. Americans had a pent up demand and cash for consumer goods. It was a wonderfully, simple time in which to live BUT not for all. For women, not totally, for blacks, definitely not and the LGBTQ weren’t visible.. I ...
Next week we celebrate Thanksgiving. At this point I have no plans but it will all come together. How Thanksgiving has changed down through the years. We used to go to Grandma Swanson’s but when she no longer could do it, we went to my sister-in-law’s. I always worked right up through Wednesday, so I had little time to prepare. One year we had a Peterson reunion. That year I had Dick’s cousin, his wife, and two children at my house. I made pies. Of course, I used lard for the crust. Laurie wondered how I got it so flaky. I hesitated to tell her it was the lard. I even made ...
