The Official Newspaper for Foster County
The Official Newspaper for Foster County
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One of the great benefits of streaming TV is that I’m able to watch old network shows that I enjoyed while growing up in the 1970s. One of my favorite shows was “The Waltons.” When I was 11 years old, that prime-time show was a central part of my weekly ritual. Every Thursday, after dinner, my father and I boarded our Plymouth Fury station wagon and headed to the Del Farm grocery store located in a small suburban plaza one mile from our home. I pushed the cart as I helped my father work throu...
All anybody needs to know about a free economy is alive and well thanks to social-media flea markets, such as Facebook Marketplace. While procrastinating every morning, I review this site looking at cars, lakefront homes and a wide variety of highly entertaining items people are trying to hock. Facebook Marketplace offers a hands-on lesson in how free-market economics really works. You see, commerce and trading are what humans do. They are the basis of wealth creation and a thriving...
Sen. Bernie Sanders has sponsored a bill to mandate paid vacations for all employees. Like so many of Bernie’s proposals, it sounds good until you get into the nitty gritty. Look, it’s true, as Bernie argues, that the United States is the only advanced economy that does not require employers to provide paid vacation time. It’s also true, reports CNN, that “not only do American workers get less vacation time than workers in other industrialized countries, but they also opt to take fewer days of...
Bowling didn’t make the cut again. Neither will baseball and softball, ballroom dancing, pole dancing and a host of other sports be featured in the 2024 Summer Olympics games in Paris. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is picky about the sports it chooses. A sport must be widely practiced globally, draw a high level of interest among the media and public and also not pose too many cost and scheduling obstacles, such as the need to build large baseball stadiums. But in a perfect world, wo...
As our country goes to pot, I find myself more focused on personal matters, such as this hopeful item I read on MSN.com: Researchers have identified a molecule called osteopontin, which is a potential game-changer for people who are losing their hair. That’s good news for fellows like me, whose hair has been slowly receding for years. For most of human history, you see, the roles of men and women were clearly defined. Since basic survival was so difficult, the division of labor was very clear a...
Thank God Willis Haviland Carrier invented air conditioning — for the most part. Before air conditioning, the heat drove us outside and brought us together. Friends sought the shade of trees or a refreshing dip in a lake or river. On the hottest nights, whole families brought their blankets and pillows to riverbanks, where it was cool. In the evening, neighbors sat on their large front porches, enjoying a cool breeze as they sipped lemonade and told stories. Even in the 1970s, when I was a k...
In 1974, when I was 11, I flushed an apple core down the toilet. You see, my father had remodeled our basement into a family room with a powder room. Always looking to save a buck — he had six kids to feed on one income — he bought the cheapest toilet he could find. It never did work right, and since we couldn’t afford a plumber, my father spent much of his spare time unclogging it. Armed with this knowledge, then, it’s remarkable I did what I did. One Sunday morning, after chomping on a large...
It was the first time in my childhood I had an excuse for coming home late for dinner, but nobody — not even the cops — would listen. In the summer of 1972, when I was 10, Tommy Gillen and I built a dam in the creek on the other side of the Horning Road railroad tunnel. We’d been building up the dam for days to create our own three-foot pool in which we chased after crayfish and minnows — our own cool spot to while away the hot summer afternoons. We’d just completed adding another row of blocks...
Ida Ayres never served a day in the armed forces, but at 95, she knows plenty about the sacrifices of war. “Through six wars, I have been the daughter, sister, wife, mother and grandmother of family members who served, or are serving, their country,” Ida told me. During World War I, Ida’s father, Sam DiRenna, fought for the Italian army. DiRenna, who was born in a small town near Naples, was captured by the Germans and spent 13 months in a concentration camp. The German’s branded his forehea...
My mother would have been considered eccentric had she been financially wealthy. She would do almost anything - and wear almost any silly costume - to bring joy into the lives of others, much to the embarrassment of her six children. But she is wealthy in the ways that really matter, and her greatest wealth is teaching the art of laughter. She knew the benefits of laughter long before scientific studies confirmed them. When she wasn't laughing herself, she was teaching us how to. Most nights...
“It wasn’t my fault the car in front of me hit me. I glanced at my text message for only a second when our bumpers collided.” “How could the car in front of you hit you?” “The idiot stopped to let a deer cross the street — and dented my front bumper with his rear bumper. Yet the cops wrote me up for texting while driving!” “It’s because of people like you that April has become National Distracted Driving Awareness Month! Safety advocates are urging drivers like you to avoid texting or watching...
I forgot what it was like to experience a good old common cold. Prior to covid, you see, the cold-getting experience went like this: I’d wake with a stuffy nose and scratchy throat and my only thought was to curse the gods for visiting a new virus cocktail on me that was going to make me cranky for nine days. I remember at first denying that a cold virus was feasting on me, then, as the hacking got bad, I moved on to the anger stage before finally accepting my fate that the miserable common cold...
Here’s a great New Year’s resolution: get a pet. As we wrap up a very inflationary 2023, pet shelters across the country are at maximum capacity and they don’t have room to house the pets people are turning in. ABC News reports that animals entering shelters began to climb in 2021. During the covid pandemic, you see, many people adopted pets, but as they began to go back to the workplace, some decided they no longer wanted to care for a pet, so they turned them back in. The past year was signi...
Here’s an unpleasant holiday statistic: Average Americans are giving significantly less to their favorite charities this year than they did just four or five years ago. Average Americans have long been among the most generous people on Earth. But this year, thanks to an economy disrupted by COVID, soaring interest rates and three years of high inflation, many are unable to give. Americans are hurting in their pocketbooks. This past year credit-card debt jumped faster than ever before in history,...
With every purchase you make — at coffee shops, fast food restaurants, chain stores and more – you are presented with a digital payment screen that asks you to leave a tip. On one hand you feel guilted into leaving a tip, because the person who just rang up your purchase is staring directly at you. On the other hand, you wonder how in the world did we get to a place in which workers in so many different roles – even plumbers and mechanics – are suddenly expecting extra money just for doing their...
Well, that didn’t take as long as expected. In case you missed it, our federal government is now estimated to pay more than $1 trillion a year to service just the interest on our national debt — about $200 billion more than we spend on our military or Medicare. Why are we suddenly paying so much? Because the cost to service our debt has doubled in the past 19 months as annual federal deficits balloon and high interest rates make borrowing more expensive. The origin of this “sudden” problem...
Hopefully, the rugged beard I’ve been sporting will motivate at least one of my fellow men to take better care of his health this November. Every November, you see, two charitable organizations, Movember and No-Shave November, raise funds by encouraging men to not cut or shave their facial hair. Both organizations have made November an enjoyable month for we men to share photos of our thickening mustaches, beards and other long hair. The idea is to get men thinking and talking about mental h...
When I read a news piece about the passing of longtime California senator Dianne Feinstein a few weeks ago, some of the comments left at the bottom of the online article made me sad. Feinstein suffered a very public health decline before she passed. Anyone with the slightest sense of empathy would think “there but for the grace of God go I” — as every one of us could suffer a similar decline before our time finally comes. Empathy is in short supply these days, however. I don’t recall the exact w...
President Biden is being dogged by a unique White House problem. About a week ago, Biden’s German Shepherd, Commander, bit a secret service officer — Commander’s 11th secret-service-officer biting since he moved to the White House in December of 2021. Commander must have been following the paw prints of Major, Biden’s previous German Shepherd, whose biting appetite included secret service agents, technicians and at least one National Park employee. At one point, Major bit an unlucky governm...
It was a family event for the ages. Last weekend, my family traveled to Gettysburg to attend my nephew’s wedding. I drove my mother down Friday so she could participate in the rehearsal. We had a wonderful drive talking about a variety of things, mostly stories about my father, who we lost last year. After the rehearsal, we attended a welcome party, where we had great fun catching up with my cousins and other family members. The room was filled with intense joy. Every person there was e...
Houses are getting smaller again — which is going to make many Americans happier. Americans faced with high mortgage rates and a shortage of affordable homes for sale are opting for new, smaller homes that do not have dining rooms, living rooms, spare bedrooms and even bathtubs, reports the Wall Street Journal. Builders are building smaller homes partly to give cost-constrained buyers a more affordable option. But it’s mostly because it’s the only way home builders can turn a reasonable profit,...
Declining attention spans have reached epidemic levels. That’s what Adam Brown, co-director of the Center for Attention, Learning and Memory at St. Bonaventure University in New York, tells Time. That’s certainly the case with me. As I struggled to write the first three paragraphs of this column, I searched autotrader.com for a new car I don’t need or want; searched Facebook Marketplace for lakefront vacation homes I can’t afford; and visited Amazon.com to order more expensive treats for my...
As a heat wave hits America from coast to coast, it’s hot outside — but cool inside, thanks to the triumph of air conditioning. For most of human history, there was little people could do to avoid heat. During the day, it drove people outside of their homes to enjoy the shade of a tree or to take a refreshing dip in a lake or river. At night, folks in cities slept outside on their porches, roofs and even fire escapes. When I was a kid in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, few homes had air con...
I dream of recreating some of the epic bike hikes I enjoyed as a kid back in the 1970s. My used Murray five-speed spyder-bike with the high handlebars only cost 25 bucks, but it was one of the coolest bikes of the age. Man, I loved that bike. During the long summer days, I rode with a group of kids. We’d ride for two or three hours in the county park, then make our way to McDonald’s for an orange drink and apple pie, which I paid for by borrowing a handful of coins out of my dad’s penny jar. It...
People are getting so used to increasing crime rates in cities across America, an etiquette is evolving between some muggers and their victims. I learned about this while I walked with my friend and his wife from a Washington, D.C., pub to their home six blocks from the Hill. “When you get mugged, there are certain rules you must follow,” said my friend’s wife, walking at a fast gait. “WHEN I get mugged?” I said, trying to keep up with her. “She’s right,” chimed in my friend. “Muggers are of...
