Here comes a busy week for all of us

November 21, 2021

It’s going to be a busy week. Airports and highways are expected to be incredibly busy with holiday travelers. A few area high school football teams will be busy prepping for their biggest game of the season, so far. Area bakeries this week will be busy making pies that people like me would rather purchase than bake for Thanksgiving dessert. Pizza shops, of course, will be doing crazy amounts of business Wednesday night for the cooks taking the night off from their kitchens before getting started on the bird Thursday morning. Then, moms and some dads, (but not in my ...

Journalists’ work can be risky business

November 14, 2021

The attorney for U.S. journalist Danny Fenster said his client wept Friday after being sentenced to the maximum penalty in a courtroom in military-ruled Myanmar in southeast Asia. It’s no wonder. We’ve all seen movies depicting harsh living conditions and labor camps in foreign prisons. Now Fenster, 37, will serve 11 years of hard labor, the most severe sentence of seven journalists convicted since the the military ousted the elected government earlier this year. Fenster’s offenses? It was never clear exactly what Fenster was alleged to have done, and it appeared that ...

You can’t always blame the media

November 7, 2021

Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, in recent weeks, claimed that the Democrats’ “Build Back Better” bill was overwhelmingly popular with Americans, and then simultaneously also claimed most Americans had no idea what’s in it. Upset that the package stalled, he questioned how polling could be so wrong. Really? Has presidential candidate Hillary Clinton taught him nothing? Sanders pointed out how challenging it is to ask people to have faith in government when they have little understanding of what their government is trying to do. He went on to indicate that ...

We’ll keep shooting for the perfect paper

October 31, 2021

Ohio debuted its new license plate this month. It depicted the Wright Brothers’ first airplane pulling a banner that reads “Birthplace of Aviation” draped across the horizon. It would have been beautiful, except that instead of the odd-shaped original aircraft pulling the banner, it was pushing it. The person who designed the plate attached the banner to the wrong end of the plane. Everyone had a good laugh over the mistake. The Associated Press moved a story with the headline “Ohio mangles license plate.” Ohio isn’t the only one who has made this “flighty ...

Distrust so huge that even proof is disbelieved

October 24, 2021

What I can describe only as irresponsible reporting by a national cable news network spiraled so far out of control last week that even after two of my most experienced reporters spent days chasing and eventually debunking a Mahoning Valley connection, many readers remain unconvinced. It all started Monday when Fox News aggregated a story initiated by The New York Post about migrants being flown on charter flights from Texas to Florida to New York. The Post staked out and photographed airplanes overnight at a suburban New York airport. “The charter flights originate in Texas, where ...

Creativity of artists surrounds me every day

October 17, 2021

I’m surrounded every day by artists. Granted, most of them aren’t “artists” in the sense that commonly comes to mind. Still, they produce and share creative works to be consumed and enjoyed by the masses each day. So, yeah, by my definition, they are artists. Take, for example, page designer Laura McDonough. She routinely turns out beautifully composed page designs like last week’s Sunday Life cover depicting Warren native Dave Grohl, the internationally acclaimed rocker who recently published a book, “The Storyteller.” And then there are wordsmiths like ...