Let’s pick up where we left off last week. School-music programs feed talent into community organizations’ choral and instrumental programs. Just as school-music programs are worth attending, so are community-music programs. As with school-music programs, that includes when family ...

*Note – Regarding last week’s narrative, my apologies for adding too many days to the celebration of Hanukkah which actually begins Thursday, December 7, and ends on Friday the 15th. My bad! Now onto this week’s piece. T-Minus two weeks and two days, and counting, before Christmas, so ...

The holiday season, with all of its pomp and parties, and food and festivals, is always portrayed as a communal gathering of kids and grandkids, neighbors and community. But we know that for some, Christmas can be a stark reminder of being alone and the absence of familiar faces. A quiet ...

My mother considered herself a Christmas elf. She was a no-nonsense, practical woman who also happened to be 5 feet, 11 inches tall. Not exactly a pixie. But every December, as the month wore on, she got a bad case of Elf-ism while scattering her pixie dust. Wearing a Santa hat, she loved to ...

Breathe in and savor the smell! That is what you do when you enter a bakery. Now I have to admit that scent does not permeate as much in the big box bakeries. I am not sure when they bake things, but it definitely is not during the normal store hours. I remember five bakeries in Dunkirk, but ...

In 1965 Senator Robert Kennedy paid an unannounced visit to Willowbrook. It was a complex of buildings designed to house children and adults with developmental disabilities. Residents were in buildings meant to house 4,000 but the population soon exploded to 6,200 residents. What he saw there ...