The Buffalo News: Local Columns

Bruce Andriatch: Splendid hue for the ages: ‘forever green’: By Bruce Andriatch
Updated: 05/06/08 9:38 AM; Kim Goodman moved to Sweet Home Road in 1999 and immediately fell in love with the forest behind her property. “The guy who sold us the house told us it was going to be forever green,” she said. “Two weeks later, I started hearing about a golf course.”

Bruce Andriatch: Hamburg embraces town golf course: By Bruce Andriatch
Updated: 04/29/08 9:34 AM; Dick Knell of Hamburg is living the golfer’s dream. At 70, he is retired from the state Department of Correctional Services, but his wife still works, leaving him plenty of time every day to get in 18 holes.

Bruce Andriatch: Musing on what’s amusing, etc.: Bruce Andriatch
Updated: 04/22/08 8:22 AM; Some notes collected while wondering whether all the rats left the city for the suburbs because of the garbage totes or because they thought the schools were better. . . .

Donn Esmonde

Donn Esmonde: Abuse is not team ‘tradition’: Donn Esmonde
Updated: 05/11/08 11:52 AM; It is your kid in the back of the bus. Think of it that way. Imagine that your son is riding on the Wilson High School baseball team bus. View the situation through that lens. That, to me, is when this picture comes into focus.

Donn Esmonde: Mother turns catastrophe into a cause: Donn Esmonde
Updated: 05/09/08 8:25 AM; Write the law with a mother’s tears. Turn tragedy into triumph. Spare more mothers the grief that engulfs Kelly Cline.

Donn Esmonde: Lax system lets Kee be double dipper: By Donn Esmonde
Updated: 05/07/08 9:07 AM; The one-time conscience of the county’s control board is now the queen of the double dippers. A former fiscal watchdog, she now has both hands scooping from the public trough.

Charity Vogel: Understand poverty by living in it: By Charity Vogel NEWS STAFF REPORTER
Updated: 05/05/08 8:00 AM; Nine dollars. One quarter. That’s what it looks like up close, this horrible, hydra-headed beast called poverty that casts its malevolent shadow over Western New York.

Charity Vogel: A memorable trip for vets who earned it: Charity Vogel
Updated: 04/28/08 11:25 AM; Harry Kuligowski doesn’t owe the rest of us a thing. Any such debt, if ever one existed, disappeared 63 years ago this month, when Kuligowski, then a 25- year-old GI, walked into Buchenwald concentration camp.

Charity Vogel: A vision for Buffalo to focus on: Charity Vogel
Updated: 04/21/08 8:05 AM; We can choose to be small. Or we can decide to dream big. The choice before us was made clear last week, when two strongly opposing views of Buffalo’s future collided in the city’s consciousness like so many warring meteors.

Off Main Street: Hitting a nerve: Updated: 05/10/08 9:35 AM; The home page for www.iloveny.com , the state’s official tourism site, presented Buffalo front and center this week. Unfortunately, the opening lines of its come-on for the city rubbed one Off Main reader the wrong way.

Off Main Street: Beer and brawls at the Ralph: Updated: 05/03/08 9:18 AM; A debate over whether the Rogers Centre in Toronto or our own Ralph Wilson Stadium is the better football venue broke out in the letters page of the Toronto Sun this past week.

Off Main Street: Statuesque mistake: Updated: 04/26/08 10:51 AM; Here’s a new possible explanation for our decades-long financial difficulties: We angered Lady Commerce.

Reporters’ Notebook / Bits and pieces of news...: Updated: 05/09/08 6:33 AM; OLAF FUB SEZ: Advice from legendary abolitionist John Brown, born on this date in 1800, “Be mild with the mild, shrewd with the crafty, confiding to the honest, rough to the ruffian, and a thunderbolt to the liar. But in all this, never be unmindful of your own dignity.”

Reporters’ Notebook / Bits and pieces of news...: Updated: 05/07/08 6:40 AM; OLAF SEZ: FUB According to first lady of Argentina Eva “Evita” Peron, born Maria Eva Duarte on this date in 1919, “Shadows cannot see themselves in the mirror of the sun.”

Reporters’ Notebook / Bits and pieces of news...: Updated: 05/06/08 6:36 AM; OLAF SEZ: FUB According to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, born on this date in 1953, “The art of leadership is saying no, not yes. It is very easy to say yes.”

Rod Watson: Don’t expect health reform any time soon: By Rod Watson
Updated: 05/08/08 2:36 PM; The stories of unnecessary suffering and infant death in Sunday’s paper should be enough to spark outrage and the overthrow of a mercenary health care system.

Rod Watson: Forget race when talking of competence: Rod Watson
Updated: 05/01/08 8:02 AM; Too bad Barack Obama never campaigned in Buffalo. It wouldn’t have taken him nearly as long to disabuse himself of any notion we’re in a “post-racial” era.

Rod Watson: Why can’t we be honest about race?: Rod Watson
Updated: 04/17/08 8:08 AM; Miss Manners for president? At the rate we’re going, a campaign of polite platitudes might be all that’s left after the candidates get pummeled for anything approaching an honest observation about race — or class — in America.

Pets /By Mathew Will, DVM: Updated: 05/09/08 6:33 AM; Q: My cat is 14 years old and seems to be having difficulty getting through the day. When do I know when to say goodbye?

Volunteers / By Paula Voell: Updated: 05/08/08 6:32 AM; The North Tonawanda Inter-Church Food Pantry is in need of volunteers. Opportunities include help with sorting and stocking shelves, as well as bagging groceries to give to families. The pantry is also in need of drivers and assistants to go to various vendors to pick up donated items. The hours of operation are from 10 a. m. to 12:30 p. m. Monday through Friday and from noon to 3 p. m. on the fourth Saturday of the month. Volunteers can come in one day a week, or as many hours as they wish.

Trivia Quiz /By Donald Saltz: Updated: 05/07/08 6:40 AM; 1. Name either of the two largest toymaking companies in the United States.