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Please give blood if you can

As more people make travel plans to celebrate with family and friends this year, the American Red Cross is asking donors to set aside a time to give blood or platelets for patients waiting for care over the holidays. Throughout the season, several factors can disrupt the ability of the Red Cross to collect enough blood for patients across the country. “Travel: According to a recent study, nearly half of Americans plan to travel over the holidays this year, which may negatively impact the blood supply if fewer people come out to donate. “Seasonal illness: The U.S. is seeing a ...

Craving for recognition

The day I die, my branch of the family tree will die as well. I don’t have any children who could carry on our genes or pay the fee for our family grave in Austria. Ten years after my death, the cemetery staff will remove our gravestone and give the spot to strangers. It’ll be as if we’d never existed. It’s indeed a weird law that people in Austria don’t own their graves but have to pay for using it. My grandmother’s brother was out of luck. As nobody was willing to pay the fee for him, his name was replaced with a stranger’s. When I was in Austria this past ...

Readers’ Choice another reminder of importance of LOCAL businesses

Talk about excitement! One week ago, The (Lock Haven) Express community newspaper posted and published its annual guide to the winners of our Readers’ Choice Awards. The campaign featured nearly 1,000 nominations of businesses over more than 110 categories! The plethora of nominations of our local and area businesses reflects the pride and value our readers place on the men and women who work hard to make a living and improve the quality of life here for all of us with their products and services. The campaign is exclusively reader-driven — readers nominate the ...

Report on loan denials sheds light on challenges facing our area

Troubling. Unfortunate. A challenge to overcome. These are our initial reactions to a recent Center for Rural Pennsylvania report featured in The Express community newspaper that parts of our area have among the highest rates of home improvement loan denials. Now we all should know that banks cannot take adverse risk when lending money. There must be collateral. There must be enough income to repay loans. But the report is still troubling because it reflects, we believe, Clinton County’s above averge poverty rate, which stands at 13.4% of the population. The census puts ...

The day that lives in infamy

The emphases in this country on the beginning of World War II generally center around Dec. 7, 1941, the day of the infamous Japanese aerial sneak attack on the American naval fleet based at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Actually, the war already was in progress for more than two years before that fateful day. The war is regarded as having begun on Sept. 3, 1939, when Great Britain and France declared war on Germany in response to the Nazis’ invasion of Poland two days earlier. The United States officially declared war on Japan on Dec. 8, 1941, and three days later — Dec. 11, 1941 — ...

Why are gasoline prices higher in the Northeast?

Something has to give. Gasoline prices are higher in the northeastern U.S. than most anywhere else in the country. Why? Demand, apparently. But also problems with gasoline refining and distribution infrastructure. A fire at a large refinery at Toledo, Ohio, in September caused a jump in prices because supply was cut to that area and neighboring states. (Sadly, that fire killed two people.) And people are not conserving their gasoline consumption as life gets back to “normal” after the pandemic. Of course, because gasoline prices are tied to the global oil market, the ...