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Don’t let your neighbors starve

Much has been written about the impending suspension of SNAP, WIC and other benefits that the nation is collectively staring down — set to begin on Nov. 1, as of this writing. We aren’t going to assign blame. We could — but we don’t see that as beneficial. Blaming our various political critters, party agnostic, doesn’t put food in peoples’ bellies. Instead, we want to highlight that, even a week out, members of the community are beginning to mobilize to do something about it. Tonight, a come-as-you-can community assembly will be held at Avenue 209 Coffee House, ...

Pass out the candy, pass on the memories

For many of us, Halloween is a time of parties, scary movies and handing out candy to the trick-or-treaters that come wandering by our front stoops. It can also be a time of reflection — both on death and our relationship with it, as the Conversation piece also in today’s edition delves into, but also on our own chilly childhood nights spent going door to door while dressed up as our favorite characters, professions, fairy tales or ghosts. Not everyone gets the chance to have these great memories. For some, Halloween — and the whole spooky season built up around it — is ...

Work with us, not against us

Did you know that you can send in news or tips to The Express? We have a virtual newsroom, through which many people — of all stripes and persuasions — send us summaries and photos from local events. This helps us collect and provide more local content to our readers. Sometimes, we get people — and organizations — who will send us content for their own aggrandizement. Here’s the catch: if the work they are doing in the community is good enough, we take the stance that their motivations are, at best, secondary to the deed itself. It could perhaps be considered suspect if ...

The worth of a life

Our lives, it turns out, are not priceless, as we are generally led to believe. In fact, they are assigned a very real dollar value, which depends on a number of factors ranging from geographic location, to age, and so forth. Generally speaking, the value of a human life is considered to be between $3 and $10 million — lower values are found in the poorer countries in the EU, for example, while the richer European countries and the United States skew higher. There are a lot of economic ramifications of these figures — but we would prefer, math-averse as we writers tend to be, ...

Show up, not shut down

As we entered our fourth month without a budget in Pennsylvania, the federal government also shut down. Jokes about taxation and representation aside, this is obviously flatly unacceptable. Our elected representatives are supposed to represent us — to put our needs, in this case a functional governmental, ahead of their own. Yet, in this moment in American history, are not our representatives a reflection of our own disunity? Politics is supposed to be the art of the compromise — the idea that just as pens are mightier than swords, so too are they preferable. Historically, ...

Outcry insufficient — again — as Rockview, Quehanna to close

It is something of a recurring trend that we, the people, never really get heard or listened to. At best, it feels sometimes like the decision-makers placate us average folk — like, perhaps, one would soothe a crying baby. The most recent example of this is with the closings of SCI Rockview and Quehanna Boot Camp, as the final decision came down Friday, barely a day after the thousand-page recommendation document from Dept. of Corrections was released. It’s almost like the decision was made months ago. But we have been through this before. A quick connection can be made to Lock ...