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Letters to the editor

Project 2025’s terrible education plans

Jesse L. Barlow State College The Department of Education’s mission is “to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.’’ The Trump-Vance adjacent Project 2025 section on Education would break up the Education Department and destroy its mission. Its proposals will make it harder for low-income students, middle-income students and students from marginalized groups to obtain education from kindergarten to post-secondary education. These policies include cuts to the number of students ...

Football in your town and my town

Kimball Shinkoskey Woods Cross This is the season when men lose their minds. This is the fall football season when the bodies, minds, passions and paychecks of men get sucked up into that great expanding autumn void where nothing else matters but the kickoff and the next four hours of the game. With high school, college and professional games, virtually every day of the week there is a game to look forward to. One streaming company tells people they can watch every game every Sunday with their service. Folks, that would take the entire waking day, but that is what the ...

A veteran’s grave

Joseph R. Torrell Bellefonte My dad served his country during World War II. On Aug. 8, 1944, a young man from rural Jefferson County, Pa., found himself in the waist of a B-17 bomber flying a mission in the skies over France. Dad rarely talked about that experience, only to tell us both his plane and he took a bad hit. Dad recalled that he thought he saw his leg fly away from his body and out the door of his plane that day. It was a grievous wound, but dad made it back to base where his injury was tended and he was eventually sent back home to Jefferson County. Dad limped from his ...

Democracies threatened by autocracies

Donald Moskowitz Londonderry, NH Alan W. Dowd, in The American Legion Magazine of July 2024, comprehensively describes the plight of world democracies countering the expansionism and exploitation of one-man rule autocracies. I paraphrase him at times. In essence he says the free world needs “an alliance of democracies” against the autocracies of Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Cuba and Venezuela. Deterring the autocracies requires the free world to increase defense spending and collaborating in mutual programs designed to enhance the capabilities of democracies to counter the ...

U.S. leads global oil production

Ed Zygmunt Laceyville It’s no surprise Donald Trump returned to Pennsylvania to peddle twaddle to anyone gullible enough to buy it. None of Trump’s blabbering stands out more than his dishonesty about America’s energy production under Biden-Harris. I live in the heart of Marcellus shale drilling operations in Susquehanna County. My township is saturated with natural gas wells that have benefited many landowners and our economy. Lately, however, there’s been a marked slowdown in drilling activities that has nothing to do with the current administration’s energy policies. ...

More technology or slower pace?

Stephen Poorman Lock Haven While enjoying breakfast at the bustling downtown Lock Haven Woolworth’s lunch counter, the late Charles Ryan, long-time Publisher of this newspaper and proponent of the 1993 Lock Haven Dike Levee flood protection system, quipped: “Steve, did you ever wonder what life would be without memories?” Then much younger, this one-liner didn’t resonate. Yet, the “memory journey” for many might begin with a slower pace or higher quality of life. So, close your eyes and jump-start your imagination as we travel from Avis to Lock Haven. What do ...