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Cutting off a parent can be self-preservation, not cruelty

Columns

An in-law, age 95 and on her deathbed, was having some final conversations. She brought up a memory of her own mother, who had lost a 2-year-old daughter to a childhood disease. When she misbehaved as a child, the elderly woman recalled, “My mother would say, ‘I wish you had died instead of Alice.’” She then tried to reason that her mother, enduring a hard life on an Indiana farm, was probably just expressing grief. Possibly true, but the hurt haunted the surviving daughter until her last breath, nearly a century after the words were spoken. A trend has grown in recent years of ...

Shaving advertising can take unusual forms

Columns

Baby New Year can grow up fast! The baby pictured here is already shaving. Well, it’s probably not supposed to be Baby New Year, but being surrounded by a calendar, it’s an easy association to make. This baby was the mascot for Gillette’s safety razors, perhaps suggesting that they were ...

Dear Annie: Old friend’s insult is no joke

Columns

Dear Annie: I walked away from a 50-plus-year friendship. I’ve known “Ralph,” his wife and his kids since the late-1970s. We both worked construction. We never had a deep friendship; most men from the boomer generation don’t. Ralph has a sense of humor that others would say is off-putting, including uncomfortable joking, but we went through similar circumstances at different times. A group of three to five of us construction guys used to meet for lunch on Saturdays. One Saturday, during the usual discussions of yesteryear, I finished sharing my thoughts and looked over to ...

Applause, Applause

Columns

Each Saturday, The Express community newspaper highlights people, groups and activities our readers deem worthy of applause. The Lock Haven Area Shoe Bank would like to THANK these donors: New Hope Fellowship Church, Woolrich Community Church, Caldwell United Methodist Church, M&T Charitable Foundation and The Stephen Poorman Trust. I would like to thank everyone that helped with the cleanup at Romola Cemetery in Marsh Creek after the flooding in early September. A special thanks to Andrew Noll of Clinton County Memorials and a nearby neighbor, Tim Rickert, for resetting the head ...

Trump’s populist image is dead

Columns

As predictions of a blue wave swell, it’s worthwhile to remember that polls are sometimes wrong, that surveys have tended to undercount Trump voters (though they have been better in midterms), that professional prognosticators can err, and that Allan Lichtman is only right when he’s lucky. And yet, if there has ever been a politician who has invited electoral repudiation by more thoroughly betraying his own voters than Trump has, I can’t think of one. Trump had the most zealous followers of anyone this side of Osama bin Laden, and in his first term, he did a certain amount of fan ...

Dear Annie: A Cold War over the thermostat

Columns

Dear Annie: I’m 28 and live in a two-bedroom apartment in Washington state with my friend “Jess.” She’s an excellent roommate — clean, considerate, quiet. I know I’m lucky. But there’s one thing driving me crazy: the thermostat. She works from home and keeps the heat cranked to nearly 80 degrees! When I get home from the office, I start sweating before I’ve even taken my shoes off. I run hot and prefer the apartment on the chillier side, especially at night. Jess and I get along on almost everything else, but this has become a daily annoyance. We haven’t talked about ...