Our July 4 was low on bombast and high on fraternity this year. There were no stealth-bomber flyovers, no tanks treading ominously down Main Street or any other minatory displays of military hardware straight out of a Soviet-era Moscow May Day. Even Lee Greenwood left us alone. I’m told Washington was another story.

For the first time since Covid, “Picnic in the Park” was back in Batavia. This much-loved festival of food, music, and smiling, “hey, how ya doin’?” encounters fills the bosky park across the street from the New York State School for the Blind. (One of Batavia’s many ironies is that the best view in town is from the blind school.)

Burnham and Powell want to bring back stupid

Does Lucy Powell really think ‘knight’ is an obscure word?

It’s amazing how far Burnham has got by not being Keir Starmer

For years, my wife, daughter and I manned the Landmark Society’s strawberry shortcake stand at Picnic in the Park. We always sold out, and Batavia’s grande dame of preservation, Catherine Roth, annually chided our daughter in her DAR accent: “Too many strawberries!” Gretel cheerfully ignored Mrs. Roth and kept ladling out an extra dollop to the........

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