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Beware the risks

We have spoken a number of times about the dangers, the high risks, involved with substances bought off the streets and the dealers that some people trust with their lives. Actually, the dealers don’t care. If they cared they wouldn’t deal to you. A couple of weeks ago, the Ohio Narcotics Intelligence Center (ONIC) released a public safety bulletin “alerting Ohioans to an increasing number of illicit drug samples found to contain mixtures of various unpredictable and potentially deadly drugs such as carfentanyl,” which is estimated to be 100 times stronger than fentanyl. ...

YSU President-elect Johnson criticized higher education

While U.S. Rep. Bill Johnson isn’t the first Republican selected as Youngstown State University president, he is a partisan conservative who has served in Congress for 13 years. Johnson, R-Marietta, faced criticism by alumni, students and faculty for his politics including opposing gay marriage, being anti-choice, supporting immigration restrictions, challenging the results of the 2020 presidential election and for his professional background that doesn’t include any higher education experience. Johnson voted 96.8% with former President Donald Trump, a Republican, and only 20.2% ...

Filling the butternut hole

I found something delightful at a late-summer yard sale in an Ohio River Valley town. Green-hulled nuts littered the ground under a magnificent, towering tree on one side of the home. At first glance I assumed them to be black walnuts, and in fact there were round, green-hulled black walnuts under another tree, but these green-hulled fruits were oblong, not round. “Are those butternuts?” I asked the residents, covetous excitement leaking through my innocent question. “Yes, they are,” came the answer, followed quickly by an unsolicited invitation to take as many as I wanted. ...

Giving thanks

We have just celebrated Thanksgiving and Black Friday. I think my favorite holiday in my adult life has been Thanksgiving. My family, including my brothers, their wives and children, gathered at Mom and Dad’s house, later at my husband’s and my house, and now at my brother and sister-in-law’s home or the home of one of my children. Age has a little something to do with it, but there is the passing down of tradition to younger generations and hoping the traditions will continue when we have passed on. Why my favorite holiday? Because when we gathered for that delicious dinner and ...

Medical conditions can make the physical act of swallowing difficult

Thanks to breakthroughs in medicine and nutrition in recent years, we are living longer than ever before. But this increase in life expectancy also brings an increase in the number of diseases, injuries and impairments that affect older adults. With this in mind, we at the local Visiting Angels office in Salem have created this series of articles to keep our older population and their families informed and to offer some practical advice for meeting the challenges faced by seniors and those who care for them. – – – Most people swallow a bite of food or a drink of water without ...

Could a winter storm topple our electric grid?

Here’s some unwelcome deja vu. According to the organization that oversees the reliability of America’s power grid, much of the country could face blackouts again this winter. Warnings of winter blackouts are becoming a seasonal fixture. Texas experienced a devastating power outage in February 2021. And a bitter cold snap last Christmas forced utilities to implement rolling blackouts across multiple states. Now, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) fears that a prolonged cold snap could threaten the nation’s natural gas infrastructure and the power plants ...