Western New Yorkers know how to party.

people enjoying the concert — Photo by anna-m. weber on Pexels.com

With all the thrilling things happening in Western New York all year, you will never run out of things to here. From the Taste of Buffalo which is the largest two-day food festival in the United States, Art Festivals, Garden Walks the National Buffalo Wing Festival to free outdoor music concerts and ethnic food festivals, our night life and festivals bring visitors to our area from all over the world. Last call in Buffalo bars is 4 a.m. and I’ve closed a few myself. Yes, Western New Yorkers know a thing or two about having a good time. From old-school working man, corner bars to, casinos and live music, Western New York parties from dusk to dawn.

We also have sports teams. There is a sport for everyone in Buffalo from Football to hockey to Baseball. We even have the Buffalo Bandits, a professional lacrosse team and a win by any one of them is cause for celebration.

Cities struggle for their own identification and often point to their growing food experience and talented chefs. But people are probably not coming to Western New York for the avant-garde of American food. I never did understand “small plates” anyway, where you get just a little food for an exorbitant price and have to stop at Mighty Taco on your way home for dinner.

That’s not to say there aren’t many great new restaurants here. It’s just that when you are in Western New York, eat what Western New York does best. Even when the fashionable food writers come into town, they don’t want to go to those new, innovative restaurants. They want to go to places that serve our local favorites.

That’s fine with me because nothing says Western New York to me like beef on weck, chicken wings and grease filled, Pepperoni cup, pizza, the best comfort food in America. Restaurants here are quite happy to just serve these regional hits. Things that they just don’t do right elsewhere.

Locals debate who serves the best wings until the bars all close, but Duff’s seems to be the number one pick. But who can forget the Anchor Bar, the birthplace of what the rest of the world calls “Buffalo wings.” This is what passes for a tourist trap in Buffalo

When every American city begins to seem the same, when Boston looks like Dallas looks like Chicago, Western New York feels one hundred percent like Western New York. It doesn’t have sky scrapers but it does have grain silos and every block has corner taverns that stay open until 4 in the morning.

You’ll find nightspots to party at all over the Nickle City, from Elmwood Avenue and Hertel Avenue to the Chippewa Entertainment District right in downtown Buffalo. Dance the night away at many of the local clubs like the Club Marcella, 67 West, Bottoms Up in Buffalo and The Vault or Nfusion Night Club in Niagara Falls.

To comprehend why Western New York is such a great area to live in, you need to know where it came from. It is situated on one of the world’s greatest inland waterways and as such it brought great wealth with it. Today, 70 years after its populace has hit it’s highest point, Western New York still has the Albright-Knox art gallery, the Buffalo and Erie County Botanical Gardens, Many churches and world-class architecture from Frederick Law Olmsted and Frank Lloyd Wright.

The people here are real, hardworking folks. They’ve repurposed beautiful old architecture without any hint of pretentiousness. They party harder, eat much better, and make many more new buddies in one weekend than any other place in the country. This is truly the best area to live in.

Recently Western New York is being called upon to produce new opportunities. Instead of endeavoring to attract old industries back into town, Western New York has looked into technology and life sciences to boost itself. When young workers came here to find jobs, they found affordable housing and a rich cultural diversity parties and Festivals. Not a week goes by without several options to get turnt, one that is lit.

Buffalo has witnessed an uptick in residents aged 18-34 of over 10%. This is one of the largest rates in the country. And these new, young residents have modified the great things about old Buffalo and have turned Western New York into a hard-partying museum of this areas industrial past.

At The Old Pink, a sticky-floored, graffiti-walled, cheap beer watering hole, located in Allentown there is a view of everything that’s awesome about Buffalo. Here you will find college kids tossing back tallboys next to senior citizens. No one ever worries about what you do. In Buffalo, friendliness means pouring you shots of Jägermeister at 1:45 and telling you, “In Buffalo, this is how we get the party started.”

“Going out in Buffalo between 3 and 4am is one of the most unique drinking experiences in America. Crazy things that can happen,” says city planner Chris Hawley “The best nights in Buffalo are the ones you don’t remember.”

Make as many jokes about Western New York as you want, and there have been many but the people here know they’ve living in an amazing place. Spend a little time here, and you’ll understand it, too.

Christmas traditions

Image result for free christmas tree on top of car

I have written about family traditions before, this time I would like to share a few Christmas traditions from my past and a few that my children, grandchildren and I practice today.

My memories of Christmas as a young boy took place at 496 Berkshire Avenue, Buffalo. About a week before Christmas, we would go shopping for a tree. It had to be a long needle fir tree and it had to be symmetrical without any bare spots, nothing else would do. We would sometimes have to go to several Christmas tree lots that popped up on every vacant piece of land in the city. We would then tie it on the roof of our car and take it home like some kind of hunting trophy and I guess it was. It would spend a few days trussed up like a bird being prepared for cooking by on our front porch awaiting it’s role in our house.

The dining room table was disassembled and put in my sister’s room to make room for the Christmas tree. Once the Christmas tree lights were untangled, which sometimes took quite a bit of time, they had to be tested. My father was the only person allowed to put these on the tree. My mother would supervise and my father would have to swap bulbs until no two adjacent bulbs were the same color. We would then decorate the tree with all kinds of ornaments, both store bought and homemade. The final decoration would be “icicles” made of thin ribbons of lead.

On Christmas Eve my brother and I would retire to our bedroom on the second floor where we would have a hard time falling asleep in anticipation of Santa Claus paying us a visit. For some reason or other Santa would wrap our presents in the Sunday comic pages. I always thought he had run out of wrapping paper and was surprised that he got the Buffalo Courier Express. I think my favorite toy that Santa ever brought me was a battery operated, walking robot with flashing lights and “sound effects” that I received one year.

Many years later, after I got married, Donna and I moved to Massachusetts while I was in the Navy. We had a small tree but we couldn’t afford many ornaments. We made do with what we had and what people gave us. One thing I did was affix a starfish to the top of our tree that a buddy Ed and I collected from a local beach and had dried in the basement of my apartment.

That was fifty years ago. We still have that starfish adorning our tree. This has developed into a family tradition. All of my children have a starfish of their own now that sit atop their tree. A few years ago I gave all of our grandchildren a starfish so when they are on their own they will remember us with this tradition.

According to an old German legend, if you find a bird’s nest in your Christmas tree you and your family will experience health, wealth and happiness in the coming year. Who can’t use some good luck like this? We always have a bird’s nest in our tree and my daughter Liz has one in her tree also.

Other Christmas traditions our family has involve food. Every grandchildren gets to select, as part of their present a “Christmas” food from Nana and Papa. They have picked things like Ramen noodles, potato chips and whipped cream as some of their choices.

My son, Erik and his wife, Heidi also host a Christmas Eve dinner that starts with snacks during the afternoon, Olives and Pickles, Chips and dip, Buffalo chicken wing dip etc. Actually you could graze your way thru the afternoon and not need anything more. But then they have a full blown meal in the evening. We can choose from a cold cut platter and rolls, Beef on weck, Beans, macaroni and pasta salads, regular salad and many other dishes. They also set out Christmas cookies and various other sweets. One year they offered us homemade marshmallows.

Just in case you didn’t have enough to eat, the following morning my oldest daughter, Liz had a Christmas day brunch at her house. We have Stuffed French toast, Breakfast sausage links, Potatoes, Muffins, Eggs, and many more things to eat. With all this food, I was ready for a nap.

After Brunch we would all settle into the living room with me in a recliner in front of her roaring fireplace to open presents. I love watching the eyes of Ian and Kaelen, the younger grandchildren, light up as they rip open the colorful wrapping paper and see what gifts they have received. What starts as a controlled afternoon quickly turns into chaos. It is wonderful having all our children and grandchildren under one roof on this day.

This year unfortunately, her house has been sold and she is temporarily staying with us. My youngest daughter, Dawn has offered up her house for Christmas brunch as long as in her words “I don’t have to cook”. Dawn serves a fabulous Thanksgiving dinner so I don’t blame her not wanting to also do Christmas, so I guess Liz will be spending time at her house cooking our meal.

It really doesn’t matter where we hold our holiday celebrations though, they could be held in my garage or a storage shed on Transit Road. It’s the people and the food, the conversation and the laughter that make this season important to me.

Norb is a writer from Lockport that has also lived in Buffalo and Massachusetts.

“As close to home as your VCR”: Remote Control (Movie) (1988).

grayscale photo of remote control near eyeglasses — Photo by Steve Johnson on Pexels.com

As I sit here typing I look over at my end table and see four remotes. I also have a cordless phone there. It is not unusual for me to grab the wrong remote to try to change the station or even to grab a remote when the phone is ringing and try to answer it. I have on occasion pushed the buttons on the phone when I wanted to change channels, wondering why the damn thing isn’t working. This happens occasionally when I’m “resting my eyes” after lunch or dinner. Donna, my wife would frequently ask to go out to dinner right after I woke up. She knew I would agree to anything then and not remember it later.

There are two remotes for the television. One for me and one for Donna. (Don’t ask). There is one remote for my Roku device. Roku allows me to access thousands of sites including television programs, movie, music and social media sites. The fourth remote on my end table is for my Amazon Fire Stick. Again this device allows me to access thousands of television programs, movie and music sites. But these aren’t the only remotes in the living room.

I have one remote for my VCR so I can play all our children’s wedding videos and several old movies we have. There is one last remote that controls our DVD player. I don’t remember just why we got this because our VCR is a combination VCR- DVD player. They sit in the cabinet under the TV.

My children and grandchildren would make a game of trying to take a remote from my end table when I was in my recliner “resting my eyes” after lunch or, as my grandson calls it, my “napatizer” after dinner. That’s the nap I take before going to bed. They would wait until I was snoring like a lumberjack and then try to pick up the remote without waking me. This never worked out for them. They would inevitably be caught red handed before they even got it off the table. Just the action of their touching it was met with a stern “I’m watching that”.

If it is summer we also have a remote for the air conditioner in the dining room that I have never figured out how to use yet. It has only been five years so give me some time. I just press buttons until it seems to be doing what I want it to do.

Next we go into the recently built, first floor master bedroom suite. There we have another TV and another Roku. Both of these remotes work differently than the ones in the living room.

If you go to our second floor, there is a television and a third Roku device in our old master bedroom. In the summer there is also an air conditioner with a remote in this room. This is one of the three guest bedrooms we now have. On the third floor, the man cave, the walk up attic, there is an older analog TV and a digital to analog converter both controlled by their own remotes.

None of these remotes are alike except for the fact that they are black and have buttons. They don’t even work alike with some of them having the volume controls on the left and the channel selector on the right and some are the other way around. This isn’t very helpful late at night when you are tired and the lights are off.

I know there are “universal” remotes but believe me I have used a few of these and they aren’t universal. They have hundreds maybe thousands of codes you can punch in to try to program them for your device but if you find a code that does work, at best, you will be able to turn your set on and off, change the channel and adjust the volume.

Remotes worked better when I was a child. My father would say, “Norb turn the channel” or “adjust the volume” or “turn the antenna.” This worked 100% of the time and the batteries never died. That’s what kids were for.

This is the other thing. Every one of these remotes has two batteries in them. My best count is we have over 20 batteries running these remotes. Most of them are either AA or AAA. We go thru them so fast that we buy them in the large economy, family size packages. I believe the battery manufacturers and the television makers are in cahoots. I think the TV people get a royalty for every battery of these sizes that are sold.

Not to worry though. I see there is a smart phone APP you can use to control your electronic gadgets. That way when your phone dies, you have to get up and figure out how to use the buttons on your devices. According to WebMD Instead of using the remote, you have to get walking to the television to change the channel might give you some exercise and even help you lose weight.

We now have remote starters for cars, remote wall switches, remote thermostats even remote control bugs, (https://www.insidescience.org/news/brief-worlds-smallest-remote-controlled-cyborg-bug.)

Fall Leaves

The falling leaves drift by my window,
The falling leaves of red and gold.
Frank Sinatra-1954:

Now that the midterm elections are over, all those intrusive political ads of the past few months have settled down. Let’s move on to a less troublesome topic. Few subjects illustrate more neighborhood differences than the falling leaves. We have the rakers, the leaf blowers, the mulchers and the leave them aloners.

First off let’s all agree that the maples, the oaks and the chestnuts of Western New York are the best. They provide shade in the summer, helping keep our yards a bit more comfortable and making our homes easier to air condition during our warm, sunny days. They lose their leaves in fall, which allows the sun’s warming rays to shine through our windows, giving us the benefit of solar gain.

Donna and I used to watch a small boy and one day he was watching the city workers collect all the leaves on dump trucks and haul them away. He said that he couldn’t wait until spring when “the men” would come back to put all the leaves back on the trees.

It seems to me like the leaves came down all at once. One day they were green, then they turned various shades of red, orange and yellow. Overnight the trees are all nude, suddenly stripped of all their modesty, their naked branches exposed for all to see. Those leaves are still around though, covering the driveway, the deck, the sidewalk, the porch, and, worst of all, the grass.

There are those who are unconcerned about the leaves like those who rent and those who are blessed with the patience to wait until all the leaves are down before dealing with them. But not everyone is like this. I had a neighbor who was rather fastidious about his yard and home. This is the neighbor that I used to watch every year taking off his gutters so he could repaint them, who would paint his sidewalk white every year. The neighbor who I used to watch trimming around his flower beds with a chrome plated, black handled pair of scissors. He would be out every two hours in the fall raking his leaves. I was surprised he wasn’t running around with a wicker basket to catch the leaves before they hit the ground.

Here at the Rug household we are of two minds. Donna likes to rake the leaves to the curb. I find that there are two problems with this. The first one is if there is a wind storm before the leaves get picked up, they all blow back into my yard. The second one is if there is a snow storm before the leaves get picked up, they all get thrown back into my yard by the snowplow. So only thing that raking the leaves managed to do is give her some outdoor exercise. I like to run the leaves over with the lawn mower returning the nutrients to the soil. This eliminates both of these problems.

There’s a decision that you can make that will annoy everyone in your neighborhood. It is a gas or electric powered leaf blower. Even those of us who get up early can get fairly grumpy when my neighbor’s lawn service comes over, foisting thier leaf-blower’s, tranquility annihilating, roar on me just after dawn while blowing my neighbor’s leaves onto my property. Seriously? You have the whole day. Just do it later. Some blowers just move leaves from one place to another. You still have to get them to the curb or bag them up for collection.

While searching for the necessary rakes for my wife, the thought crosses my mind. Can’t the leaves just stay on the trees? Pine trees seem to have mastered this art. Are they smarter or more evolved than other trees?

But for now. Unless you’re obsessive-compulsive, it’s fine to spend your time doing something else. That’s because grass is dormant right now and the leaves aren’t going to kill it. In fact the leaves might just give the grass some protection during the snow and cold of the winter. They simply have to be off the grass by March, when it will start growing again.

If you have pine trees, you might just wonder how to get rid of the needles. Raking is the very best option and it’s also good exercise. Personally I would leave them where they were. Turns out that the pine needles decompose slowly and are extremely useful in preventing vegetation from growing under the trees. They act as a natural mulch. If you must remove them you can put them on those places of your yard where you don’t want the grass to grow like around your flower beds.

But positively the best way to get rid of leaves from your yard is to hire some neighborhood kids to do it, and pay them generously. Use your free time to take a walk in the woods, shuffling thru the layer of fallen leaves.

I miss the smell of burning leaves that used to permeate the air during my childhood during the fall and remember walking or dragging my feet thru a thick layer of fallen leaves. I also remember raking the leaves into a big pile and then jumping into them.

The Gambler

ace achievement banknote blackjack — Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

My name is Norb and I’m a gambler. (Muted response, Hi Norb.) I don’t bet on the ponies or play poker. I don’t play the over/under on sports games but I gamble every day.

When my alarm goes off and, at seventy, when I swing my legs over the edge of my bed, I gamble on the fact that when I stand up, my legs won’t collapse. I’ve been to the hospital a few times when I “melted” as I call it. I don’t fall, just slowly collapse to the ground because my legs can’t support me.

Once I am up, I shuffle to me kitchen where I lay bets on a number of things. I make myself a breakfast sandwich and I gamble several times. I make myself a ham, egg, cheese and kimchee breakfast sandwich in the microwave. According to Consumer Reports, “More than 10,000 people were hurt using microwaves.” I gamble the egg I use won’t give me salmonella or the ham I use won’t give me food poisoning. I’ve had food poisoning, also called foodborne illness, once in my life and it wasn’t fun. As I cut my English muffin I am reminded that lacerations caused by kitchen knives affected more than 900,800 people in 2012, according to the www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. I gamble I don’t cut myself.

After I eat my sandwich, risking choking, I then go down my back steps gambling on the chance they aren’t wet or icy causing me to slip, go ass over tea kettle and doing a face plant on the concrete sidewalk at the bottom. My wife has put non slip strips resembling black sandpaper on the steps to help prevent this.

I then take my biggest gamble of the day. I get into my car, turn on the ignition and ease myself on to the road. According to driverknowledge.com, the average number of car accidents in the U.S. every year is 6 million. I wager on fact that every other driver isn’t DWI or Texting or Chatting on their cell phone and are paying attention to their driving. When you think about it, half the vehicle to vehicle car accidents on the road are caused by the other guy. I may be the best driver in the world but that might not help me if someone is acting unsafe on the roadway.

I also gamble, if it is winter, the road crews have plowed and salted the roadways properly before I drive on them. I have traveled on unplowed roads before and I slid into the ditch.

Other gambles I have taken were asking my wife of 50 years to marry me. This was probably the most important chance I have ever taken. I would have been devastated if she would have said no. I tried to “stack the deck” to favor me when I asked. Knowing how much she loved children I asked her to have mine.

Two children later, I also took a chance when I got out of the navy. The movers were supposed to be at my apartment at 8:00 AM and pack us up for the trip back to Western New York. Donna and I got up early that day and made sandwiches, filled bottles for our two daughters and prepare for our road trip to Western New York. We figured it might take the movers 3 hours or less to load up our merger possessions so we could head home. We packed up our Volkswagen Beetle with what we thought we would need for a few days, filled a cooler and waited for the movers to arrive.

They only missed this appointment by 12 hours showing up at 8 PM. By 11 PM we were sitting in our empty apartment and had a decision to make. Should we start an 8 hour long drive, in the middle of the night, in the ice and snow of January, after being up for 18 hours? Our other choice was to stay in a motel overnight and leave for home in the morning when we had some sleep and were fresh.

Donna, my wife was as anxious as I was to get home so we gambled on option one. She said she would stay awake and keep me awake during the trip. So I went all in. We loaded the kids and the last of our possessions in our car and I started to drive

The first 25 miles went well, Donna and I chatting about how glad we were to be going home, but as soon as we got outside of Providence, Rhode Island, Donna fell asleep. I gambled again and decided to drive straight through. This almost proved fatal. I tried to deploy a few ways to try and stay awake. I turned the radio real loud and opened my window allowing the freezing air in.

I had fallen asleep a few times during that long trip but I would manage to wake up when my tires would hit the shoulder. The last time I fell asleep however I woke up in the median to snow flying over my car as I was plowing it. I jerked my steering wheel to the right and popped back on the roadway like a Jack-in-the-Box. Thank god no one was hurt.

We all are unaware we are gamblers and unknowingly gamble several times a day. Follow Norb at https://whywny.home.blog/

All in all it was just a, brick in the wall. Pink Floyd, 1979.

landscape photography of orange brick wall — Photo by Mikes Photos on Pexels.com

The internet is filled with pictures of refugees amassing at the U.S-Mexico border in California. But many of them haven’t been able to enter the United States because a physical barrier prevents them from doing this. It is just another example of a barrier, a fence, a wall, a whatever, providing real border security.

Although, erection of a wall on the border was one of President Trump’s prime campaign promises. He has made very little progress toward making that happen. Trump has blown opportunities to win wall funding by refusing to exchange amnesty for recipients of President Obama’s “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals”, or DACA, policy.

But the President loaded his wall proposal with added on demands, and it never transpired. Even as events on the border are showing the value of a wall and the throngs are tearing down fences etc., politics in Washington is just business as usual, making it impossible to build a wall.

We must understand the problem. In California, the migrants are focusing their efforts on a part of the border where there is an actual barrier. But much of the border’s 1,954 miles remains open. According to the Border Patrol, 354 of those 1,954 miles are protected by what is called pedestrian primary fence, which is a single-layer fence. Another 37 miles are pedestrian secondary fence, that is, double-layer fencing. And 14 miles are pedestrian tertiary, or triple-layer fence.

In addition, 300 miles are covered by vehicle fencing, which will stop a truck but allow anyone to walk through with no problem. We’re talking a fence here, not a wall. That is a total of 705 miles, 405 miles of some kind of pedestrian fencing and 300 miles of vehicle fencing.

Almost no one, says one fence should cover all 1,954 miles of the border. A considerable portion of the border is guarded by terrain that is so imposing and dangerous that it would be extremely difficult for refugees to cross.

Since Republicans could not pass this wall funding when they were in charge of all of Congress and the White House, how can they do it with Pelosi in charge of the House of Representatives?

There is a Public Law 109-367, AKA the Secure Fence Act. This was passed by bipartisan majorities in 2006. It mandated that the federal government was to build a “reinforced fencing”, at least two layers thick, along about 700 miles of the border. It identified areas in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas where the fencing would be installed. Many of the weak parts of the border could now be legally secured. But in the very next year, 2007, after Democrats had won control of the House and Senate, Congress amended the Secure Fence Act. The amendment said and I quote “nothing in (the original legislation) shall require the installation of fencing if the government determines that a fence is not the most appropriate” way to secure the border.

That was the end of 700 miles of fence. Public Law 109-367 still remains on the books and it still mandates a border barrier. What Donald Trump needs is the money to do this and it has to come from Congress. Obviously, the Democrats won’t want to give it to him. But if Trump were to call for the money to build the fence, he would at least have the argument that the Democrats have already voted for it.

Hold on to your hats and batten down the hatches because I have a brilliant (even if I say so myself) yet controversial idea and I expect a lot of blow back on this one. We offer the American public, those most effected by illegal immigrants, the opportunity to purchase bricks in much the same way that charities do for a fund raiser.

We then offer those illegal immigrants that cross the border a choice. They can be deported or go to a temporary work camp supported by this brick money, plus some tax dollars. At the camp they will be assigned to all the necessary jobs like food service, laundry, sanitation and even brick making. Every job that needs to be done except security would be provided by the immigrants. They could also be assigned to out of camp work details where they would learn concrete work and/or brick laying by building the wall. The only thing the USA would offer is clean drinking water, food and security. During this time on the camps, they would be provided free room and board, medical care and the chance to apply for citizenship. The United States could also use this time to check the border crossers background so we could identify any possible criminals among them. Those that don’t apply for citizenship or that fail this vetting process would be deported.

It is a win/win for everybody. The immigrants would have the chance to become Americans, learn a trade so they don’t live on welfare and Trump’s wall gets built. The Chinese built a wall to keep out invaders, why can’t we.

Be sure to protect yourself from credit card crooks:

bank banking business cards — Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Our lives are a series of credit card swipes for purchases. We swipe for gas, we swipe for groceries, and we swipe for our morning Triple, Venti, Half Sweet, Non-Fat, Caramel Macchiato. If we are behind someone who is using cash or especially a check, we get aggravated. Why mess with cash when you can get to all your money on a small plastic card? The card you use to handle your purchases has weaknesses that hackers are only too happy to exploit.

Over the last several years, the number of credit cards that had their information illegally acquired has had a dramatically increased according to FICO, the credit scoring company that is used by most banks and lenders to determine borrowers’ financial soundness. There was a 26 percent increase from 2015 to 2016 in the amount of places where debit card financial information was stolen they reported. And those penetrations required thousands of people to have to get new cards.

It is extremely easy for thieves to steal your debit card information. Crooks can place skimming devices and/or cameras over the keypads at gas pumps or ATMs to capture PINS and card numbers and then put this information onto a counterfeit card that they can utilize to hack into your personal bank account. There recently was a skimmer found on a gas pump in Lockport. It was removed before any credit card information was stolen.

The improvement of skimming technology contributes to the rise in credit card crime. For less than $100, anyone can purchase a skimmer from a marketplace online and they are making them even smaller and harder to detect. Online, the simplicity of skimming breeds even more theft when people become successful and then they become more organized.

There is also the practice of “Social Engineering.” Years ago someone from “credit card security” called me at 2:00 AM waking my wife and me. They claimed my CC number was being used to make calls to India, Pakistan and China and wanted us to verify our numbers. All he wanted was my CC number, the pin and the name on the card to verify I was “the proper person” he was calling. He was a very smooth operator and by feigning stupidity, I kept them on the line for almost an hour. I enjoyed listening to his banter he had instantaneous answers to all my questions but when I asked him where he was calling from he hesitated. That’s when he started to unravel. I asked the scammer “Where are you located?” After a long delay (like they had to look it up) they responded West Menlo Park CA. I then decided to ask a political question and asked “What congressional district are you in?” It was at this point the phone went dead.

The Federal Electronic Fund Transfer Act stipulates that if you report your card is lost or stolen before someone uses it, you are not liable for the fraudulent transactions. If your credit card is used before you report it, your liability could depend on how quickly you report it. In most cases, if you report it within two business days the maximum you might be held liable for is $50. If you wait more than that to alert your bank you could be liable for up to $500. However most credit card companies will waive the fraudulent charges the first time.

Here is a tips to lessen the possibility your card will be compromised. Be aware of the ATM you’re using. If anything looks out of place or your card doesn’t go into the machine easily, walk away. If you use an ATM and your card isn’t immediately returned, contact your bank or financial institution at once. Pay attention to the people lingering near you. If someone is standing a little too close, don’t complete your transaction. Go away. Check your bank account regularly and set up an online alert for your accounts. Ensure all your contact information (address, email, and mobile number) is correct on your account.

It has become very simple for crooks to steal credit card data. Criminals place cameras and/ or skimming devices over the keypads at ATMs or at gas pumps to capture your card numbers and PINS and then insert the information onto a card that they can use to access your bank account.

I’m not relating all this to you to panic you. Just to advise you to be careful out there.

Norb is a writer from Lockport who just got several million dollars from a Nigerian prince and he expects the funds to be deposited in his bank account soon. You can follow him at his blog WhyWNY.Home.blog

The printed media is under attack

For ages, books, magazines and newspapers, were revered for the enormous amount of information they contained. I can remember looking things up in the Encyclopedia Britannica when I was young. One summer I set the goal of reading everything that was in the encyclopedia. I’m pretty sure I never got through the second volume. In 2012, the company announced that the 2010 edition would be the last printed version. However, they were being replaced by their electronic “copies”. Reference books of all types are feeling the pinch caused by technology and the internet, from atlases to dictionaries to thesauruses.

I have a subscription to Time Magazine and it seems like a shell of its former self. There are just 68 pages in a recent addition and a large number of them are full page ads. The same thing seems to be going on with The Readers Digest that I receive every month. There are now a lot more ads than I remember with less content.

My wife is an avid reader and she has a kindle. That way she doesn’t have to lug around one or two large books. Her Kindle has well over a thousand books on it at this point. Every day I download free books for her off the internet. If she doesn’t like a book, she just deletes it. No muss, no fuss,and we haven’t wasted any money on it plus we save gas by her not having to drive to the library.

The newspaper industry has always had its ups and downs and the industry has survived previous slumps. I remember that television’s arrival in the early 1950s was supposed to predict the decline of newspapers’ prominence as most people’s source of daily news, I think sudden increase of the internet in the 1990s and the increased number of media choices available to the average reader has made this much worse. I feel the Internet has also gone further than television in eating away at the income of newspapers with Craig’s list, e-bay and other online sites that are available to sell your goods. I think the increasing use of internet search, primarily through large engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo, has changed the habits of newspaper readers.

Buffalo News owner Warren Buffett wrote, “Simply put, if cable and satellite broadcasting, as well as the internet had come along first,newspapers as we know them probably would never have existed.” Since the beginning of 2009, the United States has seen a number of major metropolitan dailies shuttered or drastically pruned. Even the news magazine “Newsweek”, has ceased being published as a print magazine.

Since the end of January 2016, I have managed to get my writing published a number of times. I have gotten published in an online newspapers as the food columnist under the banner “Lovin Spoonful”. In that time, I have also seen one online publication and two of the print publications that I was writing for close. The Lockport Star has announced it closed in July 2016 and The Tonawanda Sun also announced it was closing in July. It appears that the Community Papers of Western New York has decided to discontinue publishing all of their small town papers. Readership of print newspapers has fallen by a staggering 25% in just the last four years.

I am now being published in 3 print newspapers and four online ones. I have a portfolio of my articles cut out of the newspapers and they seem much more real than the ones I print from my computer. If I wanted, I could put together on my computer, something that said I was published in the New York Times and I’m sure that anyone with basic word processor skills could do the same thing.

Maybe I am just old fashioned and behind the times, but the feel of a newspaper in my hands just seems right. I prefer having ink stained fingers to carpel tunnel. Sure, the newspaper might not be up to the minute but it sure beats those news bytes that you see scrolling across the bottom of your television screen. What does the statement “17 dead in Brazil” tell you? Was it a terrorist attack, a bus overturning or a meal of bad Shushi? There is no how,when or why and just leaves you not knowing what the heck is going on. I’m sure at least 17 people die in Brazil almost every day. Just knowing how many people died without giving us many more facts is useless.

It seems to me I have picked a bad time to try become a journalist.I hate to say it but the best way to reach me is on the internet at nrug@juno.com. My blog is at whywny.home.blog

Unsubscribe me, again.

They start early in the morning. A sound wakes me up from a sound sleep and I’m still in a fog. I don’t remember setting my alarm clock for this early in the morning and I slap the top of it several times. The ringing doesn’t stop though. At that point I realize it isn’t my alarm clock at all but the phone on my wife’s nightstand. I roll over and reach for it. In the process I knock her two lotions, her alarm clock and the television remote to the floor.

I stare bleary eyed at the display and the best I can make out is that it is from the 716 area code. Seeing as I don’t know everyone’s home phone and cell phone number by heart, especially that early in the morning, I answer it. It might just be a grandchild calling for help.

I say hello and a sweet sounding voice on the other end introduces herself as Jessica from “credit card services” and she says she has been trying to reach me. This is a surprise to me because I am home, at this number 24/7. She tells me this is my last chance to lower my credit card bill.Oh Jessica, don’t toy with me, I know you will be calling again, 2 or 3 times today.

Sweet sounding Jessica tells me that they have been monitoring my credit card account and can lower my interest rate. This all sounds good but I never pay interest on my credit cards. Just when I thought that we were getting along so well, she passes me off to someone else and this voice says to press 1 to talk to a representative. But I am given another option to be added to their do not call list all I have to do is press 2. I think all this does is verifies that a human answered the phone.

So I press 1 and am put on hold. A different sweet sounding voice tells me that my call is valuable, that all their representatives are busy helping other customers and my call will be answered in approximately 7 minutes. When my call is finally answered, gone are those sweet sounding voices and someone named Josh answers. He asks if I want to lower my monthly credit card bill. I answer “Actually I just want to be added to your do not call list.”I hang up the phone well knowing that MaryAnn or Sarah will be calling me soon from a different number with the very same offer. If you call back the number listed on your caller ID, you will probably reach a little old lady whose number was“spoofed“.

Later in the day, Bob or John, I forget which, calls me and offers me the deal of a life time on new windows. He says he will be having a crew in my area next week and they can look my job over. I have to press 1 for English and 2 for Spanish. So I press 1 and get a real live salesman. OMG a human!

I tell him we replaced all our windows last year and I don’t need to replace them already. I then ask him to put us on his “do not call”list. I barely get this out when I hear a dial tone. I know in my heart this was an exercise in futility. Bob, John, Fred or Steve will be calling to offer me an “end of the season” discount price on siding, gutters or roofing. I think they are all related. I don’t need any of these things as I have taken care of them within the past few years.

At dinner time I am interrupted by someone that wants to help me pay for my medications. I take a chemo drug that costs over $11, 000 a month. That’s not a typo, eleven thousand dollars a month. This very expensive drug costs me a $20.00 per month copay, out of pocket, with the insurance I have purchased. If I have done my math right, that is a 550% discount. I don’t think they can do better.

I’ll be “relaxing my eyes”, after dinner, in my recliner,when the phone rings. Energy solutions, Pay less for Gas, or some other such name(every day it is a different name but the message is always the same) wants to save me a boat load of money on my utility bills. Right after that someone calls to give me the chance to save money on my phone bill. All I have to do is subscribe to their service and get VOIP. (Voice Over Internet Protocol). If someone you know that has VOIP ever called you it is like talking over a CB radio or a walkie talkie, only one of you can talk at a time.

They usually continue with this barrage of calls until around 8 PM but we have received a few after 10 PM. It’s nice, all these people who want to save me money. They used to just call during the day, during the week, during business hours but they are now calling in the weekends and in the evening. They have even invaded my cell phone. Here’s a hint. If I need your service, I will let you know. This will save us both time.

Don’t call me, I’ll call you.

Norb is a writer from Lockport You can contact him at nrug@juno.com.

Note: This article has also appeared in Buffalo Rising

Thanksgiving

I value the traditions we have around the end of the year but some traditions are set in stone and some are a bit more fluid. We have burgers and fireworks for the Fourth of July, a tree and egg nog for Christmas and a turkey with cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving.

Good conversation, delectable smells and the laid back mood make Thanksgiving one of my favorite meals of the year. I will always have warm feelings about this day.

The planning for Thanksgiving starts shortly after Halloween. Who has the folding chairs? Who is going to bring which dish? My wife and I always bring the turkey and she selects one of the largest ones she can find. She starts thawing it ahead of time so it will be ready for roasting.Then early Thanksgiving my wife starts the long process of cooking the bird soit will be ready for meal time.

We have three generations of Rugs that show up for this holiday. The younger grandchildren shrieking and running is the first sign that the guests have arrived and everyone is greeted at the door by these family members.

With my whole family comfortably gathered around, I can’t help but feel content. The relaxing noise of a house filled with the people I love mingles with the sound of a video game and I can’t think of anything that I would rather hear.

My Daughter’s home is airy, with a large island where she would lay out the appetizers. We used to have a seafood tradition where I would buy shrimp, clams, smoked salmon etc. that we would lay out before dinner along with chips, dips, salsas, pickles, etc. Honestly you could make a meal from the appetizers. I had to quit buying the seafood however as it got too expensive to buy crab legs for a dozen people.

Once the cooking starts, the kitchen seems a bit cramped though, like working on a food truck. The delicious smell of a turkey roasting fills the house with delicious aromas. It’s all worth it though when the aroma of the Brussels sprouts roasting in the oven waft out to fill the house in yet another delightful smell. From the timemy wife starts cooking the turkey until the satisfaction of that last bite,when I am too full to move, Thanksgiving never fails to fulfill my expectations.

When the large assortment of dishes is finally cooked and put on the dining room table, we all sit down and it’s time to dig in to a family style meal. My daughter serves up the best corn dish ever created. It’s creamy, with a smooth texture but she serves many, many more delectable concoctions.But every dish is better than the last and to just sample every dish on the table fills your plate. You need a side plate to hold your dinner roll.

Dinner conversations are lively, with hilarious jokes that have me laughing so hard my eyes are tearing and stories that often revolve around my children’s childhood. The conversations around the table are refreshing change from the chaos of everyday life. When my whole family is at my daughter’s house, we have to split the family into the adult’s table and the kid’s table. This is a poor description though, considering some of my grandchildren are all grown up and living by themselves. In fact one year I ate at the kid’s table and I am the oldest family member, the patriarch of this motley crew.

I promise myself each year that I’m not going to eat too much but it always happens. Just when you have had to open your belt a hole or two and you think you are done, the table gets cleared and the homemade desserts come out. There are usually three to choose from and you have just small piece of each one so you won’t have to unbutton your pants. Every year I feel as if I could just make it to the couch and take a nap, I would be fine.

Once dinner was over we would go back to the living room to watch some grade B horror movies. We used to have a competition to see who can find the worst movie. My son won one year with a movie called “bad taste“. Talk about truth in advertising. Unfortunately this tradition had to change the year that a movie depicted a head rolling across the floor and my grandson took off saying “I’m outta here “.

The hours of work preparing the food are always worth being able to share a meal with others and with all the wonderful people in my family, it’s impossible not to have an enjoyable time. With its easygoing,laid back attitude, Thanksgiving almost tops Christmas as my favorite holiday of the year.

The comfortable attitude is infectious, and for a time we can all forget our worries over a cup of steaming hot chocolate with mini-marshmallows.

From my family to yours, have a happy Thanksgiving.

Note: This article has also appeared in The Union Sun and Journal, Buffalo Rising, The Buffalo Chronicle and Art Voice.