Award-winning columnist, photographer and news writer Ellen Leahy is back as the editor of the Skaneateles Press, in beautiful Skaneateles New York.
She is the former editor of the Skaneateles Press and the Marcellus Observer, and most recently the Syracuse City Eagle. She makes her home in Skaneateles where she is also a freelance photographer and caregiver for her parents, Bill and Marion Leahy.
She began her formal writing career as a columnist with one of her hometown papers, The Duxbury Clipper, in Duxbury, MASS. Born in California, she then moved to Sea Girt, NJ. She is a product of small town America - and the late great American Middle Class.
The photo at right is the drive down to Brook Farm off of West Lake Road - one of my former Skaneateles haunts.
Currently reading...
CLEAN, as well as other assorted reads on my dad's Kindle.
I’m not talking about my style; instead here is something I am dying to tell you. But first let me ask you this, are you confused about the news in regard to journalism dying? It’s simple addition:
One litigious society + the Internet = traditional J not being as effective.
A case in point, is today’s obituary. An obit is the public record of one’s death, but rarely will it mention how one died...
Otis Jennings,Stephanie Miner,Alfonso Davis and Joe Nicoletti all speaking toward the issue of Public Power in Syracuse. The four are seeking the office of Mayor in November this year.
Samadee was nostalgic, returning to the Westcott Nation he had helped to colonize, proud that the first substantive mayoral encounter of the season was at the Westcott Community Center, and that it was focused on the issue of public power. The place was packed, but he was glad for a space in the back of the room near the front door, worried that the Wannabe would start prattling in his rhetorical radical chic, prompting the Has Been to grow impatient and respond loudly, if humorously, irreverent...
Even men aren’t immune anymore. I heard commentator David Brooke say on WCNY’s New Hour last Friday that men are being laid off in greater numbers than woman because they have higher salaries. What will we call this? Glass floors shattering under men’s feet?
The broadcasters wondered how this was going to play in the battle of the sexes. I guess I have too as well. As much as I like men, I’m not as delighted dealing with their rage – you know like – how many women go into a public place and start spraying bullets because that woman feels someone has wronged or slighted her? If women started this action, we’d be back to bullets flying on a daily basis, like in an old western...
This is my dog Grace, a west highland terrier on a full run through the orchard
At St. Catherine’s grammar school in Spring Lake, NJ the nuns told us that when Christ’s friends came to his tomb on Easter – the giant stone at the entrance had been rolled back. His body was gone and it appeared as if he had risen from the dead. But he was not again walking with the living. Instead he had gone to his father in heaven. That’s up above.
This Easter, I attended an open house brunch, a man came in that I have known since I moved to CNY in the early 1970s. He has never really been well; he suffers from a combination of psychological problems and a high IQ compounded by chronic pain and years of alcohol abuse. But, he had been managing until last month when his dog of 16 years died...
That’s me. A couple of times I got myself into credit card debt. Why? I didn’t realize credit cards were essentially legalized loan sharking. It’s a scam that the user had to be on top of or suffer. And with our accelerated society, I was not on top, instead running as a secret service agent might alongside a long Hummer limo.
Each time I eventually paid my way out at a “huger cost” than any of the goods and services I had enjoyed. We’re talkin’ nearly 30 percent more. Then finally I snapped out of it and the cards were discarded, shredded, chop-chop. I now live with a debit card that still probably has me spending more money than I would if I actually had to write and register a check or hand over the green stuff during each transaction...
