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News roundup: Area veterans take to Washington

By Philip Anselmo

A crew of other area veterans led by Assemblyman Stephen Hawley take off today on a four-day bus trip down to Washington D.C. to visit solider memorials and Arlington National Cemetary, according to the Daily News. What's more, the paper sent Matt Surtel on the trip with them. Surtel "will be writing stories on the experience for the newspaper."

This would be a perfect oportunity for Surtel to log onto The Batavian and do some live blogging of the trip, even let some of the veterans get on the computer and talk about their time at Arlington, on the road and in the capitol. What would it take to persuade Surtel to post his travelogues on The Batavian? If he can't do that, does he at least have a private blog of his own that we can link to? Batavia would really love that.


Batavia's new fire chief, Thomas Dillon told reporter Joanne Beck that he intends "to include all the members of the department and include them in the day-to-day decisions ... I know I will depend on them tremendously, and I will include them in my decision-making as much as I can." Dillon starts September 17.


John Lincoln will retire as state Farm Bureau president after 14 years in that position. The Bloomfield dairy farmer "was a strong advocate for getting the new federal Farm Bill to finally include aid for specialty crops, the many fruits and vegetables that are grown locally." Tom Rivers put together a detailed piece on this, for those interested.


Genesee County GOP Chairman Richard Siebert told Tom Rivers this morning that he has already "fielded a dozen calls from people looking for signs touting the John McCain and Sarah Palin ticket." Judging from the response we got from a post about Palin we put up following her speech earlier this week, we can see that folks in Genesee County on both sides of the party aisle are fired-up about this election and this veep choice especially.

As always, we encourage you to pick up a copy of the Daily News at your local newsstand. Or, better yet, subscribe at BataviaNews.com.

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