Agreed. It's also only the tip of a bad-writing iceberg. (By the way, I like your polite euphemism, "this woman considers herself a good writer".) Her writing is far too close to her speaking voice, a sign of inexperience (no matter that she's seven years my senior). Developing a writing voice means taking the time to test what can carry over and what can only be audible. Opening your article with italics to suggest you're speaking with scare quotes means the reader has to reread what is supposed to sweep one in the doorway. This doesn't mean I completely disagree with the author: New York State has this jaded-to-narcolepsy problem all over. Even the broke-ass parts of upstate are victims of its cosmopolitan provincialism: the idea that a place is the center of the universe, so there is no reason to experience anything else. The best gift to a lifelong New Yorker, from Buffalo to Albany, is a one-way bus ticket.