Williamsport Community Radio continues to evolve, with as much input from our listeners as we can get our hands (or ears) on. We have a mix of local music and talk, national news, and formats you won’t hear much of on other stations in the area. Local programs include Pulse of the Port (local musicians…
ARIES—In your attempt to outdo yourself with decorations this year, your flashing light display will induce seizures in your neighbors but they will never be able to prove it. So you will avoid a lawsuit but start a neighborhood war that will culminate in some nasty business next Fourth of July. Start looking for a…
”So if you’re willing to work with me one more time, and stand with me one more time, and knock on some doors one more time, and make some phone calls one more time; if you’re willing to vote for me this November, we’ll win Pennsylvania, we’ll win Ohio, we’ll win this election. We’ll finish…
Merry Millheim Millheim, PA December 7: 5-10:30 pm December 8: 10 am-10 pm December 9: 1-6 pm Shop Locally, Buy Unique: In its second annual holiday celebration, “Merry Millheim” returns with even more shopping, more live music, and more children’s activities than before. Highlights include a handmade holiday market at the Bremen Town Ballroom, live…
spoiler of its own ending: the Earth is destroyed by a rogue planet, unmoored from its solar system and barreling through our own. It’s a breathtaking image that leaves little room for ambiguity concerning the fate of humanity: nobody will survive. Many other major events are previewed as well: a main character’s doomed wedding, bizarre…
Farthest you can be from a McDonald’s eatery, by car, while in the continental United States, in miles……………………………………………………………………………………………145 Uninsured citizens: Rank among the world’s developed nations, 2012…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..1 Healthcare costs: Rank among the world’s developed nations, 2012……………………………………………………………………………………………….1 American life expectancy Rank among the world’s developed nations, 1987……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..7 Rank among the world’s developed nations, 2012……………………………………………………………………………………………………………21 American homicide…
Republicans frequently condemn what they see as an America fast evolving into a “food stamp society” with more and more people not paying federal income taxes. They call these people “free loaders” and “takers.” So just who are these people? Well, Bloomberg recently analyzed Department of Agriculture data and concluded that 70% of the counties…
About a hundred and fifty years ago, settlers traversed the wilderness along rugged roads barely wide enough for their wagons. The thick forests covered the top of the vast plateaus, concealing wetlands and secret streams. And then the road reached a place where the earth just fell away. The road hugged the side of a…
My heart is heavy. Rock of ages, strip mined of what’s stuck beneath the surface. All this runoff just so I could, baring it all and laying it to waste. A cold coal carbon-copy of once-living matter stratified plants, and these dinosaur’s bones as layer upon stinking layer, the fecal fecundity of fickle feelings fossilized: …
THE PALE KING By David Foster Wallace 548 pages. Little, Brown & Company. $27.99. The elephant in the room of every The Pale King review is, of course, that Wallace hanged himself before completing it. Some critics interpret The Pale King solely in light of this incompleteness and neglect to treat the work as intelligible…
Whether this is the beginning or the end of the world is a question whose answer is unknowable and that is probably not even worth asking. Some answers are here on terra firma for all of us to ponder, and others reside in heaven for us never to learn or to find out at a later time. Scientists claim to be…
Dove done gone pecked out mah eyes an’ made nes t s out t a tha socket s . At ’s why ah cain’t see s t raight . Wel l , tha t , a n’ tha p ig t ai l s you been pul l in’ an’ t akin’ o f f…
What is happening astrologically with the close of 2012? We’ve heard a lot about transition and planetary alignment. Can you comment on this? SJM: We are in a period when an evolutionary drive of overwhelming power is pushing us through the worst of times. Like a super storm or major weather event, we will be…
Roman Catholic Bishop Daniel Jenky, of Peoria, Illinois, ordered all parish priests in his diocese to read a letter to their congregations condemning Barack Obama. The letter, to be read the weekend before the election, declared that Obama and the Democrat controlled U.S. Senate had launched an “assault upon our religious freedom.” He wasn’t the…
If I were going to make a movie, I’d set the entire film in one place (a farmhouse, say, in northeast Pennsylvania, near the crossing of two one-time Indian trails turned pipelines for gas and mall) and tell a kind of story through the various people who have dwelt there for the last two hundred…
They’ve given the business to my mother’s favorite hill, just off Little Plum Run Road. Once, a cascading glade, the kind you’d see in those old movies, couples, bounding endless love in slow motion. Science and Progress mounting their noble steeds in the name of domestic independence these star-crossed lovers lost, the flames from the…
Local Parks Get a Financial Facelift A mock-up of the new Danville Riverfront Park The Susquehanna Greenway Partnership has partnered with the DCNR to award $60,000 in mini-grants to community partners along the Susquehanna. The purpose of the mini-grant program is to advance public and private efforts to connect people with the natural and cultural…
Williamsport Area High School students accepted the challenge of creating a piece inspired by “The Beginning of the World” or “The End of the World.” The students are enrolled in my 2D Visual Arts courses at the Williamsport Area High School. We all keep sketchbooks as visual journals and have weekly challenges as homework assignments.…
Dear Editor, A recent editorial cartoon asked “Which is the most powerful place in America?” There were four choices: The White House, The Pentagon, the U.S. Capitol or the voting booth. The most powerful place in America was not an answer option. The real seat of power is in the corporate headquarters of huge multinational…
It’s like you’re in another world. You can’t see past the vastness of the trees, the expanse of the blue sky, or the snow crunching beneath your feet. The sound of the birds and the wind rushing through the trees fills your ears. When you enter into this other world, your senses seem to perk…
Let me bring you up to speed about what’s going on at the Campbell Street Center, which is scheduled to close by the end of November. First a bit of history: -Two little black girls who wanted to join the Girl Scouts were refused by the YWCA in 1916. -In 1918, the YWCA set up…
When I first learned I’d be editing The Williamsport Guardian, I thought, “Wait, will they really let a Republican edit this thing?” Turns out they will! Don’t worry–my rightward leanings didn’t stop me from staying true to The Guardian’s roots: There’s still plenty of leftie political writing inside (pp. 6, 10, 16, 19). Politics aside,…
According to the National Center for Health Statistics, 36 million Americans (17%) have some degree of hearing loss, making it the third most common health issue facing Americans after heart disease and arthritis. But individuals with hearing loss and their family members often have trouble finding the resources they need to adjust to living with…
With the onset of an ever-increasing gas boom in our region, the weight of the impact is being considered by many of us with great concern over the future of our community as a whole. Living a stone’s throw from Rt. 664, I have had fi rsthand experience with the increased truck traffic and the…
Successful people and successful organizations set goals and make plans to achieve them. A Comprehensive Plan is focused on the future, encouraging people to think about what kind of community we really want and attempting to define a shared vision in terms of goals and objectives. We know tomorrow will be dramatically different from today.…
Are the Occupy movements starting to drift toward the classrooms? On November 17, several Pennsylvania College of Technology students “occupied” outside the Academic Success Center on Third Street, protesting against high tuition and demanding education equity. Like members of the Occupy Movement in New York, the Penn College students want to demonstrate that the movement’s…
The Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street are polar opposites in their political commitments and policy goals. The former articulates a militantly right-wing ideology with particular emphasis on reducing the size of government social programs. The latter, while much newer and still inchoate insofar as specific proposals are concerned, certainly stands for more robust regulation…
Zuccotti Park in Manhattan is named not for some obscure Italians revolutionary hero or an oddly shaped pasta, but for John Zuccotti, co-chair of the board of Brookfield Properties, the company that owns the land on which the park is situated. A former deputy mayor of New York City, he has an annual salary of…
The creative, cultural entrepreneurs and explorers who pioneered new lifestyles in dilapidated urban neighborhoods are identified as the “creative class,” a term coined by Richard Florida in his 2004 ground-breaking book The Rise of the Creative Class. Florida traces the fundamental theme that runs through a host of seemingly unrelated changes in American society: the…
There’s a famous quote I’ve heard numerous times, sometimes attributed to 18th-century politician and philosopher Edmund Burke, that goes something like this: All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. Recently, the nation has been captivated by an unbelievable tragedy that has been brought to light at Penn…
The Executive Director of AIDS Resource in Williamsport, Kirsten Burkhart, is a national HIV Hero! Kirsten won the honor in a nationwide contest to identify the heroes who help victims fight HIV in their communities every day. Winners were chosen by a panel of judges including Grammy Award-winning singer Dionne Warwick, actor Wilson Cruz, movie…
The YWCA of Northcentral PA has had a long history within the Williamsport community of providing unique services to the area. Founded in 1893, the YWCA began as a community-minded organization and has continued to adapt to the needs of Lycoming County for over 100 years. Today the organization has grown and developed into three…
On November 22, in Tunkhannock, Terry Engelder of Penn State University gave a PowerPoint presentation advocating forced pooling. Our regular contributor Ralph Kisberg presented the following counterpoint to Engelder’s presentation. On the surface, no pun intended, compulsory pooling flies against the instincts of most of us. My property, my rock, my gas, my consent or…
State grants given to build Kohl’s department store in downtown Williamsport: $5 millionRetail jobs at Williamsport Kohl’s: 130Personal pay “earned” by NY hedge fund profiteer John Paulson last year by suckering investors & betting that the U.S. real estate market would collapse: $5 billionNumber of high-paying jobs John Paulson claimed to have created: 100Loan guarantee…
Dear Editor: For the past three months I had the privilege of serving on the Citizens Marcellus Shale Commission, which hosted five hearings across Pennsylvania to give citizens a voice on Marcellus Shale gas drilling. More than 400 citizens attended and dozens testified, eager to have their voices heard. Last week, the Commission released its…
To all concerned citizens: As a Pennsylvania resident, business owner and employer of 75, I have very serious concerns about the pace of the development of Hydraulic Fracturing in Pennsylvania. As a property owner in Sullivan County, PA, I have firsthand knowledge of the Gas Industry and the high pressure tactics that the energy companies…
Ever since Steve Jobs died, I’ve been thinking about my heroes. Steve Jobs changed my life by thinking differently. In the mid 80s I walked into a computer shop with my fiancé. We were two kids in our early 20s who looked as if we didn’t have two dimes to rub together, so no one…
Have you ever wondered whether you’re a cynic or a romantic? If so, I have an hour and a half quiz for you. It’s a new critically acclaimed film called Like Crazy. I always assumed I was a romantic, at least when it came to my taste in movies. My list of all-time favorite films…
In part one of this interview, I focused on the artistic side of Williamsport Sun-Gazette Arts and Entertainment Editor Matt Parrish. The second part of my conversation with him focuses on other areas of interest in his professional and personal life. WG: How do you combine your writing with your art? How do they flow…
MISPLACED GRATITUDE
The plaque just inside the front door of Penn College’s spectacular Madigan Library contains this message to former State Representative Brett Feese: “Your tenacity, skill and leadership provided the resources necessary for our dream to become a reality. We will be forever grateful.” Now that a jury has determined that Rep. Feese employed that same…
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