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The shock of a return from Florida

I’m home. The furnace is running. OMG. After a week in balmy Florida, where I dipped into the hotel swimming pool, watched ballgames, and paraded around in shorts and T-shirts, the cold is hardly bearable.Flying from the Gulf Coast to the hill-top airport on the outskirts of Bridgeport, ...

Please stop this ‘woke’ nonsense

I suppose “woke” is now a dirty word.For the better part of a century, the word, “woke,” hadn’t harmed anybody.It had long been a bit of African American vernacular which meant alert, or aware of racial and social injustices.That’s all.Somehow, folks on the political right, have ...

When history leaps from the page

Some years ago I was sitting at a research table at the state archives in Harrisburg. I had filled out a research slip for something or other when I was handed (by mistake) a letter-size envelope containing a piece of canvas – a sample for those in state government in 1861 who bought tents ...

So long, Dilbert

Scott Adams made his fortune with his wit and artisanship.He’s losing that fortune with his mouth.He’d built that fortune on the shoulders of his highly popular comic strip – Dilbert.Adams has slowly been chipping away at the goodwill Dilbert helped him build with the public (2,000 ...

We ask presidents to do too much

In September 1935, an explosion of nine tons of dynamite devastated no fewer than a thousand homes in West Lebanon, a small community north of here in Indiana County.The accidental detonation at a stone quarry on the outskirts of town rendered the homes unfit for occupancy. Authorities ordered ...

Biden’s trip, Fox News flips

President Biden made a praiseworthy trip to an active war zone last week.Even staunch conservatives like writer George Will were impressed by Biden’s harrowing trek into the heart of Ukraine.“This is a great moment for all Americans to be proud ... This was a terrible day for Vladimir ...