2008-10-06 11:58:00
TOM MURSE
I served as a pallbearer at a great-aunt's funeral on Saturday. At a small brunch of cold cuts, veggie platters and pot after pot of black coffee afterward, my grandmother, who is in her 80s, briefly glanced over at my wife, who is nine months pregnant and due for a scheduled delivery on Tuesda......
2008-09-29 12:24:00
AD CRABLE
At what point are you old? At 55, I'm constantly raising the bar. Hey, I turned a double play in a charity softball tournament the other day. And I can still hop onto my daughters' top bunk bed without using the ladder. But there are signs that I can no longer deny that I'm now......
2008-09-22 14:30:00
STEVE BRODY
Reading the raves about the Ephrata Performing Arts Center production of "A Streetcar Named Desire," I got to thinking about another Tennessee Williams masterpiece. "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" might be more apt to these political times. The tortured hero, Brick, rants about &......
2008-09-08 12:15:00
RYAN ROBINSON
OK, I admit it was my fault — me, who's supposed to know how to present news since I do it for a living. I told my nearly 7-year-old son, Wyatt, and 4-year-old daughter, Olivia, that Mommy and Daddy had a great surprise for them. "Are we getting a dog?" Wyatt guessed right away. "A c......
2008-08-31 20:30:00
MARGARET GATES
OK. So maybe my first mistake was thinking I could remove a toilet tank with nothing but a wrench, some Internet instructions and a 5-year-old assistant wearing a child-size Lowe's work apron.I've never claimed to be Bob Vila. I was shooting for maybe Bob the Builder. Truth be told......
2008-08-25 10:38:00
TOM MURSE
Stay home or travel? It's neither here nor there "So. What do you want to do this week?" "I don't know. What do you want to do?" With those 18 words we kicked off The Great Murse Family Staycation of 2008. A pyrotechnics-studded, Beijing-like opening cer......
2008-08-18 10:29:00
AD CRABLE
Maybe you've heard. Maybe you've taken satisfaction in it. The newspaper industry as we know it is on the ropes. Neighbors and friends I talk to say they can't imagine not holding a newspaper in their hands each day. But few people under 30 tell me this. The hard, cold tru......
2008-08-11 13:17:00
STEVE BRODY
I'm a little bit disappointed with China. No, not the Chinese people, all 1.3 billion of them. No, I'm disappointed with the organizers (and governing bodies) behind the Beijing Olympics. For those of us who crave novelty as pregnant women crave pickles and ice cream, the officials......
2008-08-04 13:50:00
JANE HOLAHAN
Ah, here it is August. Dog days. The locusts are buzzing, the fireflies are glowing in the heat and humidity. Maybe you spent the day at the pool trying to cool off... Oh, would you excuse me a minute. Typing is getting difficult with the icicles starting to form on my fingers. I'll be......
2008-07-28 12:02:00
RYAN ROBINSON
Four out of 10 Americans reportedly will not take a summer vacation this year, the highest percentage in three decades. What a shame. Fresh off my own family's vacation, I lament that so many others are losing out on the experience. I understand today's slumping economy is thwarting m......
2008-07-21 12:26:00
MARGARET GATES
Eat your heart out, Bon Jovi. After all these years, I'm wanted — preferably alive — to join a rock band. I've dreamed of being in a band since I was a kid, but something always held me back. Oh yeah: I can't play a lick on the guitar. I'm a piano-lesson dropout. The only ......
2008-07-14 10:23:00
TOM MURSE
I have this picture, this mental image, of my daughter. She is standing on a South Carolina shoreline during our June vacation wearing a pink bikini and a matching sunhat. She is lanky and tan. And she is bawling her head off. At 4, she is bossy and intemperate one minute and overly s......
2008-07-07 12:45:00
AD CRABLE
I was leafing through the late Earl Rebman's outline of history along the Conestoga River from 1710-1973 recently when a black-and-white photo of a line of trees caught my eye. I know those trees, I thought. They're at the corner of South Broad and Dauphin streets, at the rear of the campus of ......
2008-06-30 12:31:00
STEVE BRODY
The signs are everywhere at this time of year. Not the signs for the guys running for president. The signs for yard sales. It's as if every neighborhood is having one. It's hard to believe so many people could have so much stuff they want to get rid of. But I guess we do. My street will be h......
2008-06-23 15:04:00
JANE HOLAHAN
I was cleaning out my desk at home the other day and I found a brief note from my mom, written back in February of 1987, just a few months after I moved to Lancaster. She apologizes for taking so long to send something to me, but I can't remember what it was. She chats about her work at th......
2008-06-16 14:19:00
RYAN ROBINSON
Voices column time again. What am I going to write about? Let's see. It'll run in Monday's paper, the day after Father's Day. I should feature my father. Taught school for 30 years, ran a first-generation dairy farm, put five kids through college — but I've written about Dad bef......
2008-06-09 12:46:00
MARGARET GATES
We just returned from our annual trip to Hersheypark and I see the writing on the wall. My carousel buddy, my Tiny Timbers partner, my fellow benchwarmer is slowly moving to the dark side — the dark, twisty, turny, lose-your-stomach side. Sure, he took in the sea lion show. He rode t......
2008-06-02 11:54:00
TOM MURSE
When I think back over all the really dumb things I've done in recent years — and believe me, they make up quite a list — perhaps none matches up to the decision my wife and I made in the summer of 2003. Gird yourselves. We (gulp) bought an SUV. At the time, with our first......
2008-05-26 00:01:00
AD CRABLE, New Era
OK, the yard party is officially over.I no longer feel pushing a lawnmower back and forth connects me to the earth.About all it connects me to these days is picking up our two dogs' poop.And raking expansive mats of wet leaves that fall inconveniently enough one tree at a......
2008-05-20 11:00:00
STEVE BRODY
The to-do list. Jot it on paper, tap it into a hand-held computer, tattoo it on your forearm. It doesn't matter. It's merely writing in the sand when you have an 18-month-old pinballing around the house at nearly all times, as my wife and I do. (We've been unwilling — ......
2008-05-05 14:43:00
RYAN ROBINSON
In recent years, I've followed the same pattern to start my old push mower the first time in the spring. I wreck my shoulder vainly yanking its starter cord one day. Then, I let it sit and the next day, it clatters to life. Just another chore of spring, like snatching pesky dandelions from......
2008-04-28 14:35:00
MARGARET GATES
Ah, spring! The weather is warmer. The grass is greener. Campers are hearing the snap, crackle and pop of the campfire and the call of the wild. Me? I'm wearing earplugs. My first — and last — experience camping was our fifth-grade class trip to Camp Swatara in Bethel.......
2008-04-21 12:13:00
TOM MURSE
Tuesday is Primary Day here in Pennsylvania, and I'm pleased as punch. Shortly after 8:01 tomorrow night, I am certain, Hillary and Barack and all their surrogates will have packed up their suitcases and moved on to the next destination, leaving behind them a trail of lofty — and, in my o......
2008-04-14 14:52:00
AD CRABLE
Attention, therapists. If you want a snapshot of a couple's or family's health or dysfunction, just ask them who controls the television remote. Some people I know all but ban watching of the boob tube to keep their kids' brains from being sucked dry. I don't tell them that when our daught......
2008-04-07 10:17:00
STEVE BRODY
The left side of my throat feels as if I've chugged a cocktail of sand, gravel and battery acid, garnished with a sprig of barbwire, and chased it with a live barracuda. The past several months have been like this, one nagging ailment after another. Happily, no one at home — wife, daughte......
2008-03-31 12:34:00
JANE HOLAHAN
One of the more historic aspects of Barack Obama's run for the presidency — which none of the pundits and politicos ever mention — is that, if elected, he would be the first president to be younger than me. He was born in 1961. I was born in 1959. I'm freaking out. OK, I k......
2008-03-24 13:49:00
RYAN ROBINSON
You might be consumed with your NCAA basketball brackets, but I'm X-ing off the last day on the calendar before Major League Baseball's Opening Day on Tuesday. In Little League, I fell in love with baseball more than sluggers admire hanging curve balls. My four siblings still kid me about ......
2008-03-17 14:22:00
MARGARET GATES
Pardon me. Have you seen my mind? I think I've lost it, along with a set of keys, a calculator and about a dozen mateless socks. Our home is a black hole. A vacuum. Many things come in, but few make it out. A few years ago, I foolishly allowed our youngest to pull the car keys out of ......
2008-03-10 10:36:00
TOM MURSE
I'm drafting a classified ad: Keep me sane, take my wheels PLEASE! Your pick: 2000 VW Cabrio, 85k miles, good cond.; 2003 Jeep, 52k miles, exc. cond., original owner of both. Keys are in the ignition, gas tanks are full. Get 'em outta here. Help!
I'm, like, this c......
2008-02-25 13:56:00
STEVE BRODY
We were standing on hallowed ground, though it might be more accurate to say we were floating above it. Forty-plus die-hard fans — major-league Yankee nerds — we oohed and ahhed our way through Monument Park behind center field at Yankee Stadium, paying our respects at plaques honor......
2008-02-11 11:07:00
RYAN ROBINSON
As you read this column, I'm probably eating. After work, I inhale what I call a snack, what most would call a three-course dinner. Two hours later, I shovel in what I call dinner (see picture in dictionary for "gluttony"). Later, instead of a simple dessert or snack, I scarf down din......
2008-02-05 08:20:00
MARGARET GATES
It all started when I lost my first tooth as a kid and got — as my mom called it — "a little woozy." Most normal children, including my own, proudly hold tooth in hand while flashing a brilliant gap-toothed smile. I saw that tiny spot of blood in that hole in my gum a......
2008-01-28 13:53:00
TOM MURSE
How the Murse family plans to save the economy The Murse household is all atwitter, chirping like robins in the springtime at our good fortune: Our recession check is soon on its way from Washington, and we are under strict orders to spend it lickety-split — or the economy gets it, see......
2008-01-21 13:18:00
AD CRABLE
Every generation, I suspect, as it ages and finds so many lofty goals have been left in the dust, tends to smirk at the young Turks now occupying dorms on college campuses. Let's see, kid, whether fretting over the freedom of Tibet and going organic are your daily concerns once you find out......
2008-01-14 09:10:00
STEVE BRODY
It was captivating somehow. Ducklings paddled around in a pool, waddled up a ladder and slid down a chute on the other side, back into the water. My wife and I happened to catch this scene on the Pennsylvania Cable Network a few days before we took our daughter to the state Farm Show. I......
2008-01-07 10:29:00
JANE HOLAHAN
The Holahans are a mystery to my siblings and me. Everyone on my dad's side of the family was long dead when my parents got married and my father rarely talked about them. We knew Maurice Holahan, our great-grandfather, came from Ireland. We knew he rose in the ranks of New York City politician......
2007-12-31 12:40:00
RYAN ROBINSON
My annual New Year's resolution to lose weight will last no longer than my first Farm Show milkshake. My other popular promise each year — to exercise more (or at least some) — won't spur more than the workout I'll get lugging the abandoned fitness equipment to the cu......
2007-12-24 08:52:00
MARGARET GATES
Our oldest made a very short Christmas list this year because he didn't want to seem greedy. Our middle child wasn't really sure what he wanted, so he ended up asking for next to nothing. You'd think that would make for some easy shopping. Not so fast. The 4-year-old wants a moto......
2007-12-10 09:58:00
AD CRABLE
Dean Rock is coming out of the closet. Most of the time when he goes to his family's deer camp in the woods of Sullivan County he wanders over hill and dale CARRYING AN UNLOADED RIFLE. His father, from Lancaster, has known, but not his uncles or cousins who make the annual trek to buck ......
2007-12-03 10:15:00
STEVE BRODY
Sometimes when I tell them, I catch a quick look, as if they expect me to unzip my skin, revealing a long-bearded, foaming-at-the-mouth "Islamofascist" ready to blow them up. I'm talking about when, if it comes up in conversation, I tell people — your basic white people......
2007-11-26 10:48:00
JANE HOLAHAN
More than 6˝ billion people live on the planet, and I swear every single one of them was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York when I visited a few Saturdays ago. I went to New York to get some culture. So did lots and lots of other people. The massive museum was packed to t......
2007-11-12 09:11:00
MARGARET GATES
It's happened to the greatest of competitors. Tony Stewart punctures a tire. Lance Armstrong gets locked up by a bike chain and a spectator's bag. Olympic skier Bode Miller loses a ski in the downhill. My pedometer keeps resetting. Some days it's tough to be an athlete. I......
2007-11-05 13:36:00
TOM MURSE
The preschool teacher stops my wife the other day. "Do you have a second?" she asks. "It's about Hillary." Our first reaction is to panic when something like this happens. To wonder, Did that little brat spill the beans, rat us out for being bad role models, let it ......
2007-10-29 10:29:00
AD CRABLE
This is what makes a good neighborhood bar: • Someone calls out salutations as you enter. • The beer is served cold, in a glass, and someone is there promptly, offering a refill. • Local beer is among the offerings. • The barmaid, while she should not be subje......
2007-10-25 09:09:00
STEVE BRODY
If you see a lonely figure sitting on a park bench somewhere, indifferent to the pigeons perching and pooping on his baseball cap, it might not be a poor wino, but one of us baseball fans left jilted by this season. We've declared the season over, even though the World Series hasn't beg......
2007-10-15 09:54:00
JANE HOLAHAN
I am a shy person. If I'm walking down the street and I see someone I sort of know, but not really well, I'll keep my head down and hope I can walk on by. It's not that I don't like that person, I just get very nervous about having to interact with them. So nervous, I......
2007-10-08 10:25:00
RYAN ROBINSON
How many college graduates does it take to install a new bike pedal? It's a question my Uncle Donald would ask in jest. The farmer/truck driver always argued that kids who didn't go to college were smarter than those who did, since bachelor's degrees don't teach practical things such as ho......
2007-10-01 14:21:00
MARGARET GATES
If you really could die of embarrassment, I would have been six feet under years ago. Like after the time I got my pigtail wrapped around my thumb and nearly threw my head in the gutter at Dutch Lanes. Or the time I passed out in gym class and was made to sit with my head between my kne......
2007-09-24 12:24:00
TOM MURSE
The movie "Revenge of the Nerds" came out 23 years ago, in 1984, and though I can't quite place where I was at the time I can imagine the setting to be a musty, dimly lit corner of the school cafeteria, a bunch of greasy dweebs snapping paper footballs across the table, trying to figure out if a Doc...
2007-09-17 13:59:00
AD CRABLE
To my glee, our girls are ravenous about the natural world. On deer drives in Lancaster County Central Park, they often spot lurking whitetails before I do. We sit side-by-side on the TV couch, amazed at, and occasionally grossed out by, the exploits on "Man vs. Wild" and "Survivorman." Ho......
2007-09-10 09:25:00
STEVE BRODY
Years ago, before setting out for the funeral of a beloved great-aunt, my dad looked at the downcast faces of my brothers and me, and said in a mock-cheerful tone, "All right, guys, let's go put the 'fun' in the funeral!" I tried to keep in mind his death-diminishing insouciance as my wife and ......
2007-08-27 12:39:00
RYAN ROBINSON
Rick Werdt started waving a metal detector back and forth along the small beach. My young nieces and nephews abandoned Styrofoam noodles, arm floaties and sand buckets and crowded around him. Move over Johnny Depp — the Pirates of Raystown Lake were hunting buried treasure. Voic......
2007-08-20 12:03:00
MARGARET GATES
We are a family of five. We are not large people. None of us at the moment would be worthy of the nickname "Shaq Daddy" or "Big Mama." But we do tend to eat three meals a day. At least, most of us do. So when I was looking for a quick dinner idea one busy day, I grabbed a coupon for o......
2007-08-13 11:29:00
TOM MURSE
You sick of hearing about Barry Bonds yet? I am. The San Francisco Giants slugger hit his 756th home run last week, breaking Hank Aaron's record. Good for him. Hooray for the new king. Put him in the Hall of Fame. Pete Rose, too, for all I care. The whole discussion about Bond's place......
2007-08-06 10:42:00
AD CRABLE
You remember how it was in college. Boxes of Kraft macaroni for cheap meals. Hardly a penny to your name. My friend and I had exactly 18 cents between us when we headed back to campus one Sunday after a weekend escape to New York City. We were barreling along — somewhere in New Je......
2007-07-30 12:50:00
STEVE BRODY
Of course my wife and I didn't know we were creating a monster. Had we known, we might have paused before planting the seeds in our vegetable garden. Foolish, novice gardeners, we rushed in. Now, measuring 7˝ feet in diameter, our zucchini plant is wider than Shaquille O'Neal is ......
2007-07-23 10:03:00
JANE HOLAHAN
A few weeks ago, I took the train to New York by myself. That meant spending a lot of time looking out the window and watching the world rush by. On the way home, I decided to pay closer attention to what I was seeing. They were all fleeting images, of course, confined to life around th......
2007-07-16 11:05:00
RYAN ROBINSON
Ahhh, summer. Buttered sweet corn, fresh watermelon and salads, Italian water ice. Baseball, fireworks, camping, pool dives and slip-and-slide slips and slides. And of course, the pursuit of summer happiness includes the pursuit of lightning bugs. "He's not a bug,&quo......
2007-07-09 10:53:00
TOM MURSE
You don't need to sell off all your worldly belongings or build a one-room cabin near a pond in the woods, a mile from your nearest neighbor, to embark on a journey of self-discovery. No, a weeklong family vacation, preferably a 10-hour, 575-mile road trip down Interstate 95 with the wife an......
2007-07-03 08:36:00
MARGARET GATES
Next to the huge backyard, the biggest selling point when we bought our home six years ago was the huge finished basement. It was nothing fancy, mind you - a drop ceiling, drywall and carpet - but the thought of not tripping over toys in the living room made me positively giddy with excitem......
2007-06-05 09:04:00
RYAN ROBINSON
Duct tape around my 1991 Honda driver's window prevents whooshing air from drowning out her radio. Lower Accord's disabled window and it will jump the track, or worse, shatter in hundreds of pieces. An aggressive tow-truck guy mistakenly performed a colonoscopy on my car bumper......
2007-05-22 09:05:00
TOM MURSE
Congratulations. And thank you for purchasing the backyard playset! We hope it will bring you and your children many years of safe and enjoyable backyard fun!
With those 26 words (and two grossly misused exclamation points, we decided later) four grown men with reasonable knowledg......
2007-05-18 14:00:00
TOM MURSE
That giant flushing noise you heard on Tuesday? Why, it was the sound of primary voters yanking the chain on yet another proposal to fund public schools and cut property taxes, the "shell game" known as Act 1. Aside from why the measure tanked — Gov. Ed Rendell said ......
2007-05-15 14:36:00
AD CRABLE
Did you choose to find out the sex of your baby before he or she was born? Would you want to? It was so uncomplicated for so long: You found out if you had a boy or girl at the precise moment baby was born. The father then ran into the waiting room, blurting to the gathered relatives: ......
2007-05-08 12:20:00
STEVE BRODY
It does, indeed, feel like a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. Thirty years ago this May 25, "Star Wars" zoomed into movie theaters nationwide. For children, mainly boys, belonging to my now-thirtysomething generation, the effects were like a jolt from a blaster set on......
2007-04-16 14:33:00
RYAN ROBINSON
Every year at this time, I aspire to be a hobo to avoid doing taxes. IRS Commissioner Mark Everson calls paying taxes "a unifying experience," but the ordeal returns me to my prison days of high school calculus. Remember spending hours (while "simple math" kids frolicked outside on warm sp......
2007-04-09 14:32:00
TOM MURSE
When your number's up, it's up, what are you going to do? You're smooth, and you try and talk your way out of it at first. The boss can't live without you. The whole family's already booked vacation on the volcanic and somewhat chilly Bouvet Island. You're incontine......
2007-04-02 09:51:00
AD CRABLE
I was watching a video the other day that a co-worker had shot while roaming through the Lancaster Newspapers building in 1985. You know the routine. You and the other subjects pack into a room and laugh at how much thinner and younger, less gray and badly dressed everyone was 22 years ago....
2007-03-26 14:24:00
STEVE BRODY
The rumor swirled for much of the winter. It caused outrage or sadness, depending on your inclination. I for one refused even to acknowledge it. Then, last week, with Opening Day (April 1) fast approaching, I finally had to confront it. Yes, the rumor was all too true, I found out: For us ......
2007-03-19 10:17:00
JANE HOLAHAN
I hate to do this to you since spring officially begins tomorrow, but take yourself back to the awful Valentine's Day storm. Surely, you remember the cold and the sleet and the rock-solid ice, and how generally miserable everything was? Well, I have happy memories of that awful day. N......
2007-03-12 14:13:00
RYAN ROBINSON
Amish are freeloaders. They don't pay taxes or contribute to the economy outside their little, closed circles. They don't pay in to Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid, but benefit from them. Their buggies carve up roads they don't have to pay to repair.
A ......
2007-03-05 13:32:00
MARGARET GATES
Not long ago, I read that Sir Edmund Hillary returned to Antarctica at age 87 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the base he helped build there. Even though most of the base buildings are centrally heated now, he wanted to spend at least one night in one of the old A-frame huts on the ice....
2007-02-26 13:23:00
TOM MURSE
There comes a scream. It is that of a bobcat in serious physical pain, or Led Zeppelin front man Robert Plant on the CD player. Either or. It originates downstairs, bullies its way through the floorboards, seduces the lemon-cream paint from the office walls and tickles my spine. Yes. ......
2007-02-12 14:24:00
STEVE BRODY
For a long time, Lancaster County's fame as the Garden Spot, the producer of so many wonderful things to eat, was accompanied by a weirdly indifferent attitude toward food. Sure, we produced a bounty of raw ingredients. But we were starved for something edible to do with them. Our local cui......
2007-02-05 13:51:00
RYAN ROBINSON
The 12-year-old had never eaten cereal, noodles or a hot dog. No solid food at all, or even soda. A plastic tube through his abdomen fed Austin Barber formula. Another tethered the Manheim Central fifth-grader to a scuba-like oxygen tank. Two hours a day, Austin wore a tight vest......
2007-01-29 13:34:00
JANE HOLAHAN
I recently celebrated my 20th anniversary here at the New Era and as I look around our newsroom, I realize that I am now one of the old-timers. When the heck did that happen? When I arrived at the New Era in 1987, it seemed like everyone was a seasoned veteran with tales to tell. The ......
2007-01-22 14:25:00
MARGARET GATES
Call me The Enforcer. Minus the .44 Magnum, the polyester suit and the ’70s sideburns, thank you. Although I wouldn’t mind some handcuffs, a notebook and, I don’t know, maybe a nice badge. Nothing too gaudy, just something shiny and official looking. Something to ......
2007-01-15 14:39:00
TOM MURSE
There are precious few places a man can find peace and quiet and time to think in his own home, and a garage happens to be one of them, the loo another, which is why moving to the Cape Cod a few streets over seemed like a good idea: We now have one of the former and two of the latter. The mu......
2007-01-08 12:59:26
Ad Crable
Rather, the old buildings and trappings that made up the Watt & Shand department store and about 75 percent of Armstrong’s world’s-largest floor plant are being assiduously picked over. Think of them as non-human organ donors, their cannibalized innards scattered to the four winds. They will l......
2007-01-01 10:49:14
Steve Brody
“Tyrant,” they spell. Excuse me — “baby,” they say. At nearly 24 inches long, she is our 2-foot tyrant. My wife and I are slaves to her every whim. She cries, “Jump!”; we ask, “How high, Dear Lilliputian Leader?” (Truth be told, all her commands sound like “bwah-bwah-bwah!”) A space alien g......
2006-12-11 10:10:31
Ryan Robinson
Exhibit A: my parents. From 44 years of marriage, five children and 12 grandchildren, they’ve received every present ever created by man, nature or elf — twice. They don’t have room in their house for anything. So a few years ago, I got Mom a wrought-iron bird bath. But fake animals, decora......
2006-12-04 14:11:46
Margaret Gates
Me, I just warble “Climb Every Mountain” at the top of my lungs in my best Mother Superior voice until they run screaming from the room, begging for mercy. Hey, it works — but it hasn’t gotten me an invitation to sing at school. Some moms just seem to have it all together. They make pancakes f......
2006-11-27 14:25:40
Tom Murse
We have folded up the walnut-finish dinner table, a worn but functional hand-me-down, and stacked the chairs against a dining-room wall. The room now serves as our own little self-storage unit. We tread carefully from living room to kitchen. Boxes filled with high-school yearbooks, wedding albums......
2006-11-20 14:00:55
Ad Crable
They quietly take it all in — everything that happens under their outstretched branches. They are non-judgmental, neither rebuking nor lecturing. So much has happened on their watch. I wish they could tell me the things they have seen. So here I am at sunrise on a recent Sunday morning, camera......
2006-11-13 13:40:40
Steve Brody
We want this, the birth of our first child, to go according to the generally accepted plan: Baby comes through it all right, Mom comes through it all right, and Dad comes through it without vomiting and then fainting or without fainting and then vomiting. Instead, there is a kind of coolly manage......
2006-10-30 13:56:03
Ryan Robinson
If you have no idea what I’m talking about, then this column is for you: You’ve been missing the best show on television. The above-mentioned characters are cute little meerkats on Animal Planet’s “Meerkat Manor.” It’s not just another animal show, but a real-life action thriller/soap opera — ......
2006-10-23 13:10:53
Margaret Gates
Yes, by some strange coincidence, even though our previous homes were on opposite ends of the county, we had both fallen in Gary’s territory many years ago. Maybe it wouldn’t be a big deal to most, but judging from our reaction, you would have thought we just discovered we had the same father....
2006-10-16 13:52:30
Tom Murse
It is a beautiful thing to behold, the mastery with which the well connected are able to hem, haw and weave together a tapestry of malarkey so deceptive you actually feel sorry for them. I was reminded of this talent last week, when an ex-governor resurrected one of my favorite excuses for bowing......
2006-10-09 13:57:00
Ad Crable
Randy Herr is on another adventure.
Lin and Harriet Bowen are currently pedaling a 3-by-6-foot quilt, the most important physical manifestation left of their son, on an 880-mile journey from their Lititz home to Atlanta, Ga. Once there, the quilt will join some 44,000 other panels, a......
2006-10-04 07:23:19
Steve Brody
Picture a roomful of men kneeling next to their supine and pregnant wives, blowing whistles in their wives' faces, barking at them to breathe, even calling them "maggot."ť
We were "coaches"ť now, after all, in the eyes of our birthing-class instructor. It would have been so easy to get carrie...
2006-09-25 14:02:58
Jane Holahan
Maybe it’s the tiny snap in the air that makes you hug yourself and go find a sweater. Or the crunch below your feet, where acorns, twigs and browning leaves litter the sidewalk. There is just something so wonderful and energizing about this time of year. And I don’t have any idea why I fee......
2006-09-18 14:08:10
Ryan Robinson
I rank slightly above Spider-Man and Veggie Tales’ “Bob ’Mato,” but well behind second-place Elmo. The cute and cuddly Sesame Street monster slam-dunks hot dog-cooking, time-out-giving Daddy every time. Or so I thought. Our little monsters, 5-year-old Wyatt and 2-year-old Olivia, were suffe......
2006-09-12 14:30:00
Tom Murse
A new Harvard study of life expectancy in all 3,141 U.S. counties found ours, at 78.5 years, is among the highest. Why? Sociologists and health experts here agree that it’s a combination of relatively high social class, low unemployment and — most importantly — access to quality health care....
2006-09-11 14:10:58
Margaret Gates
That’s right up there with having tomato soup for lunch while wearing white pants. I’ve done that, too. In the car. Eat your heart out, Evel Knievel. Being a “Let’s Go Mets!” girl in a world of phanatical Phillies fans is no easy task. Although it’s much easier now that the Mets are in first p......
2006-08-28 13:53:08
Ad Crable
Now, I want to preface this rant by assuring you that when my oldest daughter was a child, I “threw” heaven knows how many games of Candyland, Go Fish and Chutes and Ladders so that the impressionable young child would win, boosting her confidence. I tell you this because for the last 18 years sh......
2006-08-21 13:59:34
Steve Brody
It is a blouse, I determine, after much fumbling and swearing, before dropping it in the laundry basket with the 47 other freshly laundered pieces of my wife’s maternity wear that I have given up even trying to fold competently. When I try, the results look as if we paid a feces-flinging monkey to d...
2006-08-14 13:33:50
By Jane Holahan
I still get a little jump of excitement when I see the mail. Will there be a letter from a long-lost friend? An unexpected check? An invitation to some fancy party? The possibilities are wide open. Of course I am disappointed. My mail consists almost entirely of three things: bills, charita......
2006-08-07 12:59:37
By Margaret Gates
For me, however, when it comes to choosing the wrong words it’s not so much mispronunciation as misunderstanding. Some people remember where they were when they learned that Elvis died or JFK had been shot. I remember where I was when I realized that the title of that Stylistics hit was “Betc......
2006-07-31 12:59:45
Ryan Robinson
Then click the remote and go on to something else. Basem and Patty Shalloufeh, formerly of Ephrata, and their 5-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, are living in Nazareth and experiencing the Israel-Lebanon conflict firsthand. The Christian missionaries have been e-mailing Clara Weaver and Rick Mony......
2006-07-17 12:07:49
Ad Crable
Recently, I rented the documentary film “Murderball.” It’s an intimate, if often blunt, glimpse into the very physical world of wheelchair rugby, in which quadriplegic men fuse themselves into wheelchairs they’ve customized into battering rams. They knock themselves over a lot. The jarring phy......
2006-07-10 13:26:25
Steve Brody
You know the west. I’m hunting wabbits, of the most wascally kind — wabbit season at the Bwody house. The neighborhood where I live is overrun with them, Sylvilagus floridanus, or varmint. They outnumber human residents approximately 87 million to 1. A few of these Eastern cottontails have ......
2006-07-03 13:09:08
Jane Holahan
No brainiac, mind you, but smart enough. But now I’m wondering if this is a delusion. Sure, I can figure out the tip on a restaurant bill, I enjoy reading heavy-duty literature (OK, I used to enjoy reading heavy-duty literature), and I got through school pretty easily. But when it comes to ......
2006-06-26 12:29:18
Ryan Robinson
But perhaps not for long. The nation’s oldest form of currency is under attack. For the first time, it costs more than a penny to make a penny — as much as 1.4 cents — even though the copper Abe Lincolns are now actually only 2.5 percent copper. One calculation estimated that American business......
2006-06-19 13:01:03
Cindy Stauffer
Who is the easiest to pump for information. Who has to win the battle and who doesn’t care. Who actually brushed their teeth and who just pretended. But most of the time, our conversations go something like this: Me: How was your day? Them: Fine. Mumble. Mumble. Me: What did you do? T......
2006-06-12 12:55:36
Tom Murse
I’m alone up here onstage. But I’m fine. Really. Take a deep breath, I tell myself. Sit up straight. Remember what the great classical guitarist Christopher Parkening wrote: “Strive to achieve a balance between security, relaxation, and the ability to produce a good sound.” Exhale. My left ......
2006-06-05 13:44:29
Ad Crable
But that’s what modern packaging has driven us to. As I try to open things these days, I either think I’m seeing the first signs of feebleness brought on by old age or find myself prone to committing violence toward inanimate objects. I don’t know where to begin. How about the kitchen? As I sh......
2006-05-29 10:18:10
Steve Brody
Yes, more than 40 million people tuned in to watch the announcement of who won the fifth season of “American Idol” the other night. That would put it behind only the Oscars and the Super Bowl in television audience this year, according to news accounts. It was the Great American Idle. For an h......
2006-05-22 13:38:07
Jane Holahan
It includes my great-grandparents and their 10 children, including my maternal grandmother. Even though most of the people in it are strangers to me, it’s my favorite family photograph. I’d save it over the few Holahan family portraits we have and the fading Polaroids my mother took as we grew......
2006-05-15 13:19:48
Ryan Robinson
Too late for that. It’s a call for soldiers to war against the deceptive gimmicks known as “rebates.” Chances are you’ve bought something that included a “money-saving” rebate. For the good of the world and our children’s future, join me and pledge to never do so again. Flashback to Dec.......
2006-05-08 13:01:16
Cindy Stauffer
On a warm Sunday afternoon, we head down the hill to our neighborhood park to play. We settle on teams. Dad as the all-time pitcher. Me and the boy vs. the soccer-playing girls. Ha. They think they are so hot. The boy and I slap hands, high-fiving and trash-talking. We will show them.......
2006-04-24 13:52:03
Ad Crable
“Probably hungover,” Patricia Turner told me. She wasn’t, though all 21 employees at Mangold’s Tax Service rented a dining room at Tobias S. Frogg that night to celebrate the end of the “season.” Today, you can get a parking spot smack-dab in front of the friendly Columbia Avenue tax-preparati......
2006-04-17 12:48:20
Steve Brody
I’ve been summoned for jury duty — jury “service,” the good people at the county courthouse call it — and I expect to be in some courtroom today, doing my civic duty, er, service. I say they caught up with me because a somewhat threatening postcard arrived at my home about a week before I was to ......
2006-04-10 12:51:37
Jane Holahan
Would you be interested in starting a Luddites Anonymous group in the basement of a church somewhere? You may be a Luddite and not even know it. We need to support each other in this cold, hard world. Luddites are people who are opposed to technological progress. We don’t like new ways of doin......
2006-04-03 12:47:49
Ryan Robinson
Business has dropped in recent years. Some days, the register on the counter is not touched. Ruth, 67, reads the newspaper or watches television to pass the time — and chats with her parrots. “Hello. Pretty. Hi bird,” the three socialites say in human-like voices. “Heeeere cat,” Petey the c......
2006-03-27 13:19:03
Cindy Stauffer
Cindy Btfsplk. Cynthia Sue Btfsplk, formally. Cindy Sue B. for short, maybe. Joe Btfsplk was a character in the old comic strip “Li’l Abner.” He walked around with a dark cloud over his head, a hole in his shoe and a never-ending string of bad luck. I could be his little sister. Last......
2006-03-20 12:41:30
Tom Murse
Here are some of them. · Late-afternoon strolls through the Garden of Five Senses at the county’s Central Park, with the curious 2-year-old daughter and a backpack stuffed with sandwiches and fresh fruit. This little gem, nestled on a hillside overlooking the Conestoga River, is fragran......
2006-03-13 13:14:55
Ad Crable
You see, when traveling long distances in the station wagon, we (my wife is a willing accomplice) are not above plopping videos into a portable VCR wedged between the front seats (don’t call OSHA). We insert them like quarters into a juke box for as long as we can get by with it. We thus buy a......
2006-03-07 14:56:19
Steve Brody
Even though I was sensible and had it checked a couple of weeks before the pre-Lenten deep-fried depravity, the reading came in: “borderline high.” Now, the nurse practitioner said that with a low-fat diet and exercise, I should be all right. There would be no need -- yet -- to start popping Lipi......
2006-02-27 12:40:43
Jane Holahan
To speak to our billing department, press 2. To schedule an appointment, press 3. For our hours, press 4. For directions, press 5. To place an order, press 6. If you have a rotary phone, stay on the line and an operator will be with you soon. Hmm, let’s see? Uh, well, I guess I’ll press 1. Du......
2006-02-20 13:34:24
Ryan Robinson
Why am I engrossed in the Winter Olympics? My wife wasn’t home, American contenders had already choked and my kids were too busy practicing killing each other to practice pretend pirouettes. Yes, it’s still 40 days until baseball’s opening day and American Idol has not yet weeded out this seas......
2006-02-13 13:14:29
Cindy Stauffer
It feels strange to be here on a Wednesday afternoon, when this place is empty and unnaturally quiet. Everything looks different than it normally does, even the light. It’s more diffused and sideways as it comes through these windows, as familiar to me as my own kitchen window back home. I tip......
2006-02-06 13:22:02
Tom Murse
“Where did this come from?” I ask my wife, somewhat puzzled. “It came in the mail.” “Really? Huh. So that explains it.” This is what passes for conversation in our house. “I ordered it. Remember? Your Christmas gift?” she huffs. “Jeez, you’re getting old.” “Hey, love you too, sweethea......
2006-01-30 13:53:09
Ad Crable
How can people butcher my name? Let us count the ways. My name, officially Ad Allen Crable III, has always carried some baggage. From the beginning. I am actually the fourth, but there was some kind of snafu early on about a senior not being used when it was supposed to, or used twice — I’ve n......
2006-01-23 14:28:46
Steve Brody
But as ages go, 30 is by no means the end. Things get mostly better from there, I think, as one who passed the threshold a few years ago. They get more interesting, anyway. Hairier, too. Literally. Shortly after I turned 30, my barber correctly guessed my age based on a lone hair that had sproute......
2006-01-16 13:04:45
Jane Holahan
I am a catch-up reader. Stacks of magazines grow steadily on my coffee table, and I swear I’m going to get to them one of these days. I will clip out that Christmas cookie recipe from Martha Stewart’s Living, and I will read Time’s Man of the Year issue. I swear I will. It’s part of a bigger p......
2006-01-09 12:44:23
Cindy Stauffer
· Much to my mild astonishment, everyone in the middle school apparently did get an iPod for Christmas, as my 12-year-old daughter assured me they most definitely would. Or a cell phone that takes pictures. Or a digital camera. · The modern equivalent of dad struggling to put togeth......
2006-01-02 12:46:47
Ryan Robinson
Picture the bloated rat Templeton after he feasted at the fair in “Charlotte’s Web.” I deserve my gluttonous day off from work after the holiday I’ve had. Young fathers unite, grab the Elmo guitar and join in singing my version of “The Twelve Days of Christmas”: On the first day of Christma......
2005-12-26 13:05:45
Tom Murse
Resolutions. Bah, humbug, I say. Every Goody Two-Shoes around me is stumbling over himself to make vows of self-improvement in 2006. They’re out buying gym passes, swearing off this vice or that sin, starving themselves of even the tiniest indulgences. Not me. I’m perfectly happy with th......
2005-12-19 13:47:01
Ad Crable
I mulled stories that could capture the Christmas spirit. Perhaps a veteran Salvation Army bell ringer. Last year’s news. Homeowners who stuff their lawns with lighted ornaments seeking no other recompense than a child’s wide-eyed joy? Been done. With only 14 writing days to Christmas, I began to......
2005-12-12 12:51:06
Steve Brody
From the sofa in the living room, I thought I saw a tiny gray dart zip across the dining room floor. I told myself, “Forget it, it’s nothing,” and I turned back to the TV. But the next night I saw it again. It was lit up for a moment by the moon or the neighbors’ porch lights coming through the d......
2005-12-05 13:02:06
Jane Holahan
Think of these little gems while you’re looking for a parking space in Park City Center this week. · It’s a cold December morning and your alarm clock starts beeping at 5:30 a.m. Is there anything more miserable than having to get out of a warm bed? Especially when you’ve put your thermost......
2005-11-28 12:32:12
Ryan Robinson
You hate “puppy mills.” You’d do anything to squelch harm to our four-legged friends. So do it. Here is how. The simple, economical solution to the problem of kennels that overbreed dogs and treat them poorly? If you can’t beat them, join them. Farmers breed dogs because puppies ar......
2005-11-21 13:00:22
Cindy Stauffer
At this time of year, I look forward to getting out my boxes of fresh, crisp cards. I enjoy writing notes in them. I like to stack up the envelopes, after sticking the Christmas stamps in the corners. But this year, before I start my cards, I need to tackle a task that I have been putting off....
2005-11-14 12:34:10
Tom Murse
Seriously. Tie a cement block around my ankle and toss me over the Columbia-Wrightsville Bridge. The five-year wedding anniversary is barreling toward me like a runaway Peterbilt, and I don’t have a plan. Not a single original idea. (Well, I might have one. But more on that later.) Fa......
2005-11-07 13:00:15
Ad Crable
I had s’mores, Jiffy Pop popcorn, plenty of firewood, air mattresses — even pillows. All was in order until we started into the woods after dark for the short trek from the car to the camp site. We’d taken just a few steps into the gloom when the cheap drawer flashlight dimmed and died, castin......
2005-10-31 13:03:47
Steve Brody
Yet what is between the covers is anything but plain. It is a collection of my father’s many recipes, variations on Italian, French, Syrian and Japanese dishes — his favorites. It is a cornucopia, so to speak. It is as thick and heavy as a family Bible, and since my father’s death in April 2000, as ...
2005-10-24 12:55:19
Jane Holahan
I’d like to lose more and the way I feel now, I know I will. I’m focused, healthy and filled with optimism. Pass the Slimfast! Of course, there’s a problem. It involves the words “latest diet.” I am 46 years old and I have started and ended more diets than I will ever be able to count. Some......
2005-10-17 13:32:18
Ryan Robinson
I dug out a pair of old contacts to wear instead of eyeglasses and chose my best dress shirt and tie. Later that evening, I aged 15 years in one night by attending my high school class reunion. No one organized a 5- or 10-year get-together, so I hadn’t seen many of my old friends since the fir......
2005-10-10 13:15:45
Cindy Stauffer
But I saw the place where you died. And that changed my life. My journey to that place began in our newsroom when we got word of a fatal, a reporter’s shorthand for a vehicle accident where someone dies. In our newsroom, covering a fatal is a routine occurrence. Last year, Lancaster County had......
2005-10-03 12:40:22
Tom Murse
I remember it because I had resolved that day to begin running again, and I had gone home from the office, rummaged through the pile of dirty clothes lumped on the closet floor and pulled from the tangled mass a pair of sneakers I had not worn in — how long? I laced them up and drove to Lancaster......
2005-09-26 12:47:59
Ad Crable
Mostly they were studio shots of stern faces — stiffly-dressed men on settees and in uniform, women in fancy hats looking slightly away from the camera, boys in leggings posing with dogs. You could tell they’d rather be somewhere else. These are my ancestors — who I am, I’d tell myself as I tr......
2005-09-19 12:53:11
Steve Brody
You, the raccoon-eyed, wake up. I feel your pain, as a former president, a famously sleepless nocturnal type, would say. We start early here at the New Era. The first editors and reporters trickle in about 4:30 a.m., and sometimes I am among them. Most days, like the others, I get in about 6:30 a......
2005-09-12 13:20:09
Jane Holahan
My dad loved Archway cookies and we always had a pack or two in our house. Before that it was an old photograph I found of the two of us — me, about 2, wearing my red Christmas dress, and my dad, sporting a suit, a crew cut and the always present cigarette, looking young and happy back in the ear......
2005-09-05 10:35:36
Ryan Robinson
I got sinus surgery. Picture Scully in “The X Files” scalpeling a scummy alien slime out of a corpse, except that I got billed for the procedure. I had figured I’d enjoy sinus surgery even more than the two lower-back surgeries I got in the ’90s. Three or four days off work, no 5 a.m. alarm......
2005-08-30 14:13:35
Cindy Stauffer
I don’t have a cell phone. But wait. There’s more. I’m not a member of Costco. And, what the heck, you might as well hear all of my dirty secrets at once: I rarely use a credit card. In fact, I often pay for things with cash or by &tstr; gasp &tstr; writing a check. Yeah, yeah, yeah. ......
2005-08-23 12:57:41
Ad Crable
I don’t like wearing sunglasses. The darkness makes me uncomfortable for some reason I can’t explain. And cutting the grass gets old. So, the thought occurred to me: Do we need summer? What if we had the power to flip from May’s pleasant days and effusive flowers to mid-September’s breezy, coo......
2005-08-22 14:34:56
Tom Murse
Here goes. My wife’s heart belongs to another. Anthony, his name is. Anthony Field. I can’t say I’m all that surprised, either. Anthony is handsome, and though I have not had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Homewrecker face-to-face, I’ve seen pictures: his dark hair is closely cropped, hi......
2005-08-08 13:55:25
Steve Brody
So, then, what were we — three 30-something married men — doing at an early evening showing of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and having fun, no less? Well, this guys’ night out started promisingly enough, in a somewhat seedy pool parlor (is there another kind?) behind a low-rent strip mall.......
2005-08-01 13:16:18
Jane Holahan
No, the article did not discourage it. In fact, it stated that smoking was good because it tended to produce undersized babies, which were easier for doctors to deliver. So, of course, my aunt continued smoking. Didn’t everybody back in 1963? I’m happy to report that my cousin — soon to cel......
2005-07-25 12:57:33
Ryan Robinson
The Winchester rifle Helen used as a girl to shoot rats on her father’s farm sold for $150. The accordion and mandolin Italians played while building the low-grade railroad in 1904 went for $97.50. Joe’s U.S. Army uniform survived Okinawa in World War II but not the auctioneer’s block. “One......
2005-07-18 13:26:19
Cindy Stauffer
A revival of a 1950s radio program hosted by Edward R. Murrow, it allows both famous and ordinary folks to wax about their fundamental beliefs, reflecting on things like faith, justice, the American Way and the value of the pizza delivery dude. It got me thinking: What do I believe? What shapes m......
2005-07-11 12:45:52
Tom Murse
I have some important news to share with you. It might be difficult to hear, I admit. But you shouldn’t have to find out from someone else when I’m gone. I’m moving to Hawaii. To fulfill my dream of island living. Of stringing up my hammock in the shade of coconut trees and sago palms. Of trop......
2005-06-27 13:48:34
Ad Crable
Hip dude that I was in the early 1970s, I caught only glimpses of “The Lawrence Welk Show” on the tube on my way out of the house on Saturday nights. No doubt, to many Americans, Welk and his clean-cut singers and dancers were a welcome bastion of wholesomeness and patriotism, making a stand for ......
2005-06-20 12:50:19
Steve Brody
No, amid all the excitement of signing the paperwork and surveying our new property — “Wow, honey, look what we have, a cherry tree!” — one thing kept looming up before me. I now have a lawn to mow. Darn. It had been more than 15 years since I last mowed a lawn. I was a teenager then and cu......
2005-06-13 13:44:51
Ryan Robinson
Shower. Dress. Wake Andrew. Underwear, clean shirt, pants. Brush teeth. Comb hair. Breakfast. Off to Grandma’s house. 7 a.m. “No, Mommy, No! WAAAHHHH!” Kristine Messner, 18, unclutches her 2-year-old son, wipes a tear from her eye, and heads off to high school. A ful......
2005-05-30 10:03:01
Cindy Stauffer
I shared my first name both with my baby sitter and the Grinch’s favorite tot. To this day, at least two of my friends also carry it around. I am a child of the ’60s, when there were swarms of us Cindys, Karens and Dianes out there. Before I married, my maiden name was not hugely common, yet I......
2005-05-23 13:22:20
Tom Murse
But here goes: Baseball bores me to tears. I once left a Philadelphia Phillies game at the old Vet when Curt Schilling was working on a no-hitter. It was a hot Sunday afternoon, and the sun beat down mercilessly on the field, a thin sheet of pool-table green pseudoturf stretched across a stone......
2005-05-16 13:26:28
Ad Crable
My second is a realization that the bloody tip with the dislodged nail is my trigger finger. Within hours, however, the injury to such a small part of my body begins to manifest itself as a much more sweeping disruption. I never thought that losing use of one little body part could be so life ......
2005-05-09 13:46:48
Steve Brody
It’s hard not to, when the weather turns warm and the clothing turns minuscule. They have a way of winking out at you from unbundled folds and fissures of flesh. What was private, now is public. You learn things — things that maybe you didn’t want to know — about friends and neighbors and strange......
2005-05-02 13:35:30
Jane Holahan
When I heard that former President Bill Clinton was coming to Lancaster to speak at the Lancaster Chamber of Commerce & Industry’s annual dinner, I got psyched. It would give me another chance to tell everyone about when I met Bill Clinton. OK, maybe “met” is too strong a word, but I did shake hi......
2005-04-25 12:43:55
Ryan Robinson
First of all, mates, Happy Anzac Day! You don’t swallow two Anzacs with a full glass of water before a mother-in-law visit. Anzac was an Australia and New Zealand Army Corps soldier in World War I. So chuck a sickie (take a sick day off work when you’re perfectly healthy) to celebrate those so......
2005-04-18 13:57:34
Cindy Stauffer
Terri Schiavo. The pope. The war. Gas prices are rising. Britney Spears is becoming a mom. On an absolutely brilliant day, a woman gabbing on her cell phone blows through a red light and almost slams into my car. I screech on my brakes just seconds before she can ram the passenger’s seat where......
2005-04-15 14:33:31
Ad Crable
I soon noticed at family gatherings that my father-in-law, Jim, and my wife's youngest sister, Emily, would huddle to check the score on a most unusual competition.
They had a running game to see who had found the most stray money from parking lots, curbs, floors below checkout......
2005-04-11 14:15:40
Tom Murse
These edicts were not to be taken lightly. No. If followed to the letter, they would ensure that our newborn could grow up to be an intelligent, thoughtful, healthy, confident and well-rounded young woman. Remarkably, 16 months have flown by, and now seems an appropriate time as any to revi......
2005-04-08 12:16:48
Ad Crable
I learned of the icon from East Hempfield Township in a most roundabout, though highly fitting, way. Our paths were destined to cross when I got change at a small crossroads general store in West Virginia. Stuffing the money into my wallet, I couldn’t help but notice red lettering stamped in a......
2005-03-28 12:49:53
Steve Brody
We are a strange breed, so to speak, among our family and friends. It seems as if everyone else has a dog or wants one. But dogs are trouble. Recently we threw a surprise party for my sister-in-law. She and my brother own a dog, a boxer named Max. Let’s say that Max was more surprised, I think, t......
2005-03-21 14:30:01
Jane Holahan
The names poured out of my bookcase, all printed on the spines of the books I was packing away. My floors were being cleaned, and I had to get all the books out of my very heavy bookcase so I could move it. I had no idea that moving the books would be as physically difficult — just ask my knee......
2005-03-14 12:38:23
Ryan Robinson
The blond-haired tot snuggled with her stuffed bear and puppy and squeezed her glow worm’s belly. Its face lit up, fending off the monsters of the dark. Her mommy, Charlotte Laubheimer, had collected eight of the Care Bears for her nearly 1-year-old daughter. Her daddy, Steven, had recently bo......
2005-03-07 12:24:12
Cindy Stauffer
Let me count the ways. I irritate thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach. By tapping my spoon on the yogurt container to the rhythm of “Jingle Bells” while thou are trying to write a paper for thine English class. And then stopping when thou yell. And then starting up again......
2005-02-28 12:42:29
Tom Murse
Yes. You hear me correctly. Moon. Rise. Think Glacier, only warmer. Think Vermont Cream and Cotton Fluff and Ostrich and Divine Pleasure — only cooler. Think Frosted Juniper, only muted. Whatever. Since when did buying paint become this whole big affair? Give me a break. Anyway....
2005-02-14 12:51:04
Steve Brody
Writing of another fine place for walking, New York, the author Gay Talese says it is “a city of things unnoticed.” In a 1961 essay, he catalogs the feral cats, the doormen — the little things, little noticed amid the hubbub of the big city. For my wife and me, our favorite New York sight remains......
2005-02-07 13:38:41
Jane Holahan
Lancaster County will be awash in the little lumps of fat that represent the last splurge before the Lenten season begins. It may be hard for you Lancaster natives to realize, but for many of us from the outside, Fasnacht Day is weird. Weird in a good way, but still weird. Until I moved to Lan......
2005-01-31 13:04:07
Ryan Robinson
If the fabric could talk, it would weave family and tradition — values alive and well in Lancaster County — into the following story. Pinpointing when the tradition started is like finding the end of a sewed thread, so I will just go back three generations. My great-grandmother wanted to do so......
2005-01-24 12:43:25
Cindy Stauffer
You may have talked to me a bunch of times and never guessed it. After all, I’m a shameless faker. “How ‘bout them Eagles!” someone will say. “Too bad about T.O.,” I’ll tut-tut, “but they’re doing fine without him.” Just the other day I was over at Central Market, bluffing my way through......
2005-01-17 13:18:22
Tom Murse
Shleg and I grew up on the same suburban street, six doors apart. Even now, nearly 20 years since we spoke our last words to each other, I could tell you his old phone number. I dialed it every summer day of my childhood. “So whaddaya wanna do today?” I must have asked a million times. A milli......
2005-01-03 13:32:03
Steve Brody
This might be a most unpopular thing to say here, what with two Pennsylvania franchises now hell-bent for the Super Bowl. But what the heck? You can have your McNabb, your Big Ben, your T.O. Your black-and-gold or midnight-green jerseys, your war paint, your cars and trucks tricked out with team ......
2004-12-20 13:03:28
Ryan Robinson
For a minute, I am 10 years old again, my dad’s voice waking me to help milk the cows before school. “Worrrll! Worrrrrrrrll!’’ Dad’s loud cow call out
