There’s a pine tree in Levering that isn’t like any other in the world. Tall and strong, with broad branches reaching out like arms ready to embrace the earth, this tree grows on consecrated ground, blessed by the ashes of love. Love is sprinkled beneath this tree in the memory of those who left before […]
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The most significant thing that has changed since we hiked the first 31 miles on the Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail in May is that for the first time in 25 years, a man in Pennsylvania died after being bitten by a rattlesnake. Okay, he wasn’t hiking the LHHT, but this news still disturbed me because […]
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My husband recently bought some items at a store and realized when he got home and looked at the receipt that the cashier didn’t scan one of his items. So a few weeks later, when he was shopping in that store again, he picked up the same item and explained to the cashier that since […]
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Tough chicks scare and intrigue me. I wouldn’t have recognized Ronda Rousey if you put me in a cage with her and told me to run for my life. I didn’t know anything about UFC fighting, other than I get impatient when my husband channel-surfs and lingers more than one second on a screen displaying […]
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That’s right. Stephen Hawking, the world’s most admired physicist (and also the world’s only physicist who is regularly and affectionately mocked on the hit TV sitcom, the Big Bang Theory) is afraid that if we ever find extraterrestrial life, we might regret it. Hawking fears that we might come across aliens who are so super […]
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I made the mistake of mocking danger. But geez, I couldn’t help it. I mean, the signs were everywhere. Literally signs. From the time I arrived in San Francisco to the time I flew out of Las Vegas a week or so later, I saw signs, placards and brochures everywhere warning me of the potential life-threatening […]
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When Donald Trump speaks, all I hear is BLAH BLAH BLAH… That’s because I have a longstanding policy to ignore public bombast. It’s not political, although during election years, I tune out a lot of campaign rhetoric from all sides of the political spectrum. Even when professional football players trash talk other players and teams […]
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The most politically conservative friend I know was incensed when he heard rumors that his employer might mandate “sensitivity training.” “That’s an insult to my mother,” he fumed. “She raised me better than that.” How true. While the LGBTQ community has been celebrating the Supreme Court’s recent ruling allowing same-sex marriage, and their detractors continue […]
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I grew up in California, which is about as distant from a Civil War battlefield as any American in the continental United States could get, so most of the Confederate flags I ever saw were in history textbooks. When I moved to Pennsylvania, though, I was surprised and curious when I occasionally saw a Confederate […]
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I know I’m not the kind of person who should sit next to strangers. “Can I join you?” I recently asked a woman who was sitting by herself in a row of seats as she waited for an event to start. “Sure,” she said. Not a fair question. How else could she respond? With four […]
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