Get outside and play

A popular children’s television cartoon features a boy-cow named Otis, with udders. About a year ago, there was a movie about bees, and the boy bees left the hive in search of pollen for honey.
In rural Adams County, I’m guessing most kids pretty much know how to tell a bull from a cow, and probably [...]

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The Key to Afghanistan

We are about to withdraw our soldiers from Iraq — and send them to Afghanistan. They are needed there, Cong. Todd Platts, said Wednesday, to help knock down a Taliban resurgence in the southern part of the country.
“In the short term, we may see more casualties,” Platts said. “In the long term, it will result [...]

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Winter comes to Detroit

As I write this, snowing is falling west of Detroit, in Kalamazoo and Battle Creek and other places snow has not fallen so hard, so early for several years. Road crews are out trying to unslipperyize the roads. In Chicago, Mayor Richard M. Daley is trying to figure out how to plow more snow for [...]

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Let’s vote, already!

Be done with it already!
What are any of the candidates going to say in the next week that will a) change minds, or b) not get them in trouble? Which could change some minds.
I am amazed that anyone can remain undecided at this point. I believe some voters have not made up their minds; I [...]

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Green space, white space

I was raised in the country. Real country. My folks owned 50 acres of woodland in the middle of several thousand acres of woodland in a part of the state that was mostly trees and big rocks.
Imagine Gettysburg, with nothing but a few scattered houses between Gettysburg and, say, Arendtsville. Then make believe I lived [...]

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Thank you, Big Oil!

Will greedy oil barons get us to do what farmers (and public transportation advocates) have been promoting for decades.
I know why I am not a farmer. Been there, done that, got the sweat stains and sore muscles and other scars and memories that go with being raised around and raising the food that went on [...]

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Bring water, and they will drink

Soon, it appears, the Susquehanna River will have a branch running down Route 30. There’s water in that-there creek, and there’s folks arriving in Straban and several townships west of Gettysburg who are going to be mighty thirsty.
More than 80 percent of the water Adams Countians drink comes out of the ground. The problem is, [...]

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Obesity and bulldozed apple trees

I have a picture in my collection of a map depicting the layout of the housing development in which the map is posted. It’s one of those maps one can drive up to and, from the comfort of the family chariot, see the geometric patterns in which the streets are laid out, sweeping curves among [...]

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Times they are a-changin’

I marked my 60th birthday this week, which caused me to think of some significant changes of the past half dozen decades.
When I was 15, I had lots of woods in which to run around. I regularly rode a bicycle over most of the county in which I was raised. I thought that was pretty [...]

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How many barns remain?

I took a trip last week. I drove the first 180 miles — 150 of them along the Pennsylvania Turnpike — in about six and-a-half hours.
The problem was not traffic. In fact, there was no problem at all. I’ve started a photographic collection of Mail Pouch barns and roadside farms, so it was drive a [...]

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