There is a common complaint of newspapers: You never print any good news. You never print anything positive about our youth.
OK, that's two complaints.
As to the first one, we would submit that we print lots of good news and lots of bad news. Most people tend to only remember the bad news.
Beginning today and each Saturday in this space will appear a column titled "Peaches and Pits," in which our staff - all of our staff - provide instances of things they have liked and disliked about the the people, places and things in Warren County over the previous week. It will also include things that always exist, and we think they need brief comment. We welcome your suggestions as well.
We selected peaches and pits for our analogy because we believe that while peaches are sweet, juicy and enjoyable, we would not have them without the pits. It is our hope that by pointing out the pits, those hard, ugly seeds can perhaps be used to grow more peaches.
As for the second complaint, this week's collection of front pages included plenty of positive things about our youth, including the first Peach we'd like to hand out.
Two local scouts, Nowell Webster, 17, of Troop 45 in Pleasant Township, and Eric Zavinski, 14, of Troop 8 in Warren, picked the downtown area as the targets for their Eagle Scout projects and have put more than 2,500 bricks into their projects.
Each year, scouts from around the county strive to attain their Eagle Scout rank by, among other things, completing a public service project.
Webster and Zavinski are just two of them, but they happen to be doing it at about the same time and at about the same place, and the City of Warren will be better for it.
OK, now a gripe, or a Pit, if you will.
Anyone who has traveled north to south on Market Street and faced a solid, stationary line of cars beginning at the light at Pennsylvania Avenue and extending to Second Avenue and beyond have likely wondered if the situation could be made better by a left-turn lead light at Penn.
That was particularly true when Streetscape construction this summer detoured east-bound Penn Ave. through that bottle-neck.
Yes, that was an extreme example of what can happen there, but it is not the only instance.
A thorough traffic study of that intersection could prove us wrong, but it sure seems like a left-turn lead light would help.