Big, small — and very slow wheels

December 14, 2023

The one place you won’t find a Subaru is in Dear Richard’s driveway, our everyday car park. He’s a domestic sorta guy. We got chatting about our old car favorites and I realized how much he enjoyed his “big boats” from the 60s and 70s. Back then you could buy 8 horsepower under the hood of your 19-foot behemoth. And probably stash four bodies in the trunk. The sheer enormity of our cars back in the day are a stark contrast to our everyday runarounds today. When you live a long time, there are a lot of automobiles in your memory bank. During our car conversation, Richard ...

Savoring the smell

December 8, 2023

Breathe in and savor the smell! That is what you do when you enter a bakery. Now I have to admit that scent does not permeate as much in the big box bakeries. I am not sure when they bake things, but it definitely is not during the normal store hours. I remember five bakeries in Dunkirk, but maybe there were more. Those were the ones that we frequented. Each bakery was known for something special. When we wanted kimmelweck buns we went either to the plaza or to the bakery in the first ward. The bakery at the plaza was run by people straight from Germany so they had many of the ...

Christmas elves come in all sizes and ages

December 7, 2023

My mother considered herself a Christmas elf. She was a no-nonsense, practical woman who also happened to be 5 feet, 11 inches tall. Not exactly a pixie. But every December, as the month wore on, she got a bad case of Elf-ism while scattering her pixie dust. Wearing a Santa hat, she loved to surprise her friends with little gifts or baked goods, or just sit, twinkle, and talk to a shut-in for an hour. Could she help it if she happened to have a banana bread and a dozen Christmas cookies with her? No. She couldn’t help it. Sometimes six or eight loaves of her banana bread went ...

Energy policy needs balance

December 2, 2023

As the second largest energy producer in the United States, Pennsylvania has long seen natural gas and energy production as key parts of the commonwealth’s economy. More than 250,000 Pennsylvanians go to work each day in energy jobs to ensure the region has the electricity to power our businesses, heat our homes, and gas to fuel our cars. Our region has a legacy of energy production like no other – our oil fields and coal mines fueled the industrial revolution, and our union workers powered the steel mills that made Pittsburgh a global hub of industrial production. These ...

View from Hickory Heights: A recipe from the past

December 1, 2023

Yesterday I baked molasses cookies. Now you might wonder why I baked early. These cookies freeze very well. I made some in the shape of pumpkins and some trees and gingerbread men. We will have the pumpkins for Thanksgiving and the others will be for Christmas. This recipe has a history. My mother told me she remembered going to her grandma’s house after church and eating them. That means they were my great-grandmother’s recipe. I do not know the history beyond that but I suspect maybe this recipe came directly from Germany. I never knew this great-grandma since she died before I ...

Giving birth to book is not for wimps

November 30, 2023

The crazy idea of writing a book did not surface early. I had to wait until sanity abandoned me. A devoted reader since I was a kid, I always thought that books were the result of brilliant minds, great imaginations, and writerly skills. Ordinary people like me didn’t write books. But you know – you live long enough and a lot happens. Some of it is worth writing down. The book I’ve just published, Rounding Third, is named for where I am now in that long life – this autumn of my years. There are seven very heavy boxes in my front hall. At my age, I do not get excited by very ...