Among my Christmas gifts this year was a “Bird Buddy” Smart Bird Feeder. My immediate reaction upon seeing the name on the box was the obvious “But what about the dumb birds?” Apparently, we have been feeding them for years, now it’s time to cater to the intelligentsia. At any rate, it has been a big hit so far, both with me and with my feathered clients. Feeding the birds has been a tradition with my family as far back as I can remember. When we lived on Lafayette Street, we had a feeder at the edge of the garden,…

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During the summer of 1916 my father worked as part of a survey crew for the Cumberland Valley Railroad (CVRR). The CVRR began operation in 1837 and immediately became a success serving the prosperous Cumberland Valley. Initially linking Harrisburg and Chambersburg, it eventually extended south to Hagerstown, Maryland, and on to Winchester, Virginia, and the Shenandoah Valley. During the Civil War it was a popular target for the Rebels, with significant raids in 1862 and 1863, followed by the burning of Chambersburg by Rebel General John McAusland in 1864. That summer my father had just completed his Sophomore year at…

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Last week’s column was much too short to include all of my holiday memories, so I have decided to do an encore. Once again, pleasant recollections of holidays past are tempered by melancholy when I think about the folks who shared them with me and are no longer with us.   A couple of Christmas memories/traditions left over from last week deserve to be recorded. One year, when I was thirteen or fourteen, I saved up a dollar and went to Stone’s Five and Ten to find a Christmas gift for my mother. After much deliberation, I settled on a beautiful…

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Memories are often bittersweet. We tend to focus on pleasant ones and to block out the unpleasant ones. At the same time, for folks of my age, most of the participants in the ones we remember are no longer with us. This dichotomy is certainly exaggerated when I think back to the Christmases of the past. My earliest holiday recollections are of Christmas on Lafayette Street when my brother Joe and I were young. Fortunately for us, our parents went all out to ensure we had memorable Christmases, even during the darkest days of the War. I don’t think our…

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It is time for my annual Christmas column/letter. All told, I have had a very pleasant year. I did manage three trips away from home. In May I flew to Fort Collins to visit Sara’s family. The trip included attendance at an excellent performance of “Inherit the Wind” in Boulder, a play in which Ian had several bit parts. He is now in his final year at the University of Colorado where he will earn a Fine Arts Degree in Theater. Last summer he was part of a group of thespians who went to Scotland and filmed two short movies…

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I have been involved with the Senior Design Project program at Pitt’s Civil and Environmental Engineering Department for the past three decades in varying roles, including coordinating it for twenty years. Since retirement I have kept in touch with the program by serving as a mentor for a succession of teams. This week I watched this term’s six teams give their final presentations.    A team of transportation students was given a significant challenge by the Allegheny County Engineering Department – to evaluate the feasibility of replacing problem intersections with roundabouts, and to identify several good candidates for such replacement. They…

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For its November program the Bridgeville Area Historical Society welcomed Folk Artist and Illustrator Frances Halley for an interesting discussion of a Pennsylvania heritage. A member of the Pittsburgh Society of Illustrators, the Folk Art Society of America, and the Guild of American Papercutters, Mrs. Halley specializes in   Pennsylvania Folk Art, particularly that portion related to the Pennsylvania Dutch culture. She began her presentation with a brief summary of the founding of the Pennsylvania colony. Admiral William Penn played an active part in English history during the 1600s. Following King Charles II’s return to power, he granted the Penn family a…

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We nonagenarians give thanks daily for being privileged to enjoy each additional day we are given. Nonetheless, it is only appropriate that our beloved Federal government has seen fit to set aside one day each year for all of us to express our gratitude for our numerous blessings. And, indeed, they are many – family, health, a comfortable standard of living, friends, the fortuitous accident of living in Southwestern Pennsylvania, and our rich heritage of being an American (at least the heritage we were allowed to celebrate before the advent of the “woke” revolution). We may not be able to…

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Nearly twenty-five years ago, my dear friend and neighbor Larry Kennedy invited me to join a book review club that he was organizing with his friends. Little did I realize that this, in reality, was an Irish-Catholic Mafia cell populated by folks with names like Gallagher, O’Hanlon, McDermott, and Kernan, and that I was the proverbial “lonely little petunia in an onion patch”. In those days I was the sole Conservative in an enclave of progressive liberals. In the intervening years the ethnic/religious makeup of the club has changed dramatically, but not its social/political outlook. They have influenced me enough…

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I had the privilege of attending the reception and grand opening of the Public Art Bridgeville art exhibit at the Bridgeville Public Library last Friday. Entitled “Bridgeville Artists: Then and Now”, it celebrates the work of thirteen (current and deceased) artists from the Bridgeville area, working in a broad variety of media. The combination of excellent works of art, the magnificent Library venue, and the attendance of artists and organizers of the event made for a memorable evening. I was particularly pleased at the recognition of Ben Rupnik’s talent as a graphic artist. The lounge area at the middle of…

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