When my wife was still alive, the chore of writing notes on Christmas cards was her responsibility, and, like everything else, she was good at it, customizing them for each recipient. She usually started in November and completed the task early enough in December to ensure they would all arrive well before the holiday. We regularly criticized those folks who resorted to standardized printed letters with a scribbled autograph at the bottom. Now that I have inherited this privilege, I have reconsidered this criticism. It turns out that most of the people on our Christmas card list are primarily interested…

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The first week in December is a busy time for everyone involved in Pitt’s Civil and Environmental Engineering Senior Design Project program. For years this has served as the Capstone event of the students’ academic career, their opportunity to demonstrate their education and the fact that they are ready to take on entry level positions in the “real world”. At the beginning of their final semester they are subdivided into teams and assigned challenging “near real world” problems. The result of their work on these projects is a formal, forty-five minutes long, presentation which is video-taped and made available to…

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In recognition of Native American Heritage Month in November, the Bridgeville Area Historical Society gave the podium to yours truly, to deliver a presentation reporting on their presence of these people in this area, down through the years. Since they never developed a written language, the information on which it is based is largely speculative, but is based on an impressive body of archaeological data. The speaker began by tracing this presence from its earliest days through colonial times, up to the end of the eighteenth century. About twenty-five thousand years ago primitive people from Asia, accidentally perhaps, found their…

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The forty-five minutes it took me to drive “over the river and through the woods” to Elizabeth’s house for Thanksgiving dinner provided me with ample time to reflect on the things for which I am grateful at this stage of my life. I am using the term grateful, rather than thankful, because I think it implies something more comprehensive, implying acknowledgment of the involvement of other persons or influences. My first thought was gratitude for the handful of trees that still retained their leaves, in stark contrast to the rest of the barren wintry scene, as a reminder of the…

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The holiday season is upon us. It is ironic that I am sending out a column discussing a German Christmas Market on Thanksgiving Day. Nonetheless Elizabeth and I did indeed spend a lovely Sunday afternoon in mid-November at Harmony’s annual Weihnachtsmarkt. Harmony is a delightful village any time of year; it is particularly special on this occasion. Harmony was established on Connoquenessing Creek in 1804 by the Harmony Society, a sect of pietist Lutherans who had fled Germany to avoid religious persecution and purchased 4,000 acres of land in southern Butler County. By 1814 they had constructed a prosperous village…

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A series of significant recent events have combined to get me thinking about buffalo (hereinafter I will use the scientific term, bison, despite the fact that they will always retain my boyhood name for them). Recently my daughter Sara became involved in an ambitious project, the 2020 DOI Bison Conservation Initiative; her participation in it has spiced up many of our frequent telephone call visits. Last month PBS presented an excellent two-part series on “The American Buffalo”, produced by everyone’s favorite documentarian, Ken Burns. And this month, of course, the celebration of Native American Heritage month in Bridgeville has renewed…

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The change of our calendar from October to November was highlighted by “Celebrating National Native American Heritage Month: Pop-up Gallery”, co-sponsored by Public Art Bridgeville and the Bridgeville Public Library. This impressive collection of art work dedicated to Native American culture, was produced by nine different artists, including five with Native American heritage. Located at the Bill and Grace McDivitt Center for Lifelong Learning, the exhibition will be available to the public during regular Library hours – 10:00 to 7:00 Monday through Thursday and 10:00 to 5:00 Friday and Saturday throughout November (Native American Indian Heritage Month). Native American woodworker…

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The Bridgeville Area Historical Society’s October program meeting was an interesting talk regarding the history of brickmaking and the unique hobby of brick collecting. The speaker was Jean Bear, the regional representative of the International Brick Collectors Association (IBCA). I have known her for nearly three decades and was delighted to hear her presentation. Jean lives in Washington County, not far from the Arden Trolley Museum. In addition to displaying thousands of bricks in her patios and sidewalks, she maintains an excellent brick museum in a separate building. Included in her collection are three dozen different varieties of C P…

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September was a great month for adventures – festivals and visits to historic sites. I squeezed out one last adventure on the final Saturday of the month – a Brick Swap. I have been a brick collector for nearly thirty years, but hadn’t attended a swap for two decades. This one was located in Brady’s Run Park, not far from Beaver Falls. It was a glorious morning for the drive up there – bright sunshine, blue sky, and rivers of September fog in the valleys. This was my first trip to Monaca since the construction of the Shell cracker plant;…

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When my daughter Elizabeth and I attended Erntedankfest at Old Economy last year, we vowed to return and check out all the things we missed the first time. Erntedankfest is the Autumn Harvest Festival celebrated each year at Old Economy Village, the impressive historical site in Ambridge that celebrates the heritage of the long defunct Harmony Society, a pietist communal organization that flourished in the nineteenth century. Located in Ambridge, Old Economy Village is administered by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission with massive volunteer support by the “Friends of Old Economy Village”. The village consists of seventeen soon-to-be-two centuries old buildings…

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