Each year, Proven Winners and Spring Meadow Nursery have a Shrub Madness competition. They start out with 64 flowering shrubs, and each week, you get to choose which ones you like best. To show you how good I am at it, I have lost every year since it began.
I suppose it was only fitting that we should get snow on April 1. After all, it was April Fool’s Day and it appeared that Mother Nature was playing a trick on us.
I suppose it was only fitting that we should get snow on April 1. After all, it was April Fool’s Day and it appeared that Mother Nature was playing a trick on us.
Most of our conversation, it seems, revolves around our bodies and money: how we look, how to stay healthy, how to remain young, how to become wealthy.
When’s the last time you cared about the Major League Baseball All-Star Game?
Courteney Ross, girlfriend to George Floyd, spoke through tears as she sat surrounded by a plexiglass divider in a courtroom on April 1 during former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s murder trial. She spoke of their relationship and shared struggle with opioids.
Citing egregious racial disparities and exorbitant legal costs, Virginia has ended more than 400 years of executions, a brutal history that includes public hangings — by rope and even chains —electrocutions, the burning of a female slave, and, most recently, poisoning by lethal injection.
Today, we live in a society where we seem to sprint from one manufactured cultural outrage to the next. The goal posts seem to keep moving regarding what’s appropriate and what’s not, and frankly, it’s quite exhausting.
Following pandemic news too closely can be an emotional roller coaster, with dire public health warnings immediately followed by hopeful new studies. The latest soaring discovery: a new CDC study showing vaccines sharply cut all COVID-19 infections — not just symptoms. That news puts to rest…
We are at an important crossroads in this nation. We have faced immense, unprecedented challenges in this unimaginably difficult past year, but with a new administration in place and the end of COVID in sight, we also find ourselves with a tremendous opportunity to lay the foundation for a b…
Different people did different things to cope with COVID. I wrote a book.
I’m in a quandary. I’m all discombobulated. I’m at sixes and sevens, too.
Since I am a big-time garden writer, I received a free pack of Lauren’s Dark Grape Poppy seeds from Renee’s Gardens. Renee sends me a sample pack of seeds every year, and I really appreciate it.
As basketball season comes to a close on the 2020-2021 season, I had the opportunity to think about some of the controversial officiating calls that defined the season.
On a freezing January night at 2 a.m., my best friend Vernon Taylor and I were headed north on I-43, returning to Green Bay, Wisconsin, from a party in Milwaukee. I was a young investigative reporter in Green Bay. Vernon, an African American activist, was a repo man for GM.
Ever since New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo bathed in praise for his daily briefings during the COVID-19 crisis, the right has tried to cut him down to size. That was understandable. But in the context of New York's Democratic-dominated politics, the right hardly matters.
Term limits would specify the number of years an individual could serve in the House or the Senate but would require an amendment to the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. The founders believed term limits would eliminate the danger of creating an inconvenient aristocracy.
Here we go again.
The 2020-2021 high school basketball season was a special one indeed.
Pennsylvania, like many other states, has a digital divide that separates the haves from the have-nots.
To paraphrase a line of Sheriff Boss Hogg from “The Dukes of Hazzard,” a television show from the ‘80s, “There’s too much embezzling going on!”
For most of my life since childhood, the smell of hyacinths has always meant Easter to me.
Last weekend was fairly nice weather, so many of my neighbors took on some spring chores. Harold was the first to have his mower out. I may not have mine out for a few weeks, because it may be buried under a few thousand boxes.
We adopted Buddy, our tri-color corgi, 11 years ago. He spent time wandering the streets as a stray and endured the indignities of animal control before he found us.
He was having a bad day.
Undocumented immigrants have been surging to the U.S. border, some wearing T-shirts with the Biden campaign logo and the words “Please let us in!”
With the latest results from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Report Card for America’s Infrastructure issued earlier this month, it’s clear that our country must increase investment in our nation’s drinking water and wastewater infrastructure.
In 2009, I bought a 1977 VW Bug. Every fender was dented and it had no bumpers. Peeling paint fluttered in the wind. It was on its last legs.
I am a very serious Dr. Seuss fan.
When government fails, it’s the rare public official who says, “Oops. My fault.”
I got it! After working my way through a labyrinth of websites and telephone numbers and waiting lists, I finally received my first of two scheduled coronavirus vaccination shots.
Evangelical Christians, who once were content with staying out of earthly concerns, have grown into an influential subset of American politics.
Open government is good government or, at the very least, it is better government.
Do you have sore feet? Do you need relief from overexertion? Does a bath to calm your mood sound like something you would enjoy? I have a bag of Epsom salt sitting on my desk, and it says it can help with all of these problems.
When I was growing up, my father would occasionally put his hand on my shoulder, grin at me with his deep, dimpled smile and say, “You’re as handy as a pocket on a shirt.”
After a noisy election season of discontent, Republicans see their road to recovery in discouraging eligible Americans from voting.
“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
When the COVID-19 pandemic started and lockdowns became part of our daily lives, some romantic souls were predicting that this would produce a baby boom.
Can the federal government ban evictions? Seems like a pretty straightforward question. But the answer touches on a deeper one, as yet unsettled: Will life after COVID-19 be normal?
Sweetheart and I have just returned from our annual trip to sunny Florida. And, yes, it was sunny this year. When we went there last year, it was cold and rainy.
I can’t say that I like every plant I meet. Remembering way back, when I was just a young lad of 17, I was introduced to the caladium plant. The caladiums and I really never hit it off. To this day, there has never been one planted at my house.
Hasbro’s announcement this week about Mr. Potato Head was quickly sliced and diced. Days later, the toymaker is still getting mashed and roasted on social media.
Bread has become a delicacy.
With a change of leadership in Washington and related priorities being set, how we produce, transport and power modern life remains a key priority for policymakers.
Growing up, we’re told all sorts of things by parents and elders that are accepted as fact.
Nearly two years ago, I came to New Castle with a job offer to cover townships and school boards, but it turned into whirlwind of covering election races, controversial legislation and everything in between.
The former president made a semi-Trumphant return on Sunday. Donald Trump’s rapturous reception at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida, made clear that the conservative movement, as well as the Republican Party, belongs to him. Yet there were also signs that his …
In the last several weeks, President Joe Biden has reversed — or put on hold — many of the Trump administration’s immigration and border security policies.
The issue of reparations to Black Americans as payment for damage done as a result of years of legal slavery and subsequent discrimination is back on the table.
As a young athlete, I remember being at a disadvantage before even having a chance to compete.
t $7.25 an hour, the federal minimum wage is appallingly low.
Assistant editor Pete Sirianni talks about a story on a vaccine clinic coming to New Castle on Sunday.
Cindy Lou (Snyder) Raptosh, 56, of Delmont, Pennsylvania, passed away at UPMC St. Margaret's Hospital on April 8, 2021, surrounded by her loving family. Born on July 23, 1964, in New Castle, she was the daughter of the late David and Marylou (Allen) Snyder. She is survived by her loving husb…
Paul Dewberry, 87, of Neshannock Township died April 9, 2021, at his residence. Local arrangements have been entrusted to the Noga Funeral Home. Complete obituary to follow later this week.
