It’s the time of year when people get sick. Running noses, nasal stuffiness and chest congestion are the common symptoms of becoming sick during this time of year when the temperature plunges and November rains come pouring in. Many people want the quick fix to relieve symptoms that deplete our energies, so they run to [...]
It is the time of year to be merry and full of cheer. It is also the time of year for depression to hit. It is also the time of year to be broke. I think I’m all of the above rolled into one. I’m human and I don’t think I’m any different from many [...]
The house was erected with basic colors and amenities: red, yellow, white, black and blue and running water, a functioning toilet and shower. It was the simplest of houses made out of the simplest of toys. Like the old commercials toted: “A child’s pride is the best thing a toy can build,” so was the [...]
As the state of Pennsylvania scrambles to find new sources of revenue to balance the state budget, a proposed arts tax has come into play. The proposed arts tax would add an additional 8 percent to the cost of tickets for museums, plays, zoos and historical parks in Philadelphia and 6 percent for the rest of the [...]
America can boast it is the leader for the incarcerated. Our prison system is on the stock exchange. It’s not necessarily the prison system, but the companies that run them. Some companies explicitly, others implicitly while companies have gone through buy outs, mergers and name changes. America is not the lone profiteer. Europe is profiting, [...]
The first celebrated Labor Day was on September 5th in New York City in 1882; however, Labor Day wasn’t made into a national holiday until a labor union strike. It came about with the Pullman Strike in Chicago on May 11, 1894. Pullman Palace Car Company workers walked out due to reduction in wages. Considering [...]
Téa Obreht has her fictional debut in the New Yorker with “The Tiger’s Wife.” The story, taken from her novel that’s due out this April, questions fact and fiction based upon memory. Obreht begins her story with one fact. The city was bombed in 1941 by Germans. The story immediately breaks from that shifting into [...]
The other dust collector, 10 year-old Gregory Evans of Tuscola, Illinois isn’t fascinated with dust, but with the machines that collects it. Collecting vacuum cleaners since he was three-years old, he has gotten to know the machines quite intimately differentiating the vacuum cleaners by sound. His unwavering excitement in finding a new model to add to his [...]
Goats are one of the earliest domesticated animals that have had a big contribution to our dietary intake of protein from North Africa to Asia to South America. Recent media reports state that goat meat consumption is on the rise in the United States. Most Americans are just catching up to the rest of the [...]
How many of us know Smokey Bear? The beloved icon of Americana that shaped our youth and captured our hearts with powerful commercials of the 50′s, 60′s and 70′s that sent home the message of how to properly care for putting out the flames and keeping the animals and forests alive. August 9, 1944, [...]
