Opinion
Thank you very to Rep. Thomas Murt who recently assisted me with a very complicated issue and he did so personally and didn’t push it off on his staff. I am grateful that one of our elected officials in the state took the time to both listen to my concerns and then personally follow-up and g…
My son Pete and I are both history buffs and over the years we often speculated that given our English and German heritage it was likely that our ancestors fought for the other team during the American Revolution.
Whenever crazy things happen -- an illogical increase in psychiatric admissions, traffic accidents or baby deliveries, for example -- one phrase often is said to explain the unusual behavior: “There must have been a full moon.”
There will be the usual hype surrounding Super Bowl LIV between the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs Feb. 2 in Miami, Fla. And, among the issues that’s been getting regular attention in recent years is the increased awareness of concussions among the players and the steps the N…
A crime-fighting program begun last fall in Ambler -- it’s one that figures the criminal element is camera-shy -- is off to a... well, let’s call it a blurry start.
Major League Baseball has apparently decided that there are 42 too many minor league baseball cities and, according to Commissioner Rob Manfred, after the 2020 season, that will change. There will be a new agreement between the majors and the minors signed and a lot of cities will lose their…
Peter Townsend, Roger Daltrey and The Who aren’t asking, as they did in the '60s. Now, it’s the query of PennDOT. That’s not a new rock group, but the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. And the lyrics to its song similarly question, "Who are you? I really want to know."
When the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on Sunday, Oct. 27, 1963, preached from the pulpit of the Salem Baptist Church, formerly of Jenkintown, just five years before his assassination on April 4, 1968, the civil rights’ icon bellowed three evocative words — “all,” “here,” and “now” — that…
Steve Bloom's knee-jerk conservative tax cut reflex -- offered as his solution to the exit of youth from Pennsylvania (Brain Drain, 12/22) -- is both badly based financially, and off-base in its diagnosis of youth emigration.
Details of Sunday hunting and other regulations will concern people as long as hunting is lawful, but it behooves us to understand the big-picture context in which human beings hunt other animals with manufactured weapons (“Allowing a Bit of Sunday Hunting Enough for Now,” November 10, 2019).
t is with a heavy heart that I pen these words, for there is so much hate in this country. As an African American, I grieve with my Jewish brothers and sisters for the awful, ungodly attacks against the Jewish community. The stabbing a few weeks ago at a Rabbi’s home during a Hanukkah party …
Although many people dislike this word, there is no other way to describe the Upper Dublin Township Board of Commissioners and the township manager, but I'll just call them totally fiscally irresponsible. They have taken over 100 acres of green space, that cost the township nothing to mainta…
The time to act on the climate crisis is not in 20 or 30 years, it is now. The science is clear that as carbon dioxide levels increase in our atmosphere and oceans as a result of burning buried fossil fuels we are gambling with the stability of the only world we have. The planet is warming, …
Lowman Henry's declaration (Times-Chronicle, 12/15) that the current process of redistricting of legislative and congressional district boundaries is already perfect -- and that changes now being contemplated to that process, for the next round of redistricting after the decennial 2020 censu…
I read with great interest the column by Sally Pipes in which she panned the concept of single payer healthcare. I share many of her concerns but as a physician who has worked and continues to work in the trenches of health care and has Master’s degree in Healthcare Quality and Patient Safet…
I read with interest the front page article regarding limiting the proliferation of local signage. (News-Herald. Dec. 28, 2019)
Drum roll, please. Attention, Ladies and Gentlemen. Here now the latest and greatest delightful results in sales of deliciously delectable sweets savored at Christmas against taste delights like an assortment of joyful favorite cookies and baked enchantments.
It’s a few minutes before 9 a.m. on Friday, Dec. 27 as I focus on small groups of beach walkers striding the white sand of Hilton Head, SC from the fourth-floor balcony of the Hilton Grand’s Ocean Oak Resort with dark-blue ocean waves of the Atlantic massaging the shore -- the same seaboard …
I first met Dr. Fred Antil over the phone. He called my WRDV radio show one day and wanted to know if he could promote his new book “A Lincoln Treasure Trove” on our four-station network.
A six-foot, blue-lit wreath adorned with 12 white ornaments shines out from the Bucks County Administration Building in Doylestown. It’s an illustrious site. Proud yet humble; stout yet reticent.
Snoopy, Max and Beethoven are indelible Christmas beloveds, but this season it’s as if the Grinch has plotted a shenanigans dimming merriment and making trouble for dog owners and their pets. The Pennsylvania Agriculture Department’s Bureau of Dog Law Enforcement, in fact, has warned those l…
After months of internal discussion and research, Bucks County has OK’d in time for the 2020 presidential election a new voting system designed to thwart hackers with hand-marked paper balloting.
Caution, Montgomery County taxpayers! There is a package of "county campus" improvements, aka “justice center” that comes with spiraling costs. The commissioners are scheduled to vote on these costs this Thursday, Dec. 12 at 10 am in One Montgomery Plaza, 8th Floor, Norristown.
Abington residents will find, by going to www.AbingtonCitizens.com that on Nov 12th a budget will have passed with them having almost no knowledge of the plethora of bad things in it. This year alone there is a 9.9 % tax hike. But that is only one third of what they plan to hike your taxes. …
I have been following Lowman Henry’s commentaries with a generous attitude toward the newspaper editors for publishing points of view that are different from mine.
If there is an FBI investigation of the Mariner I and II pipelines only now, in the first term of the Wolf administration (Editorial, 11/28), it is remarkably ignorant that the fracking industry has received massive support from the Rendell and Corbett administrations.
For far too long, our elected leaders have abdicated their responsibility for tackling climate change. They dithered for decades, despite the science of planet-warming pollution being clear.
As Marie Yovanovitch completed her testimony in the impeachment hearings of Donald Trump and walked out of the chambers to the applause of the spectators, it reminded me of the court scene in To Kill a Mockingbird when Gregory Peck, as Atticus Finch, finishes his defense of Tom Robinson and …
With the 2019 holiday shopping season vigorously kicking off, it’s worth realizing that the terms “Black Friday” and “doorbusters,” today associated with monstrously-discounted sales the Friday after Thanksgiving attracting hordes of frenzied shoppers, have ties to Philadelphia retailers and…
Miss Sudlow was the first – she taught kindergarten. She was lovely, a blonde, I was smitten. I could see my future as a teacher. Then came the others. Mrs. Johannes (had her twice), Mrs. Roatche, Miss Applegate, Miss Waughtel, Miss McAfee, Mrs. Harding (our roving music teacher), Miss Tagga…
In reference to Bob Keeler’s article about the new speed/ped crossing signs on Washington Ave, I am alarmed that there are any complaints at all. Have we forgotten the traffic accidents involving pedestrians that have happened in recent years?
Throughout the winter months, my staff and I will be collecting winter coats for homeless veterans who are serviced by the Veterans Multi-Service Center in Philadelphia. In addition to winter coats, our veterans also need gloves, hats, scarves, thermal underwear, backpacks, and toiletries. I…
Dear friends, neighbors and Deep Run Church:
When Pennsylvania’s founder and proprietor, William Penn, visited about 1700 the Gwynedd Meeting House that had just been established by fellow Quakers on what today is DeKalb Pike, north of Montgomery County’s Norristown, Native Americans of the Leni Lenape tribe’s Unami clan were also know…
‘Some trails are happy ones,
Thanksgiving will be here next week. It’s my wife’s favorite holiday because it’s about family and no one needs to bring gifts or even send cards. The idea, she says, is to share time with family and friends and think about what you appreciate in life. A time to enjoy what we have earned. An…
Lower Gwynedd has seen many changes in the past fifty years, a change in its scenic and pleasing country setting to less esthetically pleasing developments. Developments throughout the township appear to be going up in record numbers with lack of regard to curb appeal and how they will integ…
Since we began in 1980, the Interfaith Coalition on Energy (ICE) has helped hundreds of religious congregations control their energy use and cost. In 1996, The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) deregulated PECO Energy and other Pennsylvania utilities. This allowed third parties to…
I have been watching as many of my neighbor’s ash trees which have died are being removed by tree service companies.
This past week, I attended the Montgomery County Legislative Summit hosted at Montgomery County Community College. Many of the Pennsylvania Southeast delegation was present, and the event featured breakout sessions about specific issues, including the environment. While listening to legislat…
Hallowe’en approaches and kids (of all ages) will soon holler “Trick or Treat” but what does that mean? Is there a threat implied that if you don’t get a treat you’ll play a trick on someone? And, yes, it once did mean just that and everyone played along. You went door-to-door and got your c…
By now everyone in UD and Ambler has noticed how bare the St. Mary's (Madison Estates) property on Bethlehem Pike is. The entire community mourns the trees. If you didn't attend or watch the September 10 monthly meeting of the Upper Dublin Board of Commissioners, you likely will be intereste…
One of Bucks County’s most popular historic icons -- covered bridges -- are the subject of a $2.5 million project to put them “in pristine shape” and keep them in that condition “for many years to come.’
Dr. Morton Langsfeld III, “Mickey” to those of us who were lucky enough to be his friends, passed away in late summer. It was a shock, one that will take a long time to get over. Mickey was one of those guys you just always expected to be around. We graduated from Cheltenham High School toge…
On Saturday morning, October 12, Fort Washington State Park will be awash in color, but not just from the breathtaking fall foliage. There may be a splash of vibrant orange from a pumpkin-clad Tibetan Terrier or a flash of red and blue from a Chocolate Lab in a Superman costume. Eagles green…
In 1918 and 1919 the great Spanish Influenza pandemic killed 50 million to 100 million people worldwide and about 700,000 in the United States. At one point, during a six-week period in the fall of 1918, one Philadelphian died of the flu every five minutes.
The biggest surprise this summer down-the-shore was not the weather, shark sightings or electrifying new amusement rides. Rather, it was a winged reinforcement team successfully ridding a growing and aggressive problem.
Lowman Henry (Times-Chronicle, 9/22 makes it sound as if energy companies began operating more efficiently and cleanly out of the goodness of their hearts, and that environmentalists should be overjoyed that Marcellus Shale gas drillers are no longer losing 15% of their product to leakage.
Although Lowman Henry’s characterization that use of natural gas has reduced America’s carbon dioxide emissions is appropriate (Ambler Gazette 22Sept2019), characterizing energy firms as doing "right by the environment” is quite a stretch. It is true that natural gas generates less carbon di…
