Gotta say, the narrow victory for Lancaster Mayor Rick Gray really surprised me. I figured he’d win - but by more than a mere 313 votes.
That was pretty close to a repudiation. Dunno if Gray sees it that way - but he should.
The Donegal thing is kind of sad, too. The tax increases - $117 yearly for […]

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For those of you interested and who might have missed it, Sam Lugar’s obit ran in Sunday’s paper - memorial service:
A Memorial Service will be held Saturday, October 17, 2009 at 1 p.m. at the Charles F. Snyder Funeral Home, 3110 Lititz Pike. Interment will be at a later date. Memorial contributions can be made […]

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Saw Michael Moore’s “Capitalism: A Love Story” earlier this week, and it was a bit of a sprawling mess. Lots of nuggets in there, but it lacked focus; as a film, I thought Fahrenheit 9/11 was way better. But “Capitalism” wasn’t intended to merely be a film, it was designed as political agitprop. I just […]

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Photo via Wikipedia
Thought Tom Murse did a good job with his story/obit on Sam Lugar in today’s Era. It’s on the front page, where it should be.
Bryan Rutt has a good piece on Lugar and the Sharks over at his blog, talking a bit more about the music. Was listening to a bit of it […]

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If you grew up as a rock and roll obsessed kid in Lancaster County in the early 1980s, as I did, the Sharks were gods. I had no sense that they were just a local band, because local was all I really knew back then. And when they won the Basement Tapes… well, that just […]

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Interesting.

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Ouch. If you dug the Sharks back in the day, as I did, and hadn’t heard this, this will be sad news:
Sam Lugar (Rawhauser) has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of lung cancer, and has been in LGH since the Labor Day weekend. He’s out of the ICU now, but faces a long haul.
You […]

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Interested in the reaction to the Columbia Avenue crime story last week, particularly the folks who said - hey, I live near there, and it isn’t that bad.
So do I. And yes it is.

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Associated Press apparently planning to move a story on the Lancaster cameras this evening, just saw a graphic for it. We really are on the cutting edge nationally; Lancaster, ever five years behind most trends, is out in front on this one. To many’s chagrin.

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Was interested to read the stories on LGH’s designs in northern Lancaster County, but was rather surprised that no one seemed to raise to me what seems to me to be one of the most important issues: What would the entry of LGH into the northern Lancaster market do to health care costs in that […]

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Been following the discussion on the cameras in earnest, it really seems as if this issue is heating up - and on the verge, perhaps, of becoming a national story, or an even bigger national story. CBS News is sniffing around; maybe another network as well. As posted elsewhere, an indy documentary filmmaker-type is tackling […]

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Hm.:
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said a potential wave of defaults in commercial real estate may present a “difficult” challenge for the economy, without committing to additional steps to aid the market.
Bernanke, testifying before the Senate Banking Committee today, urged lenders to modify “problem” mortgages to avert defaults. …
<snip>
It “may be appropriate” for the […]

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From the be-careful-what-you-wish-for department, the folks over at NewsLanc weigh in on the proposed high-priced condos by the bus station:
But even more importantly, bringing the affluent to downtown adds a influential voice and powerful constituency for intelligent downtown improvements.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but - isn’t the “influential voice” of this “powerful constituency,” […]

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Will Bunch, citing the L.A. Times story on Lancaster, makes another good point on the surveillance camera issue:
Actually, Mowrer is wrong — nothing could more un-American than preventing people from watching who goes in or out his front door, provided that they are standing on a public street or sidewalk where citizens have the right to […]

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Got a bit of a rise out of the story this morning about how Manheim Township School District officials are spending their summer worrying about drugs.
The district has released a survey and is forming a committee to study the issue (and don’t you love that? My God, what shall we do about the scourge of drugs? […]

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Checking over at the Congress for New Urbanism’s web site, in the wake of Kunstler’s comments, I come across these astonishing statistics:
Married couples with children now account for less than 25% of American households. Fifty percent of all households in America contain one or two people. Last year, 9% of all homes were purchased by […]

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Interesting:
Which brings me back to the New Urbanist annual meet-up last week in Denver. … For years, their stock-in-trade was the greenfield New Town or Traditional Neighborhood Development (TND), a severe reform of conventional suburban development.  That sort of reform work was only possible when 1.) the continued expansion of suburbia seemed utterly inevitable, requiring […]

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As we used to say in Pittsburgh.
Barriers have been removed from the King Street/Queen Street entrance to the convention center. Orange notice in the window, application to serve alcoholic beverages. Looks nice. Be interested to see how many patrons the place actually has.
But in our typical one step up, two steps back fashion, a little […]

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Saw the story in this morning’s Intell. Just wanted to quick say that there may be more to this story than the DA is letting on. Let’s just say that during my discussions with some of the people who knew him best, in their grief, they told me a few things they obviously didn’t want […]

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Totally missed this until I saw it mentioned in the Era’s article today - apparently the Philly Inquirer ran a piece last weekend on the rash of “Inappropriate student-teacher relationships in Lititz“:
In a town founded as a Moravian religious enclave more than 250 years ago, residents insist the cluster of teacher-student sex scandals is an anomaly […]

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