Charlie Brown’s Christmas

The Christmas buying season has seemingly been extended, adding some new stress to my Christmas lists. With those pre-dawn, store-stopping bargains, Black Friday is starting so close to turkey dinner I’m afraid there won’t be time for dessert.

I almost thought I was going crazy when I turned on my car radio just after Halloween and heard “White Christmas” blaring out of my speakers.

Am I now to consider myself too old fashioned because I like to have my dinner with all of the trimmings before dreaming of a white Christmas? I read someplace that the retail goal was to get consumers to spend as much as possible before winter heating bills come in. This news started me thinking about my idea of Christmas and holiday traditions that I enjoy.

go to column

Home

“Are you going home for Thanksgiving?” was a question that I heard often last week.

“Yes,” I answered. But the more people asked, the more the idea of home puzzled me.

Is home an apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn with a computer for editing, posters of Dylan and Lennon on the walls and cigarette butts in an ashtray? Is it a room 100 miles away that I can hardly walk in filled with clothes in boxes, marble-covered notebooks and memories? Or is it a room 20 miles from there with a bookshelf, a closet filled with forgotten memories and an exercise machine now filling the center of the room?

go to column

Protecting an amazing backyard resource

By BRIAN STUART, Lackawaxen Township Supervisor

Additional demands of increased growth present many issues, especially on the Upper Delaware River. It is a pristine and truly amazing natural resource that we are fortunate to have in our backyards. The river corridor, a natural attraction by its very beauty, must be recognized as a resource, and while it may be developed, it should be developed in an environmentally sustainable manner in an effort not to lose that very reason that made the area attractive in the first place.

go to column