Daniel Rossi-Keen, Ph.D., is the co-owner of eQuip Books, a community bookstore in Aliquippa and the executive director of RiverWise, a nonprofit employing sustainable development practices to create a regional identity around Beaver County's rivers.

This month’s installment of Community Matters was originally written nearly six years ago on March 19, 2020. On that day, all of Pennsylvania’s non-essential businesses were forced to close because of the growing threat of COVID-19. Over the coming days and weeks, additional measures were enacted at all levels of society to reduce the spread and impact of the virus. Ten weeks later, on May 25, 2020 George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, sparking a public outcry ab

I grew up in the 1950s in the 1980s. That’s an odd sentence. So, let me say it again. I grew up in the 1950s in the 1980s. My hometown of Clearfield was, and very much still is, a small, rural community in western Pennsylvania.

Simply telling better stories will never be enough to get us out of the cultural bind we find ourselves in at present. But, whatever this next chapter of the human saga holds, I can assure you that the stories we tell ourselves and others will be at the very heart of whatever unfolds.

The Shell ethane cracker plant recently amplified a report that contains misleading claims about Beaver County's population growth.

For longer than I care to admit, my basement was overwhelmingly disorganized. The disorganization in my basement began when we first moved into our home a little more than a decade ago. The area wasn’t large enough for everything I was trying to store in it. I didn’t have the right shelving, containers, or patience to create a good system to manage all the stuff I was trying to shove into such a small space. And, since I didn’t regularly need most of the things I was storing, it made it easy to

Those of you who follow along with the work of RiverWise, the nonprofit organization I have the privilege of leading, may have heard that we recently received a second round of funding from the US Department of Energy. The award, provided by the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, is part of a program known as the Energizing Rural Communities Prize. Last July, in Phase One of the program, DOE announced 67 awardees, of which RiverWise was one. Utilizing funds from our initial Phase One award
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