Community Matters

Re-creating local community in a season of national upheaval

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

We were made for this, Beaver County

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

Identity, imagination and energy innovation

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.

Humanity desperately needs a different story

Have you ever stopped to think for a second about how a fish experiences water? Just so we’re clear, I understand that this is an odd question.Maybe it’s because I am an avid fisherman. Maybe it’s because I am a recovering academic. Or, maybe I just have too much time on my hands. Regardless of the reason, when I’m on the river, I often think about such things.I wonder what it must be like to be a fish. I wonder what they experience, and what they are thinking when they are ripped out of the wat