National White Cane Safety Day was Oct. 15 and the Western Pocono Lions Club collected $408.87. Helen Koshensky, president of the Western Pocono Lions Club, wants people to know that they can make donations all year round.
Helen Koshensky, 69, opens her door to her home in Saylorsburg and greets her visitor with hospitality. She leads the way to the kitchen table and offers the guest tea or coffee.
So far, no one would know she was blind.
Helen was a sighted person up until 10 years ago. In 1999 she was diagnosed with Lupus. She had a severe reaction to two of her medications and almost died. She lost all her hair and her skin literally fell off.
The lessons and contributions of the past provided a springboard to the future when the congregation of a Slatington church gathered to celebrate a special occasion.
"My son is the pastor," said the Rev. James LeVan's mother who attends First Baptist Church in Slatington. She comes from Lancaster every Sunday when there is no snow, but for the recent 150th anniversary celebration many other family members came also.
Deacon Bob Berger asked the congregation to observe a quiet time of meditation before the service began.
Kathy Long, local historian, read sections of the journal of Catherine Williams, a Welsh woman and founding member of First Baptist Church of Slatington. She said it described the tribulations of bringing the early church into being.
It was cold with a promise of spring in the air when Williams received a letter from her brother, Ellis, in America telling of its prosperity. But people walked 20 miles to go to church, and Williams did not think she would walk that far.
The 2009 West End Fair has come and gone. But the thrill of winning still warms the hearts of all those who grabbed ribbons with their fair entries.
The really nice thing about the winners of the baking contests is when the winning recipes are shared, everyone can share in the taste of those prize-winning chocolate cakes, apple pies, angel food cakes and brownies.
There were 15 entries for the Hershey Cocoa Classic Chocolate Cake.
People say there is no rest at Wiggans Patch, where time hasn't healed.
The wild story of what happened there and the injustice that followed might be shrugged off by some as simply unbelievable, except for the fact that it's true.
Said to be Schuylkill County's most haunted site, Wiggans Patch continues to feel reverberations even after 134 years. Time hasn't erased images of the horrific bloodshed in the middle of the winter night.
For some people, fishing is more than a casual hobby. It's in their blood, or part of their constitution.
Lorrie Cockrell, an Alaskan Aleut, moved to Towamensing Township to find specialized medical care for her daughter who has reflex sympathetic dystrophy, a difficult and hard-to-treat lifetime disease.
In July, she returned to Alaska for the two-week salmon fishing season. Cockrell is very familiar with the fishing industry.
• Greyhounds are often considered a "universal" donor of blood, much like the human blood type O positive. Their blood also contains a higher concentration of red blood cells than most other breeds. Red blood cells carry oxygen throughout the body.
• Greyhounds are one of the oldest breeds of dogs the dogs featured in Ancient Egyptian drawings appear similar to greyhounds.
• English law once prohibited common man from owning greyhounds. Ownership of these dogs was limited strictly to royalty.
When Craig and Kim Shide decided to adopt their first greyhound four years ago, they looked forward to bringing their dog home and integrating him into the family. They never imagined the impact this first dog would have on their lives, or how involved they would become in the greyhound community.
The Andreas couple now owns two greyhounds, Zoe and Jakey, and has fostered more than 20 additional dogs in the past two years. They are currently fostering Chinook, fondly known as "Schnooker."
Pauline Dotter Kibler and Roy Christman don't know each other. They've never met. They aren't related, and they live in communities 18 miles apart.
But the two have something in common. They're kindred spirits bonded by a special passion that led them to save the one-room schoolhouses of their youth.
What Kibler and Christman did was to defy the odds. As one-room schools were torn down by the thousands all across America, the Kibler and Christman worked to save two historic but threatened schools that were once the focal points of their local communities.
DJI
