Happy 2022 to our fellow space travelers

In the past three years, maybe four, I haven’t burned a tank of snowthrower gas. One of those years I never even took the thing out.

“You should feel lucky then, haha,” my nephew wrote in a chat.

Nope. He is young enough to think clearing snow is a chore. I used to love clearing our driveway late at night, just me and the machine’s headlight and a stream of snow.

Continue reading Happy 2022 to our fellow space travelers

Bringing the Susquehanna to Gettysburg

Two miles upstream sits the Gettysburg Municipal Authority wastewater treatment plantWhen I was young, I lived on the shores of a lake of some 500 acres. The deepest part of the pond was, I think, about 80 feet – “The Hole,” my dad called it when he went fishing for quarry gone down to escape the too-warm surface water.

Around the lake were three year-round residences, and a few clusters of summer cottages. In winter, when the summer folks had gone back to town, two families remained; one was ours. The third year-round home was owned by a family who lived in town, spent weekends in Summer and none in Winter, and had enough money to make their summer cottage like their in-town home – large, with indoor “facilities.” Continue reading Bringing the Susquehanna to Gettysburg