SANATOGA PA – Recent jottings from a reporter’s notebook:
An Expert Cited Among Us
Observant readers of the business pages Friday (June 5, 2009) in The Washington Post would have seen the name of Kenneth Collins, chief executive officer of Susquehanna Commercial Finance. Collins, whose Lower Pottsgrove (PA) Township offices are located at 1566 Medical Dr., was interviewed and quoted by Post reporter Neil Irwin for a story he wrote on how businesses of all sizes are showing signs of spending again in the changing national economy.
The Thirteen Percent Solution
Lower Pottsgrove (PA) Township commissioners were all smiles last week (Monday, June 1, 2009) as township tax collector and Treasurer Jennifer Marsteller reported that, of $1.2 million in town and county taxes levied earlier this year, only $167,000 – slightly more than 13 percent – remained to be collected before the June 30 payment deadline. “We’re in pretty good shape,” she said.
Warning to the wise: taxes paid after the deadline incur a penalty.
Make Way For The Turtle Parade
The waterwheel near the parking lot at Kimberton Inn.
On any given weekday morning, drivers commuting to work see all sorts of thoughtless cads behind other steering wheels. There are men who endanger themselves and others by reading the newspaper while navigating U.S. Route 422; women who apply their lipstick or mascara using the rear-view mirror as a replacement vanity; and young people texting at 50 mph.
But it seems there is a soft spot in many motorists’ hearts for creatures of the wild. Witness the stop-and-go and swerving line of vehicles that can now be found almost daily on Hares Hill Road, just north of Kimberton Road, in Kimberton PA. That’s the site of a mill pond across from the parking lot of the Kimberton Inn.
Where it’s turtle time once again.
Throught the day, turtles in ones and twos do a seasonal migration from the pond, east across Hares Hill Road, to a swampy area on the opposite side where the Inn owns a decorative waterwheel. As they do, drivers who might normally barrel over the road’s bridge slow down and turn their wheels, or stop altogether, to let the critters flop their way on all fours over the asphalt. Most make it without injury.
Once a turtle successfully reaches the road’s shoulder, however … vroom-vroom.
Fulfilling Their Mission
Bidders examine gift baskets Saturday at St. James' church festival.
A teddy bear announces how festival proceeds would be used.
A group of eight youths, ages 13 and 14, now are a financial step closer to helping the homeless this August.
St. James Lutheran Church, at the corner of Kugler Road and Swamp Pike in Limerick PA, on Saturday (June 6, 2009) held a well-attended strawberry festival and basket auction to benefit its Youth Mission program. Group mentor Donna Longobardi said the kids will use proceeds from the event to pay for their travel to and stay in Elkton MD in two months’ time, where they are scheduled to work at a transitional shelter for the homeless.
Group members had several different mission opportunities from which to choose, Longobardi said. They voted for the shelter “because that seemed important to them,” she noted, obviously proud.
It takes a lot of people to work an event as large as the one at St. James. The youth group was there, of course, making strawberry shortcakes and smoothies from scratch at a food table inside the church’s George Ziegler Fellowship Hall. Other volunteers helped answer questions and take bids on more than 90 packaged gift baskets donated by area merchants. Still others manned carnival-like games and activities outside in the church parking lot.
Mission activities have become a big part of life for the church’s teens. Since 1999 it has hosted local youth mission ventures to Williamsport PA, East Bank VA, Miami FL, an adult camp for the handicapped in Indiana, Indian reservations in South Dakota (twice), and a day camp in Chicago.
At the festival's dunk tank; think her aim was pretty good?
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