There are bottles of Beaujolais Nouveau that age better than this.
State lawmakers might close the books on yet another legislative session before they come to grips with a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized the direct shipment of wine to consumers.
”There’s a lot of things going on” during the upcoming brief legislative session this fall, said Rep. Paul Costa, D-Allegheny, who’s been leading the charge to make it easier for oenophiles to get their hands on their favorite vino.
”This is America,” said Gregg Amore, owner of Amore Vineyards and Winery in East Allen Township. ”You should be free to ship regardless of where you live.”
HARRISBURG _ State Sen. Robert C. Wonderling was among the first lawmakers to use a handheld wireless device as a legislative tool, in 2002.
“Modern public service is to be as accessible as possible,” said the Montgomery County Republican. “I do that with my BlackBerry.”
In between appointments, Wonderling scrolls through articles from state, national and regional newspapers, answers constituent e-mails, and reviews his upcoming schedule. This modern legislator – with BlackBerry on his hip – is distinct from the Mr. Smiths who came to Harrisburg in decades past. While considered a leading advocate for technology use in the General Assembly, Wonderling isn’t alone.
HARRISBURG – Carbon and Monroe counties would each be in line for one of the nine cashless toll sites on Interstate 80 under a plan announced Wednesday by the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission.
The sites proposed for Monroe would sit somewhere between Exit 293 for Scranton and Exit 298 for Scotrun and between Delaware Water Gap Exit 310 and the New Jersey state line, according to a map the commission released.
In Carbon County, the Turnpike Commission is mulling a site between Hickory Run State Park Exit 274 and Exit 277 for the Northeast Extension. There’s an alternate site between Mountaintop Exit 262 and White Haven/Freeland Exit 273.
Turnpike Commission officials said they’re gathering public comment and will decide by this fall the locations of all nine of the proposed toll gantries they want to build along the 311-mile highway.
After a second heart attack in March and this round of indictments that came last year, Fumo announced he would not seek reelection in November and vacated his post as chairman of the Senate Appropriations committee, a powerful seat he held since 1984. Still, after each negotiating session of state leaders this budget season, it was Fumo who came out, sleeves rolled up, ready to speak to the press.
In what may be the final week of his legislative career, Fumo was loose and downright uppity.
Did you want a head-start or a chance to regroup before heading off to kindergarten? That topic is an interesting one that is getting even more complicated with our country’s continued dependence on standardized testing – initially the older the better the scores, so states live it. But there are much larger ramifications, unsurprisingly.
The calculus goes like this: You look at your 4-year-old, especially if he’s a boy, and consider that his summer or fall birthday (depending on the state and its birthday cutoff) means that he’ll be younger than most of the other kids in his kindergarten class. So you decide to send him a year later. Now he’s at the older end of his class. And you presume that the added maturity will give him an edge from grade to grade. The school may well support your decision. If it’s a private school, they probably have a later birthday cutoff anyway. And if it’s a public school, a principal or kindergarten teacher may suggest that waiting another year before kindergarten is in your kid’s interest despite the official policy. [Source]
More than just the newspaper bubble, today’s industry fears are the result of another cultural divide, just like one journalism faced in the late 1960s and early 1970s, famed by the Watergate scandal.
We can see this in an old tradition that died here in the Capitol newsroom more than 20 years ago. This from a brief history on the PLCA, the oldest society of its kind:
…There was a prestige reason and a practical reason to be concerned with who had been in the newsroom the longest. The prestige reason was that the senior reporter was the one who terminated news conferences, not unlike the custom, still followed today, at [some] White House press conferences. When he judged that questions had been satisfactorily posed and answered, the senior reporter would say, “Thank you, governor,” and the news conference was over. That tradition later ended [in Harrisburg]. The practical reason was picking first in the “the divvy.”
The divvy was the ultimate divide between older and younger reporters.
Today I am enjoying the Sussex County Farm & Horse Show, so I thought it was time to write down a conversation I have had too often since leaving the nest four years ago.
I grew up in northwest New Jersey. Of course, when I tell people this – anyone outside of this rural swath of the Garden State, even others from the state – they think it’s a curiously specific geographical distinction.
Click for Detail
There is North Jersey and there is South Jersey and, when pushed, there is Central Jersey. Here’s the breakdown, North Jersey is urban backfill from New York City, exurbs, grime and business sprawl. South Jersey is full of Phillies fans, Jersey tomatoes, big, greasy hair and the Shore. Central Jersey is full of elite suburbs around Princeton and the buffer between its two geography neighbors.
But my native Sussex County, and Warren County beneath it, are decidedly dissimilar from North Jersey nomenclature. Despite growing up less than 60 miles from Manhattan and 90 miles from Philadelphia, my childhood could easily be classified as small town, in the Garden State’s prime rural hinterland that you didn’t know existed.
My parents left their New York City roots for the simpler pastures of Sussex County – bringing me to Newton, N.J. when I was still an infant, so I am our first-generation of this rural community, though I didn’t know it until I left there.
