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Spring in full force: Don’t forget about the Centre County Grange Fair!

Columns

Spring has finally arrived, unfolding with flowers poking through the soil, longer days, and the feeling of renewal as the sun hits your skin for the first time in a while. For most Pennsylvania farmers, spring brings the start of the planting season. This marks a quiet but powerful start of growing not only crops but also growing hope for a better tomorrow not only in agriculture but also as a community. The thoughts and brainstorming begin within the community for people of all ages who are thinking ahead about what exhibits they might proudly show at the Centre County Grange Fair this ...

Ending gerrymandering

Columns

In the debate over redistricting, one truth is too often buried beneath legal jargon and partisan maneuvering: Gerrymandering is, at its core, about voter dilution. It is the quiet engineering of political outcomes, line by line, until communities that should speak with strength are instead reduced to whispers. For decades, one of the most consequential tactics has been “cracking,” splitting cohesive communities, often made up of Black voters, across multiple districts so they become a minority everywhere and a majority nowhere. The impact is profound. A population large enough to ...

Dear Annie: A letter left without a word

Columns

Dear Annie: I’m devastated. My oldest and dearest friend of 50 years visited me recently. We had a good day together, and everything seemed normal. A few hours after she left, I found a letter she left in my bathroom. It said some very hurtful things — that our friendship was toxic and she was walking away. She’s blocked me from calling or texting her. I’m so sad and depressed. I don’t know why she didn’t feel that talking to me about this was necessary. I feel the letter was a cowardly act. She didn’t give a reason for ending the relationship, just that it was ...

The party Americans want doesn’t exist yet

Columns

In the decades since the 1850s, third parties — parties other than the Democrats and Republicans — don’t have a great record of success in U.S. elections. Who remembers the Free Soil Party, the Know Nothings, the Populist Party, the Bull Moose Party, the Dixiecrats or the American Independent Party? And yet, I wonder whether things might be different in the coming decade. The Gallup Poll shows the largest political party in the country is no party at all. Forty-five percent of voters consider themselves independents with the Republicans and Democrats tied at 27% each. The ...

Patient winds up with aspiration pneumonia after an adenoma

Columns

DEAR DR. ROACH: I was 47 when my first colonoscopy found a villous adenoma, and during the past 21 years, I’ve had eight or nine more without problems. But this week, I had another and wound up with aspiration pneumonia, despite having followed the prep instructions to the letter. I know my stomach was empty. How could this happen, and what can be done to prevent it from happening again? A friend suggested that it might have been “water brash,” which is associated with gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). Would they let me take an acid-suppression drug before the next ...

Our savings matter, but this bipartisan push misses the mark

Columns

President Donald Trump and Congress want to help you increase your savings. And you should. At the household level, saving is the foundation of financial security and the seed capital for a better retirement. At the economy-wide level, savings fund investment that expands the capital stock, raises wages and grows the economy. A society that does not save is a society slowly consuming its future. So, any politician who wants to help Americans save more deserves at least a hearing. What should such a politician propose? The first thing to do is remove all government-made barriers to ...