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Issue Home March 31, 2010 Site Home

COLUMNS:
100 Years Ago
From the Desk of the D.A.
The Healthy Geezer
Library Chitchat
Rock Doc Break The Glass, Douse The Flames
What’s Bugging You?
Dear Dolly
Earth Talk
Barnes-Kasson Corner


100 Years Ago

FLOWERY VALLEY: March 22, being the 7th wedding anniversary of Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Hill, their friends and neighbors to the number of abut 30 gathered at their home for a surprise, which proved to be genuine. At a late hour they all sat down to a bountiful dinner, such as the people of Franklin Forks and Laurel Lake know how to prepare, and after a good social time all departed for their homes.

SOUTH GIBSON: The silent reaper has again entered our community and taken one just budding into young manhood, and one who has outlived the allotted time of man. Raymond Penny, aged 15 years, oldest son of Mr. and Mrs. M. E. Penney, died March 16, after an illness of a few days of brain fever. Raymond was a young man of promise, loved and respected by all his schoolmates and acquaintances. Albert Follett, a veteran of the [Civil] war, died at his home here March 25, after a severe illness of three weeks. During his illness his wife and daughter were taken very sick and Mrs. Follett is critically ill. The G.A.R. Post, of which he was a member, held a service at the grave in South Gibson cemetery. [Albert belonged to Co. D, 188th PA Volunteers and 152nd PA Volunteers, Battery F, Third Artillery]

CLIFFORD: The jingle of the quoits can be heard evenings under the gaslight on the corner.

HARFORD: Ray Allen was thrown from his horse and injured so that he was unable to teach school for several days.

SUSQUEHANNA: Clarence E. Titsworth has joined the ranks of automobilists, having purchased a Buick automobile of N. E. Bissell.

MONTROSE: There was never a bigger demand for real estate in Montrose than at the present time. Every desirable building lot is under surveillance. Within the past three years real estate has advanced in some instances from 25 to 100 percent. The outlook for the summer season in the way of “boarders” is ahead of anything within previous years. Many boarding houses are already booked for the entire season.

GREAT BEND: “Clapper” Crandall, a well-known character about town, was seriously wounded Sunday evening at the “Patch,” his assailant being alleged as one Muncia Cappadapa, a workman. Crandall received a bad wound in the side from a 38-calibre revolver, and a slight wound in the arm. The two men got in a heated argument over a woman of the “Patch” and the shooting was the consequence. It appears that Crandall and the woman were enjoying a “can” party at the eastern end of the bridge and had a quantity of cider in a pail, which they were drinking, when Cappadapa came along. Both were rivals for favors from the lady in question, in fact it is alleged the woman is Cappadapa’s wife. After the shooting, which followed a heated argument, the assailant disappeared and was later found at his home. He was arrested after some resistance. ALSO Messrs. Charles and Joseph Chapot, with their families, yesterday left Great Bend to make their home at Newark, N.J. They have closed their business, the Great Bend Chamois Factory, and will open one in Newark. A number of workmen will follow them to their new location. Its loss is a serious one to the town.

FOREST LAKE: Amelia Taylor, widow of J. D. Taylor, deceased, on Friday last filed in the Orphans’ Court her claim and inventory for $5,000 under the Act of April 1st, 1909. This is the first claim filed in Susquehanna county under the new law, by a widow taking

against the will of her deceased husband. The decedent left a will which was duly probated, but the widow, through her attorney, J. M. Kelly, promptly filed papers refusing to accept the provisions of the will, and claiming her right under the intestate laws, which laws only apply in cases where the decedent left no issue.

SOUTH MONTROSE: M. L. Lake, the stock buyer, has lately sold a hog to Wm. Trostel of Laceyville, a butcher, that weighed 539 lbs. It was sold for 11 cents a pound, making the total price $59.29. Mr. Lake has sold a number of others at the same rate, but they were not as heavy as this huge porker.

FOREST CITY: George Robinson, aged 28 years, was kicked in the face by a horse on the farm of J. J. Geuther, near here, on Wednesday of last week. The accident happened in the barn, and the injured man was taken to the Emergency Hospital, Carbondale, where every effort to save his life was made. He died, however, the same night. The funeral was held from the home of his parents, Mr. and Mrs. J. M. Robinson, at Browndale. A brother Jason and two sisters, Mrs. J. J. Geuther and Mrs. Henry McAvoy survive.

RUSHBORO: Chester Brown and family will move to Lestershire this week, he having been steward for several years at the Auburn and Rush poor farm. F. G. LaRue will move in to take charge of the farm. V. E. Pierson has purchased the LaRue farm.

LAUREL LAKE: Ben Scott has gone to Denver, Colorado for his health.

THOMPSON: Miss Beatrice Harpur, who has been the efficient clerk at the postoffice for over three years, has resigned the position, and Miss Addie Queker has taken the place. “And thereby hangs a tale.”

SPRINGVILLE: H. B. Kilts met with a serious mishap last Thursday up in the Chase quarry in Dimock. In drilling out an unexploded blast the charge ignited, sending a heavy churn drill into the air, breaking his left arm, besides lacerating his hand quite badly. He was brought to his home here and Dr. H. B. Lathrop reduced the fracture and made him as comfortable as possible.

BIRCHARDVILLE: Several of the housekeepers in our vicinity have purchased a vacuum cleaner, which will lessen the labor of house cleaning.

FRANKLIN FORKS: The Snake Creek Telephone Co. is putting cross-arms on their poles in order to string one more set of wires.

LAKE MONTROSE: Frank A. Warner, of Binghamton, closed the sale of his house and 22 acres of land, this side of Mott’s mill, to W. A. Lathrop, whose farm adjoins. It was for many years the home of the late Albert Warner. Mr. Lathrop will tear down the old house, one of the oldest landmarks in that neighborhood.

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From the Desk of the D.A.
By District Attorney Jason J. Legg

As Holy week approached this year, I must admit that I have given a lot more thought and consideration to the Passion than I have done in past years. It is amazing how our views change over the course of our lives becoming deeper and more vivid as a result of our life experiences. Over the past year, my family has struggled with my mother’s terminal illness with the certain knowledge that her death was looming. As I watched her journey, I am struck by the heavy cross she has been forced to carry.

Approximately 15 months ago, my mother finally learned why her strength and health was failing so rapidly - she had ALS or Lou Gehrig’s Disease. She was ventilated in an emergency room on January 24, 2009 - and has remained on the ventilator since that date. After many trials, she made it back home in April 2009, and remains there to this day. She has suffered horribly as this disease ravaged her body - as well as the damage caused by the regiment of medication and painkillers that she takes on a daily basis.

I have heard so many people say that they do not want to end up like that - and my mother would have been one of the first people to add her name to that list. She had always been adamant that she did not want to be on a machine to keep her alive, yet she has spent the last 15 months living with the assistance of a machine. It was not her plan, wish or desire. How does this relate to the Passion? It reminds me of Jesus praying in Gethsemane pleading with the Father that this cup (his impending suffering and crucifixion) pass him, but also accepting that it be the Father’s will, not his will, that be done.

How many of us would willingly accept terrible suffering as part of God’s will and plan? I am sure that we would pray fervently to be spared such pain, but to accept it is another thing altogether. It takes a special person to accept it - and my mother told me when she found out she had this disease that God had something to teach her. Can you even begin to imagine the faith required to make that statement? She had the courage to accept the heavy cross of a terminal illness as part of God’s greater plan.

My mother has required constant care and devotion over the past 15 months. She can do nothing on her own - and she could not have carried this cross on her own. My stepfather, sister and brother have been in the home to care and provide for her. While there have been others who have assisted my mother, both close friends and wonderful caregivers, it was my stepfather, sister and brother who primarily care for her. Frankly, I cannot comprehend how their hearts have borne this pain and suffering, yet they have been there everyday walking beside my mother and supporting her as she makes her way to her personal Golgotha, just as Simon carried the cross for Jesus after he fell. In my eyes, they are saints.

I know that my mother has struggled with understanding why she has been called to suffer so terribly. I am not sure if she has discovered what God was trying to teach her in the past 15 months, but I know that she has faced anger, doubt and sorrow. How could one’s faith not be shaken by such earthly torment? But the Passion speaks to this as well. Jesus, as he hung on the cross, expressed these emotions and asked his Father why he had forsaken him. If Jesus succumbs to such doubt and emotion, it is not surprising that we would demand similar answers.

In the end, I cannot begin to understand why such suffering exists in this world - or why my mother was given such a heavy cross. The Passion demonstrates unbearable pain and suffering on the path to death, but at the end of that path lies Easter Sunday with the promise of redemption, resurrection, peace and love. Perhaps, such suffering is necessary to remind us of how blessed we are in our own lives, to demonstrate the sacredness of life itself and to reaffirm the promise of our salvation. In the end, no matter how heavy the cross, Easter Sunday tells us that the cross will be lifted from our shoulders, our pain will be eased and our sorrow comforted. For this reason, Easter teaches us to rejoice and celebrate even in the face of suffering and death.

I hope you have a blessed Easter with your friends and family.

Please submit any questions, concerns, or comments to Susquehanna County District Attorney’s Office, P.O. Box 218, Montrose, Pennsylvania 18801 or at our website www.SusquehannaCounty-DA.org or discuss this and all articles at http://dadesk.blogspot.com/.

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The Healthy Geezer
By Fred Cicetti

Q. I am petrified of spiders. Is my fear justified? Are they dangerous or just creepy?

Spiders are not aggressive. They bite you only in self-defense. Most bites by spiders are harmless. However, there are dangerous spiders. Spider bites are responsible for fewer than three deaths a year in the United States.

Spider bites have caused people to have limbs amputated. These victims refused to get medical remedies early and suffered from large wounds that became infected.

Spiders do not attack in packs. They don’t get into bed with you and bite you in your sleep. Spiders like to be left alone in crannies where they snare insects without intrusion.

There are at least 50,000 spider species. Spiders are defined as having eight jointed legs, no wings, no antennae and only two body sections. Spiders spend their entire lives capturing and eating other insects.

All spiders deliver venom to their victims through fangs. The fangs of most spiders are either too short or too fragile to penetrate human skin.

The most dangerous spiders to humans are the black widow and brown recluse.

The black widow spider is from one-half inch to one inch long. It is shiny and deep black with an hourglass-shaped mark on its belly. The mark is red or orange.

Black widow spiders live in dark places such as closets and woodpiles. Only the female spider is dangerous to humans. These spiders are found throughout North America, but are most common in the southern and western areas of the United States.

Seniors, young children and people with high blood pressure are at highest risk of developing symptoms from a black widow spider bite, which looks like a red ring.

Symptoms include severe cramps, weakness, headache, anxiety, itching, nausea, vomiting and difficult breathing.

If muscle cramps develop, take the patient to the nearest hospital. Medications are used to treat the cramps, spasms and pain of a bite. Antivenom is given for severe poisoning.

The brown recluse spider, also known as the violin or fiddleback spider, is common in the midwestern and southern states. It is brown with a dark violin-shaped marking on its head. This spider is about a half-inch long and is light brown.

Brown recluse spiders are usually found underneath logs, rock piles and leaves. If these spiders wander indoors, they hide in dark closets, shoes, or attics.

A fluid-filled blister forms at the site of the bite and then drops off to leave an explanding ulcer. This injury requires professional medical attention. Other possible symptoms include mild fever, rash, nausea and fatigue.

There is no special treatment or medication used for a bite from a brown recluse spider. If infection develops, antibiotics are used.

There are other spiders that can produce bite wounds like the bite of the brown recluse. Some of these are the hobo spider, running spider, jumping spider, wolf spider, tarantula, sac spider and orbweaver spider.

What looks like a spider bite may have been caused by kissing bugs, fleas, bed bugs, flies, mites, wasps, ants and blister beetles. In addition, a spider bite might be caused by herpes, bedsores, diabetic ulcers, poison oak and Lyme disease.

General first-aid treatment for spider bites includes cleaning the wound, icing the bite to reduce pain, and elevating the wound site if possible.

If you have a question, please write to fred@healthygeezer.com.

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Library Chitchat
By Flo Whittaker

No Library Chitchat This Week

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Rock Doc
By Dr. E. Kirsten Peters

Pioneers Of Another Sort

Sometimes it pays to spend ten years in detention. Not that a person would ever want that to happen, but if it did - could you put the time to good use?

That’s a question I’ve asked myself. I’ve also asked my students exactly the same thing. The value of a good high school or college education, I say to them, is that it should give you the tools to use time like that well. What would you do with it?

One thousand years ago an Arab man named Ibn al-Haytham found himself under house arrest in Cairo. That far back ago in time, we don’t know much of the specifics of Ibn al-Haytham’s life. But we do know he was a towering giant of an intellectual in his day.

If you give a thinking person ten years to think, don’t be surprised if there are some powerful results in the end. In Ibn al-Haytham’s case, a good argument can be made that the ten-year gap in his life was quickly followed by the release of his major book on optics. That book was pivotal to our lives today, because optics was hardly the only issue it addressed.

In the ancient world - more than 1,000 years before Ibn al-Haytham’s own life - Greek philosophers had two main theories of vision. One theory (advanced by Ptolemy and Euclid) was that “vision rays” left the eye and went out to objects around us in the world. The other was put forward by Aristotle. The great philosopher had argued a “form” of some sort comes from an object in the world around you and enters your eye so you can see it.

Ibn al-Haytham pointed out, first, that not all the ancient Greek authorities could be right, since they followed two contradictory ideas on the subject. Then he noted that we don’t have vision unless there is light around us: either light from the object we are seeing (like a lamp) or light rays from reflected light (like sunlight in the day). So light, first, is what we need to understand in order to better understand vision.

Using only logic like this and a few simple experimental materials - a pinhole in a curtain or a hollow straight tube - Ibn al-Haytham went on to deduce a great deal about modern optics. Light rays travel in straight lines. Light on flat mirrors is reflected in one set of ways, and on curved mirrors in others. Light is refracted (bent) when it moves from air to water.

Most importantly of all, Ibn al Haytham did all this good work using experiments and observations, writing out for his readers what they could do to show themselves the same evidence he had seen and reach the same conclusions.

That’s not bad for 10 years of work under nice conditions. For 10 years in detention, it’s really a remarkable feat.

Two hundred years passed after the death of the Arab scholar before a Christian monk took up a translated volume of the work and saw its value. Roger Bacon was our hero’s name. He was not Francis Bacon - there are two Bacons rattling around in history. Roger Bacon repeated some of Ibn al-Haytham’s experiments - but he also endorsed for the Christian tradition this new method of gaining new knowledge about the natural world. Experiments and testing of physical facts, Bacon argued, were the most productive ways to learn about the physical world around us. Others around Bacon were soon on board with the program, and Medieval Europe began to have at least an inkling of the modern, scientific method.

The reason science and engineering have been able to progress so much in our lifetimes is that the method of running experiments and testing results is enormously successful. But in the old world, it was far from clear that this approach would lead to the most sound results.

We owe Ibn al-Haytham and Roger Bacon a lot, not just for their good work on optics, but for recognizing the power of the scientific method that has given us so much today.

Dr. E. Kirsten Peters, a native of the rural Northwest, was trained as a geologist at Princeton and Harvard. Follow her on the web at rockdoc.wsu.edu and on Twitter @RockDocWSU. This column is a service of the College of Sciences at Washington State University.

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What’s Bugging You?
By Stuart W. Slocum

No What's Bugging You This Week

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Dear Dolly,

Dear Dolly,

One of my best friends seems to be gone. Knowing her for many years, I know her very well. She has become very distant in the last year. I know that she isn't upset with me - she has just changed.

She has re-married and I'm not quite sure what to make of her new husband, (good for her or not) but she chose him and loves him very much.

I don't see her often anymore and she only calls when she needs something. I've given this matter a lot of thought, as to why she has changed. As close as we were, nothing adds up. I was hoping she would just get it. I want her to realize what has happened and not have to tell her. What should I do? -Anonymous

Dear Anonymous,

Death, marriage, and giving birth are the three biggest life changing events in the human experience. Your friend is still in the honeymoon phase of marriage and is concentrating her efforts on building a new life with her husband.

The challenge of maintaining your friendship when the dynamics shift, because the "cast of characters" has changed, can be, well - challenging. You need to talk with your friend. Tell her that her friendship is important to you and you want to keep her in your life. Don't wait for her to "get it." Tell her you've missed your time together and make a date to spend some quality "girl time" to get caught up. Think about setting up a monthly appointment for the two of you to do something together.

You must consider the possibility that her husband has the same lukewarm feelings about you that you have about him. He may feel a little envious of the close relationship you two have. Why not bring the husbands in on the friendship and find some common interests that the four of you can have fun doing together.

Friendship comes in many different forms and a true friendship will endure change. Those inevitable ups and downs will strengthen the bond between you as long as you continue to care deeply for each other and communicate.

All Transcript readers are welcome to submit their questions to Dear Dolly at deardolly570@yahoo.com.

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EARTH TALK
From the Editors of E/The Environmental Magazine

 

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Barnes-Kasson Corner
By Cara Sepcoskiw

No Barnes-Kasson Corner This Week

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