"There is, thank God, no Teacher Meter," wrote the poet and essayist and sometime teacher Wendell Berry, "And there never is going to be one.  A teacher's major contribution may pop out anonymously in the life of some ex-student's grandchild." My former students aren't old enough to have grandc...

John Updike's death isn't affecting me like Donald Westlake's or John Mortimer's or Studs Terkel's or Tony Hillerman's.  Westlake and Mortimer were my literary models at a key moment of my life.  Their styles and senses of humor got into my head and my writing.  Their characters becam...

President-elect Obama's selection of Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff the other day got me thinking about The Magnificent Seven. Not about the plot.  No cheap comparisons there, please.  Cool, quiet, dangerous man in black leads a band of heroes into town to save the peasants from the ba...

The Erie-Western Pennsylvania Port Authority will hold a public meeting 5-7pm today at the HO Hirt Auditorium at the Erie County Blasco Memorial Library, 160 East Front St, to discuss the proposal to ban unaccompanied minors from the 8 Great Tuesday's concert series. Maybe at the meeting someone wil...

Zachary Dunbar of Erie arrived in San Francisco and today will begin a 2 month cross county bike ride to raise money and awareness for the John Kanzius Cancer Research Foundation. You can follow him on his travels on his blog Cycling For A Cure. (It's about 2,600 miles from San Francisco to Erie.) T...

A driver, traveling on Route 8 near Wattsburg, hauling 10,000 gallons of gas lost control of his truck. It rolled over and burst into flames. The smoke could be seen for miles.Holy cow was there a lot of smoke. I'd almost bet you could see it from almost anywhere in Erie County. A couple of witnesse...

Dan Mulligan didn't know what to expect when the US Army summoned him from his civilian life as instructor at the Institute for Intelligence Studies at Mercyhurst College to active duty in Iraq last January. He hadn't fired a weapon since he retired from the military 15 years ago; what's more, he wa...

The Pennsylvania House and Senate passed a smoking ban. Philadelphia Governor Ed Rendell said he would sign it. Hotels must have 75 percent of their rooms non-smoking. Casinos such as Presque Isle Downs and Casino in Erie must have 50 percent of their facility non-smoking. Exempted are bars with les...

BetaJohn has tried and tried to get Erie Times News and GoErie to fix their problem with the employment classified links. The Help Wanted link was recently fixed to reflect their switch over to HotJobs but none of the links for the sub-categories work. Maybe one of the job listings is for help in th...

The Erie area enjoyed another glorious day on Sunday - bright sunshine with a high of 88 degrees. About 80,000 people visited Presque Isle State Park over the weekend. The forecast today calls for a high near 90, the fifth day in a row with temps hitting the mid 80's. The Erie Metropolitan Transit A...