Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Feds are coming for Papa Sheetz.

It’s not because our favorite convenience store chain screwed up Clueless Joe’s order when he stopped at a Pittsburgh area Sheetz outlet last week. But, judging from the way this regime weaponizes the justice and intelligence operations to pursue political foes, it would not surprise.

No, this federal witch-hunt is because Sheetz chooses not to hire criminals. Specifically, two members of the protected class – with criminal records presumably – screamed discrimination when they weren’t hired on to the Sheetz empire.

Blacks, mixed race individuals, and assorted Native Americans were excluded at rates of 13 percent and above due to criminal records according to the Feds. Whites with criminal records supposedly were weeded out at a rate of just under 8 percent of applicants.

Understand, Sheetz is not accused of going out of its way to exclude non-whites as employees. But the Feds are involved because the Sheetz methodology is seen as disproportionately ruling out non-whites even if the intent is not racial discrimination.

I know what you’re thinking, avoiding hiring people with criminal backgrounds doesn’t seem to be that bad a policy. If a disproportionately high percentage of non-white applicants have criminal records, perhaps that speaks to a societal problem.

Social Justice warriors would claim non-whites are arrested more often by prejudiced cops, prosecuted more strenuously by a biased legal system and generally given an unfair experience in life.

Or, maybe the enablers would concede that the crime rate is greater among non-whites, but decry socio-economic conditions that make these minorities desperate due to lack of opportunity and therefore driven to commit crimes.

Another factor, one you won’t hear mentioned in polite company, is how the family structure in the non-white community is in tatters due to an abundance of hit-and-run fathers, irresponsible mothers and, consequently, people who are not the parents raising children. Think aunts and uncles, grandparents, cousins, etc.

Regardless, the persecution of Sheetz for not hiring criminals is a ridiculous governmental over-reach straight out of Ayn Rand’s classic “Atlas Shrugged,” in which clueless governmental types instituted the Anti-Dog-Eat-Dog rule to eliminate competition and thereby penalized efficient businesses to keep the inefficient businesses operating.

It’s a lengthy read, but worth your time to experience firsthand how this book, released in 1957, so accurately predicts the absurdly dystopian status we have reached with governments doing their best to handcuff private industry and generally strip away individual rights and freedoms.

Rand even had ridiculous show trials in her book, along the lines of Donald Trump being persecuted for a “fraud” in which no one was harmed, or a hush money payoff (think Bill Clinton paying Paula Jones $850,000 to drop a sexual harassment lawsuit) in which the apparent problem is that Trump considered the payoff a business expense.

Sheetz officials reportedly have been trying to work with the feds FOR EIGHT YEARS to come up with an equitable solution to the matter of not hiring criminals.

If they’ve been watching Trump’s situation, they should know better than to expect a fair shake from the feds.

Expect the Sheetz chain eventually to bow to the unlimited resources to harass that is our federal government, kiss the ring, and admit to having been selfishly blind to the impact on the minority community of not hiring those with criminal records.

The situation was summed up nicely in a post from Elon Musk, himself once a fair-haired child among the Woke crowd who has become a persona non grata with the leftists and the federal government they control due to Musk becoming a proponent of free speech.

Before his – or your – free speech is cut off entirely, Musk got off this bon mot: “You know The Joker is running things when the law-abiding are being prosecuted by the government for not hiring criminals!”

Have you ever noticed that leftists as a group are about the most intransigent people on the planet? Worse, they fail to recognize this trait in themselves and instead project it onto opponents in discussions.

I run into this often regarding politics. I’m a registered Republican and so am accused of being a doctrinaire fossil, unwilling, unable and unlikely to see the light as preached by leftists.

They, in turn, tend to view themselves as the soul of enlightenment, always making intelligent and informed choices based on facts.

Presumably, this would include the number the crazies rallying to support Hamas and chanting “death to America” on the streets of New York City earlier this week.

Or perhaps we should cite the leftists who are more likely to censor opposition than their counterparts on the right, or even opposition from their progressive ranks. Witness the recent actions at National Public Radio and an endless array of similar situations in which an individual has been ejected from the progressive mob for having the temerity to suggest the groupthink of the moment was not correct.

The topic of closed minds arose while my wife was visiting a friend Thursday, with the discussion turning to a local politician visiting the church Easter egg hunt my wife’s friend had organized and supervised.

A couple of church biddies, presumably on the political right, were outraged that this Democract showed up to hand out comic/coloring books to kids.

Pictures showed up on social media and the church hierarchy felt compelled to post they were not endorsing said politician.

Churches are supposed to be welcoming places, certainly for someone looking to be kind to the kids. But this guy was a Democrat, so no room at the inn, to borrow a Biblical reference.

Understand from this anecdote that I fully recognize some on the right suffer from terminal close-mindedness, too. It’s just not nearly as prevalent as it is among leftists.

Somehow, my name got dragged into the church discussion, as perhaps someone who as a Republican would be similarly hostile to the Democrat at the Easter egg hunt.

No, my wife said, for all my faults, I tend to vote for the person I perceive to be the best candidate. As noted here in the past, I can recite a litany of having voted for Democrats, including this guy.

Two active area Democrat officeholders I have voted for are Cambria County Commissioner Tom Chernisky and State Rep. Frank Burns.

In the past, when I would deign to try to educate leftist acquaintances on this philosophy of voting for the best candidate not for a party label, it was a fool’s errand. I’ve pretty much given up on that.

But, I do try to exhibit a degree of flexibility on issues beyond politics. Some people like dogs. Some like cats. I like them both.

As a car hobbyist, I am a Mustang guy. My first car was a Mustang and I’ve owned Mustangs for significant portions of my life, including two currently.

But I also wanted a C4 Corvette (Chevrolet, not Ford) and recently bought one. Flexibility.

A writer who once covered the Steelers for another newspaper, accompanied the media types and some team publicity people to a Polynesian restaurant in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., many years back. His order – a hot dog and French fries, with vanilla ice cream for dessert.

To borrow from the Seinfeld episode on being gay, “not that there’s anything wrong with that.” I just think sometimes it’s beneficial to branch out, push the envelope, and, when at a Polynesian restaurant, try some of the specialties.

Ralph Waldo Emerson put it best when he wrote: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”

Leftists, in particular, should take note.

The whining about how little Caitlin Clark will earn on her WNBA contract reached the “Fast Money” financial show I watch nightly on CNBC, with the stereotypical outrage being expressed at her relatively low contract numbers.

Clark is the Goddess of women’s basketball, the all-time leading college hoops scorer, man or woman, with 3,685 points, surpassing the legendary ‘Pistol” Pete Maravich.

Clark has brought unprecedented interest to the women’s game, with the women’s championship contest even outdrawing the men’s title contest in terms of TV ratings.

Oh, Clark’s Iowa team still lost to South Carolina in the national championship game, 87-75, despite her 30 points.

Clark has gone on to be the No. 1 overall pick in the WNBA draft and has signed a four-year contract worth a total of $338,056 with the Indiana Fever, which sounds more like a disease than a professional sports franchise.

The outrage being expressed centers on noting that the first overall pick in the past NBA draft signed a four-year deal worth $55 million.

The easy solution would seem to be just have Clark try out for an NBA team and use her abundance of talents to make a roster there. The NBA minimum salary is a bit more than $1 million.

Problem solved.

Failing that, before you feel too sorry for Clark, understand she’s already a millionaire based on NIL (name, image and likeness) revenue, the bastardization of college sports that allows so-called “amateur” athletes to benefit from endorsement deals while still performing for their college teams.

Disgust with what NIL and the transfer portal are doing to college sports was among the reasons legendary Alabama football coach Nick Saban said influenced his decision to retire.

Even while Clark was firing up shots from every angle for good, old, Iowa, she had NIL deals worth $3.1 million as estimated by the financial folks at Dow Jones News Wires. Admittedly, it’s not $55 million, but is a lot more than $338,000 and change.

This would put Clark well into the top 1 percent of earners we all are supposed to envy and despise.

But the NIL money is given short shrift in the outrage reports. Doesn’t fit the narrative.

Predictably, Clueless Joe Biden took to social media to support equal pay in sports. Of course, Biden would do anything to deflect attention from our porous borders, persistent inflation, his troubled son Biden, the bleak situation in Ukraine, etc., etc., etc., and to buy votes.

Get your student loan forgiveness here. How about a GoFundMe for Caitlin?

And Joe doesn’t have a problem with trans guys being girls and dominating women’s sports, a curious contradiction in his professed push for fairness between men and women.

Interestingly, the public whining about pay mirrors Clark’s career, something of which I was unaware until lately. An internet search for “Caitlin Clark whining” brings up a TikTok post with 65.1 million views, and, unexpectedly, among other citations, a post on psycho-cybernetics.com by a self-professed Iowa alum who is “not a fan of her whining and complaining.”

Wanting to see what all the excitement was about, I had watched an Iowa game in the NCAA tournament. In just a few minutes, I saw Clark twice commit turnovers, miss three of four shots and generally be less than anticipated.

Just a bad day, I presume.

But, looking at the complete box score for the championship game loss to South Carolina, I saw Clark hit just 10 of 28 shots from the field, a tick under 36 percent. The remainder of her team was good on 15 of 35 shot attempts, a tick under 43 percent. Hmmmm.

It seems Clark, like Maravich, never met a shot she wouldn’t take.

In researching this blog post, I found a humorous story about Maravich and Larry Bird from Bird’s rookie season with the Boston Celtics.

The tale, as relayed by their teammate at the time, Cedric “Cornbread” Maxwell, was that the veteran Maravich chastised Bird for forcing up a shot while being double-teamed.

Shot back Bird, “If you were any damn good, they wouldn’t be double-teaming me”

Like the Blanche DuBois character in the play “A Streetcar Named Desire,” the Penguins find themselves depending on the kindness of strangers, at least as far as their Stanley Cup playoff hopes are concerned.

Ironically, DuBois speaks the line “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers” to the doctor who arrives to take her to a mental institution, ostensibly to have a lobotomy.

Considering the rabid nature of too many Penguins fans – one of whom once offered to let me cut off his leg in lieu of money if he lost a bet he wanted to make with me on the Penguins – a failure again to reach the playoffs might crowd area psych wards.

Washington and Detroit each enter NHL play tonight with 89 points, tied for the second and final wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference, although Washington is ahead on a tiebreaker. The Penguins are a point back at 88 points. All three teams have one game remaining.

The kindness of strangers referred to earlier entails depending on other teams to beat playoff rivals.

Specifically, the Penguins need both Philadelphia to defeat Washington and Montreal to down Detroit Tuesday night to give meaning to the Penguins’ season finale Wednesday night vs. the New York Islanders.

The Penguins and their supporters had to watch helplessly as Washington buckled down defensively and beat the Boston Bruins 2-0 Monday, a 1-0 game until a last-minute, empty-net goal provided a misleading final margin. Boston had beaten the Penguins 6-4 over the past weekend.

Even more painful emotionally for Penguins interests, Montreal had jumped on Detroit 4-1 Monday. But the Red Wings rallied to tie the game late in regulation and win, 5-4, even later in overtime.

The Penguins recently had blown a two-goal late lead vs. the Red Wings and the point Detroit salvaged by losing in overtime makes part of our current drama possible.

Philadelphia at 87 points also technically is alive in the wild-card chase, but needs a lot of stuff to happen to get into the playoffs, beginning with beating Washington tonight in regulation.

If either Washington or Detroit wins tonight, the Penguins cannot make the playoffs, despite a heroic rally from being 10 points out a playoff spot on March 4 and going 8-1-3 in the past 12 games.

Penguins fans suffered playoff trauma about this time last year, ending a 16-season playoff run by losing, inexplicably, at home, to the largely hapless Chicago Blackhawks.

It would be ironic in the extreme if both Washington and Detroit lost, but the Penguins came up short vs. the Islanders Wednesday. By the way, the Islanders figure to be less than motivated having clinched their playoff seeding. They might rest some key players, and other players might not be as interested in giving 100 percent as they would be were there something to be gained. That should be a huge advantage for the Penguins.

The people at moneypuck.com give Washington a 42.8 percent shot at making the playoffs. Detroit is next at 36.8 percent. The Penguins are rated at 14.6 percent and the Flyers, 5.9.

Let’s drop the puck and find out.

The federal income tax filing deadline looms Monday, prompting a look at just how the government is spending all of our tax dollars.

Data from the U.S. Bureau of the Fiscal Service, for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2023, is both informative and scary.

According to the fiscal services people, the leading claim on tax dollars is Social Security, at .22 of every dollar.

Medicare, also largely an expense for the aging, is in a tie for second place at .14 of each tax dollar. The other category coming in at 14 cents per dollar is a catch-all labeled health. Mostly, that is federal money funneled to states to support Medicaid, which is medical care for low income people – increasingly illegal immigrants!

So, between Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, we’re up to about half of every tax dollar being spent.

Much-maligned national defense comes in at 13 percent, along with another vague category entitled “income security.” And that “income security” would include, according to the story, such things as unemployment compensation, nutrition assistance and housing assistance.

By now, if you’ve been paying attention you probably have some questions, just as I do.

Workers have Social Security tax collected from their paychecks and their employers pay a matching amount. Supposedly, the money is invested in special treasury bonds, which pay interest. In effect this is the government lending out retirement funds to itself.

Is that 22 cents of annual cost out of each tax dollar to fund Social Security above and beyond all the revenue collected?

This is a significant point because as recently as March of this year the government issued a financial report putting unfunded future obligations to pay Social Security and Medicare at $73.2 trillion. That’s money that must be borrowed and you wonder why the programs have been allowed to fall so far into arrears.

Similarly contradictory is the income security category. Employees and employers pay into unemployment funds. If those contributions are even close to paying the bills, apparently they are overwhelmed by handouts such as Section 8 housing vouchers and SNAP food programs. Flooding the country with illegal immigrants only worsens this problem, too.

Denver just reported it won’t be filling job vacancies and otherwise failing to deliver accustomed services in order to have money to divert to funding illegal immigrants.

There was a boob who once wrote a vanity column for the local paper. Call her Sister Moonbeam. She cobbled up a figure of illegal immigrants paying billions of dollars in taxes and so deserving benefits.

Like most of her ilk, she was short on details, such as how exactly she documented that figure since illegals, by definition, are operating under the radar and won’t have things such as Social Security cards, won’t be on the record of employers’ books, and won’t file tax returns.

Illegals are a large, and growing, expense for a nation already living too far beyond its means. If this country were an individual it already would be in bankruptcy proceedings.

The report of how tax dollars are spent measures interest expense at .11 of each tax dollar, but doesn’t note that we are borrowing an ever increasing amount of money to fund federal spending and that figure only stands to increase.

The Bipartisan Policy Center reports the federal deficit for the month of March was $236 billion. So far in the current fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, 2023, our cumulative federal budget deficit is $1.1 trillion.

We’re in a financial hole as a nation that we never can escape, short of hyperinflating the money so the debts can be repaid in virtually worthless dollars. And every day, we dig the hole that much deeper.

Pay your taxes with a smile. Remember, Uncle Sam desperately needs the money and there are millions of illegal immigrants depending on you.

Back in my days as a sportswriter covering the Pittsburgh Steelers, aspiring players in training camp who eventually got cut often were told the decision was a “numbers game.”

The implied message was that while they were skilled and competent, they played a position at which the team was overstocked and hence fell victim because one roster only can include so many defensive tackles, or running backs, or cornerbacks, or whatever.

The actual message was that in the meritocracy of professional football, if this player had been good enough, someone else would have been sent packing with the numbers game explanation. But the numbers game story helped take the sting out of being cut.

These days, the numbers game has become a favorite tool of the current Biden regime to manipulate, obfuscate and otherwise render virtually useless the periodic data dumps, particularly economic-related items.

Let’s look at some recent numbers.

3.2– The February 12-month total consumer price index inflation rate as a percentage increase.

3.5– The March CPI 12-month total rate announced Wednesday as a percentage, an unhappy increase in inflation rate.

422 – The number of points the Dow Jones Industrial Average tanked Wednesday in the wake of the CPI release.

2.1 — The Thursday Producer Price Index rate increase for the past 12 months as a percentage.

2.2 — The anticipated 12-month PPI increase.

6.3 — The actual increase in gasoline prices as a percentage.

Minus-3.6 – The “seasonally adjusted” decline in gasoline prices that helped produce the 2.1 reported figure, just under 2.2 expectations.

271.84 – The point increase in the NASDAQ Thursday, to an all-time high of 16,442.20, based on optimism over positive (if only due to statistical chicanery) inflation news.

13 – The percentage-point jump in electricity bills in January from California’s Pacific Gas And Electric.

12,000-plus – The value in dollars of pork stolen earlier this week from a truck parked at a suburban Philadelphia truck stop while the driver slept.

10,771 – Futures prices per ton for cocoa, a record high, recorded Thursday morning for the vital chocolate ingredient.

0 – The amount of faith you should put in government economic statistics.

A young lady stopped by the house Wednesday stumping for Frank Burns and caught up with me sitting on the front porch.

I was taking a break from digging a grave for a neighbor’s dog and was in the mood to vent about the sad state of affairs locally. She listened and it turns out that despite an obvious monstrous gap in age, we tended to agree.

Such revelations are heartening, because too often I find that interactions with members of younger generations leave me wondering what planet they might call home.

Bottom line, I’m a registered Republican, but have voted for the Democrat Burns in the past for state representative and will continue to do so. I assured her as much.

I liken Burns to Donald Trump in that both his party and the opposing party seem aligned to defeat him for having had the temerity to challenge special interests. The biggest sin on Burns’ record is going against those vested interests to expose the behind-the-scenes machinations of the Myopia 2025 people to bring Afghan refugees to the area.

The fact that Myopia 2025 thought this sort of thing had to be done in secret reminded me of a favored maxim of my late mother, that being if you are afraid to do something openly, probably you shouldn’t be doing it.

Myopia 2025 is an arm of the elite swamp that runs our area, a band whose power base is the countless charities, foundations, non-profits, not-for-profits and general beggars that dominate the area scene. They seek donations, private or public, and redistribute them to maximum political benefit.

Extremely high salaries are paid to the lords of these organizations, rates of pay not in keeping with the charitable theme.

These well-heeled types subsidizing their lifestyles by shaking the begging bowl rubs me the wrong way.

Operating in secret, based on the belief that area common folk are just too stupid to know what’s good for them, similarly bothers me.

So does having the local news media running interference for it all. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that the former publisher of the Johnstown newspaper left to work for Myopia 2025.

The Republican opposition for Burns is a former media member.

Hmmmmm.

Bless Burns for doing something about the attempted Afghan invasion. He’s done more, according to the handout door-hanger card the young lady left with me, and I know he has from the public record.

Yet I am bombarded with messages in the mail from Republican-supporting organizations painting Burns as a do-nothing layabout who doesn’t show up for work and gets nothing done. The ridiculous hyperbole is entertaining in a sad way.

Projection, perhaps?

While many Woke acquaintances of mine indulge in orgies of self-congratulation over studying elections and voting for the best candidate, I’ve yet to have one give me a concrete example of voting for a Republican for significant office.

On the other hand, I have voted for the late John Murtha multiple times for the U.S. House, for former Pa. Governor Ed Rendell on his first run, for Cambria County Commissioner Tom Chernisky, for Burns, etc., etc., etc.

I will not be voting for Burns’ Republican opponent based on blind party faith, nor should you.

The Republican Party organization, locally and nationally, has been a raging disappointment.

I’m hoping (praying) Ronna McDaniel being out as chairman of the Republican National Committee and Lara Trump in as a co-chair will be positive move.

There are enough Democrats worthy of demonization for the Republican operation to target. Wasting time trying to punish Burns for going against the elites is a bad look — for Republicans and Democrats alike.

The NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament concludes tonight or, as one coach christened it, the UConn Invitational.

And the UConn Huskies are seven-point favorites to win it all for the second consecutive season, with a significantly fresh cast of characters.

Standing in the way is Purdue, a serial tournament disappointer in the recent past that finally made it to the title game.

I’m thinking the seven points is not nearly enough to tempt me to back Purdue in this game.

The Boilermakers’ guard play, particularly at the point, stunk in a semifinal win over Cinderella story North Carolina State. The glass slippers finally turned to pumpkins for that No. 11 seed. It was as much a case of NC State blowing the game as Purdue winning it.

UConn was kept close by Alabama going into the second half of the other semifinal, but eventually won going away.

The Huskies’ edge in guard play vs. Purdue is immense. They have the size on the front line to match up with Purdue and 7-foot-4 center Zach Edey.

It’s possible Purdue could win, just incredibly unlikely.

I figure I will watch at the start, hoping to be proved wrong by Purdue. But, my hand will be on the remote to seek out alternative viewing if and when UConn begins to take control.

Lest you consider risking cash money on any of this thinking, understand that my best bracket in the CBS challenge ranked 308,000 and change out of I don’t know how many entries. I did somehow have Alabama and Purdue in the Final Four and had Purdue advancing to the title game, even winning there. But . . . I’d change that in a heartbeat now.

Regarding today’s epic eclipse, cue the Peggy Lee: “It that All There Is?”

Maybe throw in a little Shakespeare: “Much Ado About Nothing.”

I know, I know, this was supposed to be the highlight of our lives. The cable TV types my wife was watching early Monday afternoon spoke of chills running over their bodies and tingling legs. This was attributed to viewing the eclipse, or videos thereof.

These seasoned professionals claimed to be breathless that it got dusky during traditional daylight hours. They ran countless shots of the sun gradually disappearing into shadow. They expressed reverence and awe so much, I thought I’d bumbled onto a televised church service.

We were supposed to be just as thrilled, amazed and awed by it all as they were. For me, not so much.

Amidst the overcast conditions here, my wife was rewarded for reclining on her back and looking skyward for long periods of time with some brief glimpses of the phenomenon.

I even slipped away from the computer a time or two to go outside and observe first a crescent of sun and, later, a mere sliver. That’s before the clouds pulled down the curtain on this much-hyped show.

Since the approved viewing glasses seemed to be manufactured in China, the topic came up that if the Chi-coms really wanted to take over the U.S., they could have forgotten TikTok and instead flooded our country with ineffective protective glasses, rendering the vast majority of the eclipse-curious blind.

Oh, well, wait until next eclipse. Then again, be alert to reports of blindness leaking out in coming days, sort of like adverse reactions to COVID vaccinations. Likely the blindness news would be similarly suppressed and censored, so maybe you won’t notice it.

On the whole, I’m glad I didn’t drive or fly thousands of miles to take in this short-lived spectacle. I have seen and heard of many who did and know of a few personally. Some (most?) spent lavishly for the right to say they were there – somewhere – to witness the eclipse.

For them I cite a couple of bon mots from Ben Franklin. First, lost time is never found again. Second, a penny saved is a penny earned.

If all had gone to according to plan, I’d have been in transit during peak eclipse viewing time today, not to watch it, but to consummate the purchase, title transfer and trailering home of a modified C4 Corvette.

But the chance to look at the car in-person was moved up to Sunday at the seller’s request and, with the notary not being available Sunday, the rest of the transaction was pushed back to Tuesday.

While driving north on I-79 Sunday, we were amused to see temporary flashing signs set up alongside the road warning drivers not to park along the berm to observe the eclipse. Presumably parking there other times for random reasons was tolerable.

I also saw evidence of various eclipse functions, including one camping area that was having a “viewing party.”

Bless them all. I hope they enjoyed the eclipse viewing and had no regrets about time and money lost on the venture.

Maybe Clueless Joe can make political capital of it all, offering to reimburse eclipse viewers for their expenses. It would make as much sense as his never-ending effort to forgive student debt for those who never bothered to repay the claims.

I’m thinking the eclipse handout would make more people happy and buy more votes.

Living in Johnstown for parts of eight decades can tend to give one a sense of being a purge target of sorts.

We’re not talking the classic purges of Stalinist Russia, in which millions were killed and/or deleted from history through clever use of retouched photos and rewritten accounts.

The Johnstown example to which I refer also is not part of our current national and worldwide purge attempt as the Woke crowd operates in censorship of social media, Lamestream media, and government accountings to cancel opposition. We’re not yet sure how many, if any, have been killed in this left-wing push. Perhaps that is coming.

What is happening in the Johnstown area is more the tale of a once-vibrant small industrial town going the dust-to-dust, ashes-to-ashes route in its transition into a welfare community, with all the attending decline.

Beyond the obvious general examples of closed business and industry, all of the schools I attended in the Greater Johnstown School District are gone, save the example of the current high school’s auditorium being the former Cochran Junior High facility.

Even that is a shell of its former self. The last time I was there, for a dance recital, the balcony was closed. The main floor also has been modified and not for the better.

The recent hillside slide along the Easy Grade brings up another reminder of my personal purge. Many of the houses that once were home to me or members of my family, also are gone, for various reasons.

Although I never lived in it, my mother and her second husband, along with my brother, once lived along Barnett Street. It was the second house from the top on the left side if you headed toward the Easy Grade.

Even as they lived in the house, there was evidence of hillside instability and an attempt was made to address that by rebuilding the garage that sat under the house. It cost a lot and didn’t work, almost as if it had been a government project.

My family moved on from Barnett Street before the previous slide that wrecked several houses and forced the 2018 repair attempt that turned the hillside into a pile of rocks visible clear across the valley.

In an ironic bit of timing, I took granddaughter No. 2 along to pick up my brother for the family’s Easter meal and made sure to use Barnett Street both going and coming.

The first leg was designed to allow her a peek at the eagle’s nest along the Easy Grade – she insists she saw the bird.

Coming back, my brother and I pointed out where he and her great grandmother once had lived along Barnett Street. We told the child the tale of the hillside giving way and the rocks being put where houses once had stood attempting to stabilize things and prevent a repeat.

But Mother Nature cannot be fooled – heavy rains come periodically to this area. And gravity never rests, eventually winning the battle.

Both of these conspired to send more of the hillside toward Barnett Street, coming perilously close to undermining a section of the Easy Grade at mid-week.

If I lived along Barnett Street, I’d be nervous, just on general principles.

Also, if I lived in any of the remaining houses our family once called home – and there still are a few standing – I might be a tad nervous, too, lest that purge continue.