Vanessa Pellechio Sanders
One of the things that has helped me through my grief is focusing on projects to commemorate my younger brother, who passed away in March.
I shared a memorial butterfly tattoo I got on my arm a few weeks ago, but I created an entire shelf to remember Vinny with these items.
Vinny was one of those people who kept everything in his house. He never had the heart to throw stuff. My date reservation magnet for our 2019 wedding was still sitting on her fridge in 2022.
He also kept the burgundy tie he wore as the groomsman of the day and the place card with his name on it. A friend of my family suggested that I make a “happiness box” to keep the things that remind him, especially the good memories. I added his tie to it, and I have the place card displayed on one of the shelves.
I also had a pair of his Aztec print shorts and my favorite white and navy silk shirt turned into stuffed puppies on display, plus mini picture frames with pictures of him wearing the clothes. I also bought one for my parents with one of his famous plaid shirts that he wore too often. He absolutely loved animals.
As I was taking photos for his funeral, I wanted to create a memorial photo book for my family. It was a welcome distraction from focusing on the fun memories, and I doubt I would have found the time to do so if I had put it off.
I created the photo book on Mixbook.com, where I followed other memorial photo book formats, but customized it to add many more pages, photos, and stories about my brother. I wanted my older brother and my parents to have a say, so Mixbook lets you send the book to other people to edit and review.
I turned her t-shirts into blankets, turned her guitar picks into earrings with rose gold charms, and printed photo strips at LA Camera in Chambersburg.
The memorial library also contains an action figure of World Wrestling Entertainment wrestler, The Undertaker, who was his favorite. I also have lots of pictures of him, and a copy of the playbook for the production of the musical “Smile,” which we were in together in high school.
These articles take me back to happier times of our childhood. Memorial projects are a great way to honor the memory of a loved one.
Sunday saw the end of the line for the New Oxford Legion baseball team for the 2022 season.
The team qualified for the Region 4 tournament which was played at Red Lion and after a terrific throwing performance from Jesse Bitzer to lead them to victory on Friday afternoon they lost a pair of games difficult and were eliminated.
I had the pleasure of seeing them play seven times this season and they were a fun team to watch, no doubt. The throwing was outstanding, the hitting was fantastic and the team played great defense.
Head Coach Scott Anderson does a terrific job with his team and the post-game interviews with him are always top notch. No matter the question, he always gives a thoughtful answer and you don’t get a bunch of cliches and “coach speak” from him. The occasional phone call is also very informative. I have known Scott for 22 years and he has never been anything but a pleasure to deal with. He was always very accommodating with his time.
Anyway, I’m going to miss covering this very nice ball club. But this group of young men is about to do great things, in my opinion.
In our large extended family (I was lucky enough to have 72 first cousins), there were always children’s tables when the clan got together for big parties. It was a big problem when you were promoted to the big table.
Maybe that’s why I’m always intrigued by where people sit in meetings. It usually matters who is at the table and in what position.
In one of the municipalities I cover for the newspaper, a former director sat among the supervisors. His successor sits at the back of the room, like all the staff. The balance of power has clearly shifted. In another, the entire staff is at the table with the elected officials, while in yet another, only the mayor joins the members of the council around the table of the “big kids”.
Lawyers are usually at hand, which means our officials must operate in a highly regulated and litigious society.
“But where”, you may be wondering, “do the journalists sit? » I try to be close to the action to see and hear the decision makers. The downside to being outspoken is that I can’t see the body language of the citizens behind me who come to watch or offer public comment.
As you might expect, public officials have a variety of responses to us in “the press”. Some are friendly and welcoming. Others seem a little wary. One of them made it clear that he considered me an annoyance. A chair turns to me at the end of every meeting and asks me nicely if I need clarification from anyone in the room before they adjourn.
We’re not even in the room, of course, when a council or council meets in “executive session” to discuss personal or legal matters. Under the Sunshine Law of Pennsylvania, no decisions should be made at such sessions. Without the confidential substantive discussion, it can sometimes be difficult to explain a decision.
I am grateful for those who choose to sit in local government seats, which seem to be getting hotter and hotter these days. For what it’s worth, I think elected officials do well to keep the school and city workers close by who keep the cogs turning on a daily basis.
Abraham Lincoln didn’t give much thought to the two-and-a-half-minute speech he gave at the dedication of the Gettysburg National Cemetery on November 19, 1863. History disagrees with his assessment.
Lincoln and the local citizens of his day come to life in the Gettysburg Foundation’s “Ticket to the Past: A Virtual Reality Experience” held at the same station where our 16th President disembarked the previous afternoon after a tour five and a half hour trip from Washington, DC by rail.
Earlier this week, I donned the helmet to time travel with my wife Nancy, her brother Keith and his wife Debbie. The whole program takes less than an hour and is well worth the reasonable admission fee.
After several minutes to digest the contents of the signs detailing the history of the railroad and Lincoln’s address, patrons have the choice of hearing from three different personalities of the time: Basil Biggs, a free African American; Eli Blanchard, an 18-year-old soldier-musician and Dorothea Horatio, a young nurse.
I chose Biggs because I heard of his many accomplishments. I heard he came here from Maryland as a free man. After the battle, he and his colleagues took on the task of exhuming the dead soldiers from the shallow temporary graves so that they could be properly buried in the city’s new cemetery. He was well paid for his gruesome labors and eventually bought a farm on the outskirts of the borough. He became a veterinarian and worked for many years at Gettysburg College. His hologram spoke to me and reminded me that we are all created equal according to our Constitution.
Lincoln had to travel via Baltimore and Hanover to get here. Gettysburg was the end of the line, the westernmost station on the railroad at the time, and so it’s also the end of my line.
Last weekend I moved away from G’burg and spent some time in P’burg.
Pittsburgh’s annual Picklesburg kicked off July 12.
As an homage to all things “dill delicious” and “light dill,” Pittsburg has become a hub for customers who enjoy a good pickle or need a “spicy” weekend. “.
The annual Picklesburgh Festival was held on the bright yellow downtown Rachel Carson Bridge, one of many significant bridges that connect aspects of the city.
Pressing around tight crowds, food vendors offered every kind of pickle you could imagine, but not limited to, pickle fudge, pickle popcorn, pickle perogies, pickle sorbet.
“Pickle moonshine!” called a woman with a smile, behind a mason jar stand.
Not to mention a pickle juice contest.
Lunch that day was a “Meat Monster,” a hot dog stuffed in a bacon-wrapped dill pickle, served on a bed of potato chips.
Because during festivals, eat festival food.
All washed down with a chilled lemonade, although served with a decorative pickle and perfectly matching in color with the rest of the dill-themed festivities, it was a refreshing sweet and sour contrast to the surrounding salty and sour.
Established in 2015, Pittsburgh’s flagship event has twice been voted the best food festival in the United States by USA Today.
What was once a city known for its steel mills and endless smog is now a breath of fresh air for unique festivities and events.
As the t-shirt says, “It’s kind of a big dill.”
In short, I slept for a week.
The first night, I just felt strange; something was wrong. Within hours, that feeling turned into a congested, aching head and a fever that had me shivering and mumbling to myself.
Then my lungs clogged up and I coughed for days. When I wasn’t coughing, I was sleeping.
Eventually, the symptoms gradually reversed, but a new one appeared. I felt a bit hazy and disconnected from reality. It was hard to concentrate and easy to get distracted.
Now, on the last day of my doctor-advised COVID quarantine, I feel more or less normal, although my sense of taste is a bit muted and, even after all that sleep over the past week, I’m tired. (By the way, physical discomfort aside, this sleep was great for my brain. My job stuffs a ton of information into my head every day. A long period of low intake did me good.)
Fortunately, it seems that I managed not to transmit the disease to my son. I stayed in a well-ventilated room (blower fan, window open, bathroom exhaust fan attached) and wore a mask every time I ventured there.
I worked from home this week. Many people have learned that they like working remotely, but not me. So many times I needed something I had at work but not at home. You don’t realize how many little things you depend on until you don’t have them. Also, covering meetings remotely is less than optimal. On the one hand, I can’t just go up to people afterwards and ask questions.
All in all, COVID could have been much worse. I am very grateful that this is not the case.
