"When I went to the prison, doors started opening for me," said Steve Boyd, a director for Yokefellowship Prison Ministry and the Volunteer Re-entry Coordinator for the Carbon County Correctional Facility.
After searching for a lifetime for the meaning of life, at the age of 62, Boyd retired to his Lehighton farm from a career as an operations manager at the Automatic Switch Company in New Jersey.
More than 80 friends bade farewell to Denise O'Donnell on a rainy Saturday, July 10 morning at the Immaculate Conception Cemetery in Jim Thorpe. The Buddhist ceremony overseen by a saffron and maroon-robed monk prayed to set her spirit on the path to rebirth on a higher plane of existence.
Carole Walbert, executor of the Denise O'Donnell estate, read "An Irish Funeral Prayer" that began, "Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room."
When it comes to the subject of trains, Wally Ely has few equals.
Since his father worked on trains, he had the train bug early in life.
Ely retired from the banking industry and is now a volunteer and past president of WK&S Railroad, Kempton, Berks County, which offers seasonal weekend excursions on what is known as its Hawk Mountain Line.
"Officially, Amtrak claims the train is three-quarter-mile long, made up of 18 passenger cars and 33 auto carriers, plus two engines," Wally Ely says of the Auto Train, the subject of his book, Images of Rail Auto-Train.
"With so many people investing in energy conservation," said Austin Blew, "I want to be sure that there are enough precautions and tests being done that failures in the installation over time, don't occur."
Blew is president of Lehighton Electronics, Inc., a 40-year-old Carbon County-based manufacturer of instruments used to qualify solid state materials. In association with an industrial standards organization, LEI had been analyzing samples of polycrystalline silicon, a lower cost material for making solar cells.
Carbon County's Sunny Rest Resort has discovered the secret of drawing guests year-after-year, for 65 years. As the resort prepares for its 65th anniversary celebration on the May 29 Memorial Day weekend, the family-owned operation is anticipating its biggest season ever.
Zumba, the aerobics-gone-salsa dance craze that is making heads turn and hips gyrate, has transformed what used to be known as an exercise workout into a party.
"It's smiling and sweating without commitment," jokes dance and fitness instructor Naomi Betancourt.
Zumba is an aerobic dance exercise party that's spreading across Carbon County. At Dance with Kim in Lehighton, since the fall of 2009, every Monday night the regulars show up to Zumba with Betancourt.
(Editor's Note: Amanda Sandlin is a 20-year-old junior journalism major at Rider University, and a previous TIMES NEWS intern. A Tamaqua resident, she is studying and volunteering in Accra, Ghana, located in western Africa, for one semester. Ghana gained independence from British rule in 1957, and now is a constitutional democracy. It is classified as a third world country and a developing nation. Amanda's columns will appear periodically on Saturdays in The TIMES NEWS during her stay in Ghana. To read more about her adventures, visit her blog at http://amandasanda.wordpress.com.)
(Editor's Note: Amanda Sandlin is a 20-year-old junior journalism major at Rider University, and a previous Times News intern. A Tamaqua resident, she is studying and volunteering in Accra, Ghana, located in western Africa, for one semester. Ghana gained independence from British rule in 1957, and now is a constitutional democracy. It is classified as a third world country and a developing nation. Amanda's columns will appear periodically on Saturdays in The TIMES NEWS during her stay in Ghana.)
Now that it's 2010, between the internet, cell phones, smart cars, high tech TV's, and 21st. century relationships, you've probably found yourself at a loss to find the right word.
So, as a help, here's a litany of words that you can begin working into your vocabulary.
A friend's not been talking for a while. He or she is in "airplane mode."
You're talking and need to emphasize a point, use you hands to draw an "air quote."
Listening to a recording that has perfect pitch. That's likely to be a type of software called "autotune."
It was an easy scramble up and down the ice and snow covered Glen Onoko Falls Trail for 25 members of the Philadelphia Hiking & Adventure Group. So easy that some members climbed up and down the trail twice, plus hiked over a mile across the Broad Mountain summit to view the meandering Lehigh River from the Packer's Point overlook.
