Free Republic

Three hundred years ago on July 30 a man responsible for many important contributions to this city, state and country died. Long before William Penn moved to the top of City Hall, there was Independence Hall. Decades before that building came to be, there was a little boy named William Penn. He was born and raised in England in the 1640s, almost a hundred years before George Washington. “One of his basic tenets was, ‘We should all come to love one another and live our lives that way regardless,'” said National Park Service Ranger Ray Harsharger. Harsharger also happens to...

A Port Authority bus driver stabbed six times during Downtown rush hour Thursday night in an altercation with an unruly group of passengers remained in stable condition at UPMC Mercy this morning. The driver, age 47, has been with the transit agency since 2006, spokesman Jim Ritchie said. His name has not been released. At around 6 p.m. last night, the driver ejected a group of young men and women from his outbound 67 Monroeville bus at Fifth Avenue and Market Street, after repeatedly telling them to stop disturbing other passengers. A man in the group proceeded to spit and...

The Informed Citizen Monday, March 14, 2005 TAMAR MYERS : Pennsylvania Dutch Mysteries (With Recipes) I've just finished reading ASSAULT and PEPPER,the latest Tamar Myers ouvre. If you've ever read anything by Ms Myers,you'll understand why I'm still laughing. Set in the Mennonite/Amish town of Hernia,Pennsylvania,the Pennsylvania Dutch mysteries feature the incomparable Magdalena Yodor,proprietor of the Penn Dutch Inn (where well-heeled guests pay extra for the privilege of doing household and farm chores.It's called "immersion".) In between the chapters of these rollicking murder mysteries,one will find apparently authentic Pennsylvania Dutch recipes-usually inserted with some passing reference to the previous chapter....