For more than thirty four years, Effort, Pa. was home to a very special manufacturing firm that emloyed as many as 60 people in this small, rural community. The Better Made Manufacturing Co., founded in 1949, made blouses that were sold in many stores locally, including K-Mart.

The blouse factory was owned and operated by Italian immigrant Lawrence "Larry" Liero, better known to those around the village as "The Mayor of Effort". Mr. Liero was a respected member...

Together, always embroiled in constant battles for existence, are Freedom and Liberty. They fight, as brothers in arms, in every human being, struggling to attain or perpetuate their existence. They are akin to a tape worm, wriggling it's way into our guts, starving out all other emotions until this one worm has eaten all it can eat and is the only thing left in our being that is hungry for survival. We, as host to them, must speak out, changing the things that oppress us. Should we let ourselves...

The Signs are subtle...but they are there,
signs of spring are everywhere...
A tiny bud on an enormous tree
awaits the moment it can finally break free.
On my lawn, it's Robin Red Breast...
at predicting Spring, he's the best..
He is standing by a yellow dot...
A dandelion is the colorful spot..
right now that's the only one I've got...
but a month from now I'll have a lot...
Up on the wall..acting like a spy..
is an eavesdropping,...

Today was a cold and windy day in the Pocono Mountains...blustery, a particular bear might say.

Days like this are when I miss my childhood home & my parents wood stove. We don't have a wood stove, but when I was a kid, I loved those first few days of cold weather when my dad would stoke up the stove...our home filling with that gentle warmth and familiar smell of seasoned firewood. A lot of times he would put up the screen doors so we could all sit and watch it...rather, get...

Some things make such a profound impact on your life that it's effects on you are impossible to erase.

I've read so many heart-felt blogs on city-data....one a mother's blog about the pain that she is experiencing with the loss of her child, another a soldiers' view about the harsh realities of military life and war.

Here people open up in a way that they probably don't or can't elsewhere.

I know that reading about them all has left a lasting impact on...