BENSALEM, Pa. Forget the clanging of coins. It’s more the sounds of silence at the vending machines in area schools these days. Many students aren’t buying the healthy snacks, fruit juices and water that must now be offered in school vending machines instead of candy, soda and other sugary, high-calorie treats. That means school districts […]

Holidays equal platters and tins of festive-looking cookies. Cookies with colored icing, cookies with sprinkles, cookies with fillings, cookies with layers. An artistic cookie display is a thing of beauty, that I’ll not argue, but I’ll reach past the whole lot if I see a flat, modest, quiet molasses cookie. This is my cookie, not […]

My deadline for this column is Tuesday. Ordinarily, that is of little significance, unless, of course, you are my family and you do something particularly noteworthy over the weekend (I’m looking at you, Dustin, and your tendency to hoard coffee mugs). This week, however, my deadline created a predicament. I needed to write this on […]

Each year about now I suddenly realize that I should have already finished putting my garden to bed. This year I had a good excuse: I’d gone to France to hike and was away for three weeks. But in other years my excuse has been the weather, or finishing a book that I was writing. […]