Monthly Archives: September 2012

red velvet magic cookie bars

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Before Baking

I am a kid at heart.  I also have a definite affinity for things with chocolate and pecans in it.  I have been making seven layer or magic cookie or magic cake bars for years. But mine are a little different.

I will share two of my variations with you.  One is brand new, being  road tested  today.   Sometimes with both, I may toss mini marshmallows in the mix.

Red Velvet Magic Bars

1 box Red Velvet Cake Mix (pre-packaged dry cake mixes are generally 18.25 oz)

1 stick of butter, melted (1/2 cup)

1 12 oz package of dark chocolate or semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 cup shredded coconut

1 cup chopped pecans

1 cup of oatmeal (Quaker plain quick cooking NOT flavored or Irish Oatmeal)

1 can sweetened condensed milk ( 14 oz – use Eagle brand – it is the best)

Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees.

Combine cake mix and melted butter until well-mixed (do by HAND, do not use mixer unless you want a crumbly mess all over your kitchen).

Press crumbs into greased rectangular cake pan (mine is about 13 inches x 9 inches).

Sprinkle nuts evenly over crumbs. Repeat for coconut.  Repeat for oatmeal.  Repeat for chocolate chips.

Open your condensed milk and drizzle evenly over entire mixture – use a gentle back and forth motion until can is empty.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 22-25 minutes depending upon your oven.

Cool completely before cutting.

Peanut Butter Oatmeal Magic Bars

1 box Vanilla or French Vanilla Cake Mix (pre-packaged dry cake mixes are generally 18.25 oz)

1 stick of butter, melted (1/2 cup)

1 12 oz package of peanut butter chips*

1 cup shredded coconut

1 cup chopped pecans

1 cup of oatmeal (Quaker plain quick cooking NOT flavored or Irish Oatmeal)

1 can sweetened condensed milk ( 14 oz – use Eagle brand – it is the best)

Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees.

Combine cake mix and melted butter until well-mixed (do by HAND, do not use mixer unless you want a crumbly mess all over your kitchen).

Press crumbs into greased rectangular cake pan (mine is about 13 inches x 9 inches).

Sprinkle nuts evenly over crumbs. Repeat for coconut.  Repeat for oatmeal.  Repeat for peanut butter chips.

Open your condensed milk and drizzle evenly over entire mixture – use a gentle back and forth motion until can is empty.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 22-25 minutes depending upon your oven.

Cool completely before cutting.

* = NOTE if you don’t want peanut butter chips, you can also use butterscotch chips

of freedom and balloon rides

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I will admit to still being up in the clouds after yesterday’s hot air balloon ride.  It was such an amazing experience.  As a breast cancer survivor, like many others, I have a bucket list.  I had never been on a hot-air balloon, and while I would never sky-dive, this is something I wanted to do. So I can cross this off my list!!

I took hundreds of photos…including from the air….I am still sifting through most of them.

9/11 has a very significant resonance with Americans.  Like the assassination of President Kennedy or say, Martin Luther King, Jr. this will live in our memories and hearts forever.

Yesterday however, more Americans died on 9/11.  In fact, a total of four Americans died in Libya in an extremist attack.  Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other embassy staffers were brutally gunned down by a rocket attack on the car they were riding in.  In addition to this horrific event in Libya, the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt was also attacked.  The Washington Post says the whole thing in Libya may have been planned in advance.

I am so tired of Middle East conflict. Let them have their holy war on another people. The Christian Science Monitor has a wonderful piece all should read.

So I don’t know what to think.  I was moved nearly to tears yesterday when all those first responders from Chester County showed up to watch the balloons take off.  A sea of mostly blue uniform shirts dotting a freshly cut green field.

It’s so weird, I find a very famous quote haunting me this afternoon.  The quote is from our Declaration of Independence.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

I am glad we are free, but I wish people would stop blowing up Americans.  And on our own soil, I wish the petty tyranny of small minded government officials in local municipalities like Tredyffrin and West Vincent would cease.

I am proud to be an American but petty tyranny and unecessary death and destruction makes me sad.

One other thing.  Yesterday I rode in the flag balloon with a favorite Chester County reporter from The Daily Local, Sara Mosqueda-Fernandez.  Here is her article about our ride:

By SARA MOSQUEDA-FERNANDEZ
smfernandez@dailylocal.com
Published: Wednesday, September 12, 2012
UPPER UWCHLAN — Hot air balloons, including one styled as an American flag, honored first responders Tuesday in Eagle on the 11th Anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

9/11 2012: from the air

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Ok this afternoon I took part in the coolest thing: a 9/11 commemorative hot air balloon ride over Chester County.  There were several balloons.  I rode in one shaped like a giant American flag.

I had never been on a hot air balloon ride and this was an awesome experience.

We left from near Eagle and landed in Devault.

When we took off, we were joined by many, many spectators and at least five fire companies.  It was incredibly moving to see all those first responders on 9/11.

I have hundreds of photos to go through.

More tomorrow!

9/11

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On September 7, 2006 I wrote an editorial about 9/11 for Main Line Media News which I would like to share with all of you.  Eleven years later, it still resonates.

I have been to downtown NYC a few times since I wrote my original column a few years ago.  I have watched NYC rise proudly again.

Face it, we are ALL different after 9/11, but I have to say we have become a country divided.  Over everything.  From the town to town, city to city, state to state to Washington D.C., we have become a country of extremism – especially politically.  We are all still Americans, but are we always proud of that? Hyper liberal, hyper conservative, what happened to the people in the middle? Who cares about the people in the middle?

When did it become a crime to disagree with the status quo?  To disagree with elected officials? To wish for better in the somber shades of a desperate recession? To be just a little bit different?

Who will do the healing if not each one of us ourselves?  Who do we believe in? Who can we believe in? Can we hope for anything or is hope still just an overused word in our everyday vernacular? And after this election, will “forward” also be over-used?

(NOTE: I apologize in advance for the spacing in the article – not how it was originally, but there is something a little wonky with posting this and I can’t get WordPress to cooperate)

Five years after September 11 what have we learned

Published: Thursday, September 07, 2006

 Sept. 11, 2006, is the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and United Airlines Flight 93’s crash in the field in Shanksville, Somerset County. This date has special significance to every American, and intense personal significance to far too many individuals who lost friends and loved ones.
But September 11, wasn’t the first time terrorists visited the World Trade Center. In truth, Feb. 26, 1993. was the date of the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York City. I worked in New York at that time at an office located downtown in the financial district.
On that day, I had accompanied an office friend to the World Trade Center to grab an early lunch and to check out some stores in the shopping concourse. We were back outside the Trade Center buildings, getting ready to cross the street, when suddenly the ground shook and moved. I remember that we were looking directly across the street at Century 21, a department store in Lower Manhattan. Then something happened that rarely happens in New York: Everything went eerily still and quiet. We looked up at what we first thought were snowflakes beginning to float and fall from the sky. After all, it was February.

Then car alarms began to go off one by one like the cacophony of many distorted bells. The snowflakes, we soon discovered, were in reality ashes.
People began yelling and screaming. It became very confusing and chaotic all at once, like someone flipped a switch to “on.” At first, we both felt rooted to the sidewalk, unable to move. I remember feeling a sense of panic at the unknown. We had absolutely no idea what had happened, and hurried back to our office. Reaching it, we were greeted by worried coworkers who told us that someone had set off a bomb underground in the World Trade Center garage.
I will never forget the crazy kaleidoscope of images, throughout that afternoon, of all the people who were related to or knew people in my office who sought refuge in our office after walking down the innumerable flights of steps in the dark to exit the World Trade Center Towers. They arrived with soot all over their faces, hands and clothes. They all wore zombie looks of shock, disbelief and panic.
Of course, the oddest thing about the first terrorist attack on New York City is that I don’t remember much lasting fuss about it. I do remember that President Bill Clinton was newly sworn into office, but I don’t remember him coming to visit New York after the attack. Everything was back to normal in Lower Manhattan in about a month, maybe two. After a while, unless you had worked in New York, or lived in New York, you simply forgot about this “incident.”
So, on the morning of 9/11, as I pulled into my office building’s garage and listened to the breaking news on the radio announcing that a plane had struck the World Trade Center, tears began to run down my face unbidden. I knew in my heart of hearts what happened. I said to myself, “Oh no. They came back.”

I remember picking up my cell phone to call my father, whom I knew to be, at that time, on an Amtrak train bound for New York City. I remember him telling me it was fine and he’d be fine. I wanted him to get off in New Jersey and take a train back to Philadelphia. But the train was already pretty much past all the stations and getting ready to go into the tunnel to New York. That very thought terrified me. To this day, I still do not understand why Amtrak did not stop those last trains from going into New York City as the news of the World Trade Center attacks first broke.
I next remember getting in the elevator and getting off on my office floor to find people clustered around television sets and radios. And the news kept getting worse: first one plane, then a second, then a third, and then a fourth.
The images and news just didn’t stop. Camera cuts from lower Manhattan to Washington to Somerset County. They are images that have to be ingrained in everyone’s mind forever like indelible ink.
It took a couple of days for my father and brother-in-law (who had already been in New York on business) to get out of the city, but eventually they got home safely with many stories to tell of what New York was like in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. A lot of people weren’t so lucky. They never saw their loved ones again after that fateful morning. Many people in the Philadelphia and greater Main Line area lost friends, coworkers and loved ones.
On September 11, I knew people who were lost, but fortunately I didn’t lose any loved ones. I remember for a brief time it seemed we were all a little nicer to each other, and politicians actually seemed to come together as one and grieve as a nation grieved.

But here we are five short years later. I have only seen the site one time where the World Trade Center once stood proudly. That was about a year after the attacks. I remember a distinct pit in my stomach and looked away from the car window. This past June I was in Washington, and had the same intense, awful feeling in my stomach as we drove on the highway past the Pentagon.

Life must go on and time can’t stand still, but all in all I can’t help but wonder: What have we learned since about our country and about ourselves? Five years after 9/11 what have we learned and what have we forgotten? What do we need to remember?

is this a cute baby or what?

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Took this photo at First Friday Main Line

pumpkin season is nigh!

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People who know me, know I love pumpkins.  Some say I have pumpkin “issues” .

I just love (real not fake not ceramic) pumpkins. The shapes of them, carving them, cooking with them, baking with them….again, I just love pumpkins!  So when my new Country Living Magazine arrived yesterday, I was VERY happy needless to say!

welcome back my friends to the show that never ends…in tredyffrin

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With sincere apologies to Emerson Lake & Palmer…it somehow seemed so oddly apropos…as another Main Line blogger said this evening:

Welcome to the People’s Republic of Tredyffrin

Tredyffrin Supervisor DiBuonaventuro goes after media and bloggers in letter posted to township website

Published: Friday, September 07, 2012

By Richard Ilgenfritz
rilgenfritz@mainlinemedianews.com

A member of the Tredyffrin Township Board of Supervisors this week injected himself into the recent dust up over why police officers failed to show up for a court hearing in a public intoxication and disorderly conduct case involving a township zoning and hearing board member.

For more on The Peoples Republic of Tredyffrin read Pattye Benson’s blog Community Matters.  If you have FiOs and depending on where you live in Chester and Delaware counties, some of you may be able to watch Tredyffrin’s next Board of Supervisors meeting on Verizon Channel 24.  If you live in Tredyffrin, get thee to a meeting!

The next Board of Supervisors Meeting as per Tredyffrin’s website appears to be Monday, September 17 in something called Keene Hall in Tredyffrin Township at 7:30 p.m.  Show up and speak out for Pattye and for yourselves.   If you are very good and very lucky, maybe they will post another letter on how horrible residents are?

Local governments like this only have the power you allow them to have.   It is time for Tredyffrin to change.   And your Board of Supervisors President Michelle H. Kichline has some explaining to do, does she not? And is her surly vice chair just supposed to keep on bullying residents and potentially anyone who disagrees with him?

Tredyffrin, how do you want your community governed?  It is up to you.  These people work for you.  I noticed that Michele Kichline is on  http://ttgop.org/  (they list her non-Tredyffrin e-mail as 2m2a@comcast.net ) and is a committee woman for Tredyffrin Republicans or something?

Anyway, I am a Republican as I have said before, so I was curious as to what Tredyffrin GOP listed as core values.  Check out what practically leaped off the page:

Our Values.  As Republicans, we believe:

~ That limited government must be fiscally responsible and always accountable;

~ That our nation must protect the dignity of every individual and guarantee the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness;

So Tredyffrin residents, how are those values working out?  Do you think your government is living up to these values?

lettergate in tredyffrin continues…

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Like many local municipalities, Tredyffrin has an official Facebook page.  I have no idea who is responsible for its content.

I posed a polite but rather simple question to the page, because I figure as a non-taxpayer and non-resident, it might be the most expedient way to get a response.  Well, I got one.  I thought nothing further could shock me about Tredyffrin Township, but well, it’s lettergate in full flower now I suppose.

I am posting the response.  Really I had to suppress the urge to ask how Tredyffrin feels about the First Amendment.  But should I bother given the response? Is it self-evident?

I asked:

Is the letter attacking a private citizen and local media outlets currently posted on your site an official government sanctioned release?  Also, you might want to read this editorial on the topic in Tredyffrin Patch. http://te.patch.com/articles/tredyffrin-website-used-for-political-attack

They responded:

 

What happens the next time residents are on the other side of an issue from an elected official?  I will note *again*, I have no idea who responds for Tredyffrin “officially” on their Facebook page as they do not identify themselves or their position within the Township.

I am just shocked.  Maybe I shouldn’t be, but I am.  How is any of this not an abuse of power and/or an abuse of a taxpayer-funded official government website?  So am I to understand that they are publicly flogging a resident for blogging and asking questions?  Is the Township website in Tredyffrin just a political bully pulpit?  Do they care or even have a clue as to how this makes the entire township look? To residents? To people considering moving into the township? To businesses?

This lettergate is certainly shaping up to be a First Amendment conundrum among other things like a public relations nightmare.

I am now going to let my friend Pattye Benson speak for herself.  Unbeknownst to me until a few moments ago, she wrote about exactly what I am writing about.  I am cross-poting her most recent post.  I will admit I am a bit surprised by Township Manager Mimi Gleason’s response. But she is retiring, right? I wouldn’t want this to follow me out the door, would you? That whole thing is confusing since Ray Hoffman wrote an article August 30th that is titled “Mimi Gleason to remain Tredyffrin manager for now” isn’t it?

Should I make a Note to Self?  Along the lines of don’t ask anymore questions about Tredyffrin, it is not safe?  Wonder what esteemed folks like Paul Alan Levy would think?  I will tell you what, this baptism by fire into all things Tredyffrin makes posting recipes even more appealing.  Recipes don’t attack.

1st Amendment Rights in Tredyffrin Township

“The dominant purpose of the First Amendment was to prohibit the widespread practice of government suppression of embarrassing information.”          ~ William Orville Douglas, US Supreme Court Justice

According to John DiBuonaventuro’s letter to the citizens, Community Matters posts are an “ongoing effort to discredit our government and its efforts to serve the citizens by creating and fostering an environment of conspiracy among its limited readership.”  I received many emails and phone calls in regards to the inappropriateness of the letter but more importantly, the inappropriate use of taxpayer dollars to post the letter on township letterhead on the township website.  The letter contains a personal attack on me, Community Matters and on those citizens who date to have an opinion.  For some reason, DiBuonaventuro also feels compelled to mention my failed election in 2009 as a Board of Supervisors candidate … I guess that was contained in the letter, as a ‘just because’, he could … and he did.

I was hopeful that Michelle Kichline as the chair of the Board of Supervisors, the township solicitor Vince Donohue or the township manger Mimi Gleason would recognize the inappropriateness of DiBuronaventuro’s letter on our public website and that the letter would be removed quickly before any further damage was done to me or the other citizens of Tredyffrin Township.

I sent the following email this morning to Mimi Gleason, our township manager:

Mimi,

Who is responsible for Mr. DiBuonaventuro’s letter on the township website?  Was placing the letter on the website sanctioned by you, the township manager?

I await your response.

Pattye Benson

I was extremely surprised by her immediate response below.  Ms. Gleason states that she OK’d the letter on the website with approval from the chair of the Board of Supervisors, Michelle Kichline and township solicitor Vince Donohue.  Folks, as a short-timer whose last day as township manager is Monday, September 17, 2012, Gleason has decided to make her true feelings known about me, Community Matters and for all those who dare to express an opinion.  As sad as I was about the DiBuonaventuro letter, I wanted to believe in our government and the people we elected to serve.  Bob Byrne, editor of TE Patch received a similar response from Gleason to his inquiry about the township website and DiBuonaventuro’s letter.

If the Board of Supervisors had been more forthcoming about the situation when the story first broke in the Main Line Media News, the outcome of the situation would have been very different.  If the public had received any assurance from the Board of Supervisors that they were reviewing the internal investigation report of the Police Department, or if the public had known that the District Attorney’s office had reviewed the report, if, if, if, … no one said anything, there was no communication or explanation.  Were it not that I went from the District Attorney, to the District Judge and then to the Police Chief, we would still have questions and no answers.  The summary information I provided on Community Matters was not secret, the residents could have had, and should have had it.

So what is the bottom line?   Gleason’s email says to me that to hold our government and its elected officials accountable by the citizenry is not acceptable in Tredyffrin Township.    You read her response and be the judge.

Pattye,

I think it is interesting that you seek information from me now, but not before starting a storyline full of inaccuracies and innuendos that had the potential to harm people’s reputations.  Correcting falsehoods well after the fact does not undo the damage from your original posts.  You feed cynicism and assumptions of impropriety when there is absolutely no basis for it.

You have done the same thing with the assisted living facility.  So much of what you have written on that topic is factually incorrect.  Why don’t you make an effort to get accurate information before you write articles and leave impressions with your readers?   You have to know that your so-called legal expert has no expertise, and therefore I can only conclude that you share his agenda to make the Township and the Board of Supervisors look bad, without any regard for the truth or ethics.  That has been a disappointing conclusion to arrive at.

In answer to your question, it is unusual to post a statement from an individual Supervisor, but given the inaccurate and derogatory statements and innuendo publicly made about John DiBuonaventuro, I decided to approve the posting of the letter on the Township website.  In this case, he was the subject of baseless public speculation simply because he is a Tredyffrin Supervisor.  The circumstances justified the use of the website to publicly defend him, carrying with it the implicit endorsement of the Township to the accuracy of his statements.  The Chairman of the Board of Supervisors and the Township Solicitor agreed that it was appropriate for the letter to go on the website.

Mimi

barn du jour

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tredyffrin has blogging *issues*

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UPDATE 9:31 a.m.  At 8:22 a.m. on 9/7/12  the letter posted on Tredyffrin’s official government website was taken down.  At 9:24 a.m. the letter is back up.

So unfortunately for all concerned who tried to do good, it is somewhat disturbing to think a local government website paid for with Tredyffrin taxpayer monies is being used somehow like a private website for personal gain?

The uncomfortable question must be asked: are people to assume that this is now officially an official letter?  Sanctioned by Tredyffrin Government and every elected and  appointed official and township employee? What happens the next time a resident questions something?  Another letter from another supervisor on official letterhead? Or something worse?
 
This municipality has  part of Valley Forge in their borders, correct?   Are the freedoms our founding fathers so long ago that they are forgotten and ironically this whole scenario is in essence a modern version of  what the people who founded the United States fought to escape in Europe in the first place?
I am hardly the only one questioning this.  Please see the article written by Tredyffrin Patch Editor Bob Byrne (and I quote):

The Vice Chairman of the Tredyffrin Township Board of Supervisors is on the warpath and he’s launched a savage political attack on the media and a private citizen on Tredyffrin Township’s official, taxpayer funded, website.

In a page-and-a-half screed that reads like a vicious political campaign hit piece, Republican Tredyffrin Township Board of Supervisors Vice Chairman John “JD” DiBuonaventuro offers his explanation of his romantic involvement with a township Zoning Hearing Board member who is at the center of a “drunk and disorderly conduct” criminal case….The letter then turns blatantly political as DiBuonaventuro launches an attack on Main Line Media News which ran the original story (Patch linked to the story on the MLM website) and goes after Community Matters Blogger Pattye Benson, who also posts many of of her blogs here on TE Patch.

 

(Prior part of post continues below)
************************************************************************************

I had no idea until a little while ago that the letter that this Tredyffrin  Supervisor John DiBuonaventuro wrote was on the Tredyffrin official government website.

Truthfully, I am somewhat scandalized by that.  Because in addition to everything else, for someone who did not like this entire topic, they just blew the topic larger than life in a more tawdry manner than any blog post and attacked a resident in Tredyffrin who happens yes, to blog on her blog at Community Matters, but who also happens to give hours and hours of herself to the residents with items involving historic preservation and fun things like the Paoli Blues Festival.  This woman doesn’t just talk the talk, she walks the walk.

Her name is Pattye Benson, and she is a magnificent human being.  I am sticking up for her here because I know her and she has integrity and personal values.  She is kind and pleasant and will always lend a helping hand.  She is also a rather thoughtful blogger and I know for a fact she mulled over posting the latest Tredyffrin tackiness for a while because she just did not know what to think.  Now apparently in Tredyffrin over this issue, you are damned if you don’t and damned if you do anyway?

She wrote another post this evening called Community Matters Closes the Chapter on Police Investigation but Tredyffrin Supervisor Opens a New Chapter . Read it.

She ends her post thusly:

I hope that all who read the above narrative, come away with a positive feeling about these four individuals (Tom Hogan, Michelle Kichline, Tom Tartaglio and Tony Giaimo) and the parts of our local government that they represent – I believe that these individuals respect the citizens of Tredyffrin and are trying to do ‘what’s right’ by us.

Unfortunately, as I was completing this exhaustive summary, I was told of an open letter to the citizens, penned by BOS supervisor John DiBuonaventuro.  Apparently, DiBuonaventuro does not support Main Line Media News, Community Matters or the civil rights of citizens to express their opinions on this topic.  Below is the last paragraph of DiBuonaventuro’s letter, click here for the full text. The tag line for Community Matters is “Your Voice Matters, Join the Conversation” and I stand behind it … we, as the community do matter and your voice does count!

Pattye has style.  Now the whole world knows that a sitting elected official did date a current appointed official in Tredyffrin.  This is by this elected official’s own hand, and very Ed Rendell of him.  Me thinketh the supervisor doth protesteth too much???

However his attack on a private citizen named Pattye Benson that was in a sense condoned (supported? I mean what adjective does one use?)  by ALL in Tredyffrin Township because this was published on seemingly  letterhead   on the official Tredyffrin Township Website is a sad state of affairs.  It sends a message to the citizenry that you are o.k. as long as you do not question your government, let alone criticize anything. Does it also imply the First Amendment doesn’t matter when it comes to politics?  It is also very revisionist history because people concerned about this issue, who have commented on this issue, who have reported on this issue did not ever create this issue.

So congratulations, Tredyffrin Township, you have created a pickle of a new mess, indeed.

And while we are talking about this, someone whom I guess must be a supporter of this Supervisor DiBuonaventuro wrote a comment.  I imagine he also wrote Pattye’s blog, but I have not checked yet.  Here is this guy and what he had to say:

Brian Holton Bholton5@aol.com 108.2.10.144

Wow indeed. JDB is right on the money. These blogs are a haven for cowards, namely the anonymous posters and you bloggers who allow the postings without any verification.The National Enquirer has higher standards than chester county ramblings or community matters.

I am sorry that this dear man feels this way about two female bloggers.  We’re just regular gals.  And my goodness he is all in a lather.  Truly he can kiss my grits on this one.   I am entitled to my perspective and allowed his opinion to post. I am not hiding who I am, and I am also a writer. If he or anyone else does not like this blog then don’t read it.  He takes a jab at anonymous bloggers, and Pattye and I aren’t so anonymous.  But some do blog anonymously for any number of reasons.

A pen name, nom de plume, is as old a tradition as the United States itself. Ben Franklin and Thomas Paine and John Adams all wrote with pen names.  And in their time, they were heroes.

Ironically, I wrote an editorial in 2009 about blogging for Main Line Media News. Here is part of what I said then:

So let’s talk about being a blogger, or “citizen journalist.” Sometimes we write about what we had for dinner, and sometimes we write about who that politician had dinner with. Sometimes we are just giggling over political shenanigans and a political-blog lampoon is born.

Do politicians like blogs and bloggers? Heck no. Ending up on a blog is like being caught outside in your underwear. Politicians are all about the image, and when the emperor has no clothes, the image can get tarnished, can’t it? I think blogging is a way for the common man to level the playing field. I like to think bloggers can make a difference. After all, look at what blogging has done for the billboard issue in Haverford. Look at eminent domain in Ardmore.

Politicians, despite protestations to the contrary, know that blogs can be good for them. Sometimes they will release a statement or will even create a blog during an election cycle. Simply put: they like it when they can control the output; they don’t like it when they can’t….Why is blogging on the Main Line such a big deal? Is being a blogger like having chronic halitosis? Or do people who complain about blogs complain about them because they have not figured a way to use them to their own advantage yet?

OK, I will admit I have a lot of opinions and am as politically inconvenient as the next local blogger. But so what? …I am amused by the festering Petri dish that is Main Line politics and other local issues….Bloggers blog under catchy “handles,” as well as under their own names with or without a fun handle. People love to make a big hairy deal out of blogger anonymity. But pen names are definitely as American a tradition as apple pie.

Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison were among our founding fathers who wrote under aliases. If alive today I bet they would embrace blogging as a communicative medium….To wind this up I think blogging is here to stay, and people should just get used to it. Blogging is another way for people to have a voice in what matters to them.  Much like this editorial page, I don’t see anything wrong with that.

At the end of the day, am I really surprised this guy Brian above left a nasty comment? Nope. Is it the first nasty comment I have received as a regular writer or a blogger? Nope and it won’t be the last.

Truthfully, dear readers and blog followers when I wrote my original post on this sorry arsed topic I had truthfully no idea it would mushroom into “As The Tredyffrin Turns.”  Didn’t know this woman.  Did not know this Supervisor.  Did not know any of it.  I merely read an article I found profoundly disturbing on the Main Line Media News website written by a reporter.

And now, here we are.  And isn’t it sad.