NEPA Blogs

PA Live! Blog of the Week: Circumlocution for Dummies

2012-01-31T00:01:00.002-05:00

NEPA Blogs will be presenting a "Blog of the Week" on the WBRE's PA Live! every Tuesday. PA Live! airs weekday afternoons on WBRE from 4:00 to 5:00.

Our PA Live! Blog of the Week this week is Circumlocution for Dummies (http://mcour.blogspot.com/).

Mark Cour is this area's longest-running blogger. He's been at it for over twelve years, almost since before the word "blog" existed - so long that he's called "The Blogfather" by other local bloggers. His original blog, Wilkes-Barre Online, focused primarily on politics and things going on in and around Wilkes-Barre, and his blog posts served as the uncredited sources for many newspaper, radio, and television news stories over the years. A few years ago he decided he was tired of putting so much effort into coding his own website when young upstarts were using blogging services that made blogging easy, even for dummies. And so Circumlocution for Dummies was born, a place where he could say what he had to say without putting all the tedious effort into getting his words to appear online.

"Circumlocution" means "to talk in circles," to speak in a roundabout manner that avoids getting to the point. And that's not something Mark does, ever. He doesn't mince words, and he doesn't pull punches. He says what he means and means what he says, whether he's talking about state, local, or national politics, fracking, kayaking, biking, or even his beloved New York Football Giants. He's outspoken, and odds are he's going to say something that will offend you. Deal with it. His blog isn't for the faint of heart - but neither is life. Whether you agree with what Mark has to say or not, he'll always give you something to think about.

If you have a blog you would like us to link on NEPA Blogs, or know of a blog you think we should link, please let us know! You can always drop us a line at nepablogs@gmail.com!

All are invited to meet the bloggers of Northeastern Pennsylvania at the Spring 2012 Blog Fest on March 30, 2012 at Rooney's Irish Pub in Pittston! Stay tuned for more details!

Two from Tracey Selingo

2012-01-30T11:47:00.001-05:00

Via the NEPA Blogs mailbag...

I'm in NEPA blogging about two things: promises worth making to yourself and small biz tips (twistedpinky.com and inkengage.com/blog, respectively).

Twisted Pinky
http://twistedpinky.com/
Promises worth making as you journey through life

Ink Engage
http://www.inkengage.com/blog/
Small business tips

Do you blog about NEPA? Do you live or have you ever lived in NEPA and blog about anything at all? Let us know and we'll be happy to list you! Contact us at nepablogs@gmail.com!

Pecha Kucha Night is TONIGHT!

2012-01-28T13:50:00.003-05:00

Back in November, I told you about an upcoming event called "Pecha Kucha Night" which was to happen after the beginning of the new year. The time has come.....Pecha Kucha Night has finally arrived!

Pecha Kucha Night Scranton

Saturday, January 28, 2012 at 7:30pm at The Vintage Theater

What is Pecha Kucha Night?

In a nutshell, Pecha Kucha Night Scranton is a quick-fire presentation format where local thinkers, dreamers, artists, and storytellers can come together to share in conversation with the community. You can read more about the format here.

Several of the NEPA Bloggers have stepped forward to present at the event, Harold and myself included. There will also be presentations by Gerard Hetman and Mandy Boyle as well as many others. If you are looking for something to do tonight, stop on by!

Here are additional details: http://www.facebook.com/events/138110756288979/
For Anti-Facebookers: http://www.navybook.com/PKNS/index.shtml

You can also follow them on Twitter: @PechaKuchaScran

Also, check out the articles about tonight's presentation in The Weekender and Scranton Times Tribune.

~Michelle

A journey In imagery

2012-01-27T00:11:00.001-05:00

This one...this one, I've totally forgotten how I got to know about it. Based on the date I first jotted down some notes about it, and the fact that it's the blog of a photographer who is based out of Stroudsburg, I suspect that it is somehow connected to The Forwardian Arts Society.

A journey in imagery
http://ajourneyinimagery.blogspot.com/

This is the blog of freelance photographer Stephen Lippay. As he says in his very first blog post,

The object is for me here is to post past and current photo projects, sharing my experience, and keeping people updated with where I'm at, and what I've done. If anyone is interested that is... There may be a few that I cannot slip publicly yet, but the time will come.

Photography blogs are always fun. All my life I've preferred books with pictures, and I think I feel the same way about blogs! Be sure to check out A journey in imagery.

My Quill Pen (new version)

2012-01-26T00:01:00.001-05:00

It seemed to me that we added the original version of My Quill Pen to the NEPA Blogs roster ages ago, but in fact it was less than two years ago. It wasn't long after we linked the blog, about a month and a half, that it fell silent. And then it suffered the further indignity of getting its RSS feed scrambled in the sidebar, meaning that even that final post would not be displayed.

A week or so ago I was scrolling through updates from friends on Facebook when I saw one that shared a blog post from a place with a familiar name: My Quill Pen. Say, doesn't whoever's blogging at that site know that that name's already taken?, I thought. I clicked through to the blog and saw a familiar photo above the blogger's name. I clicked through to the old version of My Quill Pen and saw that it was the same blogger, same name, - even the same photo!

So now we present to you the new (and updating!) version of My Quill Pen! Let's hope this post doesn't serve, as seems to happen all too often, as the NEPA Blogs kiss of death!

My Quill Pen (new version)
http://www.paulsevensky.com/

Music Is Like Oxygen

2012-01-25T11:50:00.000-05:00

Continuing to work through our backlog of blogs to be added! This is one that was mentioned on the NEPA Bloggers Facebook group page a while ago. It's by C.J. Marsicano, who also blogs at The Groove Music Life.

Music Is Like Oxygen
http://www.musicislikeoxygen.com/

From the "About" page:

This blog will be devoted to one thing: album (and occasional single) reviews, irregardless of when they were released. Obviously, some new releases will get featured at our mothership blog The Groove Music Life, but for time and event-appropriate reviews and even for random reviews of older or recently issued but missed releases, this is where they’ll be posted.

So, put out those cigarettes, douse any open flames, and click on over to Music Is Like Oxygen! Just remember: you get too much, you get too high; not enough and you're gonna die...

PA Live! Blog of the Week: Burnside Photographic

2012-01-24T00:01:00.005-05:00

NEPA Blogs will be presenting a "Blog of the Week" on the WBRE's PA Live! every Tuesday. PA Live! airs weekday afternoons on WBRE from 4:00 to 5:00.

Watch this episode on the PA Live! site: http://pahomepage.com/palive-details?nxd_id=223342

Our PA Live! Blog of the Week this week is Burnside Photographic (http://burnsidephotographic.com/wordpress/).

Mike Burnside is a native of Northeastern Pennsylvania who has been highly active in the NEPA community for many years. He is a veteran of the local media scene as well as a member of the Cultural Council of Luzerne County. And for the past five decades he has also been a photographer, capturing images in a broad range of formats.

And what images! He refers to his photography as "abstract work grounded in nature." He does extreme close-up work (see this study of water and ice), but also takes spectacular images of landscapes (like this compilation of images taken last Autumn) and even the un-natural works of man (like these heartbreaking yet beautiful images of what was once the luxurious Penn Hills resort.) He also finds the hidden treasures along the way - when a visit to a baseball museum turned out to be disappointingly unphotogenic, a nearby clock repair shop provided the most amazing opportunities for photographs.

Northeastern Pennsylvania has many fine photographers, and Mike Burnside is one who has chosen to share his images though his blog, Burnside Photographic. We may not all have his skill, eye, and experience, but if you have a camera and a computer, you can start capturing your own images and sharing them with the world on a blog. And if you do, be sure to let us know, and we'll list it on NEPA Blogs!

If you have a blog you would like us to link on NEPA Blogs, or know of a blog you think we should link, please let us know! You can always drop us a line at nepablogs@gmail.com!

All are invited to meet the bloggers of Northeastern Pennsylvania at the Spring 2012 Blog Fest on March 30, 2012 at Rooney's Irish Pub in Pittston! Stay tuned for more details!

Technical difficulties

2012-01-23T19:04:00.001-05:00

We're having a little problem with our "NEPA Bloggers Updates" list on the sidebar. We first discovered it the other day, when we couldn't add (Not So) Lost In Thought to it. You can open the list to edit, and you can add as many new blogs as you want, but when you hit "Save" the system hangs while saving.

At first I thought there might be an issue with the fact that the name started with a non-alphanumeric character, but I created a new live-updating blog list on the sidebar and was able to add the blog to it without a problem. Then I thought maybe the problem had to do with the fact that there are 357 blogs on the list - maybe 357 is some magic limit. So I decided to do a little housekeeping: I created a "parking lot" of sorts for blogs that are not currently updating - these blogs lurk at the bottom of the list anyway, along with those unfortunate blogs without RSS feeds. (More on that later.) I added a handful of blogs that fell into this category, and then I attempted to delete them from the list. I selected a few for deletion, freeing up (I assumed) a few spots for blogs to be added. Then I hit "Save"...and the system hung again.

So. Can't add blogs to the "NEPA Bloggers Updates" list, and can't remove them, either. Not good. But at least we can add new blogs to the "Overflow Blog List" and add non-updating blogs to the "Non-Updating Blogs" list, until we get this resolved.

Meanwhile, there's another problem that I noticed a while ago that may or may not be getting worse. I talked about the issue here:

I noticed the other day that there seem to be a lot of blogs that have stopped live-updating and have fallen to the bottom of the "NEPA BLOGGERS UPDATES" list on the sidebar - including some that I know had functioning site feeds recently. Site feeds are automatically detected by Blogger, most of the time; usually, I just have to enter the blog address into the appropriate box, and Blogger will do the rest. (Sometimes, especially with Tumblr blogs, I have to append "/feed " to the end of the address.)

One of these blogs is Scranton Christmas Windows, which was our featured PA Live! Blog of the Week a few weeks before Christmas. For some reason, the feed is now pointing to http://scrantonchristmas.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default, which will take you to a page full of html (or is it xml?) jibber-jabber.

Unfortunately, to fix this problem I have to delete and re-add each of these blogs. And while before I looked upon this problem as tedious, for the moment it is just impossible.

We've informed Blogger of this issue, and it may be a variation on a known issue regarding following and unfollowing. It could also be a template or table corruption, though Blogger's "new" format from a few years ago prevents you from seeing all of the site's html directly to get a visual sense of whether this is the case. It could also be an issue with the "New" Blogger GUI vs. the "Old" Blogger GUI, though I've tried fixing it using both. Finally, it could be a consequence of Blogger terminating support for certain antiquated blogs; perhaps we are linking to some of the unsupported blogs, and that's causing some of the problems. (I suspect this may be the issue with the feeds.) Whatever the problem, it is something that has developed since January 17, the last time we were able to successfully add a blog to the "NEPA Bloggers Updates" list.

All the Right Notes

2012-01-23T00:36:00.000-05:00

Here's a blog I came across by accident while looking for something else. It's by poet/writer Brian Fanelli, voted "Best Local Author in Lackawanna County" in the Electric City "Best Of 2011" poll.

All the Right Notes
http://brianfanelli.wordpress.com/

Saturday Spam Submission

2012-01-21T07:51:00.004-05:00

From time-to-time we receive emails with requests to add new blogs to our blog. Usually they are delivered to our inbox with no issues, but for whatever, reason, this email was re-routed to our spam folder.

I don't put much trust in GMail's spam filter because I've had it catch legitimate emails on a number of occasions, so I usually review the folder before emptying it out. I'd suggest you'd do the same if by chance you have a GMail account. Good thing I did! This particular email was sent nearly 5 days ago!

Susan Coburn:

A friend of mine started this blog and she is from the back mountain area.

http://healthybabybeans.com
Family Nutrition Made Simple by Mother of Two and Dietitian!

From the About Page:

My name is Clancy Cash Harrison. I am a mother of two wonderful children, a wife, a Registered Dietitian and a foodie. I have a passion for eating food in the whole and natural form. We try to avoid commercialized foods and buy local when possible. I look at food in two ways: food to grow and food for fun! We enjoy our local dairy’s ice cream but respect the power of kale. I firmly believe it is not necessarily about nutrition but about the behavior surrounding food. As parents, we need to learn how to enjoy and respect food so our children will too.

[...]

My blog is a journey documenting how we live our life. I want to teach my children about their family culture and tradition through family recipes and food. This blog is not intended to treat or cure any medical conditions. The recipes provided are recipes I use in my home and with my children. Please consult with your pediatrician or local Dietitian to create a plan that works best for your specific needs and goals.

***You can also follow Clancy on Facebook here and Twitter here.

We can all stand to eat better and many people have made this their New Year's resolution. You can learn all about how to feed your family healthier and MORE by following Healthy Baby Beans!

~Michelle

(Not So) Lost in Thought

2012-01-21T07:00:00.003-05:00

It's no secret that I've been slacking off with adding new blogs the last few months, but I have been keeping a list of all of the new blogs that I come across to add at a later time. This is one of the blogs from that list.

I received the following message on our @nepablogs Twitter account:

@NoSoLostThough t on Twitter sent us a mention pointing us to her new blog.

(Not So) Lost in Thought
http://promise2makeitinteresting.weebly.com/blog.html

From her "Oh hey there" page:

This *looks around* is a blog. But I'm sure you already knew that and didn't think you were about to read about something you were purchasing from this site. My life honestly is not the most exciting thing to ever happen in the world, but I have a decent amount of thoughts and things that happen to me that I might as well write it down. Perhaps a little disclaimer of sorts is in order, just as a fair warning for anyone who happens to stumble across my little story (see the "disclaimer" button? That's where its at!)...(or you can just go here I suppose...that'd work too...)

Oh! And just in case you really wanted some insight into who I am, you can simply go to the "So...this is me." button OR going here works just as well :)

(Not So) is a young blonde female from Northeastern PA. We don't know her real name or location because she is an anonymous blogger. She mainly blogs about love and life. We are adding her to our side bar so that you can follow her adventures.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this is our first blogger added from the Weebly.com website. Weebly is a platform which allows users to build websites (not just blogs) for free. It is a similar community to Tripod or Geocities back in the day. There are several website themes to pick from and it has drag and drop capabilities making it easy for novices to build an online presence. Still afraid to build a website or blog on Weebly? They have video tutorials that guide you step-by-step through the process (example). Did I mention it was free? What are you waiting for? Go try it out!

Have a great Saturday, NEPA!

~Michelle

PA Live! Blog of the Week: Uncornered Market

2012-01-17T00:01:00.006-05:00

NEPA Blogs will be presenting a "Blog of the Week" on the WBRE's PA Live! every Tuesday. PA Live! airs weekday afternoons on WBRE from 4:00 to 5:00.

Watch this episode on the PA Live! site: http://pahomepage.com/fulltext?nxd_id=222012

Our PA Live! Blog of the Week this week is Uncornered Market (http://www.uncorneredmarket.com/).

Daniel Noll and Audrey Scott describe themselves as "two American kids, turned mid-career professionals, turned travel junkies." Their blog details their adventures traveling around the world, but they have roots in Scranton, and return to Northeastern Pennsylvania when they can.

Since 2006 Daniel and Audrey have traveled to places most of us can only dream about, sometimes under circumstances that most of us could not imagine. Their blog details the places they've been, the things they've seen, the people they've met, the meals they've eaten, and the surprises they've encountered. They share plenty of photographs on their blog, and specialize in 360-degree panoramic views that place you in the middle of the scene. (You must see the amazing images of the interior of the Shāh-é-Chérāgh Mosque - or, as they describe it, the "Disco Ball Mosque.")

Decades ago, kids dreaded the ritual of having the slide show projector dragged out when friends or relatives visited so they could bore us with the pictures from wherever they'd been on vacation. Now, thanks to the internet and travel blogs, we can see these travel pictures whenever we want, and read the stories, too. A blog like Uncornered Market offers us the opportunity to travel along with folks from Northeastern Pennsylvania as they see the world - all without needing to worry about passports, or hidden airline fees, or baggage restrictions. And much more interesting than Uncle Leroy's vacation slides!

For answers to questions like "Where are they going?", "Where have they been?", "How can they afford to do this?", and "What does 'Uncornered Market' mean, anyway?", see their Frequently Asked Questions page!

If you have a blog you would like us to link on NEPA Blogs, or know of a blog you think we should link, please let us know! You can always drop us a line at nepablogs@gmail.com!

All are invited to meet the bloggers of Northeastern Pennsylvania at the Spring 2012 Blog Fest on March 30, 2012 at Rooney's Irish Pub in Pittston! Stay tuned for more details!

Panic About Anxiety

2012-01-16T11:59:00.001-05:00

Don't Panic! Here's a blog from another new member of the NEPA Bloggers Facebook group!

Panic About Anxiety with Summer Beretsky
http://blogs.psychcentral.com/panic/

Summer Beretsky is from Williamsport (which we've decided is really the western limit of Northeastern Pennsylvania!) Her Twitter profile describes her as "Ex-grad student, music lover, natural enemy of winter. Writes about stress, anxiety, & panic. Lover of maps, misheard lyrics, & metaphors."

If you're feeling stressed or anxious lately (and nowadays, if you're not experiencing stress or anxiety, you're not paying attention), click on through to Summer Beretsky's blog and read up on the topic!

The Forwardian Arts Society

2012-01-15T16:42:00.000-05:00

We've actually got a backlog of new blogs to be added to NEPA Blogs! I don't want to add them all at once, because that may be a bit overwhelming, and each blog might get lost in the crowd, and we might then go a while without adding any! So here's one that we found today (after a few clicks) from one of the most recent members to join the NEPA Bloggers group on Facebook, Paul Adam Smeltz:

The Forwardian Arts Society
We are a fellowship for people who love the arts.

http://www.forwardianartssociety.blogspot.com/

This is a fantastic look at the arts scene in Stroudsburg, near the southeastern corner of Northeastern Pennsylvania. Easily accessible from Route 80, the venues Paul describes are within striking distance of much of Northeastern Pennsylvania. Have a look at what's going on, and give some thought to heading down there!

Blog feed issues

2012-01-14T19:43:00.000-05:00

Just a quick site note: I noticed the other day that there seem to be a lot of blogs that have stopped live-updating and have fallen to the bottom of the "NEPA BLOGGERS UPDATES" list on the sidebar - including some that I know had functioning site feeds recently. Site feeds are automatically detected by Blogger, most of the time; usually, I just have to enter the blog address into the appropriate box, and Blogger will do the rest. (Sometimes, especially with Tumblr blogs, I have to append "/feed " to the end of the address.)

One of these blogs is Scranton Christmas Windows, which was our featured PA Live! Blog of the Week a few weeks before Christmas. For some reason, the feed is now pointing to http://scrantonchristmas.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default, which will take you to a page full of html (or is it xml?) jibber-jabber.

I think the only thing I can do is delete and reload each of these sites on the sidebar, one at a time. This will be a time-consuming process, but unless the problem magically fixes itself (just like it magically broke itself), I don't see an alternative.

#NewHeaderWednesday

2012-01-14T07:01:00.009-05:00

Last year, Harold and I toyed with the idea of rotating the blog headers at the top of NEPA Blogs more frequently. After further discussion, we thought it would be more interactive if we opened the floor to submissions by our blog readers. We asked for your photos, and some of you had sent them in. A BIG THANK YOU to all who allowed us to use their photos!

Before long, we were out of reader photos and Harold and I took turns using photos that we took as the headers...that gets old quick. We like to see new and interesting things when we load the NEPA Blogs page.

Sooooo.....

I'm putting out another call for header submissions. Feel free to submit any interesting photos that you have taken from Northeastern Pennsylvania to nepablogs[at]gmail[dot]com. You do not have to worry about resizing or adding the text, Harold has already mastered tweeking the submitted photos. Specifically, we'd like to see some winter photography...we already have a cache of photos that we can use during the spring months.

We rotate the new blog headers out every Wednesday and they stay on our blog for a period of 1 week. It can be your claim to fame for the week because we will give you full credit for the submission (and point people to your blog on Twitter, Facebook and Google+) which may in turn increase traffic on your blog. You can see a gallery of our past headers by clicking here.

We have recently received submissions from James Roberts (@PRguyMU on Twitter), Brent Pennington Photography and the master of Ada Mae Compton. We will be rotating these in the upcoming weeks. We'd love to see YOUR photos though. Don't be shy, email them along!

~Michelle

Living Outside the Stacks and another by Daenel

2012-01-13T00:01:00.002-05:00

A blog by Daenel, who lived in NEPA for fourteen years but recently relocated to Missouri:

Living Outside the Stacks
http://livingoutsidethestacks.com/
Navigating through life away from the library

From her "About Me":
I’m an archivist, librarian and history instructor at a local college, a wife of one, a mom of five and a grandmother of two. I’m crazy smart and a little bit ditzy with a smidge of snark. I pride myself on being incredibly organized in a fly~by~the~seat~of~my~pants kind of way.

And it's a twofer! Here's her blog from her previous life here in NEPA!

Curious Child's Library Wanderings
http://curiouschild.wordpress.com/
Random musings on my life as Queen of the Histolibrarianivists.

Were you originally from NEPA (or did you just spend a chunk of your life here) and now you live somewhere else? If you have a blog, we'd love to know about it. Drop us a line at nepablogs@gmail.com!

Do you have a blog card?

2012-01-12T15:00:00.002-05:00

When I was a kid reading Sherlock Holmes stories, I was always fascinated by the use of calling cards. Someone would show up at 221B Baker Street, ring the bell, and hand Mrs. Hudson a card. She would send it up to Mr. Holmes so he could decide whether or not he wanted to talk to the person at his door, and at the same time ascertain from the card what part of the country they were from, what they had for breakfast, and their shoe size.

Decades later I became all-too-familiar with the intricacies of business cards, and the international customs involved in the exchange of business cards. (In this culture you present with two fingers, only after being offered a card; in this culture you use both hands to present the card, accompanied by a bow. Here's a video that looks at some of the subtleties of business card culture.) When I became a blogger I got to thinking: why not create a business/calling card for my blog, Another Monkey? It wouldn't have to be anything fancy - just a card with the name of my blog, the address, maybe a memorable picture. I already had the picture, and the card stock, so it didn't take much effort to create a card using a basic graphics package that I had picked up years earlier.

Years went by, and I handed out my card at various gatherings of bloggers. Then NEPA Blogs came into being, and later, the Blog Fests. I realized we had an opportunity to publicize NEPA Blogs to bloggers who might not be aware of it yet. Unfortunately by now I no longer had my original computer, or the installation disks for my graphics package (one of them went missing, rendering the whole shebang useless). But using the free program at avery.com ("Design & Print Online" under "Templates & Software") I put together a basic card. As Michelle took the site further and further into the social media world, the amount of information that needed to be on the card kept increasing. Finally it settled down to this:

So on one card we have the blog name, the shortcut address, the full address, the email address, and the names for use on Facebook, Google+, and Twitter. It's a crowded card, but it works.

I carry a supply of both cards with me at all times now. Anywhere I go that seems appropriate I will tack up or leave one or both, or simply hand them out. I pass out the NEPA Blogs card to other guests at PA Live! who have blogs or are interested in starting blogs.

So what about you? If you're a blogger, do you have a blog card? The perforated business card stock is easily available at any office supply store, or even the computer paper sections of some retailers. Avery.com provides a broad range of free templates (including a blank one, which I prefer) to design your card.

If you're going to the Spring 2012 NEPA Blog Fest on March 20, you should consider putting together a blog card to hand out. NEPA Blogs will also have a card exchange table where you can leave your card and pick up the blog cards of other bloggers. Blog cards are a great way to express your creativity and advertise your blog at the same time!

Big Man Theory

2012-01-12T00:01:00.006-05:00

Here's a blog submitted to us via e-mail, at the suggestion of another NEPA Blogger!

Big Man Theory
http://bigmantheory.com/

Big Man Theory is a blog about my battle with morbid obesity. Much like me, my posts will be geeky, vulgur, and (hopefully) funny. I hope you enjoy the site!

In its first day of existence, this blog garnered over 800 hits - and was ranked #1 among the Wordpress blogs that had gained the most popularity recently. Congratulations!

Crafternoon Tea

2012-01-11T17:57:00.000-05:00

As always, Michelle has been hard at work tracking down blogs by any means necessary! Here's one she found a while ago:

Crafternoon Tea
http://varouna.wordpress.com/

Her subtitle puts it nicely: MOSTLY ABOUT CRAFTING, BUT SOMETIMES ABOUT OTHER THINGS

From blogger Chantal's profile:
I'm a New England native living in lovely Scranton, PA. I have two mischievous toddlers (a girl and a boy, 4 months apart). I'm obsessed with crafting, art and my dogs.

...and especially of late with her sweet little adopted toddlers! Check out all the adorableness at Crafternoon Tea!

Pa Live! Blog of the Week: Framing Faith

2012-01-10T00:01:00.005-05:00

NEPA Blogs will be presenting a "Blog of the Week" on the WBRE's PA Live! every Tuesday. PA Live! airs weekday afternoons on WBRE from 4:00 to 5:00.

Watch this episode on the PA Live! site: http://pahomepage.com/fulltext?nxd_id=220832

Our PA Live! Blog of the Week this week is Framing Faith ( http://framingfaith.blogspot.com/ ).

Population shifts and financial troubles have made parish consolidation a fact of life for many of the Catholic churches in the Diocese of Scranton. Parish consolidation has left churches that have been parts of the landscape of Northeastern Pennsylvania for a century or more empty, shuttered, dismantled - and in some cases, demolished.

Framing Faith is a blog that spotlights ten parish churches that were closed due to consolidation, and the communities that made up those parishes. It features excerpts and photos from the book of the same name. The images are stunning, and the stories heartbreaking; each parish was a creation of the community, a labor of love often by people of a particular ethnic group that reflected their particular customs and traditions. As the years have passed those ethnic identities have gradually eroded, and the closure of each parish and its associated church has slammed the door on some of those identities forever. Framing Faith provides one last look at these churches, and preserves the stories of the people who worshiped there.

Framing Faith was a project of the Lackawanna Historical Society. The text was written by Sarah Piccini and is accompanied by photos by Ivana Pavelka and four student photographers. The blog serves two functions: It is a promotional tie-in to the book of the same name, but it also serves as a stand-alone showcase of the images and stories that preserve the history of these now-closed churches.

Northeastern Pennsylvania is changing around us, whether we like it or not. While we may not be able to stop this change, all of us have the ability to preserve the old world before it passes by capturing it in words and images. If you can tell a story or take a photograph, you can play a part in preserving the heritage of this area. Why not preserve these words and images on a blog? It's easy, it's fun, and it's free. Just stop by a site like blogspot.com or wordpress.com and get started!

If you have a blog you would like us to link on NEPA Blogs, or know of a blog you think we should link, please let us know! You can always drop us a line at nepablogs@gmail.com!

All are invited to meet the bloggers of Northeastern Pennsylvania at the Spring 2012 Blog Fest on March 30, 2012 at Rooney's Irish Pub in Pittston! Stay tuned for more details!

Save the Date: BlogFest 2012 Spring Edition

2012-01-09T09:15:00.007-05:00

There has been some chatter recently between our political bloggers and co-contributor Gort42 about setting a date for our next BlogFest. Normally, BlogFest has a very political overtone - but it doesn't always have to be that way. We would like it to be a social event where all of our bloggers from Northeastern Pennsylvania feel welcome to attend (...and network with politicians, if they so choose). DB Echo has an extended post coming up about that in the near future.

If you are interested in attending our next BlogFest in the spring, please "Save the Date" by adding these details to your favorite calendar application or the one that is hanging on your refrigerator.

Date: Friday, March 30th, 2012
Time: TBD, but usually at 6pm
Location: Rooney's Irish Pub; 67 South Main Street; Pittston, PA 18640. A menu can be found here.

This is a free event open to local bloggers, lurkers and anyone else interested in hanging out with the "cool kiddies" of the local blogosphere.

***You can RSVP to the Facebook Event Page right here.

Hope to see you there!
~Michelle, DB Echo & Gort42

Monday Mailbag Submission

2012-01-09T08:39:00.006-05:00

From the mailbag:

Today's mailbag submission comes from Ginny Cernera. We received the below email message from her last evening:

Hello!

I just came across your blog and wanted to let you know about mine - http://www.invincibleinc.com/

I grew up in Scranton, lived in CT for 13 years, and just recently moved
back to town over the summer. I'm enjoying reading the other NEPA blogs that you
link to.

Thanks!
Ginny Moylan Cernera
www.invincibleinc.com

I visited Invincible Inc. this morning and was surprised to find a lovely place full of craft ideas, recipes, and decorating tips. I am always super envious of those who are talented at crafty things, as I seem to have been born without that gene. I think the "About Page" says it best - "I like to make awesome things and share them with my friends and family. I love bright colors, glitter, parties and cookies – hopefully you do too!"

I hope that you'll give Ginny's blog a whirl and try out some of her yummy recipes as well!

Happy Monday!

~Michelle

Casa de Lola

2012-01-06T23:46:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago an blog was submitted to nepablogs@gmail.com that raised a few eyebrows - including the eyebrows of the anti-spam filters on my email system, which flagged it as suspicious.

Hello my name is Nathalie Sousa and I am the Editor of Casa de Lola – House of Cool, a portal for the creative community and home to all art lovers. The blog is a space dedicated to anything that is creative and thoughtful, a.k.a. cool. Through the eyes and words of our collaborators, you will find weekly inspiration from film and music to lifestyle and travel combined with straightforward, entertaining journalism.

Please check us out at www.casadelola.com and lets collaborate with each other.

Thank you so much in advance!

Best,

Nathalie Sousa

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Casa-de-Lola-House-of-Cool/201902956508196

Every once in a while we will receive a submission of a legitimate blogsite that has nothing to do with Northeastern Pennsylvania. It isn't written by someone who lives in Northeastern Pennsylvania, or used to live in Northeastern Pennsylvania, or isn't written about Northeastern Pennsylvania. You only have to meet one of those three criteria, though we have made exceptions in the past. But this blog didn't seem to meet any of the criteria: it appeared to be based outside of the area, maybe outside of the country, and the phone number attached to the email had an out-of-state area code. It all looked pretty fishy, so I set the matter aside for later.

...and sort-of never got around to following-up on it.

Fortunately Nathalie did follow-up on the matter earlier this week. This time she explained that she has recently moved into NEPA and is trying to establish a local readership for her blog. The international connections are legitimate, as is the out-of-state cell phone number. So what we have here is a blog that is both national and international in scope, being written by a recent arrival to our area.

From their "Who We Are" page:

A group of creative minds with distinct backgrounds and native languages sharing the same curious approach to the new and exciting things that life across the globe has to offer. We come together under the House of Cool domain to share our findings.

To see a cool, international blog based (in part) right here in Northeastern Pennsylvania, check out Casa de Lola - House of Cool (http://www.casadelola.com/).

Thank you!

2012-01-05T09:40:00.005-05:00

Thanks to all who have voted for us in the 2012 "Greatest Around the Poconos" competition. The voting ended on Saturday 12/31/11. We should find out on Sunday 1/15/12 if we won. Keep your fingers crossed!!

No matter what happens, we thank our loyal blog readers for having this honor of being nominated for an award bestowed upon us.

~Michelle, Harold "DB Echo" & "Gort42"

Uno, Dos, Tres, Quatro

2012-01-05T08:59:00.007-05:00

Happy 2012 NEPA! It's been a while since I've last posted here, but I come (as usual) bearing gifts ... in the form of 4...count 'em 4 Wordpress Blogs. 3 of the blogs were found on Twitter, the other blog was a mailbag submission from last evening.

New NEPA Blog Roll Addition #1

"Moving to NEPA"
http://movingtonepa.wordpress.com/

From the About Page: I am a writer, communicator and photographer and I am originally from Southampton in the UK, home of the mighty Saints. I’ve lived much of my life in Chepstow, South Wales with my friends but I have lived in Glasgow, Cork and Windsor. Now me and my wife Lola are Pennsylvania bound and this blog is a record of that adventure.

New NEPA Blog Roll Addition #2

"Tales With a Touch of Class"
http://taleswithatouchofclass.wordpress.com/

From the About Page: Allow me to introduce myself, my name is Kristen and I just graduated from the one and only Pennsylvania State University! WE ARE! A former cross-country runner, there is rarely a day you will not find me putting in the miles. I’m a shopping fanatic girly girl mixed with a love of sports and working out. Public Relations and Business major who loves to blog, tweet, and use all aspects of social media. On the cusp of entering the world of young professionals, I find myself excited to see what life has in store for me. With a passion to write I love to share stories as well as hear the personal ones of others!

I’m 23 years old and still own every stuffed animal that was ever purchased for me. In a way you could define me as immature, but I just like to say I’m having fun. Welcome to my blog where you’ll hear a running obsessed Penn Stater share her tales with a touch of class…

New NEPA Blog Roll Addition #3

"A Farewell To Carbs"
http://afarewelltocarbs.wordpress.com/

From the About Page: It’s 2012 and a time for new beginnings. A little more than two years ago, I was diagnosed with Type II diabetes. I was 30 years old, and the news was devastating. It wasn’t unexpected. I was more than 100 pounds overweight, got winded climbing more than two flights of stairs and regularly unhinged my jaw to inhale entire candy stores (not really, but it felt like it). Surprisingly, the diagnosis has done little to change my eating habits. Oh, for a few months I counted carbs and went to the gym. And then I got angry because I couldn’t eat what I wanted to eat and I stopped. Yeah … that will show the diabetes!

Ignoring the problem (and dodging my doctor) didn’t make the diabetes go away. And I’m tired of feeling out of control.

So here’s to 2012, and chances to make a fresh start. Instead of some big, fat resolution that will be impossible to keep, I’m going to set two goals per month — all of them focused on developing those healthy habits that I’ll need to make major changes in my life.

**Editor's Note: This is a blog of a person that I follow on Twitter...I do know her identity, but since she seems to be keeping things anonymous, I will not reveal the identity on Twitter in order to respect her privacy.

New NEPA Blog Roll Addition #4

"Blog Like Its Hot"
http://bloglikeitshot.com/

This was a mailbag submission. Hello, My name is Kari Bestrycki and I was born and raised in Scranton, PA! I created and currently maintain a blog (http://bloglikeitshot.com/) and would love to be listed on your site.

I created this blog for a class and found I really enjoyed the art of blogging. Fun fact about my blog, I wrote a post about Jenna Jameson's book and tweeted her the link not expecting to hear anything back. A few hours later, she retweeted me and replied to my tweet!

---

I hope you enjoy my new offerings to you, blogosphere. All of these new bloggers have been added to the side bar. I'll be back shortly with promises of more posts! Have a great remainder of your week!

~Michelle

Pa Live! Blog of the Week: Dominick at WBRE

2012-01-03T00:01:00.003-05:00

NEPA Blogs will be presenting a "Blog of the Week" on the WBRE's PA Live! every Tuesday. PA Live! airs weekday afternoons on WBRE from 4:00 to 5:00.

Watch this episode on the PA Live! site: http://pahomepage.com/palive-details/?nxd_id=219496

Our PA Live! Blog of the Week this week is Dominick at WBRE (http://dominickatwbre.wordpress.com/ ).

Dominick is a sophomore Communications major at Wilkes University. He served as the PA Live! intern at WBRE during the Fall semester of 2011. Among his other duties, he was in charge of escorting guests onto and off of the PA Live! set, making sure we didn't wander off and get lost or walk right through a live shot. He also made sure we were comfortable and would take care of anything we needed. But he did so much more - and it's all detailed in his blog!

Dominick's blog recounts both his duties and his adventures while at WBRE. It also gives a behind-the-scenes look at PA Live!: all the fun and all the work, and even sometimes all the danger! You can read about his experience with a turkey fryer (including the surprise discovery that it had an automatic shut-off that kicked in just before airtime!), see Dave and Monica in their Halloween costumes (beach wear!), and read about the cobra incident!

Dominick was a great person to work with on the show. I'm glad he created a record of his time there in his blog!

How about you? Have you done something memorable that you'd like the world to know about, or that you'd like to write down for future reference while the memories are still fresh? Would you like a record of an important experience that you'd like to be able to share with others in the future? Why not start a blog and write about your adventures!

If you have a blog you would like us to link on NEPA Blogs, or know of a blog you think we should link, please let us know! You can always drop us a line at nepablogs@gmail.com!

NEPA Blogs year in review 2011

2011-12-30T02:06:00.003-05:00

A year ago I was about ready to let NEPA Blogs die.

I had been letting the site drift into oblivion for a very long time. You can see that by looking at the number of posts each month on the "Blog Archive" on the sidebar. The site wasn't a priority for me. It was difficult to locate blogs through brute-force searches alone. The site showed no signs of approaching "critical mass" - the point where incoming links from linked sites would cause a sharp, sustained, and ever-rising increase in site traffic. I was disappointed with the site, and tired of putting effort into it. I wasn't planning to shut down NEPA Blogs, but I really didn't want to invest any more time into it.

Another "Blog Fest" was coming up in the Spring. I found about it by accident, while reading through some of the older posts on Dave Yonki's LuLac Political Letter. Dave's posts are titled more-or-less numerically, so the only way to have any clue as to what he's writing about is to go and read through each post. So unless you're willing to put in the effort to pore over each post to see if there's anything that really interests you, it's very easy to miss something. Normally Gort would announce these get-togethers on his Gort42 site with much fanfare, but Gort was taking a break from blogging at the time. It turned out Joe Valenti had also announced it on his Pittston Politics site, but due to some coding bugs Joe's new posts were not appearing on the live updates sidebar on NEPA Blogs or anywhere else - so again, unless you were actively going to his site and checking it for updates, you weren't going to see anything.

That's when Michelle stepped in with some ideas for reviving and reestablishing NEPA Blogs. "Blog Fests" in the past had been less gatherings of bloggers and more opportunities for candidates for political office to get face-time with political bloggers, and vice-versa. Michelle wanted to try to bring in more non-political bloggers, many of whom might have been turned off in the past by the overwhelmingly political tone of the gatherings. She put considerable effort into publicizing the event, getting a notice published in The Weekender and a mention in Happenings magazine. She contacted bloggers, posted notices, spread the word - and in the end the gathering was still mostly politicians trying to kiss up to political bloggers, and political bloggers letting them. But the ball was rolling. Things were changing.

Michelle breathed new life into NEPA Blogs. Working together, she and I revised the look of the site for the first time in years. She worked out a way to replace the blog title with an image that incorporates the blog title. We started off with an image that had been gracing the site for several years, but then began rotating through different photos of various scenes throughout Northeastern Pennsylvania. Then Michelle took things to the next level. I believe she had created the NEPA Bloggers group on Facebook some time before, but she shepherded the group through one of Mark Zuckerberg's periodic catastrophic revisions, saving the group from the doom of being "archived." She also created a Twitter account for the site, and then brought us into the second decade of the twenty-first century by establishing a presence on Google+ as well. Thanks to Michelle's efforts, NEPA Blogs was now sending out tendrils into all of the inter-tubes.

But Michelle wasn't content with achieving domination of print and online media. While rapidly adding blogs she was locating by scanning through the followers of the NEPA Blogs Twitter account, as well as tracking down and adding blogs the old-fashioned way (resulting in more blogs being added in the month of April than in the previous twelve months combined), Michelle was also making arrangements for NEPA Blogs to make inroads into other local media.

While she was working on that, we continued to add more and more blogs to NEPA Blogs, and more members to the Facebook and Google+ groups, and more followers to Twitter. I also came up with some simple button designs that people could add to their blogs to announce that they were listed on NEPA Blogs - and with the addition of a little bit of code, they could then link back to NEPA Blogs! (Michelle wrote up very thorough instructions for doing this here.) I also created a basic set of instructions for submitting images for use as the NEPA Blogs header.

I was doing a brute force blog search in May when I came across something disturbing: a "scraper" blog that was reposting blog entries by bloggers throughout Northeastern Pennsylvania and making it look like the blog entries had been written specifically for this other site. The newest entry was something I had just posted to my personal blog, but there were other entries by plenty of other people linked by NEPA Blogs - including, I think, NEPA Blogs itself. (Unfortunately, there were no blogs included on this scraper blog that weren't already listed on NEPA Blogs.) A few carefully-worded messages later and the problem (which is to say, the site) went away, but this got me thinking: if something is worth stealing, maybe it's worth having in the first place.

(UPDATE, 12/30/2011 10:40 PM: It was in the aftermath of this event that I mentioned to Michelle that someone else was effectively squatting on the nepablogs.com domain name - a now-defunct "closed network" group of blogs that was started a few months after I created NEPA Blogs in 2006. Michelle immediately snatched up the nepablogs.org domain and set it up as a redirect to nepablogs.blogspot.com. While this was done as a precautionary move at the time, it turned out to be very useful later when we only had to give out the .org address rather than the full blogspot address.)

In June Michelle made the big announcement: NEPA Blogs would be featured in a half-hour segment of Blue Ridge Communication's ComputerWise TV. This was the biggest thing that had happened yet! We were very excited and did everything we could to prepare for the show. Despite nearly dying practically before we got on the road and then having a difficult time locating the well-hidden Blue Ridge Communication facility (even with a GPS!), the show went incredibly smoothly. George Roberts was an excellent host and made us feel extremely comfortable throughout the interview, which was broadcast live. Unfortunately, the show is considered a sort of premium for Blue Ridge Communications customers, so even online rebroadcasts are only available to subscribers. Maybe someday they'll change their policy...

The summer rolled by with plenty of blogs being added each month. Jessica Durkin of WFTE Community Radio contacted us and asked us to do a half-hour show with her! Despite the usual misadventures (I got us lost in the Hill Section of Scranton, and a scrambled address nearly led us to pound on someone's door and tell them we were there for the interview), the interview once again went very smoothly. We left with thoughts of turning this into a regular thing, if we could all coordinate our schedules. (Which meant, if my schedule could ever become stable enough to coordinate with everyone else's.)

And then the next big break: Local television station WBRE was creating PA Live!, a new hour-long lifestyles program focusing on Northeastern Pennsylvania. Once again, through Michelle's efforts we were going to be a part of it! They brought us in to "audition" at the studio. By then, of course, we were veterans of television and radio. Having just done two half-hour programs, one live and one recorded and rebroadcast without edits, doing a ninety-second spot would be no problem. Since my schedule allowed me the flexibility to appear in the afternoon every week, it was decided that I would be the NEPA Blogs spokesmodel. If everything went according to plan, the show would start the second Monday in September. The NEPA Blogs Blog of the Week segment would run every Tuesday, starting with the second show. If everything went according to plan.

It nearly didn't.

Nature had other plans. In late August an earthquake hit, one of the strongest east coast earthquakes known. Shortly afterwards Tropical Storm Irene scraped up along the east coast, saturating the ground with water and punishing the region with high winds. Trees fell everywhere, resulting in massive and sustained power outages. (Michelle was without electricity for many days.) Then, just a few weeks later, the ragged remnants of Tropical Storm Lee cut across Northeastern Pennsylvania by another path, further soaking already saturated grounds. Then the storm parked itself in upstate New York and poured rain into the headwaters of the Susquehanna, much like Agnes did thirty-nine years earlier. And the flooding from this storm resembled that brought on by Agnes - except this time, things were even worse. And this time, parts of the Wyoming Valley were protected by an enhanced levee system.

But not everywhere. And suddenly, the once-in-a-lifetime flooding of Agnes in 1972 became a twice-in-a-lifetime event for anyone who had lived so long. And in the midst of it, Michelle took the initiative to use the networking power of NEPA Blogs and all of the social media associated with it to focus on giving help to those affected by the flood. Immediately this became our most popular post ever, as people scanned through the extensive list of links to look for ways they could give (or even get) help. This single post received thousands of hits. Since that time NEPA Blogs has seen an increase in overall readership that continues to this day.

WBRE survived the flood unscathed, and PA Live went on as planned. One thing changed - the first Blog of the Week was hastily revised to be the Susquehanna River Sentinel. Fifteen more shows have come and gone since then as of this writing, and in just four weeks PA Live will be airing its 100^th episode!

At almost the same time that PA Live! made its debut, I was also scheduled to participate in a Bloggers' Roundtable discussion at the Vintage Theater in Scranton, representing both my own personal blog and NEPA Blogs. I appeared alongside bloggers Rich Howells, Justin Vacula, and Tom Borthwick. Together we did an excellent job of communicating a broad view of blogging to the gathered audience. On a personal level this was an excellent networking opportunity that opened up new vistas of possibility for me.

Meanwhile, Gort resumed his blogging activities, taking a more active role in the Fall Edition of Blog Fest and organizing a smaller, more intimate bloggers' get-together in early November. He also got in on the TV thing in December, appearing as a featured guest on WYLN's Storm Politics show.

In October I realized that while posting our past header images to the NEPA Blogs Facebook page was nice, it didn't really make these images available to anyone who wasn't part of the Facebook group - and subjected them to the whims of Mark Zuckerberg. So I created a single post to which we would append each old header as the new header was activated. And as the weeks rolled by it became clear that the NEPA Blogs header image collection was gradually providing a complete photographic record of Northeastern Pennsylvania, in all its beauty and ugliness, in its mundane and sublime aspects, as seen by many different individuals from throughout the area. Scrolling through the images could really give you a sense of what Northeastern Pennsylvania is.

Thanks mainly to Michelle's efforts, we've added an enormous number of blogs to NEPA Blogs in 2011. And, as always, some of the blogs that we've linked to have soared, some have faltered, and some have drifted off into oblivion or simply shut down altogether. That's just the way of things in the blogosphere, and there's no reason NEPA's corner of the blogosphere should be any different. We still haven't reached critical mass, still haven't achieved a sustained chain reaction in which the traffic from linked blogs to NEPA Blogs and back out again to the linked blogs goes into an ever-increasing upward spiral. Maybe we never will. I don't let it get me down anymore. We've got a great team of co-administrators here, with Michelle keeping us on the cutting edge of all media, both old and new, and providing the necessary shots of adrenaline to the heart of NEPA Blogs, and Gort thinking about the politics so we don't have to. And me...well, I just do whatever it is that I do. Write pretty and talk pretty and look pretty on TV - all with varying degrees of success, I suppose.

So. Onward to 2012. I leave you with this video, created by Michelle, inspired by Mark Cour's always popular video flapdoodles. Enjoy!

Laughing At My Nightmare!

2011-12-28T21:26:00.003-05:00

After I did my bit on PA Live! yesterday, Monica Madeja turned to me and told me excitedly about a remarkable blog she had read about in the Allentown Morning Call over the Christmas holidays.

Allentown Morning Call: "Happiness is always an option"

It's a blog by Shane Burcaw, a young man with a severe form of muscular dystrophy. His blog is called Laughing At My Nightmare!.

Laughing At My Nightmare!
http://laughingatmynightmare.tumblr.com/

I have a disease called Spinal Muscular Atrophy that will eventually kill me. I have been in a wheelchair since I was two. I love to laugh and my life is pretty funny. Allow me to share...

Now, I immediately thought of a recent minor controversy involving the precise definition of "NEPA" and how, by pretty much any definition, places like Allentown and Bethlehem are actually part of the Lehigh Valley and not included in Northeastern Pennsylvania. But Monica twisted my arm and persuaded me to make yet another exception to the "NEPA" requirement for NEPA Blogs. So once again we allow one of our neighbors from the wrong side of the Lehigh Tunnel to come and hang with the cool kids from Northeastern Pennsylvania. (If this keeps up we'll need to spin off a new site called "Lehigh Valley Blogs!")

Let's all welcome Shane Burcaw of Bethlehem to the NEPA Blogs family!

Pa Live! Blog of the Week: The Plastic Waffle

2011-12-27T00:01:00.004-05:00

NEPA Blogs will be presenting a "Blog of the Week" on the WBRE's PA Live! every Tuesday. PA Live! airs weekday afternoons on WBRE from 4:00 to 5:00.

Watch this episode on the PA Live! site: http://pahomepage.com/palive-details/?nxd_id=218586

Our PA Live! Blog of the Week this week is The Plastic Waffle (http://pwaffle.blogspot.com/).

Bob Merc grew up in the 1970's and music has always been a big part of his life. Disabled with rheumatoid arthritis for the past nine years, he created his music blog, The Plastic Waffle, as a way to share music with the world - and keep his sanity. His blog covers bands from 10CC ("I'm Not in Love") to ZZ Top and everything in between - nearly five hundred bands so far! (The term "plastic waffle" comes from the song "An Elpee's Worth of Toons" by Todd Rundgren, one of Bob's favorite performers. It refers to a record album, made of plastic and full of little indentations.)

The Plastic Waffle features a new and different artist every day of the week. His posts contains facts and information, trivia, videos, and reviews about the artist. He also has links to take you to the best places to buy concert tickets, music equipment, and take music lessons.

While Bob can't get around as much as he'd like, he sees music as a way to bridge the gap between people, and his blog has attracted visitors from over eighty countries in the past few months alone. Blogging gives him a way to connect with the rest of the world that might not otherwise be possible, and it allows him to share his passion - his love of music - with people from all over.

So what's your passion? Do you enjoy art, or music, or food? Maybe you enjoy coin collecting, or setting up model trains, or geocaching? There are people all over the world who share your interest, and may have something to share with you. A blog is a great way to share your passion with the world, and connect with people from all over. Why not give it a shot and see what people from the rest of the world have to say!

If you have a blog you would like us to link on NEPA Blogs, or know of a blog you think we should link, please let us know! You can always drop us a line at nepablogs@gmail.com!

Unity Church Wilkes-Barre

2011-12-21T00:36:00.000-05:00

This is another site that is not exactly a blog, though it does contain some bloglike features and may at some point incorporate a blog:

Unity Church Wilkes-Barre
http://unitynepa.com/

From the "Welcome" part of their front page:

We are a spiritual haven in the greater Wilkes-Barre/Scranton area and beyond. We welcome all individuals who are seeking a spiritual path and a spiritual home. Our doors are open to all who seek to find their oneness with God and with all life.

Unity is considered more a way of life than a religion. It seeks to apply the principles taught by Jesus in a practical way to enhance our way of living in the world today. May you find the joy of unconditional love, the blessing of inner peace, and the inspiration to become all that God created you to be...at Unity of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania!

Our Mission Statement:

Unity is a spiritual community built on Love. We offer positive, practical, spiritual ideas to assist people to heal and prosper their lives.

We'll be adding this site to our sidebar list of NEPA Companies & Organizations.

PA Live! Blog of the Week: The Nest Effect

2011-12-20T00:01:00.001-05:00

NEPA Blogs will be presenting a "Blog of the Week" on the WBRE's PA Live! every Tuesday. PA Live! airs weekday afternoons on WBRE from 4:00 to 5:00.

Watch this episode on the PA Live! site: http://pahomepage.com/palive-details/?nxd_id=217676

Our PA Live! Blog of the Week this week is The Nest Effect (http://www.thenesteffect.com/).

NEPA Blogs doesn't just focus on blogs written by people living in Northeastern Pennsylvania. We also look at blogs written about Northeastern Pennsylvania, and blogs written by people who were originally from Northeastern Pennsylvania. The Nest Effect falls into this last category. It's written by Tiffany, who describes herself as a "a wife / blogger / teacher / organizer / deal-seeker / list-maker / and DIYer." As she tells on her "About" page, she is originally from Northeastern Pennsylvania but moved out to Salt Lake City, Utah a few years ago with her high-school sweetheart - who became her husband earlier this year. But it's clear from Tiffany's posts that she still carries a love of Northeastern Pennsylvania in her heart. She even came back to NEPA to get married, and returns to the area whenever she can.

The lines of one Christmas classic remind us that "there's no place like home for the holidays." Sadly, not everyone can be home for the holidays. This will be Tiffany's first Christmas not spent in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Like many people who grew up in Northeastern Pennsylvania but now live elsewhere, she will find the words of another, more melancholy song apply: "I'll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams."

Not everyone from Northeastern Pennsylvania spends their entire life here. Some move out and make their way in the big wide world. If you're originally from Northeastern Pennsylvania but now live somewhere else, or if you're originally from somewhere else and now live in Northeastern Pennsylvania, you should consider staying in touch with your roots and keeping in contact with friends and family back home through the use of a blog.

To read about all of the blogs that we link to that are written by people who were originally from Northeastern Pennsylvania but now live elsewhere, click here.

If you have a blog you would like us to link on NEPA Blogs, or know of a blog you think we should link, please let us know! You can always drop us a line at nepablogs@gmail.com!

NEPA Freethought Society

2011-12-19T14:09:00.000-05:00

Here's another site that isn't exactly a blog.

NEPA Freethought Society
http://www.nepafreethought.org/

From their front page:

The NEPA Freethought Society is community of non-believers (atheist, agnostic, freethinker, humanist, secularist, skeptic, bright) in Northeastern PA. Our members come from Wilkes-Barre, Scranton, East Stroudsburg, Hazleton, and the surrounding area.

This site isn't exactly a blog per se, though it does include a news stream and intends to link to members' blogs. It also lists the group's podcasts, including "Discussion on Morals," "Discussion on Religious Faith," "Race & Religion," and the most recent debate, "Does the Christian God Exist" (not yet posted to the podcast page as of this writing.)

More information on the NEPA Freethought Society can be found through their FAQ page and their "Learn More" link.

justjacq

2011-12-18T03:56:00.002-05:00

Here's another blog sent to us via email! It's called justjacq ( http://justjacq.wordpress.com/), and it's written by Jacquelyn. Here's a little bit of what she has to say on her "About" page:

I’m a 25 year old girl from Pennsylvania who sees everything, thinks about everything, and reads. What I’m trying to be? A 25 year old girl from Pennsylvania who does all those things and incorporates a healthy living. I’m inspired by those who effortless eat healthy and stay fit. I guess my people watching and book habits don’t really fit that mold. But hey, I’m single, young, and kid-less. I should be able to do it all! So what will you find here?

- My thoughts
- My eats
- My day
- My reads
- My loves
- My friends
- My stories

I want to write about the things I see, the things I think about, what I read, eat, and do. I want to write about those who inspire me and those who need some inspiration. I want to write about everything.

...and things just go from there.

For a blog about everything and more, be sure to check out Jacquelyn's justjacq!

TECHNICAL NOTE: We're being a little fuzzy about the definition of the term "NEPA" here. Jacquelyn's email states:

I recently moved to NEPA (living in Bethlehem) and would love for my little blog to be added to your site.

Bethlehem is technically in the Lehigh Valley, outside of Northeastern Pennsylvania by most definitions of the term. But since she asked so nicely, I'm willing to allow our neighbor from the other end of the Lehigh Tunnel to come and hang with the cool kids from NEPA!

Congratulations to Bill Thomas!

2011-12-16T17:08:00.000-05:00

Congratulations to Bill Thomas of Cinema Cyclops for being voted Best Local Blogger in Diamond City's Best of Luzerne County poll! Not too shabby for a blog that's only been around since October and has (as of this writing) eleven posts to its credit. Be sure to check out all of Bill's movie reviews!

Don't forget, you can continue to vote for NEPA Blogs for the Best Blog in the Poconos ("People" category, item #7) once per day per IP address through December 31!

It's a Keeper

2011-12-15T20:06:00.001-05:00

From the NEPA Blogs mailbag:

My name is Christina Hitchcock and I'm a food blogger. On my site, It's a Keeper (http://www.everydaytastes.com), I'm blogging my way through my recipe pile (ala Julie and Julia style). I started with a pile of 300 + recipes that I've collected and decided to cook my way through them and report the results back to my readers.

I've been featured a number of times (see my I've been Featured page - http://www.everydaytastes.com/ive-been-featured/) in The Times Tribune, Happenings Magazine and on WNEP. Plus, my husband and I have 2 cookbooks.

Christina is from Madison Township. It's very exciting to know that someone like her is right here in Northeastern Pennsylvania! Be sure to check out her blog, and all the recipes that have gotten her stamp of approval, at It's a Keeper!

If you blog in Northeastern Pennsylvania, blog about Northeastern Pennsylvania, or used to live in Northeastern Pennsylvania and have a blog, please contact us at nepablogs@gmail.com so we can list you!

PA Live! Blog of the Week: We are: clamco

2011-12-13T00:01:00.004-05:00

NEPA Blogs will be presenting a "Blog of the Week" on the WBRE's PA Live! every Tuesday. PA Live! airs weekday afternoons on WBRE from 4:00 to 5:00.

Watch this episode on the PA Live! site: http://pahomepage.com/palive-details/?nxd_id=216346

Our PA Live! Blog of the Week this week is We are: clamco (http://clamco.blogspot.com/).

We first learned of this blog by tracking back a comment that they left to a post on NEPA Blogs a few months ago. When I told them I wanted to add them to our links list, they said they had thought about submitting their blog to us but didn't think they would fit in since their blog wasn't actually about anything specific. But that's the beauty of "life" blogs: you don't have to write about a specific topic, or have a specific theme. You just blog about whatever you want! We are: clamco is a blog by a family in Northeastern Pennsylvania - Chris, Lorraine, and Megan (the "c", "l", and "m" of "clamco", as explained here) along with a dog and three cats. Their blog documents their day-to-day adventures, whether it's Megan's art, or selling things on eBay, or running in a half-marathon, or taking a family vacation, or preparing for Christmas, or just celebrating the joy of a sunrise.

Once upon a time people sent out annual Christmas letters, detailing the changes in their family's life in the previous year. But with a family blog, you give friends and family a ringside seat to your life as it happens. And someday you may be glad to have a document of your family's life so you can look back and say "Remember when...?" For a great example of a family blog, be sure to check out We are: clamco!

If you have a blog you would like us to link on NEPA Blogs, or know of a blog you think we should link, please let us know! You can always drop us a line at nepablogs@gmail.com!

Mama's Cool Things

2011-12-12T21:50:00.000-05:00

Here's a local blogger I found out about through her appearance on PA Live!: Karon Rehrig of Mama's Cool Things (http://mamascoolthings.com/). She's a single mom in Northeastern Pennsylvania whose blog is targeted at moms and specializes in product reviews. From her "About Me" page:

Karon graduated from Penn State and into the world of single mommyhood. After her second child and second career, she discovered the world of blogging. She shares her adventures of trend-hunting for herself and her daughters and their love of traveling. She has worked with many brands and serves as an ambassador for Chevy Girls, TrashCanKidz, Mom Pact, Claritin Mom Crew, Saline Soothers/Boogie Wipes, UbiSoft, Juno Baby and many others.

Check out the cool products Karon is reviewing, and see how you could get in on the act as well, by visiting Mama's Cool Things!

Congratulations to Mike Stevens and Tom Flannery!

2011-12-10T21:43:00.000-05:00

Congratulations to Mike Stevens and Tom Flannery, who were jointly voted Best Local Bloggers in Electric City's "Lackawanna County Best Of 2011" poll for their blog Riding Both Rails. Hooray!

Don't forget, you can continue to vote for NEPA Blogs for the Best Blog in the Poconos ("People" category, item #7) once per day per IP address through December 31!

The Nest Effect

2011-12-10T01:26:00.001-05:00

Brute-force searches for blogs are getting harder and harder to do. Maybe we've picked all the low-hanging fruit. Maybe we've made this task harder for ourselves, since so many searches for "NEPA blog" or "Northeastern Pennsylvania blog" point back to NEPA Blogs.

But after quite a bit of searching, I found one I haven't seen before. The Nest Effect (http://www.thenesteffect.com/) is a blog written by Tiffany, who describes herself as "a wife / blogger / teacher / organizer / deal-seeker / list-maker / and DIYer." As she tells on her "About" page, she is originally from Northeastern Pennsylvania but moved out to Salt Lake City, Utah a few years ago with her high-school sweetheart - who became her husband earlier this year.

I love blogging and started back in February of 2009 with Real Simple Saving Methods. That blog became way too much work when couponing exploded into a new way of life for many. I became uninterested in what I was doing and felt like there was way too much competition out there, always posting the same content as me, therefore not making my blog unique. In April 2011 I decided to begin The Nest Effect because I knew I had so much to share (about everything) and wanted to feel like I could post about whatever I want. The Nest Effect is such a blast to write/run because my readers are amazing and keep me inspired. I never feel like my writing is a chore; I love doing it. I only post what I want to and keep it real 24/7.

For a fascinating blog by someone originally from Northeastern Pennsylvania who is making her way out in the Big Wide World, go and visit The Nest Effect!

Are you a blogger originally from Northeastern Pennsylvania who now lives somewhere else? Well, don't be a stranger! Reconnect with your NEPA roots here at NEPA Blogs! Get in touch with us at nepablogs@gmail.com and we'll be happy to list you!

Eddie Donlin

2011-12-09T00:01:00.003-05:00

When Michelle first sent me a frame grab of this site from her iPhone, I was a little taken aback.

Ed died online? What the heck kinda name for a blog was that? And why was it spelled wrong?

It wasn't spelled wrong, it turns out. This is the personal blog of Berwick's Eddie Donlin: photographer, father, and newbie beer-maker!

http://eddiedonlin.com/blog/

Scroll through his blog to see examples of his work, plus stories of his travels and his photo shoots. It's always interesting to see Northeastern Pennsylvania through somebody else's eyes, and this is your chance!

The Scranton #BlueKey Tweetup

2011-12-08T01:32:00.003-05:00

On December 14, one of our fellow NEPA bloggers, Mandy Boyle, will be hosting a #BlueKey Campaign Tweetup at The Vintage Theater in Scranton. It's a fundraiser, but more importantly, it's a chance for you to network with Twitter users from NEPA.

What is The Blue Key Campaign?
The Blue Key Campaign is part of USA for UNHCR, an organization dedicated to helping refugees worldwide. The symbol of the campaign is a "blue key" pin or pendant; a key, because it's the one thing that refugees may never hold in their hands again.

Purchasing your own key for just $5 is a great way to show support for refugees, as well as for the tireless work of more than 6,000 UNHCR staff worldwide, who work 24/7 to provide the protection, food, shelter and relief refugees need.

To learn more about The Blue Key Campaign and the work of USA for UNHCR, visit http://www.thebluekey.org/

 Why a Tweetup?
Tweetups are great ways to meet people from the community, both locally and on Twitter. So, if you're an active participant on Twitter and want to meet some of your fellow tweeps, this event is a great opportunity for you to introduce yourself, network, and have great conversations with some of NEPA's Twitter glitterati (or just really nice people who happen to be social media geeks). Plus, it'll be an opportunity for you to show your support for The Blue Key Campaign.

What are the Event Details?
The #BlueKey Tweetup will be held on Wednesday, December 14 at The Vintage Theater in downtown Scranton from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. The Vintage Theater Cafe will have some delectable goodies and beverages available for purchase during that time, so stop in for a nice cup of tea and some conversation.

In the meantime, you can register and purchase your very own blue key by checking out the event on EventBrite: http://bluekeyscranton.eventbrite.com/

The cost to register is $6.12 and it includes your very own blue key pin or pendant to be picked up at the event, as well as EventBrite's service fees.

Questions?
Any questions? Contact Mandy Boyle at boyle(dot)mandy(at)gmail(dot)com.

~Michelle (although, this post was written in it's entirety via Mandy)

If You Can Play Scranton

2011-12-07T01:06:00.000-05:00

If You Can Play Scranton: A Theatrical History, 1871-2010 (http://ifyoucanplayscranton.blogspot.com/) is a blog that's also a tie-in to a book of the same title by Nancy McDonald. From the entry "About the Book":

If You Can Play Scranton is a theatrical history of America as seen through the famous performers who came to Scranton, Pennsylvania. It discusses performances by the best known actors and actresses of the tragic and comic stage, ethnic performers, vaudevillians, musical comedy, concert, orchestra and band performers from 1871-2010. At the turn of the 20th century, Scranton was one of the most famous try-out towns for legitimate stage productions. The sophisticated taste of its audience, created by extensive exposure to world renown talent, continues to this day.

If You Can Play Scranton captures yet another aspect of the rich history of Northeastern Pennsylvania. The book can be purchased directly through the blog (in six different formats!), but the blog also provides a wonderful sampling of what lies within. If you're not familiar with Scranton's long history of theatrical and vaudeville performances, pay a visit to If You Can Play Scranton and see a world you might not believe was once right here in Northeastern Pennsylvania - and still is!

If you've written a book about a topic of interest in Northeastern Pennsylvania and don't have a blog tie-in, you're missing an excellent opportunity for promotion and sales! Create a blog for your book, and then let us know about it at nepablogs@gmail.com so we can list it!

PA Live! Blog of the Week: Scranton Christmas Windows, 1938 - 1960

2011-12-06T00:01:00.003-05:00

NEPA Blogs will be presenting a "Blog of the Week" on the WBRE's PA Live! every Tuesday. PA Live! airs weekday afternoons on WBRE from 4:00 to 5:00.

Watch this episode on the PA Live! site: http://pahomepage.com/search-fulltext?nxd_id=214776

Our PA Live! Blog of the Week this week is Scranton Christmas Windows, 1938 - 1960 (http://scrantonchristmas.blogspot.com/).

This remarkable blog is a time capsule preserving and sharing images from a bygone era. I'll quote the site itself:

In 2009 Gene Giancini was cleaning out a building on Scranton’s West Side. His family had operated a business in the building for 60 years, and he was in the process of selling it. He found, stacked in the corner, old photos of Christmas window displays from Household Outfitting Company, 306-314 Lackawanna Ave. Mr. Giancini generously donated the photos to the Albright Memorial Library. We will be presenting them through this web site.

There are just 23 posts on this blog, but the images they present are remarkable, a record of a time long past, an era with a style and grace that are too often lacking today, when Christmas was a season of magic even in the storefronts on Lackawanna Avenue in Scranton.

But these posts are also filled with historical mysteries gradually solved through careful detective work. The photos themselves are records of places that have long since disappeared. How many of us have stacks of old photos sitting around, tucked away in boxes in basements or attics? How much of the history of Northeastern Pennsylvania is captured on these photographs, just waiting to be noticed? Most communities have libraries and historical societies that would be happy to accept these treasure troves. Don't let these photographs end up in a landfill somewhere!

As Christmas fast approaches, it's good to pause for a bit and take a look at the way one Northeastern Pennsylvania business decorated itself for Christmas during the middle third of the last century. Be sure to check out Scranton Christmas Windows, 1938 - 1960!

If you have a blog you would like us to link on NEPA Blogs, or know of a blog you think we should link, please let us know! You can always drop us a line at nepablogs@gmail.com!

Flavor of the Med

2011-12-04T00:01:00.011-05:00

A submission via e-mail:

Hello,
I own an online business based in Tobyhanna that has a blog online: http://flavorofmed.com/index.php/blog

At first I thought this might be...like, a company that made flavorings for medicine? But, no! The "Med" in "Flavor of the Med" is the Mediterranean, and it's a Mediterranean and Middle Eastern Online Grocery. Go through the entries and see if you don't find yourself wishing that Flavor of the Med had a bricks-and-mortar presence where you could visit and smell and taste the foods! If you're a fan of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cooking and are looking for some recipe ideas or an online source of ingredients, stop by Flavor of the Med and have a look around!

Do you own a business in Northeastern Pennsylvania? Have you considered using a blog as part of your business model? It's a great way of connecting with current and future customers, and letting the world know about what you have to sell. If you're in NEPA and have a business blog, contact us at nepablogs@gmail.com and we'll list it here at NEPA Blogs!

Two more by Lucia Peregrim

2011-12-03T00:01:00.001-05:00

Lucia Peregrim is the blogger behind both the Sound for Scoliosis blog and the Ricochets Rapid Detail blog. Here are two more blogs from Lucia:

WilkesBarreScrantonNightOut.com - NEPA Rocks!
http://www.wbsnightout.com/sidekick/columns/neparocks/index.php

Well, OK, not exactly a blog, but close enough. A new online publication about night life in the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton area. Lucia's column will appear monthly.

urok entertainment
http://urokentertainment.blogspot.com/

urok entertainment is all about helping musicians find gigs throughout NEPA via charity events such as Scolipalooza, Rock the Lumbar, Sound for Scoliosis .... for more information about sound for scoliosis check us out at www.soundforscoliosis.com stay tuned - we just started formation 11/8/2011.

While this blog is all about connecting musicians with gigs, it also provides excellent exposure for the bands mentioned. Give it a read to learn more about local bands and where you might be able to see them!

Two by Brent Pennington

2011-12-02T00:01:00.001-05:00

Northeastern Pennsylvania is home to many excellent photographers, both amateur and professional. Here are two blogs by Brent Pennington, a professional photographer who also captures images for his own enjoyment:

Brent Pennington: Photographer
http://brentpennington.com/blog/

From the "About" page:

I’ve been behind the camera for over 6 years and I have to say, it’s an exciting journey. It’s more than a hobby for me, more than a career – it’s a passion. I’ve been a photojournalist, worked for major universities & trade schools, sold fine art photographs, and recorded graduations, weddings, and families.

But most of all, I’ve worked with people. That’s the rewarding part. Getting to step inside the moment and see people as they truly are, capturing their feelings and their essence. I’ve been able to tell their stories.

Let me tell yours.

Brent also has another photography site, which has a very different focus:

The Roving Photographer
http://therovingphotographer.com/blog-2/

From that site's "About" page:

I specialize in portraiture and wedding photography. I get a thrill out of meeting people, getting to work with them, getting to peer just a little ways into who they really are, and make an image of it. But when the clients are gone and the light stands are put away, I retreat to nature and make images for myself.

It lets me forget the daily concerns and focus on the world around me, instead. The activities of the wildlife, the life cycles of the plants. It’s something I’m passionate about, and take great pleasure in doing. And that’s enough.

So if you’re looking for stunning models and beautiful brides, check out my professional site: Brent Pennington: Photographer. You won’t find any of that here on display here (although you may get to see some behind the scenes)… But what you will find are songbirds and eagles, mammals and wildflowers, and a taste of the landscapes across which I roam. You’ll also find info on the gear I use, a well as the gear that I build for myself.

Be sure to check out both of Brent's sites to see two sides of a photographer's work!

Dominick at WBRE

2011-12-01T00:01:00.003-05:00

Well, here's one so recursive it may bend space-time...while engaging in a frustrating brute-force search for NEPA band blogs, I came across a reference to a NEPA band - and to myself! It was on the blog of Dominick, one of the interns at WBRE who helps out with PA Live! Among his many, many other duties at the station, he escorts all of the guests on and off of the set, gets us anything we need, and makes sure we're ready when it's our turn to go on. His blog serves as an excellent record of the goings-on at PA Live!, though he hasn't mentioned anything about The Cobra Incident yet (yes, having an angry venomous snake on the set is a fine idea, especially when the only person who knows how to deal with it is the person most likely to be bitten!)

Dominick at WBRE
http://dominickatwbre.wordpress.com/

Mark Mysterrio, Pennsylvania Birthday Magician

2011-11-30T00:01:00.004-05:00

I attended a magic show held to to benefit Toys for Tots this weekend, and among the many local magicians I saw perform was Mark Mysterrio. Mark is a magician who also seems to be part Doctor Who (Sylvester McCoy's seventh Doctor, to be precise) and part Rip Taylor (the part that flings confetti and sparkles and marshmallows, if Rip Taylor ever flung marshmallows.) His performance delighted the children and adults there alike, and it was only in the aftermath of the event that I learned he had a blog.

Mark Mysterrio's Pennsylvania Birthday Magician.com
http://pennsylvaniabirthdaymagician.com/

His site may look like a standard website with a static front page, but it is in fact a blog built using the Wordpress platform. I'm hoping I can find a way to access the RSS feed to provide updates on our sidebar. (UPDATE: Mark sent us the feed information - http://pennsylvaniabirthdaymagician.com/feed - so now we have an updating feed on the sidebar!) In any event, be sure to check out his page - and check out his sidebar for his latest updates!

P.S.: Mark Mysterrio is also on the "Greatest Around the Poconos" Ballot on the "People" page in category #9, "Local Entertainer," just two categories below NEPA Blogs! So while you're voting for NEPA Blogs, and bloggers and blog friends like Andy Palumbo (#19, TV Reporter) and Rocky and Sue (#11, Morning Radio Team), why not cast a vote for NEPA magician and blogger Mark Mysterrio, too!

Are you a magician or other entertainer who has a blog? Don't keep it under your hat - let us know about it at nepablogs@gmail.com !

PA Live! Blog of the Week: The DnA Project Band

2011-11-29T00:01:00.008-05:00

NEPA Blogs will be presenting a "Blog of the Week" on the WBRE's PA Live! every Tuesday. PA Live! airs weekday afternoons on WBRE from 4:00 to 5:00.

Watch this episode on the PA Live! site: http://pahomepage.com/palive-details/?nxd_id=213506

Our PA Live! Blog of the Week this week is The DnA Project Band (http://thednaprojectband.com/).

The DnA Project Band is a band out of Northeastern Pennsylvania. They bill themselves as "Northeastern Pennsylvania’s craziest and most fun live act," and you'll get a chance to judge for yourself when they play live at Luna Rossa on Route 209 in Gilbert, PA on Saturday, December 3. They will be improvising a song on the fly from ideas shouted out by the audience, and will also be collecting new, unwrapped toys for Toys for Tots!

Band blogs are an excellent way for bands to reach out to and connect with their fans and potential future audiences in-between shows. A blog provides a format which is more interactive than a traditional website. Blogs are also very easy to set up - no "webmaster" required! Of course, these band blogs also give bands an opportunity to talk tough and build up expectations that they then have to meet when they perform live!

The DnA Project Band isn't the only band blog listed on NEPA Blogs. We've recently added The Countercoup, another Northeastern Pennsylvania band that has been blogging for a while but has yet to play out. There are lots of bands out there in NEPA, and a blog takes so little effort to create and has such a huge potential payoff, it seems only natural for more of our local bands to take advantage of the format to stand out from the crowd.

If you have a band and are from or play in Northeastern Pennsylvania, why not consider starting a blog as a way of announcing upcoming shows, posting photos from past shows, connecting with fans, and reaching out to potential future audiences? We'd love to list you on NEPA Blogs!

If you have a blog you would like us to link on NEPA Blogs, or know of a blog you think we should link, please let us know! You can always drop us a line at nepablogs@gmail.com!

Pecha Kucha Night

2011-11-28T01:53:00.003-05:00

I received a Facebook message tonight from fellow NEPA Blogger Mandy Boyle about the upcoming Pecha Kucha night in Scranton. She offered me an opportunity to speak at the event. I'm always a bit leery of public speaking, however, so I didn't commit to anything yet.

What is Pecha Kucha Night?

In a nutshell, Pecha Kucha Night Scranton is a quick-fire presentation format where local thinkers, dreamers, artists, and storytellers can come together to share in conversation with the community. You can read more about the format here.

We're looking to host Pecha Kucha Night Scranton on Saturday, January 28, 2012 from 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. at The Vintage Theater in Scranton.

Here are additional details: http://www.facebook.com/events/138110756288979/

You can also follow them on Twitter: @PechaKuchaScran

Pecha Kucha Night Scranton

Saturday, January 28, 2012 at 7:30pm at The Vintage Theater

If you are interested in presenting at the event, I suggest you connect with Mandy Boyle. This sounds like an amazing opportunity for artists and writers! Feel free to pass along the word about this event to anyone who may be interested.

~Michelle

mikeverbickas

2011-11-28T00:01:00.001-05:00

Mike Verbickas is a senior journalism major attending the Pennsylvania State University. He's recently started a blog to, among other things, serve as a portfolio for his journalistic work. From his first post:

Journalism is a fantastic ride, taking reporters to the unlikeliest of places. I invite you to come along with me. In the coming weeks and months, I will be posting original interviews, published articles and daily reflections from a young professional’s life in media.

Check out mike's milog, mikeverbickas, at http://mikeverbickas.wordpress.com/ .

The Countercoup

2011-11-27T00:01:00.001-05:00

Band blogs are a great way for bands to connect with their audiences and keep them up-to-date with the latest news. This one is by the band The Countercoup (http://www.thecountercoup.com/). From their "About" page:

For too long, the local music scene and others like it have been overpopulated with interchangeable bar bands that are deriving their set lists from a limited and worn out song book. The only real difference from club to club on a given night is the name of the group and what order the songs fall in. Most of the time, the band members aren’t even into the idea of playing “Don’t Stop Believin’”, “Sweet Home Alabama”, or “Brown Eyed Girl” at all, let alone for the 50th, 100th, or even 5th or 10th time.

Just as bad as that are bands that seem to form out of nowhere, rehearse for a short period of time, rent a PA, play a few gigs, and then vanish. And sadder than that are bands that are good but don’t play that often by choice!

The Countercoup is not and will not be any of those things. The Countercoup is made up of musicians who remember when the music scene in Northeast PA was dominated by bands who had their A game on every weekend. The Countercoup is a rock unit that has had enough of how things are in the local scene and want to change things for the better, now!

Will The Countercoup live up to their own expectations? Follow along in their blog and see! And if you want to see them when they play out, be sure to watch for dates of upcoming shows on The Countercoup's blog!

Do you have a band in NEPA? Does your band have a blog? If not, why the heck not?! Get yourself a blog and have it listed here on NEPA Blogs!

Food, Wine and Culture

2011-11-26T00:01:00.003-05:00

At nearly the very northwesternmost corner of Northeastern Pennsylvania is Troy, Pennsylvania, home to the blogger of the Food, Wine and Culture blog (http://foodwineandculture.wordpress.com/). From her "About" page:

Welcome to my Food, Wine and Culture Blog! As with most things in life, my blog is influenced by the community that I grew up in and the communities that I have lived in. So far, that mostly includes the US Mid Atlantic region. I’ve been fortunate enough to have traveled to Italy, Calgary, Cape Breton, Aruba, California and so many more. And the foods, wine and culture of these locations have also left their mark – but in the end, I find the strongest influences continue to be those from the PA Northern Tier and NY Southern Tier.

A native of the PA Northern Tier, I left for college saying that I would not be back. But after four great years of college at the University of Maryland, and a number of years living and working in the Baltimore-DC area, the desire to be back in the Northern Tier found me home again.

For information on Food, Wine and Culture, not just in NEPA but also in Central PA, the Northern Tier, and even Upstate New York (particularly the Finger Lakes region), be sure to check out the Food, Wine and Culture blog!

Sassing Me

2011-11-25T00:01:00.004-05:00

NEPA Blogs doesn't just link blogs written about Northeastern Pennsylvania, or written by people living in Northeastern Pennsylvania. We also link to blogs by people who were originally from Northeastern Pennsylvania but have since moved on - but have carried a bit of Northeastern Pennsylvania with them.

Sassing Me (http://sassingme.wordpress.com/) falls into this third category. From the "About" page:

I’m a twenty-something, NEPA bred, DC living, brand-new Mom. I’m a social media maven and lover of all things related to family, traveling, shopping and reading. My husband and Baby R are the apples of my eye and I couldn’t imagine moving through life without them.

Check out Sassing Me for true tales of motherhood, big city life, and the fine art of creating change in towing policies!

Are you originally from Northeastern Pennsylvania, but now live elsewhere? If you have a blog, we'd love to know about it! Contact us at nepablogs@gmail.com!

Happy Thanksgiving from NEPA Blogs!

2011-11-24T00:16:00.001-05:00

Gort, Michelle, and I would like to wish you the happiest of Thanksgivings!

Gort's guest blogger reminds us of the finest traditions of the holiday:

Gort42: Thanksgiving is a time for family

Michelle looks fondly at holiday memories with family:

mhryvnak.net/blog: Thanksgiving vault

While I serve up a rerun of a classic heartwarming illustrated tale. Gather the kiddies and share with them the true joy of Thanksgiving!

Another Monkey: Holiday Reruns: The Littlest Turkey!

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

PA Live! Blog of the Week: Bucktown Bargains

2011-11-22T01:06:00.001-05:00

NEPA Blogs will be presenting a "Blog of the Week" on the WBRE's PA Live! every Tuesday. PA Live! airs weekday afternoons on WBRE from 4:00 to 5:00.

Watch this episode on the PA Live! site: http://pahomepage.com/palive-details/?nxd_id=212576

Our PA Live! Blog of the Week this week is Bucktown Bargains (http://bucktownbargains.com/).

With Thanksgiving just a few days away, and Black Friday and the Christmas shopping season just around the corner, everyone should be putting some thought into how to save money with every purchase they make. And that's the idea behind Bucktown Bargains, where the motto is "Saving One Buck At a Time...In Stores and Online!" As Jenna, who runs the site, puts it in her "About" page:

Why spend the money if you don’t have to? We have all found ourselves second guessing purchases and thinking about a quick return. With this site, you will be confident in your savings in knowing that a Buck saved, is a Buck well spent. So, join me as we go hunting for bargains in stores and online and remember, if you put the time into deal hunting you will save one ‘Buck at a time’!

Bucktown Bargains is all about saving money on the things you buy. Whether it's alerting you to advertised specials, letting you in on special online deals, or giving you the inside track on stacking coupons on top of sales to get many items at vastly reduced prices - or even free - Jenna's Bucktown Bargains is an essential part of any strategy to save money while shopping during the holiday season and year-round!

Bucktown Bargains is one of several sites listed on NEPA Blogs that are dedicated to helping shoppers save money. Two of the other currently active ones are NEPA Mom (regularly featured on PA Live!) and We Shop Deals 4 You. Check them out!

If you have a blog you would like us to link on NEPA Blogs, or know of a blog you think we should link, please let us know! You can always drop us a line at nepablogs@gmail.com!

Three from one

2011-11-20T02:50:00.003-05:00

Michelle has been very hard at work tracking down blogs to add to the NEPA Blogs link list, and I...have not. The closest I came to adding a blog this past week turned out to be one Michelle added over a month ago! These three blogs are just some of the many that Michelle has located and put on the list to be added.

These blogs are written under two different names, but they're all by the same person! As Catherine Shefski she writes the All Piano blog (http://allpiano.wordpress.com/), a blog which is, unsurprisingly, all about piano. In this guise, Catherine is a piano teacher who has taught at many institutions (see her linked bio for a full list!), and currently teaches at The Music Studio just outside of Scranton. From her bio there:

Catherine Shefski received her undergraduate degree from Smith College. After graduation, she enrolled in the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, England where she studied with Carola Grindea, founder of the European Piano Teacher’s Association (EPTA) and earned an LGSM Diploma in Piano Performance and Pedagogy. In 1982 she received her M. Mus. Degree in Piano Performance from New England Conservatory in Boston, MA.

...A former faculty member of Settlement Music School in Philadelphia, Ms. Shefski has also held teaching positions at Wilkes Community Conservatory and Doylestown Community Conservatory. She currently teaches over forty piano students at her studio in Northeast Pennsylvania.

But Catherine is also a published author of urban paranormal fiction (The Doppelganger Song) who maintains an eponymous blog under the pen name of Caitlin Sumer (http://caitlinsumer.wordpress.com/). Here she writes not only about her own works of fiction, but provides reviews of and commentary on the works of others.

In addition to these two she also maintains a Tumblr blog, Not Just Piano (http://notjustpiano.tumblr.com/). It's primarily a freeform photo/image blog, and as the title suggests, not all of the posts are related to piano - though many of the earliest ones are.

Three aspects of one person, expressed in blog form. Do you know of anyone else in Northeastern Pennsylvania who has chosen to creatively express their innermost self through the medium of blogging? If so, we'd like to list them here on NEPA Blogs!

A Major Award

2011-11-16T20:48:00.004-05:00

There is exciting news to report this evening! NEPA Blogs is up for an award! Through nominations, we have secured a spot in the "Best of the Poconos" Best Blogger category! I used three exclamation points in the last three sentences because I am that excited!

You, our readers, can help us win this award. Simply visit, http://bestofthepoconos.com/voting/people/ in your favorite web browser and find category #7 - "Local Poconos Blog/Blogger" and select the radio button for NEPA Blogs. You can vote once per day per IP address over the next 45 days. Hey! Why not vote once from home and at work? We can use all the votes you are willing to give to us :0) BTW, fellow NEPA bloggers, Andy Palumbo, George Roberts and Rocky & Sue from KRZ have also been nominated for awards. Be sure to give them a vote or twelve while you are voting for us.

The bottom line is, our blog would not be successful without your continued input and support. This nomination and potential award would not be possible without all of our awesome blogger friends...we dedicate this honor to all of you. Thanks for 5 awesome years of blogging!

~Michelle

PA Live! Blog of the Week: Mark's Tech Tock

2011-11-15T06:01:00.005-05:00

NEPA Blogs will be presenting a "Blog of the Week" on the WBRE's PA Live! every Tuesday. PA Live! airs weekday afternoons on WBRE from 4:00 to 5:00.

Watch this episode on the PA Live! site: http://pahomepage.com/search-fulltext?nxd_id=211326

Our PA Live! Blog of the Week this week is Mark's Tech Tock (http://www.markstechtock.com/).

Mark Rutkowski is Professor of Technology and Coordinator of Innovative Technology at Luzerne County Community College in Nanticoke. (His full resumé is as long as your arm and lists many community activities beyond his duties as a professor!) Mark's Tech Tock is a blog that explores innovations in technology and their effects on society. As he puts it, his topics include:

- Computer security and crime
- New or at least interesting technology
- Relationship between technology and society
- Sustainable and renewable energy
- Personal experiences related to technology

From the latest devices coming out and how they will affect your life to topics of solar and nuclear power - or even the role that flywheels play in the national power grid - Mark's blog posts cover topics across the spectrum of technology, all written in a language that is accessible and easy to understand, with plenty of links and helpful references for further investigation.

Whether it's a smartphone or a simple electrical outlet, we all use technology every day. If you want to get a better understanding of technology and how it affects your life, check out Mark's Tech Tock!

If you have a blog you would like us to link on NEPA Blogs, or know of a blog you think we should link, please let us know! You can always drop us a line at nepablogs@gmail.com!

Schuylkill Buzz

2011-11-12T09:29:00.004-05:00

Forgive me Blogfather, for I have sinned. Its been one week since my last blog post.....

I submit for your approval another *Twitter Find*

Schuylkill Buzz
http://schuylkillbuzz.com

From the About Page:

The Internet and the social media changes everything. We used to get most of our local news from the print newspapers of Schuylkill County. Now, it’s our citizens in our towns like Pottsville, Orwigsburg and Frackville who are reporting our communities’ news and events, publishing the latest restaurant reviews, and cluing us in on the latest sales down the street.

Schuylkill Buzz is a new local media resource; one just for you Schuylkill County! Follow us on Twitter and we’ll add you to our lists!

Schuylkill Buzz looks to be a Wordpress platform Blog. It incorporates several local newspapers and as well as local enthusiasts reports from the community into an easily readable/searchable format.

We don't have many blogs from the Schuylkill County area and many would probably argue that "Schuylkill County" isn't technically NEPA. This goes back to the age old question "What exactly are the boundaries of NEPA?" We are still trying to figure it out, folks. We've been trying to figure it out since our first blog post.

Anywho....as always, if you have a blog that you'd like added to our blog roll, please send an email to nepablogs@gmail.com with your information.

~Michelle

My Soul, My Surrender

2011-11-10T01:51:00.001-05:00

I'll be honest with you: I don't "get" Tumblr. From what little research I've done, the basic idea - embraced my many users - is that the Tumblr platform is well-suited to a format that just tumbles along, occasionally stopping to say "oh, look at this!" and then quickly moving on. Past posts are forgotten almost as soon as they appear, and new posts - usually still images or looping motion .gifs - are reblogged from sources that the user is following. It almost resembles a photo blog, sort of, kind of, not really. And some Tumblr users do use it as a photo blog. Heck, former Secretary of Labor (and sometime Conan O'Brien crimefighting partner) Robert Reich has a Tumblr blog that looks...well, pretty much like a conventional blog.

My Soul, My Surrender is the title (or current title) of the Tumblr blog located at http://crossroadsdemon.tumblr.com/. This is another of Michelle's finds, by a NEPA blogger who is following the NEPA Blogs Twitter feed. From...well, the little block that I'm assuming is a Tumblr "About" thingie:

hello! i'm samantha, a 24 year old from pennsylvania who is obsessive, sarcastic and a total asshole. it takes a lot to offend me and i usually find humor in every situation. i also like a lot of things, especially supernatural. that's about it.

(It appears that "supernatural" refers to the surprisingly long-running TV series "Supernatural," now in its seventh season.)

If Tumblr is your thing, or if you're familiar with its layout and structure, this may be a great place for you to visit. If you are unfamiliar with Tumblr at all, this will be a great opportunity to see what Tumblr is about. Either way, check it out!

PA Live! Blog of the Week: Rachel of all trades

2011-11-08T06:03:00.004-05:00

NEPA Blogs will be presenting a "Blog of the Week" on the WBRE's PA Live! every Tuesday. PA Live! airs weekday afternoons on WBRE from 4:00 to 5:00.

Watch this episode on the PA Live! site: http://pahomepage.com/palive-details/?nxd_id=209916

Our PA Live! Blog of the Week this week is Rachel of all trades (http://racheltroychock.blogspot.com/.)

Rachel's blog is a "life" blog, a blog that focuses on topics that are of interest to her - or just things that have come up throughout the day. When Michelle added her to NEPA Blogs some months ago, she listed the topics covered on Rachel's blog as Fashion, Fundraising and advocacy, Cooking, Music, and Parenting. Rachel's posts since then have carried on in the same vein: clothing and fashion for moms and kids, posts about parenthood, recipes (zucchini bread!), her experiences during the Flood of 2011, and an issue that is very important to her - lung cancer research and awareness.

This past weekend Rachel was involved in fundraisers at the Columbia Mall and Buckhorn Firehall, and she has two other additional fundraisers coming up on November 19th (a Flapjack Breakfast at Applebee's in Bloomsburg) and 20th (a basket and doll bingo at the Buckhorn Firehall.) See this post for more information. Rachel would really appreciate any help anyone can give!

Rachel says "I blog because I am trying to make myself a better person. A better writer. And it's working. I have a long way to go, but the fact that anyone is still reading is a testament to the improvement I've made in my writing." These are words that every blogger can relate to!

A technical note: Rachel's blog is presented in Blogger's new "Dynamic Views" template styles and formats. Her blog is visible in multiple formats - Classic, Flipcard, Magazine, Mosaic, Sidebar, Snapshot, and Timeslide - but only in "modern" browsers like Internet Explorer 9, Google Chrome, or the latest versions of Firefox and other browsers. For someone running Windows XP with IE8 (the highest version that can run on Windows XP), not all of the features of Rachel's blog will be visible, and it may not be viewable in every version. This is a recent innovation by Blogger, and may be revised or made into the new standard in the near future. So why not take it for a test drive, and maybe provide Blogger with some feedback as to what works and what doesn't work?

If you have a blog you would like us to link on NEPA Blogs, or know of a blog you think we should link, please let us know! You can always drop us a line at nepablogs@gmail.com!

Cinema Cyclops

2011-11-07T21:50:00.001-05:00

Bill Thomas's Cinema Cyclops (http://www.cinemacyclops.blogspot.com/) is billed as "The Mad Musings of a Pop Culture Addict with an Eye for Movies - No-frills movie reviews in 500 words or less. Because you've got places to be, dammit!"

Bill's goal is to add at least one new review each week. The films he's reviewed so far are mainstream films in the genres of science fiction (Real Steel, The Thing (2011) , In Time), fantasy (The Three Musketeers (2011)), and comedy (A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas.) But in the future he plans to cover a broader selection of upcoming movies, and some older films as well.

If you'd like to get the inside scoop on the latest movies before you plunk down your hard-earned cash to see them in a theater, or if you'd just like to read some funny, insightful reviews of those same movies, be sure to check out Bill Thomas's Cinema Cyclops!

REMINDER! Blogger Meet-up is tonight

2011-11-06T10:31:00.003-05:00

We hope that you can join us tonight at our Blogger Meet-up.

The Who/What: NEPABlogs.org will be hosting an informal Blogger Meet-up. Come out and meet the NEPA Blogs (dysfunctional) family. ALL ARE WELCOME. There is no admission or cover charge. It is absolutely 100% free. You have to buy your own drinks though. Unless you serenade me with an off key version of Lady Gaga or something like that.

The When: Sun Nov. 6, 2011 starting at 5pm. Stay until the cows come home….or last call. Whichever comes first.

The Where: The Metro Bar & Grill in Dallas. For directions to the Metro Bar and Grille, please visit: http://www.themetrobarandgrill.com

Come on out and meet the bloggers, politicos, lurkers and posers! Hope to see you there.

Twigs Restaurant, Cafe & Radio

2011-11-03T18:34:00.004-04:00

Twigs Restaurant & Cafe is located in the heart of historic downtown Tunkhannock. Despite the devastation that occurred during the recent flooding, Twigs is open for business. I recently found their website by listening to the Gem 104 radio station. Twigs has a blog that they use to discuss to menu items, recipes, wine pairings and promotions. Here's another interesting thing - they also have an Internet Radio station. I found this announced in passing from their Twitter account @TwigsCafe.

More about the restaurant:

Our Mission at Twigs Restaurant and Café is "to offer outstanding food expertly served in a comfortable atmosphere." Our chefs use only the freshest market ingredients and incorporate the finest foods from around the globe.

Twigs also offers catering on your premises complete with a private chef who will meet your every expectation. Twigs has other options for on site parties. Call us for all your catering needs and any help needed to pull off the perfect event.

Twigs Restaurant & Café
Open Daily 11am to 9pm (10pm Friday & Saturday)
1 East Tioga Street, Historic Route 6
Tunkhannock, Pennsylvania 18657
570-836-0433

I have only heard good reviews of this restaurant's food. I'd highly recommend checking it out if your travels ever take you where Rte 29 & 6 intersect.

Lastly, here's the directory to Twig's web presence:

Main Website: http://www.twigscafe.com
Twigs Cafe Blog: http://twigscafe.blogspot.com
Twigs Cafe Internet Radio Station: http://www.twigscaferadio.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/TwigsCafe

~Michelle

The DNA Project Band

2011-11-02T21:10:00.007-04:00

I received a Facebook message from one of my friends, Allan. He requested that I give his band's new blog a mention on NEPA Blogs. We are birthday buddies, both born on New Years Eve.....so I couldn't refuse his request. Allan is a member (and the webmaster) of "The DNA Project", a four member rock band from the bowels of the Poconos.

The DNA Project Band -- Your genetic building block of kickass music!
http://thednaprojectband.com
@The_DNA_Project on Twitter

As I mentioned before, this blog was just created as an offshoot of their main website http://www.thednaproject.net. The band is going through a webpage redesign and decided to incorporate a blog as a way of better connecting with their fans.

From the About:

Just WHO IS The DNA Project?

Simply put we are four guys with a mission and purpose. We love making music, we love sharing what we create with you, and we just f*****g LOVE MUSIC! Need anything else be said?

(A)l was created implanted in the genes of human parents by Apollo, greek god of music, and Selene, goddess of the moon. A creature of the night who sings nearly constantly, his words can move people to tears, lust, love and war.

Dave is the bastard child of Ares god of war, and Eris Goddess of Discord. seriously his musical nature is dark and foreboding, and his physical nature matches it don't piss him off.

Chaz well Chaz happened when Dionysus went on one of his many benders during a festival and got all hot and heavy with Athena, goddess of city, science and war. His fingertips having been blessed by Hermes control an unbelievable speed in lead guitar playing and his warlike nature comes through in the utter beautiful chaos of his solos.

Nitro Nick offspring of Zeus and Artemis (goddess of the wild) watch out.. his drumsticks have minds of their own and will impale you if you re not careful. But his beats summon all races of beings to march towards the cause that is The DnA Project.

Yeah that's us till we change this JAM ON!

The website and blog have links to their music (free download!) and videos to their performances. They do something really cool at their shows - improv song creation using interaction with their fans. Think Drew Carey's Improv-a-Ganza meets the bastard brothers of Green Day. Check out the video. Pretty neat stuff.

Also, *shameless plug*

The DNA Project has a show planned on Saturday, December 3rd at Luna Rossa on Rte 209 in Gilbert, PA. Some of the details are still being worked out, from my understanding. However, the band invites you to stop by and listen to some killer music.

~Michelle

PA Live! Blog of the Week: Gort42

2011-11-01T06:00:00.009-04:00

NEPA Blogs will be presenting a "Blog of the Week" on the WBRE's PA Live! every Tuesday. PA Live! airs weekday afternoons on WBRE from 4:00 to 5:00.

Watch this episode on the PA Live! site: http://pahomepage.com/search-fulltext?nxd_id=208646

Our PA Live! Blog of the Week this week is Gort42 (http://gort42.blogspot.com/).

There are a lot of political blogs out there - politics is surprisingly popular here in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Some of them are well-crafted, long-lived blogs like David Yonki's LuLac Political Letter or Joe Valenti's Pittston Politics. Others are flash-in-the-pan blogs that support or attack one particular candidate or another, and tend to pop up a few weeks before election day and go away as soon as the elections are over. But all the important ones have one thing in common: they're all linked by Gort, the pseudonymous blogger behind Gort42.

Gort describes his blog - which takes its name from the menacing, silent robot from the classic film The Day the Earth Stood Still and the Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything from "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" - as "A random journal about local politics, baseball and whatever comes to mind." He actually provides the most complete and level-headed views of the local political scene around, including information about candidates and upcoming political events. But he also provides a valuable set of links to local and statewide political blogs.

When I was first starting NEPA Blogs, I wanted to be able to link to a large number of local blogs at once, and my own personal list just wasn't enough. But I realized I could simply steal Gort's blogroll and increase the number of linked blogs immensely! Upon thinking about how much work this would involve I had a change of heart, and decided to invite Gort to become a co-administrator of NEPA Blogs so he could do the heavy lifting himself.

Gort is very active in the local blogging scene, and is the organizing force behind both informal blogger gatherings (including the one being held Sunday, November 6 at the Metro in Dallas) as well as the blogger-candidate mixers that have been taking place the last few years around the Spring and Fall elections.

If you want to learn more about politics in Northeastern Pennsylvania, or want to get a perspective on the issues in an upcoming election, there's no better place to start than Gort's Gort42!

For more political blogs based in Northeastern Pennsylvania, see...oh, heck, just check out Gort's Blog List!

If you have a blog you would like us to link on NEPA Blogs, or know of a blog you think we should link, please let us know! You can always drop us a line at nepablogs@gmail.com!

NEPA Blogs Flapdoodle

2011-10-31T00:46:00.007-04:00

A few years ago, Mark Cour of Wilkes-Barre Online/Circumlocution for Dummies came up with the concept of the "Flapdoodle" (as he calls it). I admired him because he had several informative videos posted on Youtube which showed various photos set to music in a slideshow format. The definition of flapdoodle, according to Merriam-Webster is simply nonsense. His video (below) "All the Madmen" is anything but. Featured in the video, are all of the popular NEPA Bloggers in 2006, a history lesson of blogging/bloggers in Northeastern PA if you will. Sadly, my personal blog is missing from the video as I was nearly dooced from my job around the same time this video was created.

He is my inspiration for creating the below NEPA Blogs flapdoodle 2.0. I hope you enjoy watching it as much as I enjoyed creating it. The theme of this video is "Changes", because in order to remain relevant you need to accept and embrace change. I'd like to think that I've helped NEPA Blogs change for the better, but that's for you to decide.

~Michelle

Spook-tober

2011-10-30T11:52:00.004-04:00

We are a day away from Halloween and one of the most scariest things that could happen, did happen. We got snow! AHHHHHHHHHHHHH! This is by far more frightening than venturing into the area's haunted houses (kidding, those things do really scare the crap out of me!)

Here's a photo from my house in Sweet Valley:

On a more serious note, I figured that I'd post some blogs and websites from the area that are related to all things spooky. So.....here.....we.....go!

(Previously Linked)
NEPA Paranormal Society
http://www.nepaparanormal.com

"The NEPA Paranormal is a group of 13 investigators all out to seek the truth. We have all come together with our own paranormal experiences and questions, and we all want to see what we can find out there. We do believe the paranormal exists, and want some answers." They have also been recently featured on "Ghost Adventures" Season 2 Castilla De San Marcos and "The Haunting" Curse of the Black Horse Inn and now are on Fox 56. If you are looking for a quick way to get goosebumps, checking out this website is the way to go!

(Previously Linked)
Pennsylvania Haunts & History Blog & Website
http://hauntsandhistory.blogspot.com
http://sites.google.com/site/hauntsandhistory/pennslvaniahaunts&histroy

"Pennsylvania and its neighbors are bursting with tradition, legends, tall tales and ghosts. Each week we'll introduce one or two of their strange and spooky stories to you. Click on Pennsylvania Haunts and History to get to our website's home page." If you are into Haunted houses and the like, this is a great place to visit because you can read and learn all about them in the State of Pennsylvania, not just limited to NEPA.

(New)
Poconos/I-80 East Haunts & History Website
http://sites.google.com/site/hauntsandhistory/poconosi-80east

"The legends, lore and ghost tales of Bradford, Carbon, Clinton, Columbia, Lackawanna, Luzerne, Lycoming, Monroe, Pike, Potter, Sullivan, Susquehanna, Tioga, Wayne & Wyoming counties." I was happy to find that the Henryville House was located on this list. I lived in the Poconos growing up, and my friends always told me that this place was spooked. Also, it appears that this website was created and is maintained by the same folks who run the Pennsylvania Haunts & History website.

(New)
Paranormal Investigators of the Poconos Website
http://www.piofthepoconos.com/index1.html

This is similar to the NEPA Paranormal Society, except they cover the Pocono Region. From the About Us page: "Founded and established in the picturesque Pocono Mountains by researchers Diane & Kieran Pryor, the Paranormal Investigators of the Poconos (henceforth referred to as PIP) is a serious non-profit organization that is committed to the research and study of unexplained phenomena. We do this free of charge."

If none of that is your cup of tea, then I suggest heading over to NEPA Mom, and check out the list of local Halloween Attractions that your little ones are sure to love.

Have a safe and Happy Halloween everyone!
~Michelle

NEPALife

2011-10-28T13:29:00.001-04:00

Here's another find by Michelle: NEPALife (http://gerardhetman.tumblr.com/).

The subtitle on this Tumblr blog is "Bringing NEPA flare to talk on sports, politics, community service, and more!" Unfortunately, as with many Tumblr blogs, there aren't any links that I can see to an "About" page or anything else of the sort. We can cleverly surmise that the name of the blogger is Gerard Hetman, perhaps this Gerard Hetman, reporter and photographer for the Times Leader.

NEPALife consists mostly of image posts, with a few links and blog entries sprinkled in. From the first blog post:

I decided to call this blog “NEPALife” because I plan to talk some about life here in Northeast Pennsylvania. Of course I have lots of other topics to discuss as well, so I am looking forward to good times ahead!

Be sure to check out NEPALife!

Country Baby Handmade

2011-10-27T20:35:00.004-04:00

Country Baby Handmade
http://country-baby.blogspot.com

Country Baby Handmade is the blog of Amber; a mother, wife and nurse from Northeastern PA. She is extremely crafty and uses her blog to chat about her love of DIY and Handmade everything. She also has an Etsy store where she sells stuff she makes located here. You can find Amber's adorable daughter modeling some of her fashions. According to Amber, her daughter is her inspiration for a lot of the items that she creates. "...a lot of these items I originally made for her to use but because of my love for hand crafting things I decided to make it a lucrative business to help supplement my income while I stay home and spend valuable time with her."

About Country Baby:

Country Baby is a great shop to find handmade flower headbands made with great quality silk and acrylic flowers, fabric flowers and more in your choice of sizes ranging from infant to adult. I also offer machine sewn, hand sewn and embellished; hats, blankets, dresses, toys and many shabby chic styled accessories. All of my items are made to order with great attention to detail for you and your little one. I have several coupon codes and special promotions available to my new and returning customers. Thank you for stopping by at Country Baby's Etsy Shop!! You can also find me on Facebook and through Blogger. Please feel free to message me with any custom order requests or any payment questions.

Amber, we wish you the best of luck with your business. Hopefully, a mention on NEPA Blogs will be just what you need to give your sales a boost!

~Michelle

Blogger Meet-up

2011-10-27T03:44:00.004-04:00

via Michelle

....announce the upcoming NEPA Blogger Meet-up. This event will be actually focused around the bloggers…what a novel thought!

We are inviting the usual political suspects, but don't think that many of them will be showing up because of the close proximity to election day. I'm sure that they will be busy vying for last minute votes.

Here are the dirty deets about the event:

The Who/What: NEPABlogs.org will be hosting an informal Blogger Meet-up. Come out and meet the NEPA Blogs (dysfunctional) family. ALL ARE WELCOME. There is no admission or cover charge. It is absolutely 100% free. You have to buy your own drinks though. Unless you serenade me with an off key version of Lady Gaga or something like that.

The When: Sun Nov. 6, 2011 starting at 5pm. Stay until the cows come home….or last call. Whichever comes first.

The Where: The Metro Bar & Grill in Dallas. For directions to the Metro Bar and Grille, please visit: http://www.themetrobarandgrill.com/

***More details here: http://nepablogs.blogspot.com/2011/10/blogger-meet-up.html – We put the "fun" in dysfunctional.

I hope you can stop by and partake in some libations with cool kiddies.

The Saturday OT Commitee and Operatic Society will also be attending to infuse cash into the malt beverage industry to insure it's liquidity. This a gathering of bloggers, readers, political types, friends and anyone else that is interested. All are welcome. A quick check of the agenda reveals that there isn't one. Michael Rennie, the unofficial Social Secretary of the Northeast Blogging Council has announced that his organization has sanctioned the event saying "It's a good excuse to drink beer."

Edit (by Michelle): You can RSVP on our Facebook Event page here.

Jefferson Stolarship

2011-10-26T22:18:00.001-04:00

Another find by Michelle:

Jefferson Stolarship
"The 100% Official Jeff Stolarcyk Website Blog Thing."
http://www.jeffersonstolarship.com/

From his "About" page:

Hi, I’m Jeff Stolarcyk.

Over the past few years I’ve been a gaming journalist, a comic book reviewer, a college teacher, an IT trainer in a large hospital system and, most recently, an SEO and social media “expert” at Solid Cactus Web.com. Currently, I’m Solid Cactus’s Affiliate Marketing Manager. I’m a frequent contributor (my name used to be in the masthead) at eBiz Insider magazine, have spoken about blogging and social media to audiences at conferences and other events. Not-so-professionally, I’m one fourth of Alert Nerd Press, a digital publishing imprint focusing on geek literature. Currently, I’m working on a comic book with my friend Matt Springer and I’m about halfway through a novella that I’ve been releasing serially in Alert Nerd Press’s semiquarterly magazine, Grok. I like writing things; if you want to work with me, send me an email.

I’m also a giant nerd. I love movies, comic books, video games and the dozens of gigs of music on my iPod in the same way that more sociable people love puppies. I’m pretty okay; I even have testimonials:

(For the testimonials, continue reading here.)

Frightened? Confused? That sounds about right. Go over to Jeff's blog and have your head spun around with movie reviews, rants about last-minute design changes by clients, mortal terror spawned by a repurposed U-Haul truck, and the very real possibility that a clever campaign ad by a very nice lady may result in carnage on the roads. And that's just from the first three posts I read.

Past headers

2011-10-26T17:13:00.011-04:00

One of the changes we made when Michelle Davies revived NEPA Blogs this past April was to the header. For a few years a single image had been posted at the top of the page, separate from the "NEPA Blogs" title. Michelle worked out a way to incorporate the title into the image and post the entire image as a header in place of the text title. It then became a simple process to create new headers and post them on a regular basis. For a while this was twice a week, but as we went along we realized that we were burning up the available supply of iconic images of NEPA, and any submitted images weren't being displayed long enough for anyone to show off to all their friends. So now the image changes once a week, every Wednesday.

The image layout has some basic rules for consistency: all images are 72 dpi and 920 pixels across, with the height being no more than two-thirds of the width (or so.) The words "NEPA Blogs" appear in 96-point Times Roman Bold, while a description of the image and its location in NEPA is included on the image (whenever possible) in 18-point Akbar - a font based on the handwriting of Matt Groening, creator of the Life in Hell comic strip and "The Simpsons." If desired, credit, copyright, and website information can be included as well, sometimes in an appended bit of blank space at the bottom.

We're always looking for submissions for the header. Complete instructions are here, though these are just general guidelines; we can (and do) crop and resize images to fit the header, and creatively dodge around the image to avoid obscuring anything critical. Not all of these images actually come from bloggers; one of the most striking was posted to Facebook by a non-blogger in the aftermath of the September floods, and was used after securing permission from him.

We've been posting past headers to an archive on Facebook, but not everyone is on Facebook, so this isn't available to everyone. So, after the jump, I will begin adding all of the headers we've used in the past. This will be a huge and ever-growing post, so I may have to break it up. Also, I may have forgotten to archive an image here or there - it wouldn't be lost in that case, just sitting in the "unused/current" folder instead of the "past" folder. We'll post them all eventually. But please submit new ones so we don't have to start repeating them!

(Cick on images to see larger versions.)

PennsNet.com: Not a blog, but very useful

2011-10-25T23:53:00.001-04:00

A few months ago, you may recall, I was doing one of my occasional brute-force blog searches when I discovered that many of the folks linked by NEPA Blogs were having their posts stolen and reposted on another blog, without any sort of links back to their own sites. This practice, known as "scraping," isn't just content theft; it's also theft of advertising revenue, since many of the blogs from which the posts had been "scraped" - and to which they no longer pointed - had revenue-generating ads associated with them which were now detached from the content. The "scraper blog" was, of course, loaded with revenue-generating ads - so all of this content was now working for the owner of the scraper blog, not the people who had created it in the first place.

PennsNet.com - a site found by Michelle - isn't a scraper blog. Instead it's a concatenator site - or, to use the current terminology, it engages in content curation, not content generation. It posts links to news stories from other sources, as well as snippets of those stories - the headline and the first two dozen words or so. As of now it lists stories from four sources: "Citizens Voice," "Scranton Times," "Times Leader," and "WNEP." Each story links back to the original post at the original site. So with this site, it's very convenient to scan through the headline content of three newspapers and one TV station to see what stories of interest they might have, and then click through to read the complete, original story.

From a business point of view, this is a little sketchy: part of the business model of these sites is that you are exposed to ads while you are searching through content, so allowing someone to search through the headline content without the ads eliminates the possibility that someone will spot an ad that interests them and click on it. On the other hand, it's really no different from having four RSS feeds running side by side, each showing the headline content for a different site and inviting you to click through.

Not every story makes it onto an RSS feed, so there will probably be stories you would see on the original sites that you won't see on PennsNet.com. PennsNet.com also isn't technically a blog, as far as I can tell, though it may be by some definitions. But it is very convenient and very useful as a way to quickly see what is making the news in Northeastern Pennsylvania, and to have quick access to four major sources of news in NEPA. For now I'll be adding it to the "Sites About NEPA" section of the sidebar. But first, I may go and check out some of those headlines...

PA Live! Blog of the Week: Fashion Vandals

2011-10-25T06:00:00.003-04:00

NEPA Blogs will be presenting a "Blog of the Week" on the WBRE's PA Live! every Tuesday. PA Live! airs weekday afternoons on WBRE from 4:00 to 5:00.

Watch this episode on the PA Live! site: http://pahomepage.com/palive-details/?nxd_id=207306

Our PA Live! Blog of the Week this week is Fashion Vandals (http://fashionvandals.com/). It's a sometimes dark, sometimes sexy, and always edgy fashion blog written by Marissa Phillips, a.k.a. Riss Vandal. From her "About" page:

Marissa Phillips aka Riss Vandal is a staff writer for Gothic Beauty Magazine , the creator of Strange Days jewelry, and cohost of The Phillips Family Fun Time radio show. Among many things, her heart ultimately belongs to punk and goth subcultures, loud and garish cosmetics, and mostly anything that comes from Japan.

Fashion Vandals definitely won't be to everyone's taste: the fashions presented are more Lady Gaga than Lady Diana. (Check out these awesome paper eyelashes!) Some of the Model of the Week shoots are a bit risqué, so you might want to keep that fan and smelling salts handy on your first visit.

Riss's blog isn't just about fashion. She presented a wonderful account of a Tea Party she had with friends at Sugar's Tearoom in Forty Fort, and another of a pilgrimage to Frazetta's Fantasy Costumes in East Stroudsburg.

To see what's cool and what's hot in the world of goth and punk fashion, or just to get a taste of the amazing variety of topics that people in Northeastern Pennsylvania blog about, be sure to check out Riss Vandal's Fashion Vandals!

For other fashion blogs based out of Northeastern Pennsylvania, also check out Jilly BeansTALK and Trend HUNGRY. Darling Stewie has been known to delve into posts about fashion now and again, too!

If you have a blog you would like us to link on NEPA Blogs, or know of a blog you think we should link, please let us know! You can always drop us a line at nepablogs@gmail.com!

Blogger Meet-up

2011-10-24T19:45:00.004-04:00

Gort has shared with me that there will be another Blogger Meet-up on Sunday November 6th at 5pm. The location will be the Metro Bar and Grill in Dallas. See below for more details.

(Click the above picture to go to the bar's website)

Hello All,

How about a get together the Sunday before the election. It won't be a big political thing like Blogfest as most of the candidates will be busy hustling for last minute votes although we will invite them. Maybe make it more of a NEPA blogger meetup with a little more warning than the last impromtu one. Add in friends and family. What do you think?

--Gort

I'm in if you are! Hope to see you there :o)

~Michelle

From the Mailbag: NEPAtoday Magazine

2011-10-23T19:44:00.006-04:00

From the Mailbag:

Today's Mailbag submission comes from Lew Marcus of the Scranton area. He requested that we link to his online magazine:

NEPAtoday Online Magazine - http://www.nepatodaymagazine.com
"Commentary on politics, lifestyle and the arts"

As of right now there isn't too much content on the website, but I'm sure that will change. There are 6 articles that cover a variety of topics from 3 different authors. We hope that by linking to this website that the word will get out about the magazine and that it will continue to grow.

Here's the 411 on the magazine (from the website): NEPAtoday Magazine Online is the cyber-sister of NEPAtoday Magazine, a monthly printed periodical published and distributed by Marcus Publishing, 611 Monroe Avenue, Scranton, PA 18510. To reach us via email or to SUBSCRIBE we are at: nepatodaymag@aol.com. To Subscribe just list "subscribe" in the subject line. We'll send you an email link every time we publish!

If you have a blog that you would like us to link to, please shoot us an email at nepablogs@gmail.com.

~Michelle

PA Media Board

2011-10-23T16:51:00.002-04:00

This one came from the comments.

Bob Quarteroni: I'm trying to get a local media blog up and running but so far with no success, as in no posts and few looks, so I'd really, really welcome people stopping by and commenting, or at least looking. It's at http://pamedia.proboards.com. You can reach me at bobqsix@verizon.net. Thanks. Bob Quarteroni

Pa Media

http://pamedia.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general

There have been other sites that focused on the local media such as Beale's Bites and another message board that I won't link to because it deteriorated into personal attacks. Both authors/moderators decided to stop updating because some of the comments about people became viscous and in some cases libelous.

Well Bob, here is some unsolicited advice. Ditch the message board format and move to blogspot or wordpress, etc. I have found that the board platform is clunky and hard to navigate. The sign in and create account requirement discourages people from commenting. Shoot me an email if you want to discuss this gort42@yahoo.com.

Anyway, good luck and I hope this plug will direct people to your board.

The Mine Shaft

2011-10-21T18:37:00.003-04:00

Did you know that the NEPA Miners Football Team have their own blog?

The NEPA Miners Blog (a.k.a. "The Mine Shaft")
http://www.nepaminers.com/blog

The NEPA Miners started their new blog back in May. From the first post:

2011 marks the 5th Anniversary for NEPA Miners Football. We are growing in talent and popularity, still not everyone has heard about us? 2006 started a grassroots effort by Dan LaMagna launching the areas newest minor league sports franchise. The Miners started out fast with two winning seasons making the playoffs each year but needed more support to maintain success long term off the field.

Dan LaMagna was the one that alerted me to their new blog on Twitter. If you want to give the boys in black and gold a follow they can be found @NEPAMINERS. I've added the NEPA Miners blog to the blog roll and also under the NEPA Sports Blogs section on the right hand side.

The name of this blog cracked me up when I first noticed it. It reminded of that song by Jerry Reed "She Got the Goldmine". I'm going to leave out the rest of the song title/lyrics, but you can Google it if you are curious.

Happy Friday NEPA!

~Michelle

Riding Both Rails

2011-10-20T22:02:00.003-04:00

About a month ago, I graded the News Media on their Social Media presence on my personal blog. In the process I posed a rhetorical question (not necessarily expecting a reply)...Why doesn't Mike Stevens of WNEP have a blog? He has a such profound way of telling stories from his "On the Pennsylvania Road" segments. I figured blogging could become a natural extension of his adventures.

Not long after that post, I was informed by Jennifer Wade that he does in fact have a blog.

"Riding Both Rails"
by: Mike Stevens and Tom Flannery
http://stevensandflannery.wordpress.com

The "About" section of the blog has an interesting story (I'd expect nothing less)...

Mike Stevens will choose the subject matter (Tom respects his elders). Mike and Flannery have pledged to write 1000 words a week. Starting the week of 12/5 2010. Flannery has promised not to curse. Sevens has promised to not say “I’m too busy”

After a year they’ll have a book.

As incentive, if Stevens misses a deadline, he will pledge $5 to Flannery’s charity of choice. The National Alzheimer’s Association. If Flannery missed a deadline, the Stevens charity of choice is the USO. A deadline doesn’t mean much without a penalty after all.

I read through a few of the most recent blog entries and I am intrigued to see where this collaborative effort will go next. 12/5/2011 is rapidly approaching and if they have kept up with their pledges, they should have enough material for a book. Although, I have to admit I'm very curious to know how much cash went to those charities :o) Nice work, gentlemen!

Mike Stevens & Tom Flannery's blog addition is just one of SEVERAL that we have on our blog roll from the NEPA news media. I find the industry endlessly fascinating and hope that we continue to find more blogs from journalists/radio broadcasters/staff writers. If you know of any that we aren't already linked to, please drop us a line at nepablogs@gmail.com.

~Michelle

P.S. WELCOME BACK, GORT!

Caffeinated Politics

2011-10-20T15:08:00.002-04:00

It's been a while since I've been able to post a link to a new blog as the ever efficient Michelle and DB usually beat me to it.

Caffeinated Politics is wriiten by my friend 2nd District Democratic Chairman Casey Evans

From his introductory post

time for a different perspective
So, here I sit, at 5:45 a.m., as I watch the holy-hell-i'm-up-way-to-early-for-this news end and Morning Joe start on MSNBC and regretting having gotten up in the first place, when I, as per my daily routine, log on to the Times Leader and Citizens Voice websites to read the letters to the editor (what can I say, it's a guilty pleasure) and subsequently check LuLac and Gort for the latest happenings in the local political scene. Of course, they deliver the usual buzz with all of the candor and reliability that we have come to expect from them, and then it occurs to me..."I could totally do this, too."

Caffeinated Politics

http://caffeinepolitics.blogspot.com/

PA Live! Blog of the Week: WB Fire Fighters Thoughts

2011-10-18T02:13:00.006-04:00

NEPA Blogs will be presenting a "Blog of the Week" on the WBRE's PA Live! every Tuesday. PA Live! airs weekday afternoons on WBRE from 4:00 to 5:00.

Watch this episode on the PA Live! site: http://pahomepage.com/search-fulltext?nxd_id=206066

Our PA Live! Blog of the Week this week is WB Fire Fighters Thoughts (http://wbff88.blogspot.com/). It's written by Wilkes-Barre fire fighter Dan Emplit, a.k.a. Don Quixote, who describes himself as "an over-caffeinated 18 year WBFD Engine 3 Driver, with 6 years Active Military service who has the clinging scent of gun oil about him."

Dan's posts aren't just about fire fighting. He shares his thoughts on local politics, has a remarkable series of posts filled with pictures of the condition of the interior of the Hotel Sterling (material from a class he took as part of his job; you can see the pictures here, here, here, here, and here), talks about national politics, gun safety, America's position in the world - and his blog was the first place I ever saw the trailer for the Avengers movie! (Hawkeye? Really? He does look pretty cool here...)

Dan can be blunt and frank at times, and his language reflects this. So if you're the sort who comes down with a case of the vapors when you encounter words you might not hear in Sunday School, you might want to have a fan handy when you read his blog. But if you'd like to get the thoughts of someone who routinely puts his life on the line to protect the lives and property of others, stop by WB Fire Fighters Thoughts and see what Dan has to say!

For other thoughts from a fire fighter, be sure to check out Gary R. Ryman's twin blogs Keep 200 Ft Back: My View From the Back Step and Fire Men, the companion blog to his newly-published book of the same title!

If you have a blog you would like us to link on NEPA Blogs, or know of a blog you think we should link, please let us know! You can always drop us a line at nepablogs@gmail.com!

Impromptu Blogger Meet-up

2011-10-16T12:36:00.003-04:00

Hi all!

Sorry for the short notice, but I received the following email yesterday (around 1pm) from fellow NEPA Blogs contributor Gort42:

Hello Everyone,

I know this is short notice.

A few of us will be getting together tomorrow at 6PM at the Metro Bar and Grill in the Twin Stacks Center in Dallas.

Hope to see you if you can make it.

Gort42

Please feel free to join us, if you are so inclined. I'd love to meet more of you if you are in the area and available!

~Michelle

Progress Pennsylvania

2011-10-14T16:57:00.003-04:00

*Another Twitter Find*

Progress Pennsylvania
http://progresspennsylvania.wordpress.com
"Pennsylvania revitalization and economic development success stories"

The Who: The blog is authored by Roy Keeler from Pottstown, PA. On twitter he can be found under the name of @ProgressPA

The What: This blog is dedicated to Pennsylvania cities and towns who are making positive strides with revitalization and economic development. The idea is to showcase these places and hopefully they will become an inspiration. Enjoy reading these success stories!

Although Roy is not from NEPA, he has an extensive section of his blog dedicated to revitalization news from Scranton PA and Wilkes-Barre PA areas. You can also choose to read about other Metro areas throughout the state to see how they are doing in comparison.

Roy also gave us a Follow Friday mention on Twitter today which we highly appreciate! What is Follow Friday? You can read more about it here and here. You can follow us on Twitter too! Our user name is @nepablogs

~Michelle

Wake Up Wilkes-Barre

2011-10-13T21:16:00.002-04:00

Fireman Dan tipped off Mark who tipped off me to the newest political blogger to pop up in the Blogosphere.

Wake Up Wilkes-Barre (which, by the way, they do not have hyphenated on their blog) can be found at http://wakeupwilkesbarre.blogspot.com

There is no "About Page" that I can find on the blog, so I will do my best to describe it in my own words. The blog's focus is specifically politics in Wilkes-Barre city. The author is anonymous. He/She describes himself/herself as follows (from the Blogger profile page) "A resident of the most corrupt city in the northeast, possible the county." The author is very much opposed to the campaign to re-elect Tom Leighton to another term as Mayor. The blog raises questions about the city's more controversial topics, such as the LAG Towing Contract, City Vest & the fate of the Hotel Sterling, as well as Leighton hiring some of his relatives.

Mark is not convinced this blog will be around after the election. According to him: "In reiteration, another election, another short-lived, fire-breathing blogger. What else is new?"

It is true, most political blogs that we list here at NEPA Blogs appear shortly before election day and then disappear or are abandoned thereafter. Maybe this one will survive after November. We'll see, I guess.

~Michelle

NEPA Newsletter

2011-10-12T20:11:00.003-04:00

It's been a while since I've done a dual post at NEPA Blogs...that is to say, 2 posts in one day, but STOP THE PRESSES, this website was worthy of it.

That's right. It's a website and not a blog, but it is about NEPA. More specifically NEPA-Speak.

I submit for your enjoyment "NEPA Newsletter"
http://www.nepanewsletter.com

I found this in going through the archives of my blog. I'm sure by now, most of you have seen the Coal Speak dictionary over at CoalRegion.com. This is similar in nature to the dictionary there, except for one hilarious thing....it's ILLUSTRATED. You need to check out the link to see what I'm talking about. Too lazy to do that? Here's a quick screen shot:

Now don't walk...run and check out the hilarity that is the NEPA Newsletter. Then after you are done there, don't forget to check out the Heynabonics video on Youtube to bring your NEPA-Speak lesson full circle.

~Michelle

Unsung Throes

2011-10-12T18:36:00.005-04:00

Dale Wilsey Jr. of the Manic Frustration blog, hit us up on Twitter yesterday with a recommendation for a blog of one of his local writer friends.

Rachael Goetzke's blog is called "Unsung Throes" and the URL is http://kindalikeapoet.wordpress.com

From the About Page:

What’s all the racket about…?

Welcome to the blog of musical musings, creative wonderings and lyrical lolly-gagging. Hopefully, you will find the writing uplifting and inspiring. Hopefully, it will make you nod your head, yell, “heck yes!” or in some other way, enchant you into the beautiful and eternal conversation that music is. Pull up a chair, and sip your coffee. Welcome!

....And welcome to the blogroll Rachael, you are among some of the most talented and creative people in the Blogosphere in Northeastern Pennsylvania....

If you have a recommendation of a blog you'd like us to feature on NEPA Blogs, please holler at us through email (nepablogs@gmail.com) or via Twitter (@nepablogs).

~Michelle

PA Live! Blog of the Week: A Girl's Gotta Spa!

2011-10-11T06:01:00.011-04:00

NEPA Blogs will be presenting a "Blog of the Week" on the WBRE's PA Live! every Tuesday. PA Live! airs weekday afternoons on WBRE from 4:00 to 5:00.

Watch this episode on the PA Live! site: http://pahomepage.com/search-fulltext?nxd_id=204746

Our PA Live! Blog of the Week this week is called A Girl's Gotta Spa! Here's what NEPA Blogs co-administrator Michelle had to say when she first added this blog to the NEPA Blogs links list back in April:

A Girl's Gotta Spa! :: A beauty blog... because we all deserve a little pampering.

NEPA's own Shannon Nelson has been running this successful blog since 2005. To which she has extensive industry "Street Cred" detailed here.

More from the About Page: A Girl’s Gotta Spa! (sm), as a way to bring relevant and easy to understand product reviews with a dose of honesty, integrity and humor to women across the globe. As one of a handful of beauty bloggers at the time, it resonated with women looking for product opinion before they made a purchase.

As a woman, I do value Shannon's opinions before purchasing any cosmetics, hair accessories or styling products. Trust me ladies, she knows her stuff! She even recommended a new hairdryer for me when I was away in Green Bay on a work business trip after mine died. In addition to being a beauty blogger, she is also a LIFESAVER! I highly recommend this blog!

SHAPE magazine recently announced its nominees for the 2011 "Best Beauty Blogger" awards, and A Girl's Gotta Spa! is on the list! Voting runs through October 28, and you can cast your vote for this NEPA blog here! Congratulations, Shannon, and good luck with the contest. And congratulations in advance on A Girl's Gotta Spa!'s sixth blogiversary, coming up October 24!

If you have a blog you would like us to link on NEPA Blogs, or know of a blog you think we should link, please let us know! You can always drop us a line at nepablogs@gmail.com!

Frank Knorek

2011-10-10T17:18:00.003-04:00

Frank Knorek is currently a purchasing agent working in the private sector for the nation’s largest independent distributor of dental supplies and equipment.

In his own words:

"I have a front row seat in observing all aspects of how a corporation functions. I play a key role in vendor account management, consumer relations, coordinating vendor marketing promotions, and supply chain management activities."

The Blog URL is http://frankknorek.wordpress.com

From the About Page: My blog is a collection of experiences, insights, resources and discussions on entrepreneurship, non-profit management, new media, government affairs, economic development, public administration, and career issues facing young professionals.

This blog is another find from our follower list on Twitter. It is definitely worth a read.

~Michelle

Children's Chalk Fest

2011-10-07T19:00:00.008-04:00

The Wilkes-Barre River Common is finally having their second annual Children's Chalk Festival tomorrow, Saturday, October 8 from 11am-3pm. You can find the flier below. The event had to be postponed twice due to the September Flooding. This is a great event for the entire family. There are endless activities to keep young children occupied and happy. Best of all, its FREE! The Times Leader had an article about it today, which you can read here.

Also, I wanted to take a moment to formally announce my latest community service endeavor which will be officially kicking off at Chalk Fest. Karla Porter and I are Co-Chairs on the "Wyoming Valley Costume Caper", a Halloween costume donation drop/swap to benefit children/families who may otherwise not be able to afford a brand new Halloween costume. Have you seen the price of some of those things? Very costly. Help us give them a fun Halloween! Read all of the details in the below press release.

Halloween Costume Caper 2011 Comes to Wyoming Valley

October 5, 2011 - Wilkes-Barre PA - The Arc of Luzerne County and Wyoming Valley CYC have teamed up with volunteers to make Halloween happier for some area children.

Gently used children’s Halloween costumes will be collected at these Wilkes-Barre locations through October 20:

Wyoming Valley CYC, 36 S. Washington St Wilkes-Barre

The Arc of Luzerne County, 16-18 W. Linden St Wilkes-Barre

Odyssey Fitness, 401 Coal St. Wilkes-Barre

Tobyhanna Federal Credit Union, 880 Schechter Drive

October 8th at Chalkfest , Rivercommon Wilkes-Barre

Families can visit the Wyoming Valley CYC, 36 S, Washington St. Wilkes-Barre, on October 22 from 12:00pm - 6:00pm to select pick up a ‘new’ costume for their children. There is no cost for costumes.

The idea for the ‘costume caper’ came from community volunteer and mother Michelle Davies. Davies got the idea while thinking about costumes for her own children this year, and families that may struggle to provide this day of fun, especially in light of loss to many from recent flooding. A few emails later she was teamed up with The Arc of Luzerne County and the Wyoming Valley CYC to make it happen.

I will be on Rock 107 on Monday 10/10/11 at approximately 8:30am to talk about the project with DiRenzo & Prospector. I hope you will tune in and consider donating new and used costumes to our Costume Caper Cause.

You can also find us on Facebook under "Wyoming Valley Costume Caper". I hope you will stop the page and "Like" us.

~Michelle

REMINDER: Dale Wilsey Jr.'s benefit is TONIGHT!

2011-10-07T07:45:00.005-04:00

Details from the Press Release:

WHO: The Scranton Cultural Center featuring artist Dale Wilsey Jr.

WHAT: First Friday Exhibit: to benefit the Wyoming County Cultural Center at the Dietrich Theater

WHEN: October 7th, 2011 5-8 p.m.

WHERE: The Scranton Cultural Center

420 North Washington Avenue

Scranton, PA 18503

4th Floor, Shopland Hall Lobby

TICKET PRICE: Free

FROM ONE CULTURAL CENTER TO ANOTHER: SUPPORTING ARTS IN NEPA

Scranton, PA -- Sept. 20th, 2011 -- The Scranton Cultural Center at the Masonic Temple will host a benefit exhibit to raise money to help restore and rebuild the Dietrich Theatre in Tunkhannock. The Dietrich Theatre (the Wyoming County Cultural Center) was recently devastated by record flooding. Estimated costs to restore and repair are close to $100,000.

The exhibit will take place Oct. 7th, in conjunction with Scranton's First Friday, as well as, the kickoff of the SCC Electric City Listen Local series. The free exhibit will begin at 5pm on the 4th floor Shopland Hall and run through 8pm. Money will be raised through individual donations, sale of artwork and a bake sale. Donations will be accepted until 10pm.

Photographs in the exhibit were taken by writer/photographer and Tunkhannock native, Dale Wilsey Jr.

All proceeds will go directly to the Dietrich Theatre.

Visit the SCC's site, www.scrantonculturalcenter.org for more information.

--
Dale R. Wilsey Jr.

manic-frustration.blogspot.com

The Plastic Waffle

2011-10-06T16:53:00.007-04:00

Happy Thursday everyone! Time for another mailbag submission. Our latest mailbag submission arrived yesterday to the NEPA Blogs Gmail account from Bob Merc (a huge Todd Rundgren fan) who would like us to add his blog to our ever expanding blog roll.

"Greetings ! My name is Bob Merc from Scranton, Pa. and I have a music blog called "The Plastic Waffle" I would like to have it listed at your site.. the addy is www.pwaffle.blogspot.com Thank you!!! "

The URL is http://www.pwaffle.blogspot.com
You can also follow him on Twitter: @BarreChordz

The Plastic Waffle blog features a new and different recording artist every day of the week. These featured blog posts contain faction information, trivia, videos and reviews about the artist. There are also a ton of links directing you to the best places to buy concert tickets, musical equipment and get musical lessons (if you are so inclined). You can learn more about Bob's focus for this blog by reading the first blog post here.

If you would like to feature your blog/list you in our blog roll, please send an email to nepablogs@gmail.com with your info!

~Michelle

PA Live! Blog of the Week: Manic Frustration

2011-10-04T06:01:00.071-04:00

NEPA Blogs will be presenting a "Blog of the Week" on the WBRE's PA Live! every Tuesday. PA Live! airs weekday afternoons on WBRE from 4:00 to 5:00.

Watch this episode on the PA Live! site: http://pahomepage.com/search-fulltext?nxd_id=203556

At NEPA Blogs, we locate blogs in a variety of ways. Some blogs are submitted to us through email (nepablogs@gmail.com) or through our Facebook group. Some we find by actively looking for sites that mention places in Northeastern Pennsylvania. And some have been found when co-administrator and social media maven Michelle Davies took a closer look at our Twitter followers and found out that some of them, in fact, had blogs!

Dale Wilsey, Jr. falls into this last category. His blog is our PA Live! Blog of the Week this week, and is called Manic Frustration (http://manic-frustration.blogspot.com/). It would perhaps be overly simplistic to call Dale a "blogger"; he is, in fact, a writer, photographer, and documentarian who blogs. But at the same time, he is also a full-fledged blogger. Based out of Tunkhannock, a beautiful city along the Susquehanna River in the northern reaches of Northeastern Pennsylvania, he has blogged extensively about the effects of the recent historical floods in Tunkhannock here, here, and here. But his blog also falls into the broad category of "life blogs," those meandering, unfocused blogs that serve as a means of expression for any and all of a blogger's thoughts, whenever they may arise. Life blogs to me represent blogging in its purest form, resembling the works of eighteenth-century diarists and journal-writers who captured so much of the history of their times through their own personal reflections and observations.

As I mentioned earlier, Dale is also a photographer, and an exhibition of his photography will be displayed Friday, October 7 from 5:00 PM to 8:00 PM on the fourth floor of Shopland Hall at the Scranton Cultural Center as part of Scranton's First Friday celebrations, to benefit Tunkhannock's Dietrich Theater / Wyoming County Cultural Center, which was damaged in the flooding. You can read more about the show on Dale's blog here, and can read even more in this excellent review with Electric City / the570.com here.

You can read more about Dale Wilsey, Jr. and Manic Frustration here. Be sure to check out his blog, and visit the exhibition of his work on Friday to benefit a good cause!

If you have a blog you would like us to link on NEPA Blogs, or know of a blog you think we should link, please let us know! You can always drop us a line at nepablogs@gmail.com!

2 From Joe Gannon

2011-10-03T18:19:00.002-04:00

I found Joe Gannon from scouring the @nepablogs follower list. He has two parenting blogs that he authors.

Blog #1 --

RaiseACaveman
http://raiseacaveman.blogspot.com
Twitter: @RaiseACaveman

"Just a guy teaching his son how to be a man. And having as much fun as possible doing it!"

After perusing the About Page, I learned that Joe has a 10 year old and 4 nephews that are all under the age of 4! I must also mention that this blog of Joe's hasn't been updated since March. As a mother of 2 under the age of 7 (one of which is an evil genius), I can completely empathize with having your hands full. God bless your soul, Joe.

Blog #2 --

Raising Freedom
http://raisingfreedom.blogspot.com

This second blog of Joe's talks about raising kids who value and respect freedom. There are only 2 posts over there, but we have no doubt that he will pick-up where he left off with this thought provoking blog soon enough.

Hey, and if you are on Twitter and not following us, you are missing out! If you blog and have twitter join the fun by giving a follow to @nepablogs.

~M

Vote Early / Vote Often

2011-10-02T12:35:00.005-04:00

We have another NEPA blogger that has been nominated for a Best Blog Award at Parents.com. If you remember back a few months ago, NEPA Mom was nominated for a similar award. So, who was nominated this time around?

Its none other than Shannon Nelson of the "A Girl's Gotta Spa" beauty blog!!! Congrats Shannon! Shannon tipped us off over on our Facebook Group Page (which by the way, you should join if you haven't already).

If you haven't checked out the "A Girl's Gotta Spa" beauty blog, here's the 411. Its a beauty blog from Shannon Nelson-a mom, skin care professional and pro in the social media industry. She covers everything from hair products to spa treatments. You can also read more about Shannon and her blog from vising the "About Page" on her blog.

Right now she only has 3 votes :-(
Get over there and vote for her right now so she can win this award!
The URL to vote is: http://blog-awards.parents.com/blog-awards/mom_blogs/1146-a-girl-s-gotta-spa
Voting ends on 10/15/11 and the winners are announced thereafter.

~M

Worthy of a second mention

2011-10-02T12:14:00.003-04:00

A few weeks ago we featured "Our10.org" which was a portal for flood victims and volunteers/those with donations to connect. Our10.org was founded on September 16, 2011. The focus seems to be in the Wyoming County area, but anyone can sign up and post a listing. You can read our post about it here.

There is a similar website for Luzerne County/The Wyoming Valley out there (although not limited to those areas) for flood victims/volunteers. It is called NEPA Connect.

http://www.nepaconnect.com

From the Connect Flood Needs Page:

At NEPA Connect we want to do what we can to help people affected by the recent historic flooding in Northeastern Pennsylvania get back on their feet as quickly as possible.

Use this free tool to find or donate items for home or business. We can work as a community to put affected homes, small businesses, and most importantly lives back on track.

[...]

-The NEPA Connect Team

I have had great success with posting some baby furniture and getting the items into the right hands of someone in need. You can read more about the experience on my blog here.

~M

Happy in NEPA

2011-09-30T17:26:00.004-04:00

Happy in NEPA - http://happyinnepa.typepad.com - is the TypePad blog of Dr. Patricia Fox who lives and works in Northeastern PA. She is one of the blogs I found on my most recent Twitter blog fishing expedition. You can follow her on Twitter @DrPFox

More from the About Page:

I am a psychology professional living and working in northeast PA (NEPA). I am abundantly curious about what makes people happy. Dr. Ed Diener pioneered the modern study of happiness, scientifically known as "subjective well-being." I became interested in the study of well-being while a graduate student in the Doctor of Psychology (Psy.D.) program at Marywood University in Scranton, PA.

As an educator, writer, and researcher, I explore the factors that influence happiness including income, personality, relationships, health, environment, geography, and public policy. As a trained clinical psychologist, I am curious about how individuals cultivate happiness. I am especially interested in the happiness of people living in northeast PA (NEPA).

Pennsylvania is experiencing an historical change related to its mineral wealth. In 2003, the first natural gas well in the Marcellus Shale was drilled in southwestern PA. Speculators began to secure gas drilling leases in late 2006. Natural gas drilling quickly came to northeast PA in 2007. In 2010, Pennsylvania was reported to have 57,469 natural gas wells, the second highest in the U.S. The citizens of PA continue to be divided about the potential economic benefits and the environmental risks of natural gas drilling in the state.

I blog about the scientific research on happiness and well-being. I also explore the events unique to northeast PA influencing happiness. Finally, I seek out those people living and working in NEPA who have discovered what makes them happy.

Some happiness is just what the doctor ordered after all of the tragic recent weather events that occurred in NEPA. I urge you to check out the blog, a little happiness never hurt anyone.

~M

Endless Simmer

2011-09-30T17:02:00.004-04:00

The Endless Simmer blog is essentially a "foodie" blog. There are several individual contributors to this culinary blog...similar to NEPA Blogs setup, except they are from all over the country. The connection to "NEPA" is that one of the contributors is a NEPA Native. Blogger Clayton Jacobs (@bellyrulesmind on Twitter) is of local swagger, from the About Page:

"Neither a writer nor a chef by profession, Clay Jacobs (Borracho) joins the ES team with passion and desire to explore new culinary experiences and basic grammar skills. Borracho is as likely to rave about Michelin 3-star cuisine as the pizza place down the street. When he cooks, the focus is on local product, bold flavors and comfort food, but his posts mix in discussions of technique, sports, pop culture and a dash of the inane. His Gridiron Grub series offers amped-up takes on typical football and tailgating foods to enjoy when watching the game, even if you are a Dallas Cowboys fan."

There's also a blogger listed as attending college in Central Pennsylvania....Madeline Shores. Here's her bio from the About Page:

"After living off cafeteria food, the strange products of her tiny kitchen, and Central Pennsylvania’s finest offerings while attending college, Madeline Shores (ML) hwas forced to enter the real world in 2009 to begin her fast and sexy life representing the future of America. With only the stamp of a snotty private school and a completely unmarketable degree, ML has returned to Philly to live off cheap beer and whatever food she can afford (see: gourmet instant ramen). In her free time, she can be seen traveling and acting as the mealtime paparazzi while spending time with friends, some of whom have dubbed her “the anytime eater.”

On Twitter: @MadelineSho

To view all of the contributors to the blog, visit: http://www.endlesssimmer.com

More about the blog:

We created Endless Simmer to satisfy our insatiable desire to think about food constantly. We’re basically somewhere between regular consumers of food pop culture and total snobs. We can just as easily enjoy offal or destroy a Dunkin Donuts (fake) egg and cheese croissant. We love to experiment in the kitchen, but we do frown on cheating. There’s nothing we love more than a good food pun.

Turn to Endless Simmer for all your food needs. We will share our cooking stories, favorite shows, restaurant reviews, travel tales and any other things we can think of that incorporate eating in any way.

Clearly, we just can’t keep our mouths shut.

For our sake, we hope that they don't, because we were drooling over several of the posts. However, the "Top 10 Things I Ate In College That I'll Never Eat Again" post was pretty damn hilarious. I am guilty of so many of those food crimes! However, I'm kind of shocked that ramen noodles were absent from the list. Maybe some of the authors are guilty of still eating them (as I am on occasion)....speaking of which. TIME FOR DINNER.