Teaching Pennsylvania History: Part 5: Major Events

Temper this section of Pennsylvania history with Bible study time about our security in Christ, God’s provision for his people, and disaster readiness (staying close to God, his word, and his people).

Activities Students Can Do About Each Event: read more

Teaching Pennsylvania History: Part 3: Native Americans

Different things students can do:

• Look up pictures of Native Americans by these artists: Robert Griffing, John Buxton, Jack Paluk, and Andrew Knez Jr.
• Read one of the novels about captivity among the Indians. (Captives: Mary Jemison, Catharine Carey, Regina Hartman)
• Read accounts by early travelers, settlers, or missionaries who wrote about the Indians: Jesuit missionaries, Moravians, David Zeisburger, Conrad Weiser, John Heckewelder, and David Brainerd.
• Make a timeline about the historical events
• Visit local landmarks. Add local dates to timeline.
• Make a list of names from your area that came from Indian names.
• Visit the Harrisburg State Museum Indian exhibit. read more

Teaching Pennsylvania History: Part 2: The History of Transportation

Different things students can do:

• Look for the words in the below outline on the Internet.
• Visit transportation exhibits at local museums. (Harrisburg State Museum has a great exhibit.)
• Make a scrapbook of pictures from Internet.
• Art and writing projects involving Pennsylvania transportation.

1.   Draw different forms of historic transportation

2. Make up a story in which you must travel via a certain historical form of transportation.

3. Write a report comparing two historic forms of transportation. read more

Thomas Buchanan Read

(United States Public Domain)

Native Pennsylvanian, Thomas Buchanan Read, born in 1822, had many talents. He painted, sculpted, and wrote in various genres. Although he had a huge following while he lived, most people now only know read more

Christmas in the Park

 A Cinderella carriage is probably the most unique feature of the Richfield Christmas event.  Two beautiful horses pull a white wrought iron carriage around the park with riders. Enchanting! read more

Pennsylvania Animals: Eastern Wild Turkey

Gobble, gobble, gobble. Do those words make you think about Thanksgiving? Besides the honorable holiday, turkeys remind me of a magazine article I once read by Peter Lord. He used the contrast between turkeys and eagles to teach spiritual truths.

Male turkeys are called gobblers and the females, hens. Gobblers grow to be about two and one-half feet tall, three to four feet long, and 25 pounds. Females are much smaller and weigh half as much. Males have spurs for fighting and beards up to twelve inches long. A few females also have beards. Only males gobble. Both sexes read more

PA Wildlife: Bobcat

Imagine our surprise at seeing a bobcat when looking at some webcam photos my friend took. After all, how many bobcat have you seen? The Pennsylvania Game Commission says probably not many because of their shyness, ability to hide, and nocturnal habits. In 2000, the estimated population of bobcat in Pennsylvania was 3,500.

Bobcats in our state average 15 to 20 pounds, have gray-brown fur with dark spots and stripes. Their lips, chin, front of neck, as well as, their belly is white. Including their six-inch tail, they average 36 inches in length, just like the fisher.

What sets them apart from most other cats is their extra fur that extends down from their jowls. The other distinguishing characteristic is their longer back legs which give them a different gait.

Like the fisher, bobcats attack and eat porcupines. They also eat all kinds of small animals and carrion. They have little effect on Pennsylvania’s deer herd because they only eat the crippled or sick deer.

Some bobcats live up to 14 years in the wild and inhabit mostly mountains, isolated forests, and swamps. They seem to prosper best near clear cut forests because of the increase in small mammals that lumbering brings to the newly cut area.

Many bobcats used to roam this region, but with more mature trees and populated areas they declined. Beginning in 1970, the laws changed to protect them and subsequently allowed them to increase. In 2000, the Game Commission made the decision to again allow limited hunting of them.

Reference for writing this was Chuck Fergus’s Wildlife Note #3 on “Bobcats” published by the PA Game Commission online.

PA Wildlife: Fishers

Three Fishers

 What was that? I saw something similar to a cat up ahead when I walked up our neighbor’s road. Highlighted against the pale road, the animal looked black. Since I am very familiar with cats, I wondered about this creature’s humplike back and different gait. I asked several people. Finally, someone suggested a fisher. What? I had never heard of such a thing. I began to investigate.

From a children’s book, Follow a Fisher by Laurence Pringle, I’ve learned some interesting facts. The fisher is part of the weasel family. Most females weigh three to seven pounds. Males are almost twice as large. Average length from nose to the end of their long tail is the same as a yard stick. All fishers are covered with brown and black hair but females tend to be darker. Each of their four feet has five toes with long toe nails.

The most astonishing to me is the amount of time a female carries her young inside her body---about a whole year. What a long time to be pregnant! She also is still caring for her last litter of young while pregnant with the next and all by herself. Yes, the male doesn’t help.

They hunt mostly at night for small animals but also eat carrion, nuts, and berries. The most unusual food they consume is porcupine, an animal only tackled by two others, the bobcat and cougar. In fact, fishers have been introduced into areas that are overpopulated with porcupine to help control the numbers.

On the Pennsylvania Game Commission site, I found that fishers had almost died out in Pennsylvania but in the 1990s they brought them back by introducing 190 in the northern tier. The Game Commission believes that some also migrated from a re-introduced colony in West Virginia. One biologist, Dr. Matt Lovallo, believes that there are thousands now in Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania Wildlife: Whitetail Deer

Spotlighting? Yes, that is what we call it. After everyone piles into the car, we drive around country roads or through fields, and look for whitetail deer.

As a child, my family owned a 200 plus acre farm. In the evening our favorite line from my father would be, “Do you want to go spotlighting?” Three of the major fields of our farm had forests surrounding them. We would drive up a dirt road which branched off into each of the three fields. There my father would position our car just right so that the headlights would shine to show any deer grazing there at night. Sometimes, we would see whole herds. Other times, just a single would pop her head up. The prize ones had a huge rack on their heads. I learned to count deer. The more we saw, the better the night. Later, we got a handheld spotlight and could examine more of the field. I don’t remember that we saw any more than with the headlights of our car.

My husband and I also go spotlighting. We use a handheld spotlight with the most powerful light available. Our car has to stay on paved roads since we don’t own a farm. The most memorable night for me was on the Lewistown Narrows many years ago. We had heard that there was a white deer showing up there. Traffic was at a minimum back then on that road. As we approached the mentioned sight, my husband shone the light up the bank, and there she was! Not all white, she had a saddle of brown, but what a thrill that was!

The other fun we have these days is seeing trail cam pictures from cameras placed at strategic spots in the woods. They are movement sensitive to take a picture whenever something walks by. A friend of ours has gotten some really unique pictures this way. I've been given permission to share these to show you some of Pennsylvania’s white tail deer. Even though the last one looks like a white deer, it is not. 

The Flying Banana and Other Pennsylvania Transportation came out in paperback last night. Check it out.

PA Memories: Pennsylvania Dutch Country by Patti Smith

In the mid-eighties, I was on a six month temporary assignment 

with the Department of Labor in Washington, D.C.  Being from Seattle, this part of the country was foreign to me as it was with a fellow assignee from Denver.  We decided to take advantage of our free weekends by taking road trips.

One of places we toured was the Pennsylvania Dutch Country and I was awestruck by the beauty of lush green fields, quaint farmhouses and covered bridges.  Proprietors of businesses were warm, friendly and patient; contrary to their pushy counterparts in metropolitan areas and it was at one of the shops I began my love affair with hand-made quilts.  The quilting displayed remarkable intricacy; evidence of many hours of painstaking labor.  That type of workmanship is something absent from quilts manufactured in factory assembly lines and shipped to department stores.

The simplicity of the region had a calming effect, coming from the hectic atmosphere of Washington, D.C. and I hope someday to have the opportunity to return.

Patti J. Smith was born in Wimpole Park, England. She lived in England and Morocco as well as several state-side Air Force Bases and considers her father's last assignment, Moses Lake, Washington, her hometown. She audited for the Dept. of Labor and Veteran's Administration Offices of Inspector General, served in the U.S. Army Reserve (Transit Control Unit and Criminal Investigation Division) and recently retired as a background investigator.

Patti lives in Vista, CA with her husband and has three granddaughters. She serves as a Regional Coordinator for the Silent No More Awareness Campaign, Co-leads Rachel's Hope After-Abortion Healing Retreats and sings in her parish choir.

Her writing includes devotionals, light romance and suspense, and her strong faith is reflected in each genre. She is a prolific blogger and reader, and proudly admits to being a diehard Seattle Seahawks fan and Fantasy Football fanatic. Her travel adventures include Spain, Mexico, Canada, Australia, Fiji, South Korea and almost all states - including Hawaii and Alaska.

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