Round the Square

THE BARD: “By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes!” This quote, from Macbeth, of course, is one of our favorites from the works...

WORDS : Two longtime friends of RTS have founded a word group for fellow enthusiasts. Frances Wolfe Haight from Kane has been writing since age 10, an...

GENDER BENDER : When we left you yesterday, our chicken Stephanie had made a miraculous recovery from her “egg-bound” condition. But then, inexplicabl...

MYSTERY CHICK : “They were the words no one wants to hear: ‘Mom, I think something is wrong with Stephanie.’ My heart froze.” “Stephanie is my 11-year...

MCKEAN ORBIT: We’re throwing it way back –– all the way back to October 20, 1849, when the McKean Orbit was being published in Smethport. What is intr...

PATTERNS : Have you ever found shapes in the clouds? Or patterns in a leave? It’s the nature of the mind to look for recognizable shapes. We received ...

FACTS : OK, so we’re falling a bit more in love with Pennsylvania with every fact we find. From cheesesteak to mushrooms, grapes to Christmas trees, t...

COMEDY : We’re sure many of our readers remember “The Dick Van Dyke Show.” Now we won’t have far to go to see a digitally preserved collection of prod...

POTHOLES: Here is one sign of spring that people do not look forward to every year: potholes. Duke Center author Bill Robertson said there are plenty ...

HISTORY: One of our frequent commenters, who signs typewritten postcards only as “An Era Reader,” sends us some remarkable things. The most recent not...

PRESIDENT : The Bradford Landmark Society is such a treasure trove of information. We got this note from curator Sally Costik, and had to share: “With...

LUCKY US: Buffalo is notorious for its mountains of snow but Bradford is no stranger to one of the mysterious phenomenon responsible — “lake effect sn...

LOCAL NOTES : It’s all the rage now to get “micro forecasts” for weather predictions but our own resident meteorologist has been doing that in McKean ...

GET LOST: “When you get to the pile of scrap metal on the side of the road, take a left. But if you drive past Busty’s place, turn around — you’ve gon...

HISTORY : Did you know there’s a connection between Jim Thorpe, Pa., and a popular attraction at Walt Disney World? According to the website Uncover P...

PARTY : Me oh me oh my, wasn’t that a party? Well, that song by the Irish Rovers came out about 60 years after this party, written about in the May 12...

HOME : Most residents of Pennsylvania could name the state capitol — Harrisburg — and the state flower — mountain laurel — but did you know there is a...

RIXFORD : An opera house in Rixford? Believe it! That was one of the gems we uncovered when researching the history of Rixford, one of the many small ...

USDA : Here at The Era, we get a lot of emails. One recent message caught our eyes as being a bit different than what we usually see. It dealt with un...

MORE : We promised some more on the history of Bradford from the Landmark Society. From the society’s website: “About 1837 Col. Levitt C. Little came ...