I Really Hope I’m Wrong
W.D. Ehrhart, a 1966 graduate of Pennridge High School, with his wife, Anne, on his induction into the Pennridge Wall of Fame in 2003.
The Northcountry Chronicle
Of Poetry and Lawyers
“The first thing we do is, let’s kill all the lawyers.” – Henry IV, Part II, Act IV, Scene II by W.D. Ehrhart The first time I ever read one of my poems in public was in 1971 when I was 22 years old. That was over half a century ago. Since then, I’ve read my poems in public hundreds of times in venues ranging from universities to middle schools, union meetings to art galleries, libraries to hot dog shops in countries from Japan and Slovenia to Wales and the Netherlands as well as in a majority of these United States. But just last week …
Reaping the Whirlwind
by W.D. Ehrhart This past weekend, my wife and I went down to Margate, New Jersey, for a friend’s birthday party. Driving on the Atlantic City Expressway, we passed a huge billboard that screamed: STOP OFFSHORE WIND. Below that, in somewhat smaller letters, it said: Never Experience the Jersey Shore the Same Way Again. Pictured was an array of wind turbines stretching from one edge of the billboard to the other. Together we marveled at the mentality that wants to preserve the scenic beauty of the seashore until the planet turns into a cosmic cinder and there’s no scenic beauty anywhere on the planet, or …
How Is This Possible?
by W.D. Ehrhart Where do I begin? Let’s just dive right in: Donald J. Trump claims he is the same as a veteran of military service because he went to a military academy as a schoolboy, though he avoided military service during the American War in Vietnam by obtaining a medical deferment for bone spurs from a podiatrist who was financially beholden to Trump’s father. Apparently, he learned a lot about war at the New York Military Academy because he has subsequently claimed that he knows more about war than career generals and admirals. He has considered awarding himself the Purple Heart Medal while musing …
New Life for Local Newspapers
by Jim Hightower How about a little bit of good news for a change? Specifically, good news about news. The demise of local newspapers has been a very depressing story in the last few years, with several thousand of them gobbled up by Wall Street profiteers. Those money powers loot the publications’ assets, then callously shut down each community’s paper, or reduces them to empty news shells. So that’s that—local print journalism is passé, right? Wrong! High-spirited, community-minded subscribers in places like Glen Rose (Texas), Hamburg (Iowa), Portland (Maine), and International Falls (Minnesota) are humming an upbeat tune of regeneration that could be titled “Not …
College Admissions: Foul & Fair
by W.D. Ehrhart I find myself fascinated by the current debate over the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College overturning a previous 2003 case and effectively gutting affirmative action in college admissions based on racial criteria. I recently retired from high school teaching, and I watched a lot of kids go through the college admissions ordeal. I had students who scored poorly on SATs and ACTs, but who were excellent students I was never reluctant to write college recommendations for because they were smart, savvy, hard-working, and well-grounded. And I had kids with superlative standardized …