The LuLac Edition #131, Jan. 15th, 2007

PHOTO INDEX: GOVERNOR ED AND HIS BLOGGER FAN, GROUP PHOTO OF FORMER TIMES LEADER COLUMNIST STEVE CORBETT, FORMER WILKES BARRE CITY ADMINISTRATOR HARRY MILLER, FORMER DISTRICT ATTORNEY COREALLE STEVENS, YOUR BLOG EDITOR WHEN HE COULD ACTUALLY PLAY SOFTBAL, RUN AND AMBULATE WITHOUT A CANE AND SOFTBALL PITCHER TEDDY GLAZINSKI.

RENDELL'S SECOND COMING

The ceremonies for the second term of the Rendell administration are set to begin. As usual, the network of record will be PCN. Starting on Monday, January 15 at 8:00 p.m., PCN will take a look back at some past state inaugurations. Then the action will get going on Tuesday, January 16 starting at 10:00 a.m. with live coverage of the swearing-in ceremonies of Lt. Governor Catherine Baker Knoll and Governor Ed Rendell as well as the Inaugural Ball and Gala that night at 7:00 p.m. Unlike 2003, I did not recieve an invitation to the Inagural festivities. I'm going to miss Frankie Avalon and the wife squeezing into this incredible Royall Blue number for thew ball, but on the other hand I'm saving money on gas and tux rental. This time, I will watch it from the comfort of my living room. The weather promises to be as cold this year as it was in 2003. Here is a program schedule for this year's activities:



PA Gubernatorial Inaugurations
8:00 PM
Gov. Author James Inauguration, 1939


8:05 PM
Gov. George Leader Inauguration, 1955


8:35 PM
Gov. Raymond Shafer Inauguration, 1967


9:10 PM
Gov. Milton Shapp Inauguration, 1971


9:55 PM
Gov. Dick Thornburgh Inauguration, 1979


10:25 PM
Gov. Robert Casey Inauguration, 1987


11:30 PM
Gov. Robert Casey Inauguration, 1991


12:00 AM
Gov. Robert Casey Inaugural Ball


12:10 AM
Gov. Tom Ridge Inauguration, 1995


1:00 AM
Gov. Tom Ridge Inaugural Address, 1999


1:30 AM
Gov. Mark Schweiker Inauguration, 2001


2:25 AM
Gov. Ed Rendell Swearing-In Ceremony, 2003





TUESDAY, JANUARY 16, 2007


6:00 AM
PCN Profiles Scott Newkam

Chair and CEO, Hershey Entertainment & Resorts


7:00 AM
PCN Tours Philadelphia Ethnic Markets


7:45 AM
PCN Tours Afro-American Collection

Philadelphia


8:00 AM
Gov. John Fisher Inauguration, 1927


8:15 AM
Gov. Mark Schweiker Inauguration, 2001


9:10 AM
Gov. Ed Rendell Swearing-In Ceremony, 2003


10:00 AM
Inauguration Day - LIVE

Vincent Carocci, Former Press Secretary for Gov. Robert Casey

David LaTorre, Former Press Secretary for Gov. Mark Schweiker

Swearing-In of Lt. Governor Catherine Baker-Knoll

Swearing-In of Gov. Ed Rendell

Open Phones


2:00 PM
Inauguration Day

Vincent Carocci, Former Press Secretary for Gov. Robert Casey

David LaTorre, Former Press Secretary for Gov. Mark Schweiker

Swearing-In of Lt. Governor Catherine Baker-Knoll

Swearing-In of Gov. Ed Rendell


5:45 PM
Weather World - LIVE


6:00 PM
Inaugural Celebration of the Arts

Indiana University of PA Jazz Ensemble

Governor's School of Arts Students, Harrisburg


7:00 PM
Inaugural Concert - LIVE

Jon Bob Jovi

Robert Randolph & The Family Band

Jill Scott

Frankie Avalon


9:00 PM
Inaugural Ball - LIVE


10:00 PM
Swearing-In of Gov. Ed Rendell.

CORBETT RETURNS

If you tuned into the Sue Henry program on Martin Luther King Day, you heard the dulcet tones of Mr. Steve Corbett who used to work for the Times Leader. Corbett's column followed TL opinion writers like Hank Pearson, Bill Thompson and Jean Torkleson. Corbett's columns always made people talk if not wince. Personally, having been on the positive and negative side of Corbett writings, my feelings toward the guy's opinions are mixed. However, no one can argue that when you were mentioned in a Corbett column, you became part of the local pop culture whether you wanted to or not. Corbett sounded a little more subdued but still is as full of opinions as he used to be on Friday night get togethers at a little bar on Parish Street called Schnappsies. (Actually it was a combination bar and Mexican restaurant that had the best Mexican food I've ever eaten in my life. Somehow, I wound up managing their softball team)and Corbett and his girl (as he called her) hung out there. Corbett left the Valley to go to California. He was replaced by Casey Jones who turned out to be a non entity as a writer. According to the California newspaper's website,(Santa Maria Times. com ) it looks like he left there sometime in 2005. Corbett's writing style was personal. In a piece he wrote for his paper, The Santa Maria Times, he recalled a visit to Wilkes Barre and reflected on the Mary Leo killing. Here's that article:

New home, old home a paradox of similarities

When the plane touched down Tuesday night in Santa Maria, I stepped into the cool night air and gave thanks for my good fortune. After spending a week in the sweltering East Coast heat and humidity, I was thrilled to be home.
I even missed the marine layer - a phenomenon that I tried and failed to explain to family and friends.
My "new" home meets my needs far better than life in my old home, where I grew and learned but eventually decided to move on. Although we have our problems in Santa Maria, desperation defines a diminishing quality of life in the Pennsylvania city I used to call home.
Last Thursday afternoon, with the thermometer hitting 96 and the humidity feeling as thick as Pea Soup Andersen's specialty, I drove past block after block of abandoned buildings before stepping into the air-conditioned refuge of a state store.
That's what the government calls places that sell bottles of liquor and wine in Pennsylvania. In the "Keystone State," you can't buy those products anywhere else. Weird as it sounds, I picked up three Central Coast wines, including one from Santa Maria that I had never heard of before.
People I knew in the store expressed surprise that I had returned and quickly brought me up to date. Life in South Wilkes-Barre was worse than ever. Crime, drugs, prostitution and poverty were particularly worse than ever.
As we talked, I watched through the window as cops swarmed the parking lot and cuffed some emaciated-looking no-account. Whatever his alleged offense, four city squad cars and a county sheriff's cruiser seemed a bit much to take him into custody.
But the cops were making up for lost time because they couldn't make up for lost life.
Two days earlier, just steps from the grandiose police presence, somebody stabbed and killed 87-year-old Mary Leo in her apartment above the hot dog restaurant that has been in her family for generations. Deaf but otherwise in good health, she lived alone and took pride in caring for herself as the neighborhood around her fell apart.
Knowing that the dying neighborhood where I lived was just a few blocks from the murder scene all the more reaffirmed in my mind why I had exchanged what I knew best for a new life in a land about which I knew so little.Still, good news among friends and neighbors grew between the cracks of the downtown squalor and heartache - blossoming despite delusional community leaders who sound more like cult leaders as they hawk "I Believe" as a business development slogan.Serious crime happens everywhere and Santa Maria has its share.But, life is very different here.Trying to explain us to them became an exercise in futility. To them, California is a liberal place where we perform the "litmus test" for the rest of America. Between beers, another of my cousins sang, "If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair" as if the message in the song from the late 1960s still shapes the Golden State, let alone San Francisco.Maybe it never did.Yeah, we're weird, all right, I said, but for reasons very different from those you might expect. I'm still trying to get a grip on California history - how and why this vast state became what it is.A frontier streak of independence still exists here that I've never dealt with before, compounded by a distinctly Californian libertarianism that I had no reason to know existed. Also, political parties aren't as strong or as organized here as the politics I knew all my life there.But what we still have going for us here that they have lost there is a great willingness to embrace the international influences that make my growing city of 90,000 a glorious melting pot of race and ethnicity.Of course, not everybody in Santa Maria is part of the welcoming committee or wants to be. But, unlike Wilkes-Barre, a city of about 42,000 where population and business continue to crash and burn, this city still depends on newly-arrived immigrants to labor in its core industry.Here, immigrants farm.There, immigrants used to mine coal.There, what are called "coal fields" closed long ago.Here, the strawberry, broccoli and lettuce fields remain open.Big city hopelessness is bleeding unchecked into smaller East Coast cities.Mary Leo is another casualty.I didn't know Leo personally, but I remember her old-fashioned manners from when I used to occasionally stop by the tiny restaurant as I walked the streets of another city in another time. Now, as I walk the streets here, I sometimes think of there.And I'm very sorry for their trouble.