Real Life | Real Issues

Communities adjust to natural gas drilling's impact

2011-05-12T13:50:09Z

(Undated) -- In his budget address two months ago, Governor Corbett pledged to make Pennsylvania the Texas of the natural gas boom. "Let's make Pennsylvania the hub of this boom," he said. "Just as the oil companies decided to headquarter in one of a dozen states with oil, let's make Pennsylvania the Texas of the natural gas boom." That's because most of the state sits on a potential gold mine of natural gas reserves located in the Marcellus Shale formation. Drillers have flocked to rural communities across the commonwealth to set up shop and start extracting the gas from deep underground. Those boroughs and townships suddenly find themselves face to face with the positives and negatives that come with the industry. witf's Real Life | Real Issues multimedia series, looks at the impact natural gas drilling has had on two communities in the northcentral part of Pennsylvania. Scott Detrow begins our trip in Bradford County. Then, witf's Tim Lambert and Scott Lamar discuss how Hughesville, Lycoming County, is adjusting to drilling activity.

{mp3remote}http://witf.vo.llnwd.net/o35/fmnews/rlrinatgas.mp3{/mp3remote}

Click here to view a slideshow

{gallery}slideshow_marcellus{/gallery}

Biggest thing since the CA gold rush

2011-05-03T22:28:19Z

The business owner stood and looked at the two reporters. "This is the biggest thing since...the California Gold Rush!" he said. He was referring to the boom in natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale formation in the Williamsport area. Others may not agree, since many feel the impact drilling may have on the state's environment may not be worth the big bucks some see flowing into communities across the commonwealth.

It's hard to argue that there's a bigger story in Pennsylvania, now than what's happening in the natural gas industry. From the controversial gas extraction method known as fracking to extract the gas to the impact of increased truck traffic on back roads in small communties to how drinking water may be affected, the issue appears to be in the headlines every day.

All this month, witf's multimedia Real Life | Real Issues series will focus on the many issues surrounding drilling in the Marcellus Shale formation. Diane McCormick of Central PA Magazine kicks off our coverage with her story, " Marcellus Shale: Good, Bad or Ugly?"

Throughout May, we'll feature stories and interviews on the topic on witf 89.5 & 93.3 in Chambersburg, witf's Radio Smart Talk and Smart Talk on witf TV.

Biggest thing since the CA gold rush

2011-05-03T19:00:00Z

Throughout May, we'll feature stories and interviews on the topic on witf 89.5 & 93.3 in Chambersburg, witf's Radio Smart Talk and Smart Talk on witf TV. ...

Working with Cancer

2011-04-27T18:49:11Z

After you’re diagnosed with cancer, there can be a lot running through your mind: how did this happen, how far has it progressed, am I going to survive? You might also wonder, how am I going to continue working? Cancer is difficult as it is, but trying to work through treatment just adds to the difficulty, and that’s what Pat Siegrist realized during her bout with breast cancer.

Siegrist is an Administrative Assistant for the American Cancer Society and she works with cancer patients regularly. “At the time of my treatment and still today I work in the Patient Navigation Center, which works with all the cancer patients calling in from around the state.” Little did she know that she would be one of those patients.

Siegrist is married and has a child, and her priorities are with her family. Even after her diagnosis, she remained adamant about taking care of her daughter, who was seven years old at the time. She chose to work through her chemo treatments and was glad to have worked through them.

“At times it was extremely tiring,” she says, “but still rewarding to keep my life as normal as possible.” Her chemo treatments occurred every two weeks for six months, with her first three months being the most intense. Especially because Siegrist had undergone a gastric bypass just months earlier. “With my body still adjusting to the gastric bypass process, it was like a double whammy to the system,” she says.

She scheduled her treatments on Thursdays and was not permitted to work the following day. Siegrist recalls, “my worst down time would start Saturday afternoons and by Sunday I was flat on the couch for the entire day.”

“After my first couple of chemo treatments, the tiredness set in pretty harshly. At that point, I started working half days. I would come to work in the morning and work until lunchtime. Then I would go home and nap all afternoon until my daughter got off the bus at 4:00pm. Then most evenings I was in bed at the same time as my daughter which was 8:00pm,” Siegrist says.

Although it was difficult, the chemo shrunk the tumor to the point that it was almost non-existent. Her doctor said she could choose a simple lumpectomy, but Siegrist wanted to get a mastectomy and have her breast reconstructed.

But that surgery had to be postponed for almost a month. As a side effect of her chemo, Siegrist developed shingles. She developed a rash on her head that went down her face. “It’s very common for a chemo patient to get shingles because the immune system is at such a low point.”

“But that delay worked well for me,” Siegrist says. “It gave me time to gain my strength back. By the time my first surgery came, I was back to working almost full days again.” After her first surgery, her doctors made her stay away from work for three months to recover. “You take for granted being able to dress yourself and put your own socks on. Every little thing I began to do on my own was a huge victory. The day I put on my own shoes and tied them was groundbreaking for me.”

Cancer treatment is difficult, but with the help of her family and friends, Siegrist was able to continue the process. “My co-workers watched me like a hawk,” she recalls. “If we had meetings in the office and someone had a cold or was sick, I was banned from the meetings, for my own protection.” Her mother was also a great help, going with her to almost every chemo treatment, never leaving her alone through the process. “Truthfully, while I was going through everything with chemo, I never really thought of myself as a cancer patient. I knew I was fighting to save my life, but it never really struck me that I was a cancer patient.”

This entire process was difficult for her, but with the help of family and friends, she was able to go through it with minimal complications. “Working through my chemo and cancer was extremely tough, but it also was rewarding at the same time,” Siegrist says. “It showed me how tough you can be and the courage you really don’t know you have. It shows you the generosity of others and how much love everyone has.”

Life in the Time of the Marcellus

2011-04-19T22:36:28Z

While the Marcellus Shale is in the news today because of what it contains, it may be helpful to explain what it is.

The Marcellus rock layer is mostly shale that settled on the bottom of an inland sea around 390 million years ago in the Middle Devonian epoch, over a period of about 2 million years. Today’s Allegheny Plateau and the adjacent ‘ridge and valley’ portion of the Appalachians were at the time an area of very low elevation, termed the Appalachian Basin. While this area is most notable for the coal that formed from swampy forests about 90 million years later, the Marcellus was deposited at a time when the basin was filled with an unusually deep sea devoid of oxygen, somewhat like the Baltic Sea today.

The sea had deepened because North America was buckling under the force of Europe, which had just attached itself to Canada and Greenland. The upward bend that formed the new Acadian Mountains between the two continents produced a corresponding downward bend in the Appalachian basin. As the new mountains began to erode, they began to fill the Appalachian basin with sediment, starting in the area of the Catskills in New York and flowing to the southwest.

The Marcellus shale contains few large fossils because the depth and lack of oxygen in the sea kept it sparsely inhabited. However, the same dearth of oxygen also prevented the dead plankton and bacteria that fell to the seafloor from decaying; these organisms are still with us today in the form of natural gas trapped within the pores of the rock.

Those large fossils that are found in the Marcellus tend to be in small sub-layers of limestone that formed in brief periods of lower sea levels. Brachiopods, organisms that resemble scallops or mussels but are very different biologically than mollusks, were very common; the brachiopod genus Lingula, present in the Marcellus formation, survives to this day with only small alterations. Bivalve mollusks, snails, crinoids (‘Sea Lilies’) and trilobites such as the Pennsylvania state fossil Phacops rana lived on the seafloor. Above them lived shelled cephalopods: the nautiloids, whose modern-day relative is the nautilus; and the ammonites, which are extinct, but are more closely related to the modern octopus and squid.

Small fossils similar to those found in the Marcellus shale can be found at a public fossil-digging site along Bear Hole Trail at Swatara State Park near Grantville, PA. The exposed rock layer is brightly colored shale from the Mahantango Formation, which sits atop the Marcellus and is only a few million years younger.

Although Marcellus fossils consist mainly of creatures with shells, there were a wide variety of fish alive at the time; the Devonian period is often called “the Age of Fishes” because of their diversity. Most notable were the placoderms, armored fish with jaws. More heavily-armored placoderms shuffled along the seafloor, while more flexible species prowled the water above. Also present were acanthodians, nicknamed “spiny sharks” for their shape and the large spines that supported their fins. Though these now-extinct types of fish were dominant at the time, relatives of today’s fish had also appeared, including sharks, ray-finned fish and the lobe-finned fish that are the relatives of modern coelacanths, lungfish, and land vertebrates.

However, the most important changes to life on Earth in the Devonian period took place on land. At the beginning of the Devonian, 416 million years ago, land plants were tiny green stems without true leaves or roots, or were non-vascular plants like mosses and liverworts. By 390 million years ago when the Marcellus shale was formed, plants such as the Maine state fossil Pertica quadrifaria had grown to around 6 feet tall and had small leaflike branches to take in more sunlight. The first known forest, found in Gilboa, New York, dates to only 5 million years later and consists of the first known tree, Wattieza.

Wattieza grew to around 25-40 feet high and looked somewhat like a modern tree fern. Its trunk bulged outwards at the bottom to support its weight, as it lacked true roots. By the end of the Devonian 360 million years ago, forests were filled with the tree Archaeopteris, which had strong, deep roots and a sturdy trunk. Although plants still reproduced entirely by spores, which restricted them to wet lowlands, the growth of forests provided food for larger land animals and increased the oxygen in the atmosphere, producing long-lasting ecological and climate changes.

As for Devonian land animals, wingless insects and arachnids were common, feeding on the small plants and on each other. The first four-legged land vertebrates had previously been thought to have evolved near the end of the Devonian, the time of their earliest surviving fossil skeletons. However, in 2009 Polish researchers found the salamander-like tracks of a creature several feet long walking across a tidal mudflat, preserved in a 395 million year old rock.

One other unsolved mystery of the early and middle Devonian (and the preceding Silurian period) concerns a fossil called Prototaxites that defies categorization. At first sight it appears to be a petrified tree trunk up to 25 feet in height. However, it is not only older than the first trees, but under a microscope it reveals a fungus-like substructure of tangled fibers, rather than the orderly fibers of plants. The scientist who first identified the fossil in the 19^th century mistook it for a rotten tree trunk; in following decades theories have variously identified the organism as an enormous alga, fungus or lichen towering over the tiny plants of the time. The most recent theory postulates that the fossilized columns are actually mats of small plants called liverworts that had rolled up like a carpet under the force of the wind. Under modern conditions this seems ridiculous, but primitive plants were not strongly rooted to the ground, and there were no trees to break the force of the wind.

So, whenever you turn on a gas stove, remember that what is cooking your dinner may have been alive at a time when the land itself was Earth’s great new frontier.

PHOTO: The brachiopod genus Lingula, present in the Marcellus formation, survives to this day with only small alterations. Scale line = 1 centimeter. (Credit: Laurie VanVleet, Ithaca City School District, from the collection of the Paleontological Research Institution [PRI], Ithaca, New York). View the original on Flickr.

RLRI: witf staffers experience dealing with cancer

2011-04-14T13:47:00Z

(Harrisburg) -- witf's Facing Cancer Together is an interactive, multimedia effort to connect the stories and lives of people touched by cancer Since it just launched this week, witf's Tim Lambert got to thinking about the people around him and how they might have been impacted by the disease. Cancer has had an impact on Lambert's family. His late mom survived breast cancer when he was very young, his dad is a prostate cancer survivor and his wife's first husband passed away from lung cancer. As part of Facing Cancer Together, Tim talked with several fellow witf staff members about their experiences for our Real Life | Real Issues series.

{mp3remote}http://witf.vo.llnwd.net/o35/RealLifeRealIssues/RLRI_0414_FCT_WEB01_0.mp3{/mp3remote}

Listen to more witf Staffers: In Their Own Words

	Mark Duncan: {mp3remote}http://witf.vo.llnwd.net/o35/RealLifeRealIssues/markdweb.mp3{/mp3remote}
	Suzanne McKinnon: {mp3remote}http://witf.vo.llnwd.net/o35/RealLifeRealIssues/suzannemweb.mp3{/mp3remote}
	Joe Ulrich: {mp3remote}http://witf.vo.llnwd.net/o35/RealLifeRealIssues/joeuwebwav.mp3{/mp3remote}
	Brandon Sheaffer: {mp3remote}http://witf.vo.llnwd.net/o35/RealLifeRealIssues/brandonsweb.mp3{/mp3remote}
	Joanne Cassaro: {mp3remote}http://witf.vo.llnwd.net/o35/RealLifeRealIssues/joannecweb.mp3{/mp3remote}
	Gabrielle Hafen: {mp3remote}http://witf.vo.llnwd.net/o35/RealLifeRealIssues/gabriellehweb.mp3{/mp3remote}
	Jon Walker {mp3remote}http://witf.vo.llnwd.net/o35/RealLifeRealIssues/johnweb.mp3{/mp3remote}
	Craig Rhodes {mp3remote}http://witf.vo.llnwd.net/o35/RealLifeRealIssues/craigrweb.mp3{/mp3remote}

Learn more at Facing Cancer Together

RLRI: Lancaster family adjusts to life in the Sandwich Generation

2011-03-31T13:45:10Z

(Lancaster) -- People who are caring for their aging parents, while supporting their own children have been dubbed the Sandwich Generation. The term is relatively new, having been added to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary in July 2006. This month, our Real Life | Real Issues series is looking at how some midstate families are adjusting to life as part of the Sandwich Generation. WITF's Tim Lambert visits with one in Lancaster County.

{mp3remote}http://witf.vo.llnwd.net/o35/fmnews/rlrisandwich.mp3{/mp3remote}

{gallery}slideshow_Sandwich_Generation{/gallery}

"Where's Mom?' – The Sandwich Generation: A Teenager's Perspective

2011-03-29T18:38:33Z

I live in a cozily disorganized home in Mechanicsburg that I share with my 20-year-old brother, Kevin, and my 58-year-old mom. I’m 17 and a senior in high school. Down the street, in a white ranch home lives my 80-year-old grandma, Lillian, for whom I was named.

Our family sounds average enough from this description, but we are part of a unique group: The Sandwich Generation. This refers primarily to my mom – the one in the middle of caring for two generations of her family. The challenges faced by this generation are distinct and affect everyone in the family, not just the person in the middle.

My grandma moved to Mechanicsburg from Escondido, California, about six years ago, after her husband passed away and she didn’t want to be alone. Before the move, my mom spent a month in California living with her mother and helping her get ready to leave. The two of them sold or donated some of my grandma’s items and packed up the rest on a moving truck. They hired someone to drive the truck across country since that trip was out of the question for my grandma; she was flying to Pennsylvania first class as quickly and painlessly as possible.

When my grandma first moved here, everything was a big family affair. We had get-togethers regularly with my aunt, uncle, and their two sons, who lived down the street as well. I remember this being a lot of fun since I wasn’t used to having family around. Looking back, maybe we actually did it to make my grandma’s new beginning more appealing to her. (The snowy winters brought a whole new challenge.)

My grandma is not high-maintenance and still hangs on to every bit of independence she can. After my mom helped her learn her way around, she was happy to go shopping by herself some mornings and pick up her own medications each month. However, as a wary woman used to the same doctors for 10 years, my mom accompanied her to all of her appointments.

The longer my grandma stayed here, the more she seemed to go into “mom mode.” It seemed to me like she acted as if my mom was no more than 15 years old. She didn’t like my mom’s old t-shirts, so she bought her nicer clothes that my mother would never have picked out. She said “be careful” more than any other words. She commented on the way my mother ate, viewed politics, handled her marriage, raised her kids. The more my grandma imposed herself on my mom, the more my mom started acting like a child trying to appease her mother. Sometimes they argued like a teenager and her mom, sometimes she just said “OK, Mom” and changed the subject or got quiet.

At home, she was not much for order. I’m a rather obsessive organizer so this drove me crazy. She used to make dinner pretty often, but after my parents separated two years ago that decreased quite a bit. I started making dinner about three nights a week, always cleaning up at least part of the mess. For a decent length of time, I went to school then came home and cooked. Sometimes I did everyone’s laundry more often than my mom did. Her mother would take her out for a few hours a day to accompany her on errands, then my mom would go out some more on her own or garden until dark.

During my parents’ separation, my mom’s visits to grandma became less frequent. My grandma upset her with comments about money, the divorce, my dad in general. I could tell it was hard for her to be directed by her mom during such a tough time, to respond respectfully to her comments.

My mom had consumed her life with pleasing everyone else but herself: her kids, her husband, her mom. Eventually, I think all the sides felt suffocating. For a few months last year, it seemed to me like she didn’t go anywhere. During this time, her brother and his wife took on the daily visits to Grandma. We’re very lucky there was someone nearby who could do help. Many Sandwich Generation parents seem to take full responsibility for their kids and parents because think they are the only ones who can help. Even if there is someone else, like a sibling, who can share the job, parents seem wary to ask.

Lately, she’s started going out with her mom again, accompanying her on a couple of errands a week or going to appointments. But not every day. My mom says for her one of the hardest parts of being in this generation is watching her mom change both physically and mentally, becoming less active than she used to be. Some picture the middle person in the Sandwich Generation to be some sort of supermom, but it’s not always what it seems. My mom has health issues of her own to deal with, along with those of her mother. The challenges of being in the Sandwich Generation do not go away for any of the parties involved, even if things are running smoothly.

This year, I will graduate from high school. My aunt wants a big backyard party; I want to go out for dessert after the ceremony. However, we’re not going to do either of these things. My grandma does not like to go out after dark often, if ever, so we decided to all have a nice brunch together the day before the ceremony instead. Compromises such as this one are common in the Sandwich Generation.

I approach my mom to talk about caring for both her mom and her kids. She’s cheerful and asks me to curl up in her lap and snuggle with her like I did when I was very young. I oblige because I like it when I’m the kid and she’s the parent. I ask her how I’m helpful to her. She says that, more than anything, she appreciates when I visit her mom. She thinks it’s important that someone see her mom every day, but that it can’t always be her. I’ve known this for a while, but I’m glad she sees it now, too.

The Sandwich Generation

2011-03-03T23:50:01Z

Couples across the midstate are facing the sometimes difficult task of caring for their parents and raising their children. Dubbed the Sandwich Generation, they find themselves facing additional stresses on their daily lives, from coping with aging parents to planning for retirement to making sure their kids get the attention they need. All this month, WITF’s multimedia series, Real Life | Real Issues, will look at how the Sandwich Generation adjusts to life in a multi-generational household. Central PA Magazine kicks things off with the article, "Practical Caregiving." If you are part of this group of families, please feel free to share your story in our comments section.

Are you a part of the Sandwich Generation?

2011-03-03T05:28:24Z

WITF’s Real Life | Real Issues: the Sandwich Generation needs your help. Do you know anyone who is dealing with caring for parents, while also raising kids? WITF would like to talk to them about how they handle that huge responsibility. Please contact Tim Lambert at news@witf.org

We're all one step away from being homeless...

2011-03-02T01:51:00Z

Even before the nation's economy collapsed, hundreds of thousands of Americans lived on the streets - homeless. Now, two years later, many more Central PA residents are in limbo - some without jobs and, increasingliy, without homes. How has the homeless population changed in recent years, and what can be done to provide effective aid to those in need? Join WITF in a partnership with the United Way of Lancaster County for a conversation on the evolving challenges of homlessness.

WITF's original production, One Step Away: A Community Forum on Homelessnes, aired Tuesday, March 1, at 8 p.m.

Watch the program online!

One Step Away: A Community Forum on Homelessness is sponsored by The S. Dale High Family Foundation.

Panelists include:

Pat LaMarche	Phil Wenger
Vice President of Safe Harbour	President of Issac's Restaurant and Deli and Co-Chair of Lancaster County Coalition to End Homelessness
Chuck Wingate	Tina Nixon
Executive Director of Bethesda Mission	CEO of YWCA of Harrisburg and member of the Capital Area Coalition on Homelessness

Moderated by: Nell McCormack Abom

Hard Times at the Holidays -- Chantee Williams

2010-12-20T18:51:09Z

"It's the most wonderful time of the year. It's the hap-happiest season of all" croons Andy Williams describing, of course, Christmas. For many Pennsylvanians, Christmas time brings a reminder of the places they are not, the goals that remain unaccomplished and the struggles and challenges that they face every day. These daily stresses can be compounded by the pressure to feel hap-happy and the confusion of others about why they are not. Chantee Wiliiams and her four-year-old daughter, Sanai, have lived in Harrisburg city for about two years after moving to Pennsylvania from New York. Chantee is a single parent, works in a fast food restaurant, and is committed to creating a better life for young Sanai. Sanai shows me proudly around her home pointing out her Christmas tree as well as her washing machine and refrigerator and explaining politely that she and her mom have an upstairs AND a downstairs. Though her family's challenges are difficult, Chantee talks about trying to create the magic she thinks Christmas should be for Sanai.

VIEW PHOTOS here...

WATCH VIDEO:

Chantee Williams describes a typical morning

Chantee Williams shares the dreams she has for her daughter

Chantee Williams talks about what Christmas memories she has growing up

Chantee Williams talks about trying to put together Christmas for her daughter

Chantee Williams talks about the increase in stress at Christmas

Chantee Williams talks about what she wants Christmas to mean for her daughter

RLRI: Harrisburg mom tries to get life back on track

2010-12-16T14:56:22Z

(Harrisburg) -- The holidays are a joyful time for many -- a chance to celebrate with family and friends. But for others, this time of year can be a difficult reminder of the everyday challenges they face. As part of our Real Life | Real Issues series, "Hard Times at the Holidays," WITF's Tim Lambert visits with a Harrisburg woman whose family has faced one obstacle after another.

LISTEN TO STORY:

{mp3}rlriholidays{/mp3}

VIEW PICTURES: Images

WATCH VIDEO: SEGMENT #1:

SEGMENT #2:

SEGMENT #3:

SEGMENT #4:

Real Life I Real Issues: Immigration

2010-12-15T02:57:00Z

WITF's Tim Lambert produced a two-part series on immigration in central PA. The first story focuses on the concerns of the region's agricultural industry about the impact of potential immigration reforms. The second tells the tale of illegal immigration and its impact on the workforce, through the voices of an illegal immigrant, a pizza store manager who knowingly hires people in the U.S. illegally and a man who has lost jobs in the past because his supervisor hired illegal workers.

(The stories include the lead-ins and outros).

{mp3remote}http://witf.vo.llnwd.net/o35/fmfeatures/immigrationseries.mp3{/mp3remote}

RLRI: Hard Times at the Holidays

2010-12-03T17:48:07Z

(Undated) -- Some 110,000 illegal immigrants were estimated to have jobs in Pennsylvania last year. That's about 1.8 percent of the state's workforce, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. But, who are these workers? Who hires them? Who suffers the consequences? In our Real Life | Real Issues series on immigration in central PA, WITF's Tim Lambert reports on three stories, three voices, offering their own answers.