Death From the Skies!

Philip Plait, Viking Adult, 2008, $16

“If you’re a chronic worrier, consider avoiding Philip Plait’s Death From the Skies! However, if you’re fascinated by the cosmos despite its hazards, you’ll find this a great read. With wry humor, astronomer Plait lovingly details how the Earth could be devastated — or obliterated — by asteroids, a gamma ray burst, wandering black holes and other cosmic calamities. The good news is that most of these events are unlikely to occur anytime in the next few million or billion years. The bad news is that, if one does, you’re going to regret making all of those prudent long-term investments.”

— Ken Wolgemuth, naturalist and writer, Thompsontown

Looking for something different, delicious and inexpensive to add to your dining-out routine?

You might want to consider Egyptian fare. It fits all three preceding descriptions and is available in Harrisburg, just minutes from downtown.

Sphinx of PA — yes, that’s its official name — is located in a smallish strip mall along Paxton Street, just west of the much larger Harrisburg Mall. It is not the sort of place that might grab your attention as you’re driving by.

It's possible that John L. Felix Jr. once sat on the Conestoga Valley High School bleachers that have now been recycled into his bathroom cabinets. "The irony of ironies is, that's where I began my teaching career," says Felix, now principal of Donegal High School and first owner of a Lancaster County Career & Technology Center "Apprentice Green" home, a four-bedroom house in Mount Joy Township.

An impressive array of solar panels perches on top of a four-story building in Midtown Harrisburg, soaking up the rays of the sun and transforming them into power to light hallways, run computers and lift elevators. Underneath the building is a geothermal system that draws power from the earth and uses it to heat and cool the building, which sits on land that had to be cleaned up and redeveloped because it was once home to a gas station. In between, the building houses classrooms where students learn abou the latest in environmentally friendly technology.

The creation of the Green Center of Central Pennsylvania, which is housed in the Campus Square Building at North Third and Reily Streets, was announced last May. "The primary goal of the Green Center is to facilitate mainstreaming green technologies so they make financial sense for the businesses and residents of Central PA," says Jill A. Gaito, executive director.

The one moment in the movie Ice Age that always makes me laugh out loud is when the little prehistoric proto-sloth creature somehow knocks two pieces of flint together, inadvertently creating a spark and turning a pile of sticks into a makeshift campfire. Whereupon he dances around making self-congratulatory statements and christening himself “Lord of the Flame.” At which point the sarcastic mammoth dryly observes, “Hey, Lord of the Flame, your tail’s on fire.”

Artisan bread is just that — artistic. It has its “artistry” baked in, much like an oak table that is painstakingly pieced together by its maker, cut, polished and filled with pride. Like that table, artisan bread is hand-crafted, produced either one at a time or in small batches, with no two alike. These loaves claim a historic past that goes back to our country’s very beginnings, when women mixed and kneaded basic ingredients such as yeast, flour, water and salt.