Talking to a contractor tonight – he said he did not think they will not make the new deadline.

A “special report” appeared on March 27 entitled: “The young & the homeless Students who live in motels, shelters or even cars are an ongoing nationwide and local problem. Lancaster and Hempfield, the county’s two biggest school districts, are coping with troubling increases.”

WATCHDOG: Two wags of the tail for this timely, informative and compelling article. It demonstrates that when the New Era allows reporters enough time to investigate, it can turn out quality product.

Special to NewsLanc from H. Michael Gray. Gray wrote the original screenplay for “The China Syndrome.” His book, “The Warning: Accident at TMI,” is based on his on-scene reporting, operator interviews, and the five official studies that followed.

The “unplanned event” at Three Mile Island 30 years ago this month was set in motion by the failure of a $20 check valve in a half-inch copper pipe. That minor incident led to a series of cascading failures that presented the men in the control room with a situation they had never seen before and had never been trained to handle. With key instruments gone haywire, flying blind, they made a couple of bad choices that wiped out the plant and released a still unknown amount of radioactivity into the air.

For several years, the wreckage of the reactor itself was too hot to approach so we didn’t know how close we had come. But when the inspectors were finally able to lower a camera into the pressure vessel, the image was a heart-stopper. There was nothing left of the 150-ton uranium core but rubble. Parts of it had turned to liquid. Which means that at some moment on that fateful Wednesday, the reactor at TMI was within 30 minutes of the “China Syndrome” — a melt-down comparable to the disaster at Chernobyl. Had it not been for a lucky operator who flipped a switch to see what would happen, the Pennsylvania state capitol might now be a ghost town.

The current world-wide scramble for dwindling oil reserves is forcing us to take another look at good neighbor nuke. But before we hit the on-switch, we need to carefully consider the lessons of Chernobyl and TMI: nuclear power is a completely unforgiving technology. The worst-case scenario must always be front and center — because Murphy’s Law turns out to be as immutable as the law of gravity. “If something can go wrong, it will.”

In an article titled “Nuclear’s comeback isn’t cheered by all”, the Intell reports “Currently, 17 companies have applied to the NRC for 26 licenses, and new plants may soon be built, creating as many as 100,000 new jobs.”

WATCHDOG: Shh! Don’t tell the New Era. They wrote nuclear energy’s obituary a couple of weeks back.

ALL business should open and close with longer hours and be consistent for at least the first 6 months. That would give a consistent shot to drawing visitors onto the street.

Otherwise, forget it, they will not leave the building unless they are staying at the Brunswick or the Arts Hotel and are going to walk back.

At Thursday’s Lancaster County Convention Center Board Meeting, several local artists addressed the Board with concerns that the surrounding art community was not properly informed of a potential business opportunity. On February 19, a Request for Proposal (RFP) was published by the Lancaster County Convention Center Authority (LCCCA) for over $78,000 worth of art for Lancaster County Convention Center.

With a tight proposal deadline and limited notification, many artists were left with as little as five days to submit their proposals, while many of the project parameters required unusual dimensions in which most artists could not provide existing material.

One Pequea resident, who recently opened an art gallery in Downtown Lancaster, spoke firmly to the Board regarding his disappointment with the process: “While I applaud the Authority’s interest in supporting the local artists, I must say that the planning and implementation of the release of that information, I believe, was flawed.” While acknowledging the difficulties of coordinating a slew of last-minute work requests, he asserted that this problem, at the very least, exhibited a lack of connection to the local art community—particularly those located Downtown.

Executive Director Kevin Molloy provided some helpful explanation for the rushed proposal deadline: “Originally, the plan by the architects did not have the level of artwork involved with the Convention Center that we are now….We had listened to some public comment, and we flipped that 180 [degree turn around], rather late in the game.”

Molloy also noted that the aforementioned art requests will not likely cover all wall-space that could potentially be fitted with local art. The Board made assurances that, the next time around, there will be a more rigorous effort both to notify the local art community and to allow sufficient time for response.

Although noting the unavoidable complications surrounding the recent RFP, Chairman Art Morris asserted that he is “sorry” that the process didn’t reach as many artists as possible.

Thursday evening Lancaster’s duo-pianists Veri & Jamanis performed “An Evening with George Gershwin” before a packed Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall. The audience of almost three hundred expressed great enthusiasm after each number and gave them a standing ovation at the concert’s conclusion.

For those with memory going back to decades of the couples’ New York recitals, the evening was especially satisfying.

A bus load of devotees made the trip from Lancaster and back after the concert, arriving mid-afternoon to allow passengers time to do a bit of sight seeing and to stretch their legs.

Fran Veri obviously was enjoying her solo performance of the Gershwin “Song Book” of seventeen popular numbers starting with “Swanee” and concluding with “I Got Rhythm.” The duo performed “Variations on ‘I Got Rhythm’” at the outset followed by a Veri arrangement of “An American in Paris.”

The couple concluded with a performance of “Rhapsody in Blue” that ‘brought down the house.’

Veri is a native of Lancaster, the daughter of a physician. The couple have resided locally for well over forty years and are the artistic founders of the Pennsylvania Academy of Music. They met in New York City while students at the famed Julliard School of Music.

The audience had come to hear Gershwin played at its best and as it was written: for one and two pianos. It was clear from the its rapt attention throughout the performances, comments at Intermission and happy faces when filing out that that the attendees were delighted.

An article appears with a frowning picture of State Representative Mike Sturla headed “Sturla’s nonprofit may be scrutinized by AG.” The opening sentences are: “The case of the once-powerful state lawmaker accused of misusing money from a nonprofit he founded is likely to shed light on a small number of similar foundations in Pennsylvania, including one started by Rep. Mike Sturla here. Investigators with the state Attorney General’s Office are ’scrutinizing’ the nonprofits created by legislators who serve on their boards and get almost all their money from the state, said Kevin Harley, a spokesman for the office.”

WATCHDOG: Gee, we figure good old Mike is going to have to do time in the slammer!

But wait: Two thirds down the lengthly articles we discover: “But no one has alleged or even suggested that Sturla or LIVE has done anything wrong. In fact, the nonprofit’s IRS filings show the group has funded dozens of projects in the community — playgrounds, book drives, free smoke detectors and the like —with money it received from the state Department of Community and Economic Development.”

What a relief! What a con!

By Cliff B. Lewis

The used books business is a tough one these days. With big-box outlets drawing the masses to their pseudo coffee shop environments, and with online networks connecting buyers to individual booksellers, people too quickly overlook the simple pleasure of strolling through aisles of thoughtfully arranged hardbacks or the sweet dry fragrance of time on pages once-read.

Of course, a walk on Chestnut Street might jog one’s memory. On 11 and 529 W Chestnut Street are two such thoughtful and inviting bookshops.

Chestnut Street Books, at 11 W Chestnut, has been the endeavor of Warren and Mar Anderson since 1991. Before setting up shop, the couple made their final decision to move here from Baltimore after Warren had visited Onion’s Café in Lancaster City: “I had coffee and chatted with the woman who was running the place….I thanked her and went on my way, and I hadn’t gotten maybe half a block, and here she comes, running down the street, because I’d walked off and left my portfolio on the counter. And I said to myself: ‘What would be the probability of somebody doing that in Baltimore? Zero!’”

In the last 18 years, the Andersons have garnered a fluent handling of the skills required for used book-selling: An encyclopedic knowledge of literary works, authors, genres; a sharp memory for the faces and interests of repeat customers; an innate understanding of the value of different books in different places. According to Warren, a good used book store is measured by the quality of its selection: “Any idiot can put out bad books or common books…that you can hardly walk down the street without tripping over a copy; but putting out good books, interesting books that are in good shape…that’s what makes the difference between a good book store and an inferior bookstore, in my opinion.”

Unfortunately for the City of Lancaster, Chestnut Street Books will only remain open beyond July of this year. Proud of what this post-retirement project has accomplished, Warren says “the problem is that, just about the time that you have learned how to do it, you realize that you are now too old to do it.” This little bookshop near Chestnut and Queen will surely be missed.

Fortunately for the City, however, there will still remain another used bookseller—and on the same stretch of road, no less! Dogstar Books, at 529 W Chestnut, was opened by Brian Frailey in 2006. The new establishment boasts a hip and colorful atmosphere, located just across the street from the quaint Chestnut Hill Café.

Frailey opened the shop as a supplement to an online business that he had already been running for several years. The physical location served as a way to sell inexpensive books not worth the shipping cost and to keep his work interesting: “Selling online, there’s a lot of time and work, and you don’t ever have a social life. At least, when you’re in the shop, people come in and talk to you.” Since Dogstar’s opening, the shop has played host to a broad variety of Downtown social and cultural events, from poetry readings to art galleries to musical performances.

Though the market can be rough, the used books business is here to stay in Downtown Lancaster. They exist to promote good literature, good conversation, and one of the most obvious forms of recycling. It would surely be a benefit to all if we local residents would stop by these establishments next time we think of driving to the nearest big-box.

“At the LCCCA Finance Committee meeting this past Monday evening, there was a discussion about moving the LCCCA offices a few weeks after the hotel and convention center opened for business on April 21. It is obvious that at least 36 hours before this announcement the LCCCA leadership had no idea this delay was coming.

“At the LCCCA PR, Marketing, and Hospitality committee meeting on Thursday, March 19, Josh Nowak of Interstate Hotels and Resorts presented his usual report, with no mention of the possibility of a delay. It is possible that IHR didn’t know about this delay in advance, either.

“There is a video on Lancaster Online of Tom Smithgall from High stating that ’substantial completion’ should still occur in mid-April, as previously scheduled. The original plan was for the facility to open a week after ’substantial completion’, now it will take a month. What changed?

“I wonder how long it has been since general contractor High knew that more than a week would be needed to wrap up the project. I have trouble believing that an experienced contractor like High would not have knownmonths ago that this extra time would be needed. Why didn’t High let everyone know that this could happen?

“Now the hotel and convention center will be opening with a damaged reputation of its own creation; not the fault of the LCCCA or of IHR, but by the very same corporation which has already profited the most from thisproject.”