Patrick Varine stories, Page 161

Franklin Regional students will still get two days off for spring break, but two more have been pegged as make-up days, as of Feb. 26. April 18 and 23 will now serve as make-up days as a result of cancellations due to winter weather, district officials announced via the FR...

Joe Morelli was sitting at his home off of Brick Hill Road in Murrysville on Sunday afternoon when he heard a loud crash at the front of the house. During a period of strong, gusting winds that began Sunday morning and prompted a high-wind warning from the National Weather Service,...

Before an entrepreneur reaches the point where they feel comfortable calling themselves a small-business owner, there’s the daunting prospect of first starting a business. In the case of someone like FlexScreen President Joe Altieri of Plum, he was able to put in place a group of investors to help launch...

Pastor Tim Stradling stepped up to the microphone at 10:50 a.m. Sunday to kick off the second service at Armbrust Wesleyan Church. Before he could get out his first sentence, he heard an unwelcome thump. “That’s the noise our sound system makes when everything goes out,” said Stradling, who continued...

An e-waste and data destruction event is scheduled for 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., March 2 at Murrysville Calvary Lutheran Church, 4725 Old William Penn Highway in Murrysville. It will be provided by Greensburg-based Cyber Crunch. Computers, laptops and cell phones will be accepted at no cost. Hard drive shredding...

AARP tax aides will be on hand March 8 and 22, and April 5, to help with tax preparation for lower-income, elderly and disabled residents. Aides will be at the Murrysville Community Center at 3091 Carson Avenue from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. on each date. Participants will need to...

Patrons of the Penn Area Library recently received a letter from library officials seeking donations as part of a direct-mail campaign, the first it has undertaken. But it likely won’t be the last. “We’ve been thinking about this for several years now,” said library treasurer Alice Ainsworth. Encouraged after speaking...

Retired biology teacher Dick Byers of Stahlstown set out with a group of volunteers to document Westmoreland County’s natural areas and preserve a “snapshot” of the region’s flora and fauna for future generations. The next generation will have a chance to read all about it through the county’s library network....

Drive through rural Westmoreland County and it won’t take long to find: an unpaved driveway with loose stone peppering the public road at its entrance, the result of storm water shifting gravel before it finds a path into the ground. Westmoreland Conservation District officials are hoping to change that. Next...

Eleven members of the Franklin Regional J.O. Wrestling program have qualified to compete in the Pennsylvania State Championship Wrestling Tournament. On Feb. 17, Franklin Regional hosted the Area 3 state qualifier tournament with youth wrestlers from 19 school districts competing for spots in the state championship tournament. That championship is...

Murrysville Christian Concern thrift store officials thought they’d hit a low point in early 2018, when nearly the entire board of directors resigned in the wake of concerns among store volunteers and one board member that the nonprofit was not using enough of its revenue for charity purposes. That changed...

Murrysville council back a $12 million bond issue by the Franklin Township Municipal Sanitary Authority as the authority addresses a host of issues with its system and its new chairman said customers can expect another rate hike further down the road. “We know that we’ve got way more than $10...

Murrysville council on Wednesday night will discuss backing the Franklin Township Municipal Sanitary Authority’s $12 million bond issue and accept easements from two local property owners for storm water improvements. FTMSA officials are asking council to back the bond issue, $10 million of which will be used to tackle ongoing...

Ronald Germanoski carried the lessons — and more importantly, the camaraderie — he learned in the Boy Scouts well into manhood. “When he was young, he was in the Boy Scouts, and he dropped out just a few merit badges shy of becoming an Eagle Scout,” said his son Brian,...

There’s really no big secret about how Ron Donoughe got into the plein air art movement — he wanted to be a painter, and he also wanted to be outdoors. “It wasn’t a big fad when I started with it in the 1980s,” Donoughe siad. “But there were some painters...

After spending a summer next door in Salem Township, the Delmont Farmer’s Market is coming back to the borough in 2019. Vendor Amanda Bank told borough council members she and market patron Alice Heasley plan to organize the market in its original location, the Rose Wigfield Parklet on Greensburg Street....

Franklin Regional school board members did not award contracts Monday for the estimated $54 million construction project to consolidate its elementary schools onto one campus. The agenda for the board’s committee-of-the-whole meeting Feb. 4 listed “awarding of prime contracts for the Sloan Elementary Additions & Alterations Project and the New...

Franklin Regional students will have a freshly-turfed field next school year as part of a $1.78 million district capital improvement plan approved for 2019-20. The $1.2 million project, which includes the football field as well as resurfacing the surrounding track, accounts for the bulk of next year’s capital improvement plan....

The annual Murrysville Woman’s Club Spring Fashion Show fundraiser will take place April 13 at the Lamplighter Restaurant. It will begin at 10 a.m., with a breakfast buffet and fashions from Chico’s in Monroeville, modeled by members of the club. There will also be a wine basket raffle and a...

“Afrofuturism” may have been coined as a term in the mid-1990s, but its mark can be seen across the spectrum of black culture over the years. Loosely defined as the intersection of African diaspora culture with modern technology, it could be glimpsed in the out-there jazz and space-age costumes employed...

Last year, one of the Westmoreland Conservation District’s rain gauges measured 72 inches of total rainfall — far above the typical 40 to 45 inches that the region sees annually. “It really brought home the stormwater issues we have,” said Kathy Hamilton, stormwater technician and landscape architect at the conservation...