Laurels & lances: Supporting and sneezing

Laurel: To coping with problems. Westmoreland County District Attorney Nicole Ziccarelli wants to expand efforts to help kids deal with trauma.

The Handle with Care Program is a collaboration with New Kensington-Arnold School District, Allegheny Intermediate Unit, Highlands Family Center and police in Arnold and New Kensington using a $250,000 grant from the Richard King Mellon Foundation.

The program acts as a safety net to support children exposed to traumatic situations.

“In the future, we hope to work with the Westmoreland Intermediate Unit, and we are in conversations with them and have been working with them to expand it countywide,” Ziccarelli said.

It’s a proactive plan for the schools to really care for children and for the DA’s office to do more than just prosecute criminals. Expanding it would be a positive way to address multiple kinds of trauma faced by kids.

Lance: To unfortunate consequences. Unexpectedly warm weather in February should be an absolute delight. With temps that ranged from cool spring 50s to downright summery 70s at a time when we are normally pricing more salt and hoping the snow shovel lasts the season, there couldn’t be a downside, right?

Wrong.

The unseasonably early weather is confusing for plants that don’t use calendars and therefore don’t realize that it isn’t spring yet. In fact, as far as simple dates go, we have almost a month of winter left.

Aside from just affecting when your bulbs pop up or when the trees bud, there is the added problem those plants bring with them: allergies.

Spring pollen season can come early, overlapping with the mold allergies you might have from warm, wet weather.

This is what we get when a 15-pound groundhog delivers our winter weather forecasts. At least the furnace gets some time off.