Posts

The Great Golf Ball Hunt

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If you follow me on Instagram , you're familiar with our nightly golf ball hunts and #greatgolfballhunt20 (or whatever the year may be). But in case you don't, or you're wondering how that all began, here's the story... We moved into a house in a "golf course community" a little over three years ago. I can't remember exactly when we found the first golf ball, but the first few times we walked to the neighborhood playground a block away, we found a stray golf ball each time. And we found a few that had made their way into our yard. And then we started seeing them in the "buffer zone" between our yard and the course. This evolved into a nightly walk around the section of the course behind our house. There are rules to golf ball hunting -- we only go out when no one is on the course, and we only walk in the area by the house and in a direction that ensures we'll see someone teeing off on the opposite hole and can get out of their way. So

Trucking's Trailblazers: Edward J. Buhner

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'Gentle Kentuckian' Pushed Trucking Safety To The Forefront Edward J. Buhner Served Key Role In Defense Transportation During World War II By Jennifer Botchie ATA Web Editor Edward J. Buhner Feb. 13, 1901-Dec. 24, 1980 ATA President, 1947-48 The American Trucking Associations took a new direction in recent years, guided by the decisions of the 1998 Wren Committee. But long before the Wren Committee, or even the Few Committee of the 1980s, there was the Buhner Committee, led by Edward J. Buhner, who later became ATA's second president. It was this committee that laid out the foundation for ATA's organizational structure. Buhner's work in what was originally called the "Committee on National and State Organization of the Trucking Industry," leaves him remembered as one of the key figures in making ATA

Trucking's Trailblazers: Ted V. Rodgers

'The Father Of Motor Truck Transportation' Ted V. Rodgers Unified A Fractured Industry, Giving Birth To Its Prosperity By Jennifer Botchie ATA Web Editor Ted V. Rodgers April 7, 1888 - Sept. 13, 1960 ATA President, 1933-47 A bronze plaque in the lobby of the American Trucking Associations headquarters in Alexandria, Va., honors Ted V. Rodgers, the associations' first president, calling him "the father of motor truck transportation." By all accounts, that description is not much of a stretch, as Rodgers has been frequently described as someone who almost single-handedly united what was a fragmented industry in the 1930s. Starting with his tenure as president of the Pennsylvania Motor Truck Association and continuing as ATA's leader, Rodgers was not afraid to travel extensively and use his persuasive powers to ally di

Nostalgia and resurrecting old writing

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Yesterday, my Facebook memories informed me that July 2020 marks 20 years since I started working at the American Trucking Associations . As I said there, it's hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that that job was almost half a lifetime ago. Twenty-five years since my high school graduation, or 20 years since my college graduation, don't seem quite so strange, but for some reason this does. Maybe because it was the first post-college job for which I had to leave my hometown and thus marked the real beginning of my "grown-up" life. I started as an assistant web editor with Transport Topics , the weekly newspaper. I had to write the A.M. and P.M. Executive Briefings for the web and e-newsletters, which basically meant I trolled through the news all day, looking for items of interest to the trucking industry. I had a My Yahoo page (!) set up to cull through trucking, transportation and other related headlines. It wasn't a bad gig, but I also had to sit at the

Corona Adventures: Paw Paw Tunnel

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Sophie and Annabelle prepare to take on the Paw Paw Tunnel I don't know about you (though I can guess), but I'm a little tired of being cooped up in the house. On the flip side, I don't really feel ready to jump back "out there." We just moved into the green phase of recovery on Friday (June 19), so a lot of things are opening up more, but by the same token it doesn't seem like there's been a ton of caution observed around here for the past month or so. So what do you do when you seek adventure but most places are still a little too... peopley... for your taste? Well, if you're like us, you take advantage of your husband's oddball schedule, which gave him a day off on Wednesday (but meant he had to work on Father's Day 😢) and hope most people are working mid-week. We've been big fans of the C&O Canal towpath for years, because we enjoy hiking and the towpath's wide, flat and mostly gravel path are easy on little legs --

I am a Jen of all trades and master of absolutely none

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I "started" this blog a year or so ago with the intention of getting back into blogging. My previous blog, Abingtonian Adventures , wasn't exactly relevant anymore, seeing as we no longer lived in the Abingtons, outside of Scranton, Pa. The fact that I'm finally writing my first post should pretty much sum up what this is all about. You see a lot of discussion of what one's "brand" is on social media. I have neither the time, talent or energy to have a perfectly-curated Instagram feed - I just like sharing fun and/or interesting pictures. I sometimes get deep on Facebook, but normally I'm pretty low-key, almost flippant. When I started pondering what my brand could possibly be, that's when I hit on "Jen of all trades and master of none." In short: I'm a SAHM with two daughters, ages 7 and 4. But this isn't just a mommy blog. I'm a freelance writer. Blogging may be a writing exercise, but this isn't just a news