2026 Jim Tunall Award Winners

October 12, 2026

The Downtown Lewistown Adopt-a-Planter program began in 2016. The program is organized by Sara Buffington. There is no fee to sponsor a planter, other than the cost of selected plants, compost, mulch, fertilizer, etc. Sponsors are responsible for all feeding, watering and general upkeep, and must maintain their planters from mid May to the first killing frost. Each year, at least one sponsor is presented with a Jim Tunall Award. Tunall was the executive director and president of the Juniata River Valley Chamber of Commerce and Visitors Bureau, an excellent gardener and an advocate ...

The healing garden

October 8, 2026

[Editor’s Note: October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month] I live in a valley between two ridgelines in the heart of Amish County where most of my days are spent outside digging in my garden while listening to the sounds of farm cows mooing and horses neighing. For me, nothing ...

Pauper’s Cemetery story kept alive by DAR

October 8, 2026

LEWISTOWN — I have had a fascination with cemeteries since I was in my mid-20s. For over 40 years, cemeteries have told me stories about the deceased. Almost 12 years ago, I joined Find-A-Grave to volunteer to take photo requests of specific tombstones and to create memorials, with ...

For over 100 years, travelers have checked into US motel rooms and found the Gideon Bible

October 8, 2026

SALISBURY, Md. (AP) — "Rocky Raccoon checked into his room, only to find Gideon's Bible." Paul McCartney explained those famous lines in the song by The Beatles, saying these Bibles "were in every hotel in America." He'd never seen something like that in England. For more than a ...

The apple pie (alongside mom, of course) became the symbolic food of a nation

October 5, 2026

Flaky, golden crust. Apple juices bubbling through its vents. The scent of cinnamon. Apple pie is my comfort food, and the only thing my family always cooks together: rolling the dough, fluting the crust's edges, peeling and chopping the apples. My mom, the keeper of our oven's flame, has ...

A Kentucky man with a meat allergy was craving a burger. So he got into ostrich farming

October 5, 2026

DANVILLE, Ky. (AP) — When a friend approached Brent Williams four years ago with a business proposition to start an ostrich farm, he was more than intrigued — he had a personal motivation as someone who developed a life-threatening allergy to red meat, triggered by tick bites. The ...