Do Vouchers Improve Educational Outcomes?

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Do vouchers for tuition in private schools improve educational outcomes here in Pennsylvania?  Do they empower parents to make better choices for their children?  What’s driving the rapid expansion of the voucher system in Pennsylvania? Susan Spicka, Executive Director of Education Voters of Pennsylvania, addressed these and other questions on Wednesday evening, March 6 in

Some words that will matter in 2024

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One of the quickest ways to disappear a thing—a problem or an opportunity—is to take away the words we need to describe it.  And, if you can’t just cancel it entirely, the second best way to get rid of a troublesome word is to change its meaning. Back in 1987, for example, British Prime Minister

Young Activists Share their Views at the Gettysburg YWCA

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What are young activists thinking about these days in places like Gettysburg?  What are they passionate about?  What issues are they working on?  What community organizations are they collaborating with?  What are their hopes for the future, for themselves, and for our country? In search of answers to questions like these, Gettysburg Democracy for America

Climate change is getting expensive

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Climate change is getting expensive, and not addressing it has begun to cost us in significant ways. Climate change denialists, including many of our own local elected representatives, continue to repeat their talking points about jobs and freedom and so forth, but the bill for climate negligence is coming due, not only at some point

The Green Gettysburg Book Club in 2023

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As the Green Gettysburg Book Club advances into its third year online, we’ve kept on with our study of “the little things that run the world.”  Entomologist E.O. Wilson in his book Half Earth, which we read in 2021, uses that phrase to describe the work of insects in maintaining the biosphere.  For us in

Panel Discusses the Economic and Human Impacts of Climate Change

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Climate change and its economic and human impacts were the subjects of a panel discussion on Tuesday evening in Joseph Theater at Gettysburg College. Panelists included Dr. Sarah Principato from the college’s Environmental Studies Department and Drs. Rimvydas Baltaduonis and James O’Brien from the Department of Economics. The program was hosted by students Carter Hanson,

Green Gettysburg Book Club Begins Its Third Year

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Next Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2023, the Green Gettysburg Book Club will begin its third year, meeting weekly online to discuss books on environmental issues and explore solutions to both local and global environmental problems. From the beginning, the club has focused on the specifics of climate change, plastic pollution, biodiversity loss, water quality, land

A “Gut Check” on Climate?

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Climate change denial comes in many flavors these days and Bob Stilwell’s opinion piece, “Climate Change Gut Check,” published in the Gettysburg Times on Thursday, December 19 draws on almost all of them. If you care about environmental issues and haven’t seen the article, you really need to check it out. And respond with a

Entomologist Celebrates the Benefits of Homegrown National Park

Author Doug Tallamy and John Maciolik of the Green Gathering

The Gettysburg Green Gathering welcomed entomologist and native species advocate Doug Tallamy to the Charlie Sterner Building at the Gettysburg Rec Park last night for a presentation on “nature’s best hope,” the re-wilding of the spaces and places where we live and work. Dr. Tallamy is a professor of entomology at the University of Delaware

Book Review: Words Matter: “Learning the Grammar of Animacy”

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Editor’s Note: Robin Wall Kimmerer, Author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, a 2013 nonfiction book that explores reciprocal relationships between humans and the land, with a focus on the role of plants and botany in both Native American and Western traditions, will be speaking in Gettysburg on Monday,

Book Review of “Sand County Almanac” by Aldo Leopold

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How could a book written more than seventy years ago sound like it was written yesterday? Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold is just such a book. It was a great hit with the Green Gettysburg Book Club, and if you are looking for something to read this summer, it could be just the thing.

Peace and Justice Week keynote address focuses on U.S. “settler colonialism”

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Decoloniality, anyone? This big-chewy-cookie of a word is the theme for the Sixth Annual Peace and Justice Week being held from March 21-26 on the Gettysburg College campus. On Monday, Dina Gilio-Whitaker, Lecturer of American Indian Studies at California State University San Marcos, provided the keynote for  the week with a lecture on “Decolonizing and  Indigenizing