TheBurg Podcast, Feb. 19, 2016

February 19, 2016 | by Admin

Welcome to TheBurg Podcast, a weekly roundup of news in and around Harrisburg.

To listen to this week’s episode, click here.

Feb. 19, 2016: This week, Larry and Paul talk about a series of revelations about a heist at the National Civil War Museum, as well as Paul’s feature in the February issue about City Council members. They also talk about a letter Larry got in the mail, written by local legend Mary Sachs and dated Dec. 31, 1929.

TheBurg Podcast is proudly sponsored by Ad Lib Craft Kitchen & Bar at the Hilton Harrisburg.

Special thanks to Paul Cooley, who wrote our theme music. Check out his podcast, the PRC Show, on SoundCloud or in the iTunes store. You can also subscribe to TheBurg podcast in iTunes.

Stolen Antique Guns Part of NRA-Sponsored Exhibit

February 17, 2016 | by Paul Barker

A presentation case containing two antique pistols, which were among the guns police said were stolen from the Civil War Museum last Sunday.

The antique guns stolen from the National Civil War Museum in Reservoir Park over the weekend were in fact taken from an NRA-sponsored exhibit there, and not from a separate part of the museum as officials previously reported, Harrisburg police said Wednesday.

The three guns, a pair of Colt revolvers dating to 1860 and 1861 and an engraved Henry rifle from 1861, were stolen shortly after 6 a.m. Sunday. The two revolvers were owned by the city, while the the rifle was on loan from a private donor, according to museum CEO Wayne Motts, who joined police Wednesday to release additional details on the theft.

All three firearms were claimed to have once belonged to Simon Cameron, a Harrisburg native who served as President Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of war at the beginning of the Civil War. They were on display together as part of a new “Guns & Lace” exhibit that opened last week and was sponsored by a $25,000 grant from the National Rifle Association.

Police Capt. Gabriel Olivera confirmed that the thief made entry by breaking through a window and forcibly broke into the display case to remove the guns. The theft was not detected until 12:40 p.m. on Sunday, due to an apparent failure in the museum’s alarm system.

Olivera said the alarm was not triggered, but then added that the precise nature of the security lapse was not yet clear.

Olivera said surveillance footage captured images of a male thief, but that the images are not clear and that police are not yet releasing them because they “would not be of any use.” Police are looking for witnesses who may have seen someone in the museum area of Reservoir Park Sunday morning between 6 and 7 a.m. They have not ruled out the possibility of an inside job, Olivera said.

The city released the following information identifying the weapons:

A .44 caliber M1860 Colt Army Revolver with serial number 11708.
A .36 caliber Colt M1861 Navy Revolver with serial number 1825.
An M1860 Henry Repeating Rifle with serial number 115, manufactured by the New Haven Arms Company and engraved with the word “Cameron” on the receiver.

The 1861 Henry rifle stolen Sunday, engraved with the name “Cameron,” shown in detail below.

TheBurg Podcast, Feb. 12, 2016

February 12, 2016 | by Admin

Welcome to TheBurg Podcast, a weekly roundup of news in and around Harrisburg.

To listen to this week’s episode, click here.

Feb. 12, 2016: This week, Larry and Paul talk about a bill before City Council to reduce the penalty for possession of small amounts of marijuana, plus the passage of more or less the same 2016 budget that was adopted in December. They also talk about problems of editorial control and sensitivity to city issues with an NRA-sponsored exhibit at the Civil War museum. And, as always, they nominate their candidates for the Most Harrisburg Thing This Week.

TheBurg Podcast is proudly sponsored by Ad Lib Craft Kitchen & Bar at the Hilton Harrisburg.

Special thanks to Paul Cooley, who wrote our theme music. Check out his podcast, the PRC Show, on SoundCloud or in the iTunes store. You can also subscribe to TheBurg podcast in iTunes.

Armed Conflict

February 11, 2016 | by Paul Barker

How do you describe a man who orchestrates a massacre of civilians in a time of war?

William Clarke Quantrill, the head of a band of guerrilla fighters known as Quantrill’s Raiders, led a campaign of retaliation and mischief around the bloody Kansas-Missouri border during the Civil War. A 1996 PBS program, “New Perspectives on the West,” described Quantrill’s Raiders as “perhaps the most savage fighting unit” of the era. In 1863, during a nighttime raid of Lawrence, Kansas, they dragged 183 men and boys from their homes and murdered them in front of their families. But to his supporters, PBS added, Quantrill was a “dashing, free-spirited hero.”

Quantrill’s legacy surfaced in Harrisburg this week, prompting local partisans to attach their own descriptions. The occasion was a new exhibit at the National Civil War Museum, called “Guns & Lace: Firearms and Apparel of the Civil War.”

The exhibit is sponsored by a $25,000 grant from the National Rifle Association. Among the displayed artifacts is a revolver Quantrill owned. Harrisburg Mayor Eric Papenfuse, who has sparred with both the NRA and the museum since taking office in 2014, questioned the memorialization of a “mass-murdering, racist sociopath.” The gun’s presence also disturbed Homer Floyd, a local civil rights leader and past director of the state Human Relations Commission. He organized a protest outside the museum Wednesday night, during a reception for the exhibit’s opening.

You’d have thought, from the uproar, that Quantrill’s gun held a prominent place in the display. But you could easily have missed it. In fact, the exhibit had no curatorial focus at all. It was simply an assemblage of firearms and dresses—42 guns, 11 gowns, and a plain frock once worn by a slave.

Neutrality is a point of pride for the museum, which aims to present a “balanced” view of the Civil War. One of the first exhibits in the permanent collection is a pre-war timeline, with events color-coded as being about “slavery,” “states’ rights,” or a “convergence of issues.” What school of history this is meant to appease I can only guess, but it results in an odd parsing of the record. The Missouri Compromise, a temporary fix to the problem of regulating slavery in the western territories, is coded as purely “states’ rights.” So is Prigg v. Pennsylvania, the Supreme Court decision overturning a law that made it a felony to forcibly retrieve runaway slaves.

Who gets to decide a museum’s interpretive bent—its angle on history, its bias? Certainly not the NRA, said museum director Wayne Motts, as he hustled back and forth across the lobby in the minutes leading up to the reception. “This exhibit, we have been able to curate it the way we wanted to curate it,” he said. The museum claims to have exercised editorial independence, though it defines the term rather narrowly. “No one told us that we couldn’t put out certain guns or certain weapons,” Motts said. That is not the same as saying no one asked for certain things to be put in. The exhibit includes a replica 1860 rifle, one of two donated by the Henry Repeating Arms Co., with the other set to be raffled to benefit the museum.

The exhibit also shares the “Guns & Lace” name with an online magazine that the NRA identifies as a partner on its “Women’s Channel.” (“What’s hotter than an awesome gun? An awesome gun in the hands of a beautiful girl,” the site advertises.) The channel itself is sponsored by Smith & Wesson, which happens to be one of the half-dozen gun manufacturers whose histories take up a significant portion of the exhibit’s copy. (The aforementioned Henry Repeating Arms Co. is another.)

Motts said he wasn’t aware the exhibit shared its title with an NRA partner program. Neither was Gene Barr, a museum board member and the president of the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry. “Well, gee, I guess there’s only so many words in the English language, and I don’t know where it came from,” Barr said of the name.

Jeffrey Poole, the managing director of the NRA’s “Shows and Exhibits” division, saw his group’s role somewhat differently. “We approached the museum about supporting their programs,” he said. “They could come up with the exhibit, and if it met the NRA’s criteria we would fund it.” Those criteria, he said, could be found on the website of the NRA Foundation, the organization’s grant-making arm. A mission statement there says the foundation supports activities “designed to promote firearms and hunting safety, to enhance marksmanship skills of those participating in the shooting sports, and to educate the general public about firearms in their historic, technological and artistic context.”

Just outside the exhibit door was a television screen, cycling through images of the museum, shooting ranges, and tips for gun safety. But the “Guns & Lace” name, Poole said, was just “coincidence.” “Certainly the makeup of the exhibit is well-described by the title,” he added.

“Coincidence” is an important concept for the NRA. It’s what allows the country’s high rates of gun violence and the wide availability of guns to be causally unrelated—they’re simply two things happening at the same time. But sometimes, just placing things side by side can speak volumes. At the reception, I met an older white couple who live in the city. The husband, a Republican, complained that a person of his party and his race couldn’t run for office in Harrisburg. Servers were circulating the room with hors d’oeuvres, and as we spoke, one of them approached and recognized me. It took me a moment to place the face. He was the stepfather of Rayon Braxton, the 26-year-old shot to death in an Allison Hill warehouse last fall. He wore a button-down shirt and a black apron. He carried slices of sausage stuck through with toothpicks on a small ceramic tray.

I thought of him later when, giving a speech at the reception, Dauphin County Commissioner Jeff Haste referred to one of Papenfuse’s criticisms—that the exhibit was “tone deaf.” “Thank you all for being tone deaf with me,” he said, to laughter. Down the hall, as a complement to deafness, was the exhibit: mute dresses, mute weapons, small plaques with nothing in particular to say. And, by sheer coincidence, standing among all those guns, the father of a murdered son.

Feb. 8-12: This Week in Harrisburg

February 8, 2016 | by Admin

Thursday, Feb. 11:

City Council Legislative Session, 6 p.m.
City Council Chambers, City Hall, 10 N. 2nd St.

Council should have a full plate this week (though the official agenda is not yet available). The state had hoped to have an amended recovery plan up for a confirmation vote; council members hinted pretty strongly they would like a slower process, and it’s not yet clear how the state is going to incorporate their concerns about the changes. Council also plans to introduce a bill reducing first- and second-time offenses for possession of small amounts of marijuana from a misdemeanor to a summary offense with fines. And, of course, they still need to vote on changes to the 2016 budget.

TheBurg Podcast, Feb. 5, 2016

February 5, 2016 | by Admin

Welcome to TheBurg Podcast, a weekly roundup of news in and around Harrisburg.

To listen to this week’s episode, click here.

Feb. 5, 2016: This week, Larry and Paul give their top three takeaways from – drum roll… – the hearing on the city’s recovery plan Wednesday night. They also talk about an open records lawsuit between the city and the defense team for former Mayor Stephen Reed, plus crime stats and chocolate habitats.

TheBurg Podcast is proudly sponsored by Ad Lib Craft Kitchen & Bar at the Hilton Harrisburg.

Special thanks to Paul Cooley, who wrote our theme music. Check out his podcast, the PRC Show, on SoundCloud or in the iTunes store. You can also subscribe to TheBurg podcast in iTunes.

Reed Lawyers Demand Fees from City in Records Case

February 4, 2016 | by Paul Barker

Attorney Henry E. Hockeimer, Jr., left, and former Mayor Stephen Reed after Reed’s arraignment July 14 on corruption charges.

The defense team for Stephen Reed has asked a judge to order Harrisburg to pay some of Reed’s legal fees, as part of an ongoing and increasingly bitter fight over access to city records from the former mayor’s tenure.

In his Jan. 29 filing, Henry Hockeimer, of the Philadelphia firm Ballard Spahr, disputed the city’s reasons for withholding documents he is seeking under the state open records law, claiming they are “entirely personal” and without legal merit.

Hockeimer argued the city’s responses have shown “bad faith” and asked the court to require Harrisburg to pay the costs of what he described as the “frivolous litigation” forced by the administration’s withholding of records.

Hockeimer first requested the documents in July, after a state grand jury approved a sweeping array of charges against Reed in an ongoing corruption probe. The city so far has declined to provide them, claiming among other reasons that doing so would force it to violate a judicial gag order and break grand jury secrecy rules.

Hockeimer sharply critiqued those claims in his filing, arguing the city has released similar records to news outlets without complaint. He cited four news stories, including one published by TheBurg, that he said proved the city denied him access “solely because he represents Stephen Reed.”

Two of those stories, one appearing in the Patriot-News and one on abc27, refer to right-to-know requests partially granted by the city this year, although for much narrower sets of records than those requested by Hockeimer in July.

TheBurg article, published in the spring of 2015, detailed receipts of Reed’s purchases that were provided to the magazine by a different entity altogether. Hockeimer’s filing claimed the city provided the receipts, though they were, in fact, provided by Capital Region Water, the successor agency to the Harrisburg Authority.

Reed submitted the receipts to the Harrisburg Authority to support his request for a $33,000 reimbursement in 2003. The article identified Capital Region Water as the source of the documents, but that information was omitted in the legal filing.

The filing similarly mischaracterized a 2012 Patriot-News article, which referred to Harrisburg Authority documents provided in response to a right-to-know request. Nick Malawskey, the article’s author, confirmed Thursday the records were provided by the authority, not the city.

Hockeimer also said the city discriminated against Reed because of his “alleged criminal conduct.” He cited a prior filing in the case, in which the city said it was “fundamentally unfair and unjust” to force the costs of a vast records request by an alleged criminal upon a purported victim of the crime.

City solicitor Neil Grover stood by that argument Wednesday night, saying that the rights of victims of alleged crimes were also relevant in the case, and not only questions about open records laws.

Grover also denied the city had acted in bad faith and said Harrisburg would “fight a question about the awarding of fees as far as the courts will allow us to go.”

“We have acted in good faith,” he said. “If there’s anyone who’s acted in bad faith, it’s the requestor.”

A representative of Ballard Spahr said on Thursday that Hockeimer is out of the country until next week. Terence Grugan, another attorney at the firm identified as also representing Reed on the Jan. 29 filing, said he had no comment.

Findings of bad faith by an agency in records requests do occur, but are exceedingly rare, according to Erik Arneson, director of the state Office of Open Records. Of the 13,000 or so requests that have been appealed to his agency, fewer than 10 have later resulted in a judge making a bad faith finding, Arneson said.

Arneson said he was “extremely confident” in his agency’s prior analysis, which held that at least some of the records, which would have been deemed public prior to any criminal investigation, did not suddenly become privileged because of their more recent connection to a grand jury probe.

At the same time, he said the intersection of open records law and laws regarding grand jury secrecy was “not a settled area,” and that he understood why the city appealed his agency’s finding.

“I don’t fault the city for making the arguments they’re making,” Arneson said. “They’re being cautious. I get where they’re coming from.”

Judge Kevin Hess heard arguments last month on the records case, after the city appealed the Office of Open Record’s prior finding.

Hess is a former Cumberland County president judge who was appointed to oversee Reed’s criminal case after Dauphin County recused itself. He asked the city to submit a legal brief on the records issue, which he is also overseeing, by this Friday.

Feb. 1-5: This Week in Harrisburg

February 1, 2016 | by Admin

Monday, Feb. 1:

City Council Economic Development and Budget Meetings, 5:30 p.m.
City Council Chambers, City Hall, 10 N. 2nd St.

Council holds an economic development committee meeting, with a budget hearing immediately following. Council has reopened the 2016 budget, with new council members poised to consider any changes. Brad Koplinski, who lost his council seat in last year’s election, tried to slash the administration’s budget last month in order to avoid a tax hike on city workers. The administration dismissed the proposals as unrealistic, pointing out that several of the suggested cuts were contractual obligations of the city. Koplinski was unsuccessful, but the new council members could theoretically revisit some of the cuts now that the budget has been reopened.

Tuesday, Feb. 2:

City Beautiful H2O Community Meeting, 5:30-8:30 p.m.
Lincoln School, 1601 State St.

City Beautiful H2O is a campaign by Capital Region Water to promote green infrastructure projects and reduce sewer overflows that can pollute local waterways during heavy rainfall. The meeting will introduce community members to ways they can reduce flooding, beautify their neighborhoods and keep their water cleaner and ask for their input. For more information, click here.

Wednesday, Feb. 3:

City Council Administration Committee Meeting, 5:30 p.m.
City Council Chambers, City Hall, 10 N. 2nd St.

Council will continue to discuss proposed changes to the Harrisburg Strong Plan, the city’s financial recovery plan.

TheBurg Podcast, Jan. 29, 2016

January 29, 2016 | by Admin

Welcome to TheBurg Podcast, a weekly roundup of news in and around Harrisburg.

To listen to this week’s episode, click here.

Jan. 29, 2016: It snowed! Larry and Paul talk about the cost of all that shoveling and plowing, and they give their takes on the city’s response to the epic storm. They also discuss the plans of the City Islanders to play home soccer games at the Senators’ ballpark next year. Then, Paul talks with Capital Region Water CEO Shannon Williams about her company’s efforts to engage the community and reduce flooding and sewer overflows with a campaign called City Beautiful H2O.

TheBurg Podcast is proudly sponsored by Ad Lib Craft Kitchen & Bar at the Hilton Harrisburg.

Special thanks to Paul Cooley, who wrote our theme music. Check out his podcast, the PRC Show, on SoundCloud or in the iTunes store. You can also subscribe to TheBurg podcast in iTunes.

Podcast bonus: During her appearance on the podcast, Shannon Williams discussed her reaction to the water crisis in Flint, Mich. To further inform the public about lead monitoring and the water supply, Capital Region Water has prepared a fact sheet, which you can access here.

A Coffee Quest: What’s the secret to a great independent coffeehouse?

January 29, 2016 | by Don Helin

I love a good coffeehouse.

The smells. The bustle. The things I imagine being created behind all those laptops. Besides, everyone always seems so happy to be there.

And that made me wonder: What makes a coffeehouse great? Why do some succeed and others fail? And why do people flock to our area’s independent coffeehouses when there’s always another Starbucks up the road?

The Cornerstone Coffeehouse

When you walk through the front door of the Cornerstone Coffeehouse, you know you’re in a special place. You immediately hear the sounds of people talking and laughing. You sniff the enticing aroma of food cooking and then eyeball the wide variety of coffees and teas.

“You can choose from 12 different roasts or flavors of coffee, and about 25 different types of tea,” remarked co-owner Al Pera.

Besides the java itself, great coffeehouses often set themselves apart with the high quality of their food and their events. Cornerstone has both.

“We now have a full lunch menu with healthier options since many of our menu items are either organic or gluten free,” said Pera.

Live music fills the air on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights, and you’re welcome to stroll through the art gallery, which features a different artist each month. For you foodies, the owners offer weekly cooking classes in their culinary kitchen.

The staff is another key differentiator, as veteran staffers get to know regular customers and the customers them.

“I am really proud of our staff,” said General Manager Nicole Miller. “We have people who have been here for a long time. For example, our baker, Cindy, has been with us for 12 years.”

That stands in stark contrast to the face-of-the-month at a certain coffee chain behemoth. Speaking of which, I asked Pera if it was difficult to compete with Starbucks.

“I don’t compete with Starbucks,” he said. “We’re just different. For example, we order our coffee on a Monday, they roast it and get it to us by Tuesday. We also have many fair trade and organic coffees to choose from. You can sit down and enjoy your coffee in a nice porcelain mug if you’d like.”

I had to agree with the quality of the food as I nibbled on a tuna melt and spooned down a bowl of thick and tasty split pea and ham soup for lunch. I followed it up with a refreshing glass of iced tea.

After 21 years, Cornerstone has not lost a beat, outlasting many other shops that have tried to compete.

“We at the Cornerstone care for the Camp Hill community, and the community cares for us,” said Miller.

Little Amps Coffee Roasters

Aaron Carlson describes his introduction to coffee roasting as half serendipity, half opportunity.

He’s from central PA, but spent years as a musician, traveling around the country before returning to Harrisburg.

“I fell for the style of coffee we do here while living in Oakland, Calif., a few years ago,” he said. “Blue Bottle Coffee was roasting in an alley behind my house in small batches. They’re now a $70 million company, so I thought, hey, why not give it a try?”

For about a year, Carlson roasted coffee in a warehouse, doing mail order and delivery. He opened his first shop on Green Street in Midtown Harrisburg in 2011. Things went well, so he opened a site downtown about two years later. He recently added a kiosk location inside Strawberry Square.

One of his first challenges was to communicate the value of carefully grown and lighter-roasted coffee. Back then, many of his customers wanted drinks that obscure the flavor of the coffee, made with caramel or, as he says, “that gooey pumped stuff” that chains offer.

“That’s OK when it’s cheap coffee or over-roasted,” Carlson said. “Now, my customers’ favorite drinks seem to be focused on the coffee itself and not what’s dumped into it. It’s trickier to roast, but the lighter roasting brings out a better flavor and makes it a little sweeter, so the demand for this style of coffee is expanding. I do all of my own roasting and actually sell roasted coffee beans to other coffeehouses.”

Little Amps also offers a number of events, such as live music most Fridays at the State Street location, and is starting to do more cuppings—coffee tastings—at the Green Street shop.

I asked Carlson what he sees for the future.

“Hopefully, more fun and good vibes,” he said.

Cafe Chocolate of Lititz

The main street of Lititz is a maze of small shops, restaurants and bookstores. Tucked among these places, about one-half block from the General Sutter Inn, is the quaint Cafe Chocolate.

“The Cafe Chocolate has been here almost 10 years,” said owner Janice Dull. “I bought the café about 2½ years ago. It was a fairly easy transition because I trained under the previous owner for a few weeks.”

The shop serves a wide variety of drinks—hot chocolate, espresso, cappuccino, chai latte, to name just a few. But the signature drink is the Turbo Hot Chocolate: a mug of hot chocolate with a shot of espresso to fire it up. And fire up it does.

“We don’t really see Starbucks as a competitor,” Dull said. “Our products are healthier and not loaded with sugar. We make our own whipped cream and use 65-percent dark chocolate. My customers love the many gluten-free dishes we serve, such as Portuguese chicken and rice, West African peanut chowder and even cupcakes.”

I enjoyed looking through the cafe’s menu, which includes flatbread pizza (either whole wheat or gluten free), a vegetable curry Siam with black rice risotto and, of course, “Chili con Chocolate.”

I spent a lot of time trying to decide on a dessert. The café has a dark chocolate fondue that serves four and chocolate-dipped berries. I finally decided on a frozen hot chocolate, which was excellent.

The Cafe Chocolate has a motto—“Chocolate for Life”—and it couldn’t be more appropriate

St. Thomas Roasters

Judging by the popularity and success of St. Thomas Roasters, you’d never imagine that it began 15 years ago almost as a notion.

“We had never run a business before and had no experience selling coffee,” said Geof Smith, who runs the shop with wife, Pam. “But Pam had always wanted to own a coffeehouse, different from her experience in the health care field, so when I left AMP, we made the plunge. We researched trade shows and other coffeehouses before we started.”

Learning how to roast coffee was a challenge. They started by roasting their own beans, but soon became a wholesaler, roasting coffee beans for a number of other businesses, which now include such popular spots as Char’s at Tracy Mansion, Café 1500 and Karns.

Linglestown is home to a number of upscale housing developments and is also on the commuting route to Harrisburg, so the shop has a steady flow of customers. At 10:30 on a Friday morning, when I met with Geof Smith, the place was already packed with patrons of all ages.

“Our customers have a number of favorite coffee drinks,” he said. “These include Colombian coffee, our own Linglestown blend, Almond Joy lattes, Americanos and London Fogs. They have a chance to enjoy their coffee and listen to entertainment on most weekends.”

I asked him about Starbucks.

“Starbucks is a competitor, but not a threat,” Smith said. “I must give them credit because they started the whole coffeehouse scene, enabling many of us to continue on with our own models.”

He sees business growth in roasting coffee beans and selling them on a wholesale basis to his customers. He currently roasts about 20 types of coffee beans by doing roughly 11 batches each day. He roasts between five and 30 pounds each time.

“We’re delighted we took the plunge 15 years ago,” he said. “There were many challenges along the way, but I wouldn’t change any of it.”

GOING THERE

Cafe Chocolate of Lititz
40 E. Main St., Lititz
717-626-0123
www.chocolatelititz.com

The Cornerstone Coffeehouse
2133 Market St., Camp Hill
717-737-5026
www.thecornerstonecoffeehouse.com

Little Amps Coffee Roasters
1836 Green St., 133 State St. and Strawberry Square, Harrisburg
717-695-4882
www.littleampscoffee.com

St. Thomas Roasters
5951 Linglestown Rd., Harrisbur
717-526-4171
www.stthomasroasters.com

Don Helin published his first thriller, “Thy Kingdom Come,” in 2009. His novel, “Devil’s Den,” was selected as a finalist in the 2013 Indie Book Awards. His latest thriller, “Secret Assault,” was selected as the best Suspense/Thriller at the 2015 Indie Book Awards. Contact Don at his website, www.donhelin.com.

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