The business may be called Girl Friday Cooking Co., but most of the action takes place on Monday.
Thatâs when owner Gretchen McNary and her crew are busy preparing meals for delivery each Tuesday. And with more people than ever placing orders during the COVID-19 pandemic, a correspondingly greater amount of preparation usually is involved.
Beth Ali, left, and Gretchen McNary review a delivery schedule. Harry Funk
One week, all that work ended up going for naught.
âTuesday at about 1 p.m., my husband called me and said, âI have COVID,ââ McNary recalled. âWhat we ended up having to do was get rid of all that food we made. I had to go home and call 120 people, and let them know that they werenât getting their food.â
One hundred years ago, a Peters Township High School student named Elizabeth Douglass decided to compile what she called a âCharacter Book.â
A page from Margaret Douglass Character Book from 1921 reveals a classmate s stated food preference, among other tidbits. Harry Funk
âShe went around to all of her classmates and would ask your name, address, whatâs your favorite song? Whatâs your favorite food? What do you want to be when you grow up?â archivist Carolyn Friedrich said.
Today, the handwritten journal is available for viewing at Peters Township Public Library, where Friedrich is working with reference librarian Margaret Deitzer to preserve as much local history as possible for posterity.
Tim Kilkeary is a driven man, and not only because he owns two North Strabane Township businesses.
He has been a gearhead, a car aficionado, for much of his life, pursuing a passion he seemingly acquired through DNA. His late father, Bill, had a similar fervor for vehicles.
Those passions morphed into professions for father and son. Forty years ago, in June 1981, Bill launched Kilkearyâs Auto Body Inc. at 647 Thomas Road. The repair shop endures to this day, having outlasted a number of regional competitors en route to a milestone birthday celebration planned for next month.
âItâs been a lot of fun. Iâm proud of the fact that weâve been here 40 years,â said Tim, 55, who, as a Peters Township High School student, began working there when it opened.
Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen offers a viewing tip for the coming week.
Even after the director says, “Cut!,” sometimes puppeteers stay in character.
“I said all my lines right!” said Donkey Hodie, as performed and voiced by former Point Park University student Haley Jenkins. And she said it in Donkey’s voice.
“It’s a little too Little Caesars,” she said in Duck Duck’s voice between takes before cameras rolled again with a single “thank you” uttered.
It was just another day on the set of “Donkey Hodie,” a puppet show spin-off of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” for PBS Kids that debuts at 10 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. Monday on WQED-TV.
Temi Akinola
Akinola of Charlottesville, a 2020 global security and justice and French language and literature graduate, is an English teaching assistant in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.
“I am particularly interested in education and its formation on peace-building and human rights,” she said. “I will be teaching English at an all-girls high school, completing tutoring college prep programs through the U.S Embassy and working with the National Council for Human Rights in [Ivory Coast].”
She was supposed to start in October 2020, but that was moved to the beginning of February.
“My stay has been condensed,” she said. “Some of the programs that would usually take place in person, such as student workshops, question-and-answer sessions and panels, have had to take place online or via Zoom.”