Giuseppe Bellanca is a demanding coworker. He always wants to be fed, likes to nap at the desk, tends to play more than get his work done, and expects someone else to clean up his messes. But this funny…

It was more than five decades ago when a young guitar player named Lew Palladino was asked to sit in for a night with a band whose regular guitar player couldn’t make it. Then 14, Palladino ended up playing the entire week with that band in The Vogue Room in the Colonial Hotel in Hagerstown. The band…

On July 26, 1864, Gen. Jubal Early ordered Gen. “Tiger” John McCausland to proceed to Chambersburg and deliver a ransom demand. “At Chambersburg levy $100,000 in gold or $500,000 in Northern Money to pay for the houses of Andrew Hunter, Alexander R. Boteler and Edmund I. Lee of Jefferson Co. Va., which were…

I grew up in Washington County. More specifically I graduated from Boonsboro High School. More specifically than that, I was raised in Sharpsburg. From there we can…

Call it Burkholder’s Baked Goods, Burkholder’s Bakery, or The Way 2 Burkholder’s, this Sharpsburg icon is known for supplying the sweetest indulgences since 1995. Ruth Burkholder, along with daughters Julia and Susan, started churning out…

Ilze Hays of Hagerstown doesn’t just see a plant but all the possibilities that plant may hold. Like dandelions. “The dandelion is one of my favorites,” says Hays, who shares her knowledge of plants on her Facebook page Herbtastic. “You can make syrup with…

Pull into Dolce’s tiny parking lot at 792 Frederick Street in Hagerstown and the first thing you’ll notice is a sign with founder Iuliana “Julia” Manea peeking out of the window and an emblazed greeting…

On Sundays, Doub’s Woods Park in Hagerstown becomes a magical place with warriors and elves and battles and quests. This is all part of the Freehold of Phoenix Hollow…

In 2008 Gretchen Simard got tired of teaching in Virginia and made an unusual career switch. She got her contractor’s license and began remodeling homes. Her business was going along fine, but she uprooted…

When Joseph Wolfe was a child, a relative won a little green lizard at a fair and didn’t know what to do with it. “They reached out, and 13-year-old me was over the moon about it,” Wolfe says. From that anole, Wolfe’s love of…

Just inside the waiting area of Bonnie’s at the Red Byrd in Keedysville is a vintage newspaper page commemorating the restaurant’s grand opening in 1958. It is part of a collage that shows original photos of happy diners, postcards of…

Food is a basic need, but good food is a true pleasure. Pair that with good drink, good tunes, and good friends and you’ve got Branded Chophouse in Boonsboro. Fans of Vanish Farmwoods Brewery near Lucketts, Virgnia, may catch a…

“Mental health? There are a lot of signs but no one wants to take them seriously until something drastic happens,” says 18-year-old Aspen Marie Griffith. “Mental health is talked about a lot more, but there still isn’t much help. And going through therapy…

If Hub City Vinyl has a mantra, it should be “business in the front, party in the back.” During the day, there’s a record shop in the front of the store where lovers of vinyl can peruse, but in the evenings, Thursdays through Sundays, it’s Live at Hub City Vinyl, a place where…

Author and humanitarian Sam Childers (aka the Machine Gun Preacher), Thaddeus Bullard (WWE Titus O’Neil), and other celebrities are part of local portrait artist Nicole Troup’s mission to bring awareness to her Portraits for a Cause project. Her most recent painting of…

If ever a Major League baseball player achieved nothing more than footnote status, it was Thomas Charles Lipp. He made his Major League debut for the Philadelphia Phillies on…

Diners are an enduring part of the American restaurant landscape, so it’s easy to feel nostalgic walking into one. That’s true at the Dixie Eatery in Smithsburg. Online reviewers say…

Mystery and romance novelist Nora Roberts saved the historic building at the intersection of Alt. Route 40 and St. Paul Street, rebuilding it from the ashes of a fire and turning it into an elegant bed and breakfast called Inn BoonsBoro. Each room is named…

For Jeremiah Weddle, farming is in his blood. Relatives going back at least to his great grandparents have been farming in Washington County. His parents started Creek Bound Farm in 1980 doing most of the labor by hand. They grew the farm into the 4,500 acres that the family manages today.