Stuff I Found on the Ground: Vampire Blood

Found this near corner of West Center and Wood Streets, Nazareth, Pa.*

*I've decided to make this site a little more dynamic by posting more frequent little blurbs (that we usually reserved for the Facebook group or Twitter) in addition to larger blog articles. This is sort-of a new year's resolution.

Christmas Spirits in Bethlehem

Check out Ghost Hunters on SyFy (that's the Sci-Fi channel to those of us over 30) Wednesday Dec. 7th at 9pm when they'll feature the Sun Inn and perhaps some other local haunts. Here's a clip from their internet site:

Hauntings of Whitefield House

As a lead-up to Halloween, the Express-Times included an article teasing ghost stories of The Whitefield House in Nazareth.

The spookiest tale comes from Kelly Givens, business manager at the Whitefield House, who is the only person to have actually seen a ghost.
Givens said that about two years ago she was alone at the house during the afternoon and walked up the stairs into the museum and passed a woman who she initially thought was a visitor. Then she realized the woman was dressed as a Moravian nurse of the period from when the children were at the nursery.

The Whitefield House Museum, 214 East Center St., is open to the public 1 to 4 p.m. Sunday through Saturday. The cost is $5 for adults and $3 for students and children to visit. For information, call 610-759-5070.

Kazoo Parade 2011

The Nazareth Kazoo Parade was held this morning to celebrate Independence Day.

A highlight of this year's event was the grand marshal Abbe Graber, of Saugerties, N.Y. Graber, a professional kazoo player and kazoo craftsman, was invited to the borough by the Nazareth Area Chamber of Commerce to serve as grand marshal of the parade.

Anyhoo, here is a video of the parade rounding the corner onto Main Street.

Mysterious Twine Plagues Nazareth

As the Morning Call reports (read here) areas of the borough have become entwined in an unexplainable tangle of thread. Sandy Remaly noticed the string over her home near Chestnut Street. She claims that the string stretches almost 8 blocks including the area all the way over near council chambers.

I had to see this for myself and swung by there on my morning bike ride. At this point the string is gathered around a clothesline pole and stretches up to a nearby tree. But it seems to stop there. I examined the string myself and can tell you it is probably not of this planet. No human could have produced a string that light and strong. Although, it could be a new type of guitar string developed by Martin Guitars. One of the many strong storms we've had lately may have blown it out of one of their huge smoke stacks and over the borough. What do you think the string is? Check out the video and comment below:

2011 Nazareth Adult Soapbox Derby

The 4th annual Nazareth Adult Soapbox Derby took place Saturday May 7, 2011 on West Prospect Street. It was a really great day. There were over 40 cars from at least 4 states battling it out for top cart. A steady rain at around 2:30 pm cleared out most spectators but the race continued uninterrupted. Here is a slideshow of pictures from the day:

You can review race results and check out more pics at the official site: Click Here

Be sure to join the Facebook Group.

Read about the official 2011 WeirdNazareth.com car HERE.

Check out my live Tweets from the event HERE.

Mushroom Man Tasered

Some mushrooms make you big, some make you shoot fireballs. The green ones even give you a 1UP. Apparently some also make you naked. As the Morning Call and Express Times report: A naked Upper Nazareth man on a bad hallucinogenic mushroom trip is accused of assaulting a police officer and an emergency medical worker who had come to help Sunday after he threw himself down the stairs of a home in Palmer Township.

"It started as a medical call," said Palmer detective Sgt. Timothy Ruoff. "It went bad from there."

Garrison L. Goodman, 31, of Upper Nazareth Township had taken "magic mushrooms" at 1202 Dunkle St. when he attempted to "dive or fly" down the steps from the second to the first floor, Ruoff said. Although Goodman was eating the mushrooms, Ruoff said, a bottle of mushroom juice was also recovered from the house. Goodman was visiting a friend at the time.

Brian Flavelle of Suburban Emergency Medical Services arrived about 1:25 a.m. to assist Goodman, who was suffering from a cut to his head and broken collarbone, Ruoff said.

Goodman was naked in the front yard and attacked Flavelle, Ruoff said, punching him several times in the head.

When Wilson policeman Marc Crisafulli also arrived, he was punched a number of times in the head by Goodman as well, Ruoff said.

The melee ended when Crisafulli shocked Goodman with a Taser and arrested him, Ruoff said.

Goodman was treated for his injuries at Easton Hospital, then arraigned by District Judge David Tidd and sent to Northampton County Prison under $50,000 bail.

Goodman faces charges that include aggravated assault, simple assault, reckless endangerment and possession of a controlled substance.

2011 Nazareth Adult Soapbox Derby Registration OPEN!

Click Here for Registration Page

Nazareth Historical Treasures

The Express Times has a new feature called Historical Treasures that spotlights local artifacts found in local museums. It appears every Sunday in the Connect section of the The Express-Times. There are several cool Nazareth landmarks that have been highlighted thus far, the most recent being the Indian Tower. Here are links to the Nazareth pieces:

• Indian Tower
• Stone cenotaph at MHS Historical Area
• Tannenberg Organ

2010 Pumpkin Carving Contest Bust

The 2010 WeirdNazareth Pumpkin Carving Contest was a bummer. We only got two or three legitimate entries. I say "legitimate" entries because in my two years of running an online pumpkin contest I have noticed that there are internet pumpkin trolls. Internet pumpkin trolls are people, who are usually quite talented at carving, that troll the internet for various and random contests to enter their pumpkins in.

That said, we did get two entries from actual WeirdNazareth readers, Nicole Burns' Scooby Doo pumpkin and Jeff Gum's flying dog-thing pumpkin are shown below. Thanks to both of you for your pumpkin entries! Nice job.

2010 Nazareth Halloween Parade

2010 Results:

BEST APPERARING INDIVIDUAL:

1ST, “LITTLE BOO PEEP” JoAnne Vanatta From Nazareth

2nd, “PRINCESS BELLE” Sarah Banko From Bushkill Township

3rd, “WITCH and BLACK CAT” Nicole and Brianna Snyder From Nazareth

MOST COMMICAL:

1ST, HOMESTEAD KENNELS From Nazareth

2nd, “HAWIAN LUAU” Center for Animals Health and Welfare From Easton

BEST APPEARING SMALL GROUP:

1ST, “PIRATE SHIP” MacINTRYE FAMILY From Easton

2ND, NAZARETH HIGH SCHOOL DANCE TEAM

3RD, KIDS CO-OP From Bethlehem

4th, “SUPER HEROS” Freiss family From Lower Nazareth

BEST APPEARING LARGE GROUP:

1ST, NAZARETH YMCA DANCE TEAM

2ND, LEHIGH VALLEY A.A.R.C. CAR CLUB

3RD, JEANIE CARDINALS SCHOOL of DANCE From Nazareth

BOY SCOUTS:

1ST, BOY SCOUT TROOP 74 From Nazareth

2ND, CUB PACK 78 From Nazareth

3RD, CUB PACK 88 From Nazareth

GIRL SCOUTS:

1ST, NAZARETH AREA GIRL SCOUTS

BEST APPEARING FLOATS:

1ST, PARKETTES from ALLENTOWN

2ND, JENNINGS TRANSPORTATION from NAZARETH

3RD, NAZARETH MIDDLE SCHOOL BEST BUDDIES

4TH, LABAR TOWING from NAZARETH

CHEERLEADERS:

1ST, UPPER NAZARETH CLIPPERS

2ND, LOWER NAZARETH WILDCATS

SPECIAL JUDGES AWARD:

“DYNAMIC DUO” Brian and Conner Rehn from Nazareth

2010 Pumpkin Carving Contest

How would you like to win a super terrific WeirdNazareth.com T-shirt? I know, I know. Stop jumping up and down and listen for a minute. We are having another pumpkin carving contest and it is really easy to enter. You’re probably already carving a pumpkin for Halloween, right? Well all you have to do is take a photograph of it and send it to us and if it’s good enough you might win a T-shirt. Why are you jumping around again? The WeirdNazareth.com T-shirt is made of real fabric and has a spiffy silk-screened logo on the front. Each WeirdNazareth.com T-shirt is hand printed by our founder in his basement.

Information and Rules:

How to Enter:
To enter, take a photo of your pumpkin and e-mail it to us at weirdnazareth@hotmail.com. You can send us the photo itself as an attachment or a link to the photo on a photo-hosting site (Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa, etc.) We would prefer a link, but whatever works for you works for us. When you e-mail us, please tell us your name (at least your first and last intial; privacy will be respected) and the town that you live in. If you want to tell us a little about your pumpkin we would love to hear it. If you're feeling saucy, you can cronical it for the Maker Diaries.

The Weird Nazareth staff and our families will sort through all the entries and determine 4 finalists. The 4 finalists will then be posted on weirdnazareth.com and our readers will vote for the best pumpkin. After the contest is over, we will fawn over the winner and post a slide show of all the losers' entries.

Deadline for entry is midnight, Oct. 31, 2010.

Rules:
1) Your photo must be of a real pumpkin or some sort of pumpkin-like vegetable.
2) You do not have to be a Nazareth resident to enter the contest. You can be from anywhere in the whole world. Even Easton.
3) You must be of legal pumpkin carving age to enter.
4) By submitting a photo for the contest you are allowing us to use the photo to post on our sites, on our Facebook page, etc.
5) If you become a finalist, we will post your name (first name only) and town. We won’t post your last name if you don’t want us to.
6) Your pumpkin does not have to be carved, per se. It can be painted or sculpted or whatever. Basically, although we’re calling it a pumpkin “carving” contest it’s really a “creative pumpkin” contest.
7) No cheating. At weirdnazareth.com we’re fairly computer savvy. If you try to use a photo you found from a Google images search we’ll probably be able to tell.
8) You can submit as many pumpkins as you want. So you can create some really interesting in-family squabbles if you wanted.
9) If needed, you can submit multiple photos of the same pumpkin (different angles, etc.)
10) The rules above are very loose. Feel free to bend them.

Prizes:

The ultimate, grand prize, first place winner will get a WeirdNazareth.com T-shirt that is printed on whatever color shirt you want (assuming that the color has already been invented and exists at Target). It can be whatever size you need. In other words, I won’t be printing the shirt until we find out who won.

What are you waiting for?