They say true love, like wine, gets better with age.

From the glowing smiles and quiet laughs of resident couples from the Springhill retirement community in Millcreek Township on Valentine’s Day, the cliche appears to ring true.

On the most romantic of days, four couples shared their tips on keeping the magic alive for seven, 23 or even 61 years.

Gordon and Barbara “Bobby” Osborn met at their church more than seven years ago. The shared belief system has helped keep the love going, said Barbara Osborn.

Roberta Seepe, who has been married to her husband, John, for 56 years, emphasized commitment.

“(People today) don’t know each other well enough before they get married,” said Seepe. “They go into it way too quick.”

Residents of Springhill assembled a top-10 list of advice for long-lasting love in celebration of Valentine’s Day. Highlights of the list include viewing marriage as a lifetime of enjoyment instead of obligation, maintaining trust in the relationship and having fun as a couple.

For Don and Donna Swager, who have been married for 23 years, a sense of humor is the key.

Sue and Dick Koeck, married 61 years, said that common interests — including a love of a daily cocktail hour — keep them happily together.

“It’s time at the end of the day to think about what we have and how fortunate we are,” said Sue Koeck. “That’s our life: the love and the marriage.”

To find the complete list of tips for lasting love, visit www.facebook.com/springhillseniorliving.

This story originally appeared on GoErie.com.

An estimated 18,000 people gather at Gobbler’s Knob in the early hours of Feb. 2 to see if Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow. If he does, they brace themselves for six more weeks of winter.

The Erie Times-News sent me to Punxsutawney to capture the immediacy of the 15-minute ceremony through photos, videos and tweets. A three-day Groundhog Day series ran in the newspaper.

Here are the stories included in the package:

Pa. Tourism Office turns to Foursquare to promote Groundhog Day

Groundhog Day cook-off benefits Crawford County animal rescue

Groundhog Day weather, if not the forecast, pleases Phil’s fans

Photo by Jack Hanrahan

His father, Rick Bell, has served as a volunteer firefighter at the Fairfield Hose Co. in Harborcreek Township for 37 years. As a child, Bryan Bell would spend his spare time at the fire station.

“We grew up together at the station,” said Jim Hawryliw, the fire chief of the Fairfield Hose Co., who was eight years older than Bell. “He was so goofy and funny. He could make anyone laugh.”

At 14 years old, Bell joined the fire company as a junior fireman. By the time he had graduated from Harbor Creek High School in 2006, he had traveled through the ranks to become a senior fireman.

Hawryliw said Bryan Bell was an active member of the volunteer fire company, often responding to calls.

And in 2006, Bryan Bell responded to a different kind of call: He joined the U.S. Air Force.

Bryan Bell, a 23-year-old senior airman, died for his country in Afghanistan on Thursday. His mother, Donna Aldrich, received notice of his death by a letter.

Rick Bell knew something terrible had happened to his son when three Air Force officers showed up at his Harborcreek home Thursday evening.

“I opened the door, and as soon as I saw those three lieutenant colonels, I knew he was gone,” Rick Bell said.

Rick Bell said he didn’t know many details about his son’s death, which occurred in south-central Afghanistan. Bell’s main job was to clear routes with two other servicemen in an armored vehicle, Rick Bell said.

Bryan Bell last visited his dad over the summer, before his deployment to Afghanistan. He previously served a tour in Iraq.

He was still excited to be an explosive-ordnance disposal technician, and eager to defuse and dismantle bombs and other weapons.

“He always made it a point to say, ‘Dad, it’s what I want to do,’” Rick Bell said. “He didn’t want to go over there and shoot people.”

Hawryliw, the fire chief, said that Bryan Bell originally wanted to pursue a career as a firefighter in the Air Force, but he had come to love his position in the EOD division.

“It was one of the jobs I wanted,” Bryan Bell said, when interviewed by the Erie Times-News in March 2010. “It’s exciting. I’m glad I got it over the other jobs I picked.”

The position of EOD technician came into the spotlight after “The Hurt Locker” won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2009. Bryan Bell described the movie as “probably the best war movie ever made.”

While on tour in Iraq in March 2010, Bryan Bell was photographed for an Associated Press story describing EOD technicians’ reactions to the movie.

“We try to do everything remotely with robots,” Bryan Bell said in 2010. “If that doesn’t work, the team leader is the one to go in and finish the mission. My job is to watch his back.”

Those close to Bell said what they will miss most about him is his sense of humor.

“He was the most lovable, humorous person,” said Kim Bell, Bryan Bell’s stepmother. “He will be sadly, sadly missed.”

Hawryliw said he will always remember Bryan Bell as a boy sitting with his father around a campfire and talking for hours.

“Bryan was a great friend to all,” Hawryliw said. “Anybody who knew him loved him.”

Bryan Bell’s wife, Alaina Hart Bell, lives in Louisiana, where he was stationed before going overseas. His sister, Candice Bell, is also in the Air Force.

Support for the Bell family has streamed in, expressed both through phone calls and over social networks.

“We’ve gotten tremendous support from the community. It’s just been an overwhelming time,” Kim Bell said.

Rick Bell spent part of Friday morning visiting the mother of U.S. Army Sgt. Donald Oaks Jr., who was killed April 3, 2003, while serving in Iraq.

The families live less than a block from each other in Harborcreek. From his house, Rick Bell can see the U.S. flag Oaks’ mother has flown every day since her son’s death.

“People need to know that these deaths half a world away really hit home,” Rick Bell said. “It’s not all kids from Tulsa, Oklahoma, or L.A. Two of their families live less than 150 yards from each other.”

Rick Bell planned to leave Erie late Friday to travel to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where his son’s body will be delivered.

Funeral plans have not been made, but Rick Bell said his son will be buried in Erie.

Erie Times-News staff writer David Bruce contributed to this report. It originally appeared in the Erie Times-News.

Capitol Hill is becoming increasingly affected by the Citizen’s United ruling.

Citizens United — as it is commonly called — reversed the ban on corporate spending on political broadcasts and introduced the rather controversial notion that corporations should be treated the same as ordinary citizens under the First Amendment.

The previous campaign finance law was the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, commonly known as the McCain-Feingold Act, which prohibited all corporations —including non-profit organizations — from airing “electioneering communications” within 60 days of a general election or 30 days before a primary.

During the 2008 primaries, the conservative advocacy group Citizens United — which describes its mission as fighting to “restore our government to citizens’ control” — sought to air a promotional advertisement for the documentary “Hillary: The Movie.”

Because it would have aired within 30 days of the election, the ad was blocked for being in breach of McCain-Feingold. Firing back, Citizens United claimed a violation of the Bill of Rights and took its case to court.

“Citizens United v. FEC is the best chance that we have to overturn some of the most egregiously restrictive aspects of campaign finance law. This is a historic opportunity to strike a blow for the First Amendment,” said Ted Olson, the lead counsel for Citizens United during the case.

While the lower courts found in favor of the McCain-Feingold Act, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on January 21, 2010 that the ban was an impingement on the First Amendment. In a 5-4 decision, it opined that the government had no Constitutional right to regulate campaign finance as it is a form of political speech, and that corporations, unions and organizations enjoy the same First Amendment rights as ordinary citizens.

That decision, by extension, meant that corporations could make independent expenditures supporting or opposing candidates and ballot measures without disclosing them to the FEC.

“[Citizens United] opened the playing field up to voices from the right, more free-enterprise-oriented, less government-oriented voices to come into the process,” said Ed Gillespie, a Republican political strategist, in Politico on the anniversary of the ruling.

But politicos working on and around the Hill have seen a drastic shift in the way the political game is played since the ruling. Independent campaign spending is increasing with no regulation, transparency or disclosure.

“[There's such a great] amount of money gushing in and the public knows so little about it,” said Melanie Sloan, the executive director of the Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

From a campaign fundraising standpoint, that influx of money means the cost of running for office is increasing dramatically.

“There were campaigns this last time (the 2010 election) where third party spending was more than the [House] candidates’,” said Democratic fundraiser Mike Fraioli. “And they spend a couple million.”

Fraioli expects that the spending will skyrocket during the 2012 election cycle.

But Douglas Clopp of “good government” advocacy group Common Cause believes the Citizens United ruling has far more serious implications than simply increasing the cost of campaigning.

Clopp said he believes that as big corporations gain power in influencing elections, politicians will favor them over individuals even more when making decisions.

“This interest of this money in politics is paralyzing our government to the point where it cannot come to the aid of its people,” he said.

This explanatory story was featured on KCET.org’s Under the Influence blog, a collaboration between the public media website and the University of Southern California’s News21 Fellowship program.

The West Adams Heritage Association (WAHA) hosted its second annual ‘Art in Historic Places’ tour Saturday.

Attendees toured eight historic homes in the West Adams neighborhood. Each home was owned by a local artist, and his or her work was displayed throughout the house.

The ‘Art in Historic Places’ tour is one of four events hosted by WAHA throughout the year, each in an attempt to bring new visitors to the historic neighborhood and to raise money for the association’s preservation advocacy efforts.

“There are more landmarks in West Adams than the rest of the city,” said John Patterson, the president of WAHA.

In the late 1800s, the West Adams neighborhood became a destination for Downtown Los Angeles’ professionals. The “first suburb” of Los Angeles, West Adams grew exponentially with the installation of the streetcar.

But after Downtown Los Angeles’ heyday ended during the 1920s, several of the West Adams homes fell into disrepair.

In 1983, WAHA was founded as a neighborhood association. Noticing that the majority of people moving into the area had an interest in historic homes, WAHA morphed into a preservation advocacy group.

“The sense of community here is really, really strong,” Patterson said.

Patterson moved to West Adams from the Hollywood Hills because he wanted to own a historic home. Previously unaware of the area, he said he marveled at the magnificent homes when he first visited West Adams.

With WAHA, Patterson works to encourage more people to move into the area and provide guidance on how to renovate and preserve its hundreds of homes.

Sometimes referred to as the “preservation police,” WAHA has been at odds with developers in the past. It lobbies for the landmark status of homes based on their architect.

“Preservation is the ‘greenest’ building you can do,” said Patterson.

During the mid-2000s, West Adams saw a steady influx of residents. Among them were substantial Korean and Mexican immigrant populations, said Patterson. He noted that WAHA has experienced language barrier issues.

In attempt to reach out to community members, WAHA is hosting a class in Pico Union this summer to teach youth how to renovate houses. The hope is that the youth involved will work to restore homes to their former glory instead of tagging them with graffiti.

“We want to encourage people to do good work,” said Patterson.

This story originally appeared on Intersections South LA.

A photograph from the front page of the New York Tribune on March, 26, 1911.

Hours earlier all hell had broken loose. Menacing flames had engulfed the Asch Building on the corner of Greene Street and Washington Place in New York City. For the female workers on the top three floors, the building was a death trap. The scraps of fabric on the floor proved kindling, the locked doors morphed into oven doors, and the ninth and tenth floor windows became the only escape. Some workers fell to their death, others burned with the building and still others — the lucky ones — escaped down elevator shafts.

“Scenes of almost indescribable horror attended the catastrophe. Scores of girls leaped from windows eight, nine and ten stories above the street to their death. In one place so many bodies fell that the glass and iron deadlights in the pavement were broken,” reported the New York Tribune the following day.

On the 100-year anniversary of the Triangle fire, the parallels between the struggles of the factory workers and the current labor disputes are evident. As America watches unions stand up against budget cuts, it hearkens to the event that sparked the initial union movement.

As of 1911, the Triangle fire was the greatest loss of life New York City had seen. Shocked and appalled, the American people turned to the press to interpret the disaster.

“Fire is a preventable phenomenon,” wrote the New York Observer and Chronicle on April 13, 1911. “Men who in the match know how to bring together forces that can spring into light and flame when ignited know also how to put out the flames, or how to provide against the conditions which give rise to the violent spread of fire.”

Outlook, a weekly magazine, said the disaster was caused by “civic indifference and inaction.” Life Magazine blamed lax building code enforcement and corrupt building and factory owners.

Newspapers across the country printed graphic images of the fire, interviewing survivors and witnesses.

“The hundreds of girls and women in the room were pushing around and screaming wildly and many of them were jumping from the windows,” survivor Samuel Lavine told the New York Tribune. “The smoke was by this time so thick that we could breathe only with difficulty.”

In the months after the disaster, publications featured the “human stories” of the fire. Readers were introduced by name to the Triangle Shirtwaist Company’s deceased factory girls in articles that emphasized the workers’ perseverance in the face of poor working conditions and their heroism as their lives were taken prematurely.

“The wages were not so bad, [though] many of the girls only made $6 and $8 a week,” said Rosey Safran, a survivor of the fire, to The Independent on April 20, 1911. “But they should have had some regard for our lives.”

Historians credit the Triangle fire as one of the greatest stimuli for the labor and union movements of the twentieth century. Empowered by a sense of community, laborers stood up for shorter workdays, safer work conditions and higher salaries.

On October 1, 1912, The New York Times reported the recent passage of legislation limiting the workweek of women of boys to 54 hours was “a result of the agitation that followed the Triangle shirtwaist factory fire.”

But the Triangle fire also proved an influential event in the history of journalism. Publications across the country banded together in defense of the defenseless. In the practice of the muckrakers of the early 1900s, they advocated openly for social change.

In the modern-day labor movement, protesters are standing up against the powers that control state budgets in the face of cuts to public sector unions. Around 150,000 people are currently picketing in Madison, Wisc. Thousands do the same in other states across the country. Their protest comes as a direct result of the action taken following the loss of the 146 lives in Triangle fire and of the media who worked to avenge them.

There has been emotional distance in the media’s coverage of the current labor disputes. While stories about the protests have been featured in the country’s newspapers, broadcasts and news websites, very few have delved into the human costs of the issues at hand. The “human stories” of these movements have been ignored.

Clearly, history repeats itself. But what remains to be seen is if today’s media will heed the example of their predecessors and take a stand as the champion of the people.

This opinion-editorial originally appeared in the Huffington Post.