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Can we really depend on a rodent to predict our weather?

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Fairchild makes donation to Ronald McDonald Danville House

<p>Our Dallas &#8211; not the rootin&#8217;-tootin&#8217;, oil-spewin&#8217; Texas city, but rather the borough in Luzerne County &#8211; will get its moment in the television spotlight this week.</p><p>The borough that bills itself as &#8220;the heart of the Back Mountain&#8221; becomes the latest Pennsylvania community to be featured in <a href="http://on-demand.wvia.org/show/wvia-our-town-series/" target="_blank">WVIA-TV&#8217;s &#8220;Our Town&#8221; series</a>. Each hour-long program, which showcases the essence of Tunkhannock, Montrose, Milton, Berwick or another place in the public television station&#8217;s viewing area, allows local residents to record their own stories about what makes their hometowns special.</p><p>&#8220;<a href="http://www.wvia.org/television/documentaries/our-town-series/dallas/" target="_blank">Our Town Dallas</a>&#8221; is scheduled to premiere at 7 p.m. Thursday.</p><p>Already, the Wyoming Valley communities of West Pittston and Luzerne have been spotlighted in the ongoing series. (Pardon us if we&#8217;re especially partial to the upcoming program; the Times Leader and Dallas Post newspapers serve as its media sponsors.)</p><p>Each of WVIA&#8217;s &#8220;Our Town&#8221; programs allows the nearly 50-year-old PBS affiliate near Pittston to cater to a specific audience, and potential business sponsors, while at the same time keeping production costs low; volunteers do much of the groundwork. WVIA touts the project as a &#8220;video scrapbook.&#8221; For viewers, there&#8217;s an unmistakable appeal to seeing friends and neighbors on the small screen. For example, area residents helping to promote &#8220;Our Town Dallas&#8221; include Eric Martin, of the Dallas Rotary Club, Sue Van Horn, of Frontier Communications, and Dallas School District Superintendent Thomas Duffy.</p><p>Whether capturing Carbondale or Jim Thorpe, an &#8220;Our Town&#8221; program typically blends local history lessons with unabashed boosterism. During the installment on Dallas, you might hear snippets about how the borough &#8211; named for Jamaican-born Alexander J. Dallas, a Philadelphia attorney and the sixth secretary of the U.S. Treasury &#8211; grew after the 1972 Agnes Flood chased certain Wyoming Valley homeowners and businesses away from the river to the Back Mountain. And no overview of this borough would be complete without a nod to the annual <a href="https://www.facebook.com/BMMLAuction/" target="_blank">Back Mountain Memorial Library auction</a>, set for its 70th rendition in July.</p><p>Credit WVIA&#8217;s staffers for doing the legwork to continue production of the multi-year &#8220;Our Town&#8221; series. It, like much of the station&#8217;s recent programming, allows Northeastern Pennsylvania residents to discover more about the world directly around us, perhaps feel better about ourselves and, ideally, become a bit more connected. In short, it provides more of what we need to build a stronger community.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">The Back Mountain Memorial Library and its yearly auction remain linchpins of Dallas borough, the most recent community to be spotlighted in WVIA-TV&#8217;s &#8216;Our Town&#8217; series. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/web1_Auction.jpg</photo0><caption0>The Back Mountain Memorial Library and its yearly auction remain linchpins of Dallas borough, the most recent community to be spotlighted in WVIA-TV&#8217;s &#8216;Our Town&#8217; series. </caption0><photoCredit0>Times Leader file photo </photoCredit0></div></div>

Our Opinion: WVIA-TV documentary ‘Our Town Dallas’ gives borough residents rightful reason to boast