I felt a bit bad, looking back at my last post. Depending on how you read it, it sounds like I’m describing the devastation of the environment and community of Centralia, PA as “random stuff I just love.”

That was hardly my intention, of course. Anyway, I’ll make amends by offering this link to the website for a new feature-length documentary on Centralia that was released this year, The Town that Was. I hope to see it soon.

This is the kind of random stuff I just love.

A few weeks ago I spent some time reading about Centralia, PA, a town that has dwindled to almost nothing over the past several decades due to an underground fire in a coal mine that has been burning there since the 1960s. I was just once again reading the entry on Centralia in Wikipedia, and I found this line interesting:

Centralia is now the least-populous municipality in Pennsylvania, with four fewer residents than the borough of S.N.P.J.

OK, there’s a borough (a distinction for municipalities that does not exist where I live, but basically, in other words, a “town”) in Pennsylvania called “S.N.P.J.”? I had to find out more about this. So I did. Read more »