I live in Harrisburg, the capital city of Pennsylvania. In checking a directory of on-line journallers, I found one that said the writer lived in Harrisburg. Thinking I'd found a neighbor, I wrote to her. It turns out she lives in another region of the state, and listed the capital city as a ruse. Her name is a pseudonym.

I've decided to be really public about this -- the point (or one of them) is to make a name as a writer, right? I'm not very worried about stalkers, since I suspect my readers are almost all relatives or trusted friends. And I don't think I would do very well at assigning aliases and making vague references to "a nearby college library" -- I'd wind up spending more time creating and remembering disguises than I would writing.

So, I tell you straight out -- I live in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I mention this because if you watch PBS at 9:00 tonight, you'll see "Meltdown at Three Mile Island," and you might catch a glimpse of some of my stomping grounds.

Yup, that's us -- the land of TMI, the site of the "worst nuclear accident in U.S. history," which occurred on March 23, 1979. The island is about fourteen and a half miles from my house (the magic Zone of Safety began at fifteen miles). Actually, the plant itself is situated in the school district where I taught. Other places have feel-good slogans: Virginia is for Lovers; I Love New York. Ours? NO MORE HARRISBURGS!!

Harrisburg gets mentioned a lot, actually, and not just as a slug on stories coming out of the state legislature. Just the other week, when songwriter Bobby Troup died, it was mentioned (at least in the local paper) that he had been born in Harrisburg. Fans of Stephen King might remember that the murderous main character in Misery had done a stretch as a nurse at a hospital here. (King's description of the building matched perfectly the facade of Brady Hall, the former residence and classroom building of the former nursing school at Harrisburg Hospital. He must have visited here.) And Harrisburg was the stated locale for a Law and Order victim's high school reunion, where she'd been stalked by the man who murdered her husband.

Carmen Finestra, who produced the original Cosby Show and now does Home Improvement, is from Harrisburg (AND is a McDevitt '65 grad like me!), as is Seattle Seahawks running back Ricky Watters (also a McDevitt grad). Newt Gingrich would have graduated from the school where I taught if his family hadn't moved to Georgia.

Golfer Nancy Lopez met her first husband here. Jennifer Ringley, famous on the Internet as the body in front of JenniCam, is from Harrisburg. And the new Whoopi Goldberg-Winona Ryder movie Girl, Interrupted is in production in town even as I write.

The all-American Hershey bar was born not far from here, as was a new type of artificial heart. Bill Clinton launched his 1992 campaign's whistle-stop bus tour from a truck stop just on the other side of the Wade Bridge.

But perhaps my favorite claim to fame for my city is this: it was the site of the 1840 Republican convention that saw William Henry Harrison ("Tippecanoe") nominated for the presidency. Harrison won, but caught pneumonia on his inauguration day and died one month later. Try making a five-page eleventh grade history paper out of that administration!