Jan 29, 2015 5 min read

The 11-week hiatus in Washington & Jefferson College’s Energy Lecture Series has been extended to 13 weeks.

Diana Stares, director of W&J’s Center for Energy Policy and Management, organizes the series and said she had to postpone the next installment from next Wednesday to Feb. 17.

The scheduled speaker, however, will remain the same. Sarah O. Ladislaw will address “Energy Trends in North America” starting at 7 p.m. in Yost Auditorium, inside the Burnett Center. Ladislaw is director and senior fellow of the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Energy and National Security Program.

This will be the fourth of five programs in the series this school year. The final one will be March 10, titled “Energy Trends in Latin America and the Caribbean.” It will feature Jorge Pinon, director of the University of Texas’ Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy.

All sessions are free and open to the public.

Twas the day after Christmas – Dec. 26 – when Fragile Paradise launched in the Shoppes at Quail Acres.

Megan McFarland, the owner, moved her floral shop there from downtown Pittsburgh. She had been well established in the Golden Triangle, where she plied her trade for 12 1/2 years. But she has a young child and wanted to work closer to her North Strabane home, and Quail Acres is in the township, at the corner of Washington and Racetrack roads.

McFarland, operating out of the carriage house there, is offering an early perk to customers: free delivery of orders $50 or more on Valentine’s Day.

Strike up the band – Belle Vernon-based Trombino Music Centers Inc. received a national award.

The company recently received the National Association of Music Merchants’ Milestone Award for its half-century of service in the music products industry.

Robert Trombino and his wife, Norma Jean, founded the company in 1964. It once had nine locations, but now has three – Broad Ave., Belle Vernon; Galleria, Mt. Lebanon; and Westmoreland Mall, Hempfield Township.

Trombino’s customer base includes Washington and Greene counties.

Advent Communications has gone platinum.

The North Strabane Township company, on Meadowlands Boulevard, is a top technology provider locally, especially in Washington County. It recently achieved platinum business partner status with Avaya, a global provider of business communications and collaboration systems.

That status is usually conferred on national-level partners.

“We are beyond thrilled with the work of our team to reach this milestone,” David Reinhart, director of sales, said in a news release. “Over the past 14 months, Advent has received awards and recognition about our product, service and delivery. We’ve been recognized for our superb customer satisfaction and have made key investments to support our customers’ interests.”

Parry Custom Homes will be coming to Washington County in March.

The North Huntingdon Township-based company will have an open house March 5 for the showroom and design center it is building in the Old Mill project off Route 19, South Strabane Township.

Customers can view floor plans and design a custom home at the center and have the home built on Parry’s lot.

The showroom and center will be open Monday through Thursday from noon to 6 p.m.; Friday from noon to 4 p.m.; and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Sears Maid Services is a new cleaning franchise based in Uniontown and serving Washington, Greene and Fayette counties.

It also is serving another need – helping cancer victims. The new firm has joined forces with Cleaning for a Reason, a Texas-based nonprofit that teams up with cleaning companies to offer free house cleaning for women with the disease.

Sears Maid has agreed to clean two homes per month for free four straight months, but the homes have to be in the three-county region.

Michele Halterman is general manager of Sears Maid, a franchise of Sears Home Services.

Phil Garuccio is a heavy hitter for 84 Lumber Co. – the new vice president of the lumber giant’s Central Division, encompassing Western Pennsylvania, the panhandle and northern part of West Virginia, most of Ohio and Western Maryland.

Garuccio, 42, will oversee more than 65 stores, a component manufacturing plant, three engineered wood product hubs and 11 kitchen and bath design centers. He is a 22-year employee of 84 Lumber and lives in North Lima, Ohio.

Dr. Yongsheng Wang, associate professor of Economics at Washington & Jefferson College, will participate in a panel discussion on how the energy market may play out this year.

The luncheon briefing/discussion will run from noon to 2 p.m. Feb. 17 at the Fairmont Pittsburgh hotel on Market Street. It will be hosted by the Japan-America Society of Pennsylvania and the World Affairs Council of Pittsburgh.

Wang also is a Research Fellow at W&J’s Center for Energy Policy and Management.

The other panelists will be Hisanori Nei, professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo, and Rich Weber, chief executive officer of PennEnergy Resources. David Iwinski Jr., managing director of Blue Water Growth LLC, will be the moderator.

Pennsylvania American Water announced this week it has appointed Beatty Wynn Morgan senior director of field operations and Jay Lucas of Houston as engineering manager in Western Pennsylvania.

Morgan, based at the McMurray office, will lead distribution and production for the firm’s water and wastewater business. Lucas, who has been with the company since 1989, will supervise a team that delivers water and wastewater infrastructure improvement projects.

Pennsylvania American serves about 300,000 customers in 12 Western Pennsylvania counties: Washington, Fayette, Beaver, Allegheny, Armstrong, Butler, Clarion, Indiana, Jefferson, Lawrence, McKean and Warren.