I'm not having that problem, although I have them in only one location at my house. In fact they are about to be moved to make room for other things. Hopefully they'll like their new home.

By 1875 there would likely have been solid fuel (probably coal rather than wood) burning stoves rather than the, by then, old-fashioned fire places. This would be particularly true in western PA where coal was plentiful and where access to cast iron stoves would have been cheap and easy through canals or the Great Lakes. My northern NY house built before the Civil War never had a single fireplace, only stoves for both heating and cooking. The earliest stoves were wood-burning; then there was a coal phase, but by time we bought it in the 1980s all the heating and cooking had gone back to wood burners. With stoves you need only chimney stacks not the massive masonry that a fireplace needs, so you may not find large voids where hearths were. Keep an eye out for circular marks on walls about the size of gallon paint can lid. These are evidence of stove pipe thimbles as they passed through walls. If you can get up on the roof, you may be able to detect places where chimneys have been removed to below the roof surface. Look in the attic for circular holes in the attic flooring. It was quite common to have long (by modern safety standards) runs of nearly horizontal stove pipe from one room to another to get the chimney. It was also common to remove the stoves seasonally, and only keep in the house during cold weather. L.

I’m so glad to read all the conversation about everone’s thoughts and experiences in each of your own neck of the woods. In the several weeks since my last post, I have slowly noticed changes around my feeders. We now have about a dozen bluebirds who are daily visitors. They began coming even before the recent arctic weather we’ve been experiencing here in the NE lately. Same for the woodpeckers - downy, hairy, and red bellied, and cardinals. Before the cold blast, we had more chickadees than we do now. We had less than a handful of goldfinches, but now their numbers are ever so slowly creeping up. Not too many nuthatches or titmice, but a few that frequent daily. A couple of squirrels have returned. Interestingly, my husband has a friend who feeds squirrels exclusively and his friend said the population of those that are regulars at his house nearly all but disappeared! Also, last week we heard about a gentleman in his 90’s in our town who has fed the birds for over 40 years! He experienced the same mass feeding frenzy near summer’s end that I did, then the complete drop off of any birds to be seen at all. He says he’s never experienced this in all his years of bird feeding that he recalls. We were going through nearly 2x’s the amount of seed than normal, to all of a sudden having seed sit out and basically spoil because it was hardly even touched for weeks on end. With the frigid temperatures, I have noticed an increase in the hawks eyeing our feeder birds. They have been unable to find food in the woods and areas they normally frequent due to a tremendous amount of snow and have, unfortunately, captured some of our unsuspecting feathered friends. They are quite bold, and hard to scare off, which is also unusual. And yes, we also have some feeder birds that seem unbothered by my presence at the feeders while filling them, and don’t fly away til I’m nearly on top of them! This year has certainly been a very interesting year in the local bird world!

caflowerluver, I haven't looked lately for noodles - or pasta - but I learned to make egg noodles by hand when a small child and can whip up a batch pretty quick, so a darth of those wouldn't present a problem for me. In Omaha, Nebraska, in the 50s, we had: noodles; spaghetti; macaroni (for salads); potatoes; and rice; that was it ! I remember a recipe that called for Acini de Pepe when living in Wisconsin in the 70s. I had to hunt for such a pasta in more than a few stores to find it. (Such a wild thing. ) Probably had to go to Old Italy in Milwaukee to find it. My German/American Mother occasionally made potato dumplings that were heavenly tasting and shapped like a long, skinny, breakfast sausage. Never did learn to make those because she always made those when alone. My DD lived in Berwyn - suburb of Chicago - in the 90's . The Italian/American neighbors always called what they put on their pasta "gravy".