October 5, 2006 Issue
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Classified Chestnut Hill Local Online Editor Don't Miss an Issue, Tell us what you see or ©2006 Chestnut Hill Local Winner of One |
From our readersA fantastic festival A lot of hard work went into making Sunday’s Fall for the Arts Festival such a success. Forty thousand attendees saw more than 170 vendors, restaurants, community organizations, stores and musicians lining Germantown Avenue — more than in any previous years. The crowd enjoyed Chestnut Hill at its finest, especially when the late morning sun appeared. The Chestnut Hill Business Association would like to thank the following people for helping to put the festival together: Myles Menardi and his associate Felix for supplying electricity to all those who needed it. Joe Bird, Tom Gack, Sergeant Rich Paraschak and all of the other police officers who helped keep the avenue free from traffic and pitched in on so many other jobs that needed to get done. Katie Longstreth, Sam Tramontina, Mary Jane and Maureen and Mark Stanton who staffed the CHBA office. Derek Newell and Tom Walsh who made sure the streets stayed litter-free throughout the day. Joe Magarity, who so generously allows his parking lot to be turned into a food court. The Thomas Family, owners of Jacob Ruth, who loaned us space to store equipment. City of Philadelphia Streets Department, who coordinate post-festival street cleaning. Our terrific corporate sponsors — B101-FM Cabot Cheese, Verizon, National Penn Bank, Valley Green Bank Philadelphia Inquirer, Ogontz Avenue Revitalization Corporation, and Penn Distributors. Laura Lapinshohn Reale for great PR. To ‘The Weather Gods’ for the gift of wonderful, unexpected weather. Finally, the Chestnut Hill community owes a very special thanks to Peggy Hendrie, Peggy Miller and Kate O’Neill. They worked long hours to put together a festival that people of all ages would enjoy and that would present Chestnut Hill in the best light possible. When you see them, let them know how much you appreciate their efforts. Bob Previdi, Boy, do i miss Mt. Airy I have followed with amusement and annoyance the controversies in Chestnut Hill these 10 years I have been a resident. Here are two issues that particularly irk me. Put a darn dog park within Pastorious Park! I am not a dog owner (too much work) but I do enjoy watching all the shenanigans dogs engage in at the park. I have talked to numerous dog people who come from all over the area about the possibility of a pay-for-use dog park. Unanimously, they are all in favor. When I suggested a $25 per year fee, they countered with $50. Buy a special colored collar or tag, pay the fee to a designated dog walker (like raffles, either they will have the money or the collars) and use the money to maintain the park. If you don’t participate, you must walk your dog on a leash outside the dog park. Period. Spend the CHCA time negotiating with the city. Enforce the rules. I couldn’t believe the Local published a story whose focus was that Mr. Snowden was specifically targeting the CHCA in his advertising. He is having a tantrum. He frequently has tantrums. And he has money, so he can have really big tantrums that effect offers. But the CHCA or the Local, I get confused between them, going to his level and saying in essence “he is picking on us” was really too much. If he rented a store for the amount a dollar store or pawn shop or check cashing place could afford, there would be nicer clients who would be there first. So look with amusement on his wasting money on signs. And if he rents to a dollar store? Don’t patronize it…it will go out of business. By the way, don’t you think it is illegal (or should be) to inflate the value of a rental property so it doesn’t rent to take a tax loss? So how about learning a lesson from Mr. Airy and approach the community (it does say that doesn’t it?) association as a vehicle for community consensus, not as a place to act out childish fantasies and to recreate issues every few years so the association tries to fool the community into believing it is actually doing something. Esta Jo Schifter Who’s next? Re: “Bowman Properties...Teen Inc. Displacement” [Sept. 25]. Now the teens are being evicted? Who’s next, Toto? Perhaps we’ll see sky-writing planes puffing out a “Surrender Dorothy” message above Chestnut Hill. What are we suppose to do, have an unconditional surrender ceremony on the USS Missouri? Just wondering, Nicholas Langan, M.D. Dallas’ good deed The boulder and plaque honoring Constance Dallas which were pictured in today’s Local (Sept. 28) bring to mind another Constance Dallas “good deed” people may enjoy knowing about; it involves the street in Germantown where I have lived for 55 years and the distinguished building on it now known as the Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion. About 1959, that building had become derelict and was threatened with demolition by the oil company which had bought the property in order to put a gas station — “and a nice car wash to go with it” — on that corner. A zoning variance was needed and sought. At the hearing, the oil company representative undertook to establish that such a use was compatible with the neighborhood, citing numerous gas stations in the vicinity. Whereupon, I was told, Mrs. Dallas demolished his appeal in one sentence: “The gentleman has just made our case: Greene Street does not need another gas station.” There was laughter and applause, I was told. That one sentence won the reprieve that made possible the rescue of the Mansion and the consequent rescuing effect on all three blocks of West Tulpehocken Street. So I join Frederick Williams in paying tribute to Philadelphia’s first female City Council member — would she were the role model for her successors! Elisabeth Gentieu Chestnut Hill oversight I would like to thank the Members of the CHCA board for their positive reaction to the recommendations of the Oversight Committee regarding review and tightening of the guidelines for financial responsibility within the organization. Although presented as recommendations for consideration to the president and board, we are pleased at the motion to vote immediately on their acceptance and that motion was passed with virtually unanimous approval. The Oversight Committee will follow-up for implementation and report details at future meetings along with additional recommendations with the focus being a more open and productive community organization.
Jim Foster Conflicted? Former CHCA Treasurer Mark Keintz seems to see a conflict of interest in my periodic opinion and commentary in the Chestnut Hill Local while at the same time I serve on the Executive Board of the CHCA as an at-large member. I have contributed Opinion pieces and letters since September 2001, for which I have been paid in the past for some of those writings. I can assure the readers that my motivation is not the financial reward. Although my submissions continued to be printed, payment stopped after the resignation of Jim Sturdivant as editor and, by agreement with Lea Stanley, editor during the CHCA elections, the printing of my byline was limited and unpaid to avoid a forum for a candidate even if the subject matter were unrelated to the contested election issues. My writing has resumed and I cannot be paid under CHCA by-laws. I wonder where Mr. Keintz sees the conflict. My Germantown business is quite a distance from Chestnut Hill, and I do not ever remember mentioning it in any way in published comments. My business has not been touted or advertised in any CHCA events, and with exception of a few small paid-for advertisements in the Local in past years, has not been mentioned there. I would venture that unless someone carefully read the biographies of candidates published during the recent CHCA pre-election coverage, they would not even be aware of the business I operate. In order to have a conflict, there has to be some quid-pro-quo; where is it? Furthermore, anyone reading my columns over the years will hardly find a consistent thread other than that of verified often-overlooked facts woven into some degree of outrage or concern to stimulate debate. The subject matter has run the gamut from international, national, city and local issues. I challenge Mr. Keintz to find the self-promotion in any of them. Have some readers written in and taken exception to my conclusions — absolutely! — but that is the very reason I write. Preaching to the choir is a worthless enterprise, and the Local is one of the few professional forums where thought-provoking journalism has been welcomed; at least most of the time. I will continue to contribute comments and letters to the Local and hope the editor will accept them for publication. In the meantime I will concentrate my volunteer activity within the CHCA board as newly-elected chairman of the Oversight Committee. That will give me plenty to do, but I seriously doubt it will have any impact whatsoever on my business bottom line.
Jim Foster Responding to a letter from Stacy Edmonds, Wyndmoor, “Support the Zoo?”, Sept. 28 issue of the Local I can appreciate Ms. Edmonds’ concern for animals. However, I would suggest she get her facts straight before she includes rodeo in any of her letters. As one who participated, first as a contestant, and then worked with professional rodeos since the early 1950s, I can tell you there are specific rules for the care of rodeo stock. If a stock contractor has thousands of dollars invested in his stock, don’t make much sense to abuse his investment, now does it! Many of the bucking stock in rodeos live well into their 20s. If all domestic or wild animals were as well cared for as rodeo stock, there would be no need for the S.P.C.A. or any similar organizations. Tom Woodruff Consider your party Almost time to make choices. Not between best and worst, but presented to the electorate by the ballot. Supporting a party doesn’t determine your choice, but their handling of the issues for the past year should. And today those issues are pretty clearly out in the open, dominated for the most part by Iraq. We don’t lack information. How do we look at past choices and future alternatives. What to do? Going into Iraq was a good decision, overwhelmingly supported by the generally available evidence, the U.N. unanimous vote to do something, and the House and Senate approvals. But winning is much more difficult and expensive in lives and treasure than expected. Look back on 1942 when we and our friends were losing all over the world. Today’s stakes are similar and the price of losing very serious. But this time it is more complicated. Our enemy is diffuse, having very different values, adept at using modern technology to their benefit, concentrating on the vulnerability of innocents. The list goes on. In today‘s world destruction of morés, lives and building has become simple and our own standards of desired performance more difficult. One can argue that we should have had better information, not gone in, and list many shortcomings. There were certainly too many. At the same time, what would have Hussein done had we left him alone? The probabilities are serious, and frightening. Just to suggest one. Today he could be a determined foe of Iran, or an active partner, with WMD of his own, together or separately threatening Europe and the Middle East and everyone else. This is not pretty, but the sanctions were not working and the cohesion of possible partners has been demonstrated to be weak. We may not be demonstrably winning at this time, but we need not lose, a certainty should we withdraw. Sure, we withdrew from Vietnam leaving that country and Cambodia to endure 1,000,000+/- deaths and misery. We are facing up to the situations with varying degrees of input and effort. Certainly we are more safe than five years ago, but totally safe we can never be. Every action involves choices, expenses, and judgments where even after the fact observation has many nuances and unknowns. At least we know our leadership is trying and we are able to complain of too little, too much, or the wrong thing. The European countries by and large have neither the will nor the capacity to take on the same threat approaching, or even within, their own borders in a meaningful way. It would be a sad note in history if we go down, or choose isolation, defending the very values they have helped us over time develop, those countries acting as desultory observers. And they are far more vulnerable than we. And what do the Democrats offer? What are their alternatives? Who will their leaders be? Reid, Pelosi, Dean and/or others? W.W. Keen Butcher Bush has PTSD? Sadly President Bush is demonstrating symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder, severe shock, and deep depression due to the emotional damage caused by perplexing insoluble issues. While bouncing from crisis to crisis, including the war in Iraq, destruction of the twin towers in New York, skyrocketing gas prices, invasion by illegal aliens, threats from Iran, and tanking poll numbers, our President has finally slipped into a state of total incapacitation. Without a doubt, the final straw of clear non-functioning intellectually was the inability of President Bush to confront President Hu of China about their trade restrictions. Media commentators on television should be ashamed for their vicious attacks on our disabled President during his struggle with severe ailments. Remedies include extended psychological therapy by our best psychiatrists; but if that fails, then the provisions of the 25th Amendment should be invoked by his cabinet members and Congress. Whenever a majority of the principal officers in the Cabinet and our Vice President transmit to the president pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers of his office then the Vice President becomes Acting President. Larry D. VanderMolen, Ph.D. (Retired) |
