November 6, 2008 Issue                                       

©2007 The Chestnut Hill Local

Local Life

From Ukraine to refugee camp to Mt. Airy
Acclaimed artist opens tasty new restaurant
by LEN LEAR

From upper left, clockwise: Irina Datsko (right) and her daughter, Anita, run the new Italian BYOB, Langostini. (Photo by Len Lear); To make her award-winning collages, Irina uses her photographs, like this one of a beautiful orchid in Longwood Gardens, and then employs digital brushes, textures, color palettes, etc.; When Irina was awarded top honors by a national artists’ orgaization for her stunning collages, her face was flashed up on a huge screen at the Javits Center in New York, as if she were a movie star; Irina and her daughter are seen in 1983 in Lvov, Ukraine, long before either one ever knew how to speak English or cook Italian.

Everybody’s trying to get the most bang for his/her buck these days, thanks to the disastrous economy fueled by unscrupulous banking practices and a Congress and administration asleep at the wheel. Well, for a big bang, buck-wise, it would be hard to top Langostini, an Italian BYOB that opened six months ago at Front and Morris Streets, just a few blocks from the I-95 Washington Avenue exit.

‘Empty Bowl Dinner’ at CHC helps local families in need
by LISA MIXON

?Some of the hundreds of guests are seen are last year’s Empty Bowl event at Chestnut Hill College, which raised more than $10,000 to help provide food and shelter to homeless families.

Chestnut Hill College, in partnership with the Northwest Philadelphia Interfaith Hospitality Network (NPIHN), will sponsor the 10th Annual Empty Bowl Dinner on Wednesday, Nov. 12, from 4:30 to 8:30 p.m. in Sorgenti Arena at 9601 Germantown Ave.

The Empty Bowl Dinner, a popular event at the college and with the surrounding community, is the annual fundraising dinner for the Philadelphia Interfaith Hospitality Network, a non profit organization whose mission is to provide food and shelter to local homeless families.

Local businesses, schools, and potters donate clay bowls, while local restaurants donate soups, breads, and desserts. For a small fee, diners can select a hand-crafted bowl and enjoy fare from over 56 restaurants and bakeries in the Philadelphia area. At the end of the evening, diners take home their empty bowl as a reminder of those who face hunger everyday.

A few suggestions to make baseball much more exciting
by JIM HARRIS

This year’s World Series was certainly a strange one. Mother Nature managed to suck a lot of the fun and spontaneity out of it, but at least we in Philadelphia kept watching. And in the end we were rewarded with a championship. I was so happy I threw a newspaper box through a store window. And as if that weren’t enough, I was able to loot $275 from the store’s cash register. A good day all around.

Hill resident is honored for religious scholarship
by JON CAROULIS

Chestnut Hill resident Gail Ramshaw, a professor of religion at La Salle University, is seen after being honored by La Salle with its Faculty Distinguished Scholarship Award.

As a sophomore at Valparaiso University in Indiana, Gail Ramshaw attended a service held in the school’s chapel. Something about the intercession aroused her critical mind (she can’t remember what it was), so she mentioned it to the college’s chaplain. He invited her to write the intercession for the following week’s service. After she turned it in, the chaplain arranged for her to work for the chapel, writing intercessions.

Eventually, seeking to make scripture and liturgies more accessible became the benchmark of Ramshaw’s career as a scholar. La Salle University, where she is a professor of religion, recently honored the Chestnut Hill resident with its Faculty Distinguished Scholarship Award. In presenting her with the award, La Salle University Provost Dr. Richard Nigro said, “A colleague noted that her scholarship reaches more than the small numbers who work in her particular sub-discipline of religious studies, (but are works) meant to be read by all men and women of faith.”

One aspect of Ramshaw’s work is “inclusion,” which seeks to make liturgical passages relevant to all groups of people.