Thursday, February 7, 2013

A good deed

Bill, the postmaster at the Unionville Post Office, had a new assistant this afternoon: a stray dog awaiting his master!
A Unionville resident picking up her mail spotted a loose yellow Lab in the parking lot. Worried that he might run onto Route 82, she took hold of the friendly canine by the collar and phoned the Delaware number on his ID tag. The owner, who lives near the post office, answered and was understandably quite upset to hear the news. He said he was about 20 minutes away and would leave for the post office immediately.
My friend took the dog into the lobby, prepared to wait until the owner arrived, but Bill said the dog was welcome to stay behind the counter with him. Unionville had a deputy postmaster for a little while!

Who needs manners?

At the Y this afternoon two surly-looking elementary-school boys were at the front desk asking the attendant if they could borrow basketballs. They didn't smile at him. They didn't make eye contact. And they certainly didn't say "please."
The attendant asked if they had their Y membership cards.
"No," they said. (No apology.)
Would they be sure and bring them next time? he asked politely.
"Yes," they replied, pro forma.
The Y employee (who was much, MUCH more tolerant than I would've been) then gave them basketballs.
Not good enough: One of the boys said he didn't like the one he was given; he wanted a particular one. Again, no "please."
At this point I left, despairing for the future of civilized society. Let's just hope these rude kids learn that saying "please" and "thank you" is not only the right thing to do, it will make your life easier in the long run.

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Order here

I joined some friends at Applebee's on Baltimore Pike for a late dinner on Tuesday night and got to use the restaurant's new self-ordering system for the first time. There's a wireless touch-screen device at each table that has all the menu items listed on it, and you just scroll through, decide what you want to eat and drink, and punch in your order. It's pretty cool. At the end of the meal (which is still brought by a real and friendly human server), your check appears on the screen and you can swipe your credit card through.

Cold comfort

Thank goodness for all of my alert sources out there. I got this chilling e-mail on Feb. 5:
"I was driving down Spencer Rd. just west of Stroud Water Research and there on the road was a man in a bathing suit with a towel over his arm and a bar of soap. He was walking to the stream and, yes, he walked right in stream and started to wash! I was so stunned I kept driving but did look at my temperature guide and it was 32 degrees outside! Balmy!"
I asked around, and it seems that this hardy fellow is often seen bathing there in the White Clay Creek, no matter how cold it gets.

London Grove update

After 3 weeks, the pile of trash in front of the twin house at Route 926 and Newark Road -- the one I griped about in last week's column -- has finally been removed! I don't know who did it, but this is good news. I was surprised at the number of people who came up to me and said that they, too, were fed up with seeing that mildewing trash heap.
And just steps away, the corner of the old blacksmith shop that was smashed by an errant vehicle during the snowstorm on Feb. 2 has been covered over with green and blue tarpaulins.

Sunday, February 3, 2013

Cornered

The southeast corner of the old blacksmith shop in London Grove village took a hit from a Land Rover during Saturday night's snowstorm. I drove through that intersection maybe an hour before the crash and can attest to how slippery the road was.

A spicy item

I have written before of the Nomex-lined digestive system that a Kennett friend of mine possesses. He loves spicy food, the more potent the better. He can down fiery, pepper-laden soup that temporarily robs me of the power of speech (a good thing, some would say).
His favorite is El Yucateco's green habanero sauce -- not the red, milder stuff, mind you. It is so strong that even an eighth-inch-wide line of this stuff added to a sandwich makes him very happy indeed.
He went to his local tienda to buy a bottle and the clerk gave him a quizzical look, as if to appraise whether this Anglo really knew what he was getting into. My friend had to assure him that he was fully aware of its hotness quotient and could indeed handle it.

To the dump

For the past few weeks there's been a pile of junk sitting in front of a house on Route 926 (Street Road) at the Newark Road intersection in the village of London Grove. There's an old sofa, other junk and plastic bags of trash. It's unsightly and I wouldn't be surprised if creatures have taken up residence in it. I don't know who the property owner is, but I hope he or she sees that it's hauled away soon.

Saturday, February 2, 2013

Into the woods

A friend from Cochranville checked in this evening and reports that now that deer season's over, "The other hunters and I went out to take in our hunting tree stands today (when the ground is frozen, thus good and solid). Six straight hours in the cold – no lunch break. I was cold. A cold day is usually not thought of as a window of opportunity." He's right there! At lunchtime I spent a mere 10 minutes in the post office parking lot chit-chatting and felt chilled through and through.

Namaste to you, too

A yoga enthusiast I know returned to her car the other day to find a cranky handwritten note on the windshield reading "Next time park inside white lines & centered in space." I suggested that perhaps the message wasn't really so offensive as it seemed: after all, isn't yoga really about being "centered in space"?

Looking up

I had a great time at Friday's Astral Harp presentation by Kevin and Janet Witman at Kennett Friends Meeting. Kevin showed stunning photographs of the planets and stars (some taken by him, some by the Hubble Space Telescope) and told us some mind-boggling facts about the age and size of our galaxy, while his wife Janet performed wonderful music on her harp (including "Twinkle Twinkle," "Stairway to Heaven," "Moon River," "Ain't No Sunshine," and Gustav Holst's "Jupiter").
Kevin, a workout buddy of mine from the Jennersville YMCA (seeing him in a necktie was a novelty!), is an enthusiastic and knowledgeable speaker who lectures at Franklin & Marshall's planetarium, and Janet is a professional harp player and teacher and director of the Brandywine Harp Orchestra. They live in Cochranville.
Kevin showed close-ups of the moon's surface and compared its potholed surface to a Pennsylvania road in the spring. And during the section of the lecture on the sun, a stinkbug crawled up the screen and seemed to be walking on the surface of the sun, right near a sunspot. Kevin was able to shoo him away.
The program ended on a more terrestrial note, with some vacation photos of Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah, where the couple went so Kevin could photograph an annular solar eclipse; the Grand Canyon; and Scotland, where Janet was attending a harp conference and Kevin went along as "harp-schlepper."

At one point Janet said the purpose of their program was to "entertain and calm nerves," and it certainly did both. The harp music was remarkably soothing, as was the candlelit setting. I feel like I would be able to recognize Kevin's profile anywhere now, as he was silhouetted against the screen for much of the program.

The meetinghouse was standing-room-only, including a busload (literally) of people from Jenners Pond, including former Kennett residents Dick and Janice Taylor. I also saw in the audience my friends Babette Jenny (whose harpist daughter, Gillian Grassie, studied with Janet) and Karen Statz.
This was one of the most memorable and best-attended Hadley Fund programs I've ever been to.

Wired in

I'm not sure this is entirely healthy. I was just making my usual Saturday-morning rounds on Facebook when an error message popped up informing me that my account was down "due to site issues." My first reaction was to share that on my Facebook status --- but, of course, I couldn't because ... my account is down. I felt thwarted. So instead I'm sharing it on my blog.
Speaking of today's technologies, while I was working on my Christmas-present knitting the other evening at home (Christmas 2012, that is; yes, I know it's February, thank you) my smartphone started making an alarming siren-like noise that I'd never heard before. It wasn't an incoming call or email; it wasn't a Facebook comment; and I didn't have an alarm set. Was it some kind of super-duper Weather Channel alert warning of impending doom? No. It seems that Amber Alerts (for missing kids) are now being broadcast as text messages, accompanied by this startling noise. But all the text does is tell you that an alert has been issued; you have to check online to get the details.

Friday, February 1, 2013

Lifestyle

West Marlborough resident Richard Hayne, founder of Urban Outfitters and Terrain, got some ink this week in a Jan. 30 Wall Street Journal story, "Backyard Farms Gets Fancy: Meet the $1,300 Chicken Coop."
"A $58 garden hose, anyone? Or a $258 bronze-and-limewood spade? Such are the offerings at Terrain, Urban Outfitters Inc.'s fledgling retail concept that caters to the older, higher-income consumers adopting a well-appointed homesteader lifestyle."
Mr. Hayne was quoted only in his chief-executive capacity rather than speaking about his own VERY fancy and extensive ventures in backyard farming at Doe Run Farm in Springdell. He did reveal that he hopes to open more Terrain stores eventually and to add a spa to the store in Glen Mills.
Another Chester County resident featured in reporter Anne Marie Chaker's story is Peter Zimmerman, a Chester Springs architect whose sign is seen on a fair number of construction sites around here. He and his wife Eliza keep bees and make their own honey.

For rent

The Longwood CrossFit "box" (that's what CrossFit devotees call their workout space) will be closing up shop in mid-February and is selling off its weights, mats and other equipment on Craigslist. It was located behind Holly Peters' Oriental rug store, on an alley off Broad Street in Kennett Square. I never tried the workout myself, but I understand it was very challenging, and I have friends who were huge fans. The jumping-up-on-high-boxes thing was the deciding factor for me: I worry about my knees.