LONDON GROVE: Solomon's Temple

On my travels the other day I was heading west on West London Grove Road at Guernsey Road when I saw what looked like an old cemetery and the remains of a church.
A quick Google search and I learned that it was the site of the African Union Church of London Grove Cemetery, also known as Solomon's Temple Cemetery. The small church building's fieldstone foundation remains. Most of the grave markers are from the late 1800s or the early 20th century. Several are marked with American flags to honor veterans who fought for the Grand Army of the Republic during the Civil War. According to John Ford's stone, he fought in Company C of the Third Regiment of the Pennsylvania Colored Troops. (The regiment saw action at Fort Wagner on Morris Island, South Carolina, and then spent the rest of the war fighting in Florida.)

Civil War veteran John Ford died on March 28, 1915.

According to the findagrave website, for a time in the 1980s a local Boy Scout troop maintained the site; in fact, the wooden staircase and wooden fencing on the Guernsey Road side were installed as part of somebody's Eagle Scout project. Now London Grove Township keeps the grass mowed, but several tombstones have fallen over, parts of the ground have sunk, the wooden steps are rickety, and there were a few fallen branches on the ground. Perhaps another Scout project?

GARDEN: Ready for winter

It was such a warm autumn that I just put my garden to bed last weekend, uprooting the now-slimy celosia, harvesting the purple potatoes (thank you, Vincent), lifting the gladiolus and hymenocallis for the winter, and marvelling as usual about how two-inch-diameter, ten-foot-tall sunflower stalks can grow from a tiny black-and-white-striped seed.
I didn't get a chance to order my usual exquisite, expensive tulip bulbs from White Flower Farm, so I fell back on Plan B: Lowe's. And sometimes it pays to procrastinate: they were 75 percent off, and the clerk told me they'd been marked down that very morning. (My experience with Lowe's bulbs has been very positive, especially since I treat tulips as annuals.)

INFERNOS: A generous community

Like so many others, I was saddened by the tragic fire at Barclay Friends in West Chester. When the call went out seeking donations for the displaced residents, we headed to the Kennett Walmart and filled a cart with toiletries, towels, underwear, clothes, slippers and socks. We were about to head to the donation drop-off point in West Chester when I checked online and found out that they'd been overwhelmed with donations and had to close down early because there was nowhere to store everything. (Perhaps you saw the photographs of the stacks of donated walkers and wheelchairs.)
We went back to Walmart and returned everything. Selfishly, I was grumbling a bit because I really wanted to pitch in, but I was also pleased that the community was so generous.
Sadly enough, another chance to help out arrived just days later, and even closer to home, when a family on Dean Drive in the Cedarcroft neighborhood lost their house, possessions and dogs and cats to a quick-moving Thanksgiving night fire. The next day, a relative started an online donation site with a goal of raising $25,000. Within a day more than $32,000 had been raised, thanks to more than 450 donors.

EXAM: A scary prospect

On Saturday we had dinner at the Saw Mill Grill in Oxford with a young man who's working hard to gain his certification in a highly technical healthcare field. He already has passed two written exams, and the final step involves taking an oral exam this spring with not just one inquisitor but six of them, who each grill you for 30 minutes. The exam has a fearsome reputation -- the pass rate is only 50 percent, and the examiners are authorities in the field.
He told us a horror story about a hapless examinee who recognized his questioner's name and politely said that he'd studied the man's textbook.
The author pulled out a copy of the textbook from his briefcase and opened it to a random page.
"In that case," he said, "perhaps you'll be so good as to summarize this chapter for me."
I tried to reassure the poor fellow, pointing out how articulate and knowledgeable he was and how well he was able to explain the field to laypeople like ourselves.
He looked highly skeptical, pointing out that we were chatting over a relaxed dinner, not in the pressure cooker of pivotal oral exam.

FEAST: An excellent Thanksgiving

Here's hoping you had a nice Thanksgiving. We made our usual trek up the Northeast Extension to Perkasie, where we caught up with infrequently seen family members, played with the two well-behaved dogs, teased the kids about the very green (but delicious) mint chocolate chip cookies they baked, and after a heartfelt prayer enjoyed a traditional turkey dinner. (We brought the mushroom casserole; thank you, Marlboro Mushrooms.)
A few funny things about the trip: At the Wawa near the Quakertown exit we spotted two young men sporting carefully arranged pompadours (I caught one checking his hairdo in the driver's side mirror); they looked like members of the rockabilly band The Stray Cats. On the way home through Harleysville we saw a sign for "Angst & Angst, Attorneys at Law," which cracked us up. (A witty friend later suggested their slogan should be, "We worry for you.")
And at the Wawa in Lionville (we like Wawas), we asked the clerk if he had had his Thanksgiving dinner yet.
"No," he replied, "but my girlfriend says she has a surprise for me when I get home."
He actually looked a little anxious. The guy behind us in line tried to conceal his laughter.
Having a holiday in the middle of the week throws everyone off. Even the radio shows seemed to be out of whack. On Friday afternoon, a friend who listens to a lot of WXPN reported with some surprise that DJ Ben Vaughn was playing Earth Wind & Fire.
"That's not Ben Vaughn," I corrected him. "Ben Vaughn is on Saturday. It's Funky Friday."

ELISE: Best cat name ever

A friend was showing us photos of his new-ish rescue cat, Elise. We asked him to explain the name. It suits her, he said, because she is small and very cuddly. And then there's also the homage to Beethoven: Fur Elise.

LCH: Honoring a board member

Congratulations to West Marlborough resident Alice Moorhead, who received the APEX Award for Board Excellence to honor her exceptional service on the board of directors of La Comunidad Hispana, which provides medical, dental and social services for local Latino families. She received the award from the Pennsylvania Association of Community Health Centers' conference in Lancaster. The APEX awards (short for Awards for Primary Care Excellence) are given each year to community health centers in Pennsylvania.

 

UCF: Some happy parents

The Unionville-Chadds Ford School District got a strong vote of confidence from two district parents I was talking to the other evening. They made a point of buying a house in the district and said they were baffled to learn that some of their neighbors pay massive amounts of tuition to send their kids to private school. Why, they wonder, when the quality of education in UCF is so high and the district's reputation is so stellar?
(And I hear they have a pretty good football team, too.)