Ladies and gentlemen

I love hearing about these father-daughter dances being held this spring by many of our local Girl Scout troops. What a great idea, showing elementary-school girls how they deserve to be treated by a date! The photos just melt your heart: grinning girls in pretty dresses or leggings, hair in barrettes or a French braid, and their proud, good-sport Dads in a jacket and tie or a blue sport coat and khakis. Everybody is just beaming.
A friend of mine who just won a Pulitzer prize for his newspaper photography even made a charming little video of his daughter's dance, edited to the tune of "What Makes You Beautiful" by the boy-band One Direction.

Results

Here are the top 15 finishers from the "Run for Our Sons" 5K race

held at Patton Middle School on April 21, which I wrote

about last week: 

1. Johnathon Ganly 
2. Derek Brogan 
3. Paul Elsen
4. Erick Marklund
5. Jennifer Welsh
6. William Jeppe
7. Debbie Pelegrin
8. Meg Rosato
9. Michael Reath
10. Alan Horowitz
11. Matt DiPaolo
12. Dewey Atkins
13. Connor Schilling
14. Cole Walker
15. Susan McMahon

Winning time was 18:41. The ages of the top 15 runners ranged

from 10 to 51, and their paces ranged from 6:08 to 7:20 per mile.

There were 284 finishers in all. 

Truncated

In the past few weeks Asplundh workers have been making their periodic rounds of state roads, lopping off tree limbs that might fall on power lines. The staging area for their army of orange trucks has been behind the old Red Rose Inn in Jennersville. It's not difficult to identify the roadsides where they have been working. In particular, Street Road (Route 926) near the London Grove intersection now has some distinctly asymmetrical trees.
A reader said she could never figure out to pronounce the name, so I looked it up. Apparently many customers are curious about that, because it's the first FAQ on their website:
“AH - splund”. The final “H” is silent. It is a Swedish family name meaning “grove of aspen trees”.
Now you know, Linda D!

Too much information

Visitors to the Unionville post office on Saturday were greeted with a wet carpet and the following warning sign:

Whether the fluid was in fact water or not, what an ingenious way to keep people away from that part of the lobby!

Unbiased

I was just checking my blog statistics and came across this mercenary little announcement:
"When you share your words, thoughts and photos on Blogger, you are sharing your passions with the world. Sometimes, you’re passionate about brands or products. Starting today, you can make money by promoting relevant products in your posts, gaining income for each new customer you introduce to your favorite brands."
Yuck! I assure my readers that I do no such thing. I don't mention products or stores so that I can make money; that would be wrong and it would ruin any credibility that I have. Nor would I ever accept free meals, ice cream, cider, pedicures, bread or chocolate milk in return for mentioning the merchant in this column.

Writer

I'm told that Mark Bowden gave a fascinating talk at the Foxfire Restaurant at the Stone Barn on April 18 in an event sponsored by the Cheshire Hunt Conservancy. Mark, who lives near Oxford, spoke about his adventure-packed career as a journalist and author. Boy, did I make the wrong choice: I attended a zoning meeting instead of going to hear him.
My friends who attended said he was an excellent speaker and told riveting anecdotes, including an amusing one about covering an Apollo rocket launch. And the dinner was excellent, too, I'm told.
I'm sure you've heard of Mark: he wrote for The Philadelphia Inquirer for years, and his books include Black Hawk Down, Killing Pablo, and Guests of the Ayatollah.

Crossroads

There was a minor crash at Routes 841 and 842 on Wednesday morning. That evening I asked a nearby resident what had happened, and she said that judging from the frequency of accidents there, it seems some people just don't understand the concept of a four-way stop.