Shop Around Town

Here's an updated list of the stores participating in "Shop Around Town Saturday," April 20. Spend $100 at any of these shops and you'll get a free pass (a $25 value) to the Willowdale Steeplechase!

-- Annie Prue, Trail Creek, Terrain  – Glen Mills

-- J. McLaughlin, Peter Kate, Pink Turtle, Enchanted Owl, Two Sisters – Greenville
-- Ashley Austin, Vignette -  Kennett Square
-- Outback Trading – Oxford
-- That’s Hats – Chadds Ford
-- Jane Chalfant – West Chester
The 21st running of the Willowdale Races is set for Mother's Day, Sunday, May 12, at the intersection of Route 926 and 82.

I'm old-fashioned and I don't mind it

My fellow athletes know that gym teachers have their own distinct preferences when it comes to their musical accompaniment. Some blast their music at ear-splitting volume while screaming at their class; needless to say, I give those classes and teachers a miss because I don't consider that to be motivating in any way. I also value my hearing.
And the head-banging heavy metal stuff is just painful at any volume, no other word for it.
So you can imagine what a delight it was last week when one of my instructors played a CD of the Great American Songbook! "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered." "Someone to Watch Over Me." "At Last." "I'll Be Seeing You." Oh, it was wonderful!
The one young person in class, doubtless raised on an unwholesome diet of today's popular hits, was not pleased. But for one happy hour, the tastes of the 18-to-34-year-old demographic did NOT take priority.
In other gym-related matters, thank you to the Brandywine Yoga studio for hosting a trunk show of Athleta clothing, all at a 30 percent discount! Athleta gym clothes are really nice -- they have a catalog and there's a shop in King of Prussia -- and I quickly chose a new top in a cheerful pink and a hugely comfortable dress that my friends will tire of seeing this summer. Brandywine Yoga, owned by Lisa Palladino Sparta, is on Route 52 in that little shopping center at Denton Hollow Road in Pocopson Township.

Photo show

I'm going to return for a second visit to "Close to the Edge," the photography show at Hardcastle Galleries, 5714 Kennett Pike. The opening night, April 5, was so crowded that I couldn't do the artwork full justice (I'm only 5-foot-3, so I stared at a lot of people's backs). Among the works I did get to see: Jim Graham's amazing photos of rocks and ice from Iceland, Michael Kahn's mammoth print of a path leading over the dunes (I felt like I could step onto the path and into the painting, Looking Glass-style), and a beautiful photo by Alessandra Manzotti of two equestrians near "the tree" (the iconic tree that stands all alone atop the hill east of Springdell). The other photographers in the show are Steve Boyden, Sam Krisch and David Nibouar.
The show runs through April 27; it is well worth a visit.
I also walked just across the parking lot to browse through "Found," a very reasonably priced antiques store (www.foundcharmingobjects.com).

Mushroom open house

Can't wait for the annual Mushroom Festival this autumn? Then you'll definitely want to visit the Woodlands at Phillips, 1020 Kaolin Rd., which is celebrating its second anniversary by holding an open house on Saturday, April 27, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
All day long there will be a mushroom growing exhibit, with whites, crimini/portabella, oyster, maitake, shiitake, royal trumpet and pompom varieties.
From 10 a.m. to noon chef Kurt Jacobson will be in the kitchen cooking Phillips Mushrooms and Phillips Gourmet products; yes, there will be samples!
At 1 p.m. mycologist Tina Ellor will be giving a seminar, "An Overview of How Mushrooms Grow." Maitake coffee and tea will be served all day. The event will be held rain or shine; the phone number is 610-444-2192.
This delightful little store is slightly south of the Five Points intersection, south of Kennett Square.

CCHS Antiques Show

Thanks to a kind neighbor, I got free tickets to the Chester County Historical Society's annual antiques show, this year held at the Phelps School in Willistown Township. Did I know how to get there, my neighbor asked. Indeed, yes: I grew up only a few minutes away!
The show was in the school's fieldhouse. The entry hall took you past former horse stalls, and in the main hall, underneath the floor covering, you could see the vivid green artificial turf.
The antiques were lovely, but nothing grabbed me this year. The cast iron garden frogs were very cute, but I realized they'd quickly become overgrown with lamium, which would defeat the purpose of a garden ornament.
There seemed to be a lot of andirons and samplers on sale this year. One of the more unusual offerings was a gigantic ceremonial ash burl bowl, fashioned by a Native American. Price tag: $44,000. There was also a lovely painting of the sun-dappled Buck Run by local artist Jon Redmond; he painted it at Laurel Forge Farm in Newlin Township.
A child-size mug depicting ice skaters made me laugh: It said, "A small preasant." Ah, typos even in the 19th century!
I had fun eavesdropping on the dealers: the buzzword this year seemed to be "the feel" of a piece, as in "I like the feel of this [chest of drawers, candle stand, weather vane, portrait, etc.]." One dealer confided to another that he was "changing gears" and planned to focus on twentieth-century pieces. Another was regaling two customers with a story of how not even being laid up in the ICU stopped him from bidding online for antiques.
By the way, if you went to the show, too, and still have the catalog, take a look at the article about antique photographs: there's a wonderful photo of the barn at Maulton Farm barn here in West Marlborough (it burned down 70 years ago).

A sad loss

Mary Larkin Dugan and I had a lot of disagreements over the 25 years I knew her: to give just one example, I found her fondness for Maigret detective novels inexplicable. But all our sharp literary, political and cinematic differences were outweighed by the multitude of things we agreed on: our love of local history, words, amusing neighbors, and just about anything British (except for the BBC's production of "Brideshead Revisited"; I loved it, she didn't).
Mary died at Linden Hall on Monday, April 8, only a few weeks after she had been named to the Unionville High School Wall of Honor. She grew up in Marlborough Village, graduated from the Unionville schools and spent her career here teaching middle-school English while raising her four sons. After retiring, she founded the Kennett Underground Railroad Center, the Southeastern Chester County Historical Society and the East Marlborough Historical Commission, took part in a Shakespeare reading group, and had her own business researching the history of people's houses. She was even a fellow "Kennett Paper" columnist: she wrote the local history feature on p. 4.
Whenever I had a local history question, I'd send her an email and she'd either know the answer or find someone who did. She was a meticulous researcher, painstaking with the facts, and had no patience with historical embellishments -- woe to the person who got her started on the supposed "slave quilts"!
Last night a friend told me she stopped by to visit Mary two days before she died and Mary was sitting up in bed, typing away on her laptop.
From Day One Mary was one of the most loyal readers of this column (though she loathed my pen name). I could count on her to point out my many grammar errors ("further" vs. "farther" comes to mind); fortunately, she read my column before it went to press so I could correct them.
Her death is a loss not only for her family and friends but the whole community. As soon as word got out, friends and former students started posting on Facebook all kinds of fond memories and funny stories about her. I think my favorite was this one:
"She was my English teacher in 7th grade in 1978, and I borrowed a book and never returned it. A few years ago at the UHS farm show I saw her at a booth and said in my best hillbilly voice "Ain't you my old English teacher? Ain't nobody learned me English like you did." She hadn't seen me in over 30 years and she replied "Vincent, are you still enjoying Raymond Briggs books?"
Classic Mary. I can hear her saying that.
The night she died, a former student of hers, a former school colleague of hers and I raised a toast to her at The Whip. Rest in peace, Mary. I'll give George Simenon another try, just for you.

Overheard

When I go to The Whip, I don't even bother to turn off my phone because the village of Springdell tends to be a cell-free zone. (When Tony Young's ill-gotten furniture, prints, shotguns, etc. were auctioned off across the road a few years back, the auction company couldn't take phone bids for that very reason.)
So last night while sitting at the bar, I was surprised to hear my phone's trumpeting ring tone. I reached in my pocket and shut it off because I was in the middle of a riveting (to me, at least) conversation about a friend's upcoming surgery. She was describing the procedure in detail and, at my prompting, even drew me a little sketch of the planned incisions.
Well, it turns out I didn't shut the phone off; I actually answered it. My friend on the other end told me later he listened to about 20 seconds of graphic surgical details before becoming utterly grossed out and hanging up.
(I'm taking that with a grain of salt. When he phoned later that evening, he immediately launched into a tale of his own recent cataract surgery.)