March 25, 2010 - ChaddsFordLive.com

61st Annual Art Show – Chadds Ford Elementary

cfe — 61st Annual Art Show - Chadds Ford Elementary

Chadds Ford Elementary School hosted is annual art show Friday March 19 and Saturday March 20. The show was well attended with dancers from the Darlington Art Center welcoming guests in front of the school.

The featured artist this year was Len Garon, although he was taken ill and unable to attend. Donating Artist was Diane Cannon, the Vice President of the Studio Group, Inc. in Wilmington.

Hot hors d’oeuvres were served through out the elementary school transformed to art gallery. Violin music provided by Clare and Amy Semes Friday night provided a relaxing background in which to stroll through the aisles of framed art work and to talk with the artists.

On Saturday the music was provided by Alex Claffy Quartet and Andrew Vogts on violin. Artist Lou Messa gave a demonstration on Landscape Painting. Annette Alessi demonstrated portrait painting.

This year’s chairpersons were Toni Lynam and Andrea Pandolfi.

About Emily Myers

Emily Myers has lived and worked in Chadds Ford for over thirty five years. She founded the parent company of Chadds Ford Live, Decision Design Research, Inc., in 1982. ChaddsFordLive.com represents the confluence of Myers' long time, deep involvement in technology and community. Myers was a founding member of the Chadds Ford Business Association and currently serves on its board of directors. Her hobbies include bridge, golf, photography and Tai Chi. She lives with her husband, Jim Lebedda, in Chadds Ford Township.

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Academy Day 2010

School & Education

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High school students interested in attending one of the U.S. military academies
are invited to a special presentation to be held on

Sunday, April 18 at the Valley Forge Military Academy & College, Mellon
Hall, 1001 Eagle Rd, Wayne. Registration begins at 9:30 a.m. and the program
begins at 10 a.m. There will be an open house from 11a.m. until 12:30 p.m.

Students, and their parents, can meet with admissions
representatives from West Point, Annapolis, the U.S. Air Force, Merchant Marine
and Coast Guard academies. The schools keep track of student interests, so make
sure you give your name and contact information to the representatives from the
schools you are interesting in attending. For additional information, please
contact Chip Ridewood at 610-892-8623 or chip.ridewood@mail.house.gov.

This information courtesy of the Unionville High School
Listserv.

About CFLive Staff

See Contributors Page https://chaddsfordlive.com/writers/

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Local artists honor Karl J. Kuerner at Darlington

Arts & Entertainment

twilight at bear lake by donna hazen-nance copy — Local artists honor Karl J. Kuerner at Darlington

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Chadds Ford artist Karl
J. Kuerner presents a group show of some of his most accomplished alumni
in Darlington Arts Center’s gallery in Garnet Valley. This show will pay homage
to Kuerner as an instructor at Darlington over the past 32 years, a press
release said. The free opening reception on Saturday, April 10 from 3 to 5 p.m. is a chance to meet the artists
and enjoy some wine and cheese. The group show will be on exhibit through April
26 from 9 a.m.- 9 p.m. weekdays, and 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. Saturdays.

The six artists participating in this
unique show are: Garnet Valley residents Annette Alessi, Marie
Kirkwood, and Bill Sweeney;
Donna Hazen-Nance of Broomall; Stella Kavalkovich of Media and Charles Logan of Upper Darby.
Kuerner has been bringing his talent and abilities to Darlington Arts Center
for the last 32 years teaching adults to draw and paint in all media.
This exhibit is a testament to Karl’s artistic and inspirational expertise, the
release said.

Darlington
Arts Center is located at 977 Shavertown Road, Garnet Valley. For more
information directions, please visit www.darlingtonarts.org or call the Center at
610-358-3632.

About Press Release

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Adopt-a-Pet

Local News

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Duchess and Cupcake are two domestic short hair cats
that are available for adoption through the Chester County SPCA. They were
taken into Chester County SPCA’s protective custody in May 2009 because they
lived in a house with far too many cats. They were eventually surrendered to
our facility. Everyone else from that group has been adopted and now it is
Duchess and Cupcakes turn. Duchess is an 8-year-old spayed female black and
white cat and Cupcake is a 6-year-old spayed female calico cat. They are both
very sweet girls who are laid back and like to go with the flow. They can be
adopted together or apart Duchess and Cupcake are two affectionate cats that
are now waiting for their new forever home with a responsible care giver who
will give them the love and attention they deserve. If you are able to provide
that home, visit the Chester County SPCA at 1212 Phoenixville Pike in West
Goshen or call 610-692-6113. Duchess’s registration number is 96794647 and Cupcakes’
registration number is 96794650. To look at some of the other animals available
for adoption, visit the shelter or log onto www.ccspca.org.

About CFLive Staff

See Contributors Page https://chaddsfordlive.com/writers/

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Free Your Space: If the shoe fits, where’s the matching one?

Home and Leisure

Whether it’s your own shoes or your child’s, are shoes keeping you from walking out your door? On time? Sometimes shoes seem to have a life of their own. As if there are still feet in them after they’ve been removed and those feet are now free to wander off in their own unsupervised directions. One crawls under the couch while the other explores the basement. Sometimes their playful and elusive behavior threatens to make us so late that we give in and tell the 6-year-old that he’ll have to deal with his 4-year-old brother’s shoes for the day. Even our own adult shoes wander off on occasion (although they are far less confident than kids’ shoes and tend to stay in pairs). Even so, we know we wore them yesterday and could swear we took them off upstairs.

Facts & Stats:

· > Shoes will only be where we have put them (the shoemaker’s elves do not really exist)

· > 85 percent of the dirt in our houses comes in under our shoes

· > It takes about 21 days to create a habit

Now, with these three ideas in mind, let’s tackle our shoe problem once and for all!

1. In order to put shoes “away” we must first decide what “away” means and make sure that all family members agree with the definition.

Is there a closet near the front or back door? Is there space near the door for a basket or bin? Do you have a mudroom or laundry room that you don’t mind leaving shoes out in? Is there space by the front door for a few pairs to sit out?

2. Set limits.

Each family member can’t keep every shoe they own by the front door! Two pairs are the most that need to be out and handy. The rest should have a home in the owner’s bedroom.

The bedroom home should be organized and easy to use – cubbies in the closet, under-bed storage, hanging shoes storage, etc.

3. Once the areas are designated and limits are set, it’s time to create habits.

Whether you’re an old dog or a young pup, you can learn a new trick if you try. Repetition and persistence for just a few weeks will help to establish some good shoe habits that can banish those elves for good!

· Don’t like to be “the enforcer” of the family? Before you begin, designate a different person to be ‘the Fearless Shoe Leader’ each week. This person will be the one to call out “Shoes!” at the end of each day to remind everyone to check that their shoes are in an elf-defensive shoe position for the night.

· Don’t like walking around without shoes on? Make the second pair of shoes by the door, slippers.

· Kids don’t like to remove shoes each time they come in? Save the laces for school and use slip-ons when they’re home.

FiaFinally, try having this conversation around the dinner table or before bed, not when you are already late for school in the morning. Organization is a life skill, not a punishment! Whatever progress is made should be congratulated, celebrated. Stand up in your matching shoes and be proud!

To contact Annette Reyman for organizing work or speaking engagements in the Greater Philadelphia area call (908) 361-7105 or email her at annettereyman@gmail.com. She is a member of the National Association of Professional Organizers and its Philadelphia Chapter. View her Web site at www.allrightorganizing.com.

About Annette Reyman

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First Person Singular: Stealing from Groucho

Opinion

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There are times when I hear Groucho Marx in my head.

“This morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got
into my pajamas I’ll never know,” as the great mustachioed, cigar-chomping
comic actor reputedly said.

In my case it wasn’t an elephant, but rather a pelican and
it was an old pair of lounging pants, not pajamas. The bird wasn’t wearing
them. I was.

I did shoot the sucker, but with a camera, of course. ( See This Week’s Photos.)

The bird was flying above a lake near my parents’
condominium in Florida.

My recent trip was somewhat unexpected, the result of a
conspiracy. One day ChaddsFordLive.com publisher Emily Myers told me that she
and my sister decided that I needed a vacation. (They’ve known each other for a
number of years.) Two weeks later I was on a plane—at 7 a.m.— heading to a
semi-sunny and less than warm Ft. Lauderdale. From what I was told it was
warmer and less windy here than there, the week I was away.

But I did need to get away. Not a day had gone by in more
than a year when I wasn’t concerned about how best to build the editorial side
of ChaddsFordLive with multiple day parts spent either checking e-mail, writing
something, figuring out how to design the pages or just simply making things
better. I needed the time off.

But visiting ones elderly parents is not playtime. It wasn’t
painfully obligatory and I did spend some quality timer with my folks, but I
sure did need more beach time. I did get out to a place called Deerfield Beach
with my father a couple of times. Only one afternoon were we able to stay for
any length of time, though. Our previous trip was too short because it was
chilly.

We did make another attempt, in between those two tries.
This one time, however, my mother would go too. My father decided he wanted to
go to Juno Beach, the one near Jupiter not Normandy.

Dad said it was a better beach, quieter with less of a
crowd. Too bad we never got there. He made two wrong turns along the way and we
wound up in an area he had never been. He was profusely apologetic, but mom and
I ragged on him for not using his GPS.

So we had lunch at a deli called Too Jays in a shopping
center that, to me, looked like all the other shopping centers in the area. At
dinner, I was the one being ragged on about some of the foods I make. No, I
won’t go into that now.

But while I didn’t get to spend all the time on the beach
that I wanted, it was still good to get away and see the family. And I did
shoot that pelican, something you don’t see along the Brandywine. Birds here
don’t wear lounging clothes.

About Rich Schwartzman

Rich Schwartzman has been reporting on events in the greater Chadds Ford area since September 2001 when he became the founding editor of The Chadds Ford Post. In April 2009 he became managing editor of ChaddsFordLive. He is also an award-winning photographer.

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Police log for March 25

Police

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State police are investigating a residential burglary at the
Windsor at Brandywine apartments. According to a police report, someone entered
the residential unit through an unlocked second floor balcony window and took a
50 inch Panasonic plasma TV, a 42 inch Sony Bravia LCD TV, a Sony Playstation
3, a Mac Book Air laptop computer and a fireproof safe containing a reported
$2,000 in cash. The burglary took place sometime between March 13 and March 18.
Anyone with information is asked to contact Tpr. Allan McMurray at
484-840-1000.

About CFLive Staff

See Contributors Page https://chaddsfordlive.com/writers/

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Blogging Along the Brandywine: A Dream Deferred

Along the Ford

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What a difference a week can make.

Last week I had never heard of the “picoCurie per
liter” measurement, as in 2.7 pCi/L.

Tom and I were too excited thinking about the beautiful
Colonial Cape Cod home just north of West Chester on which we had signed the preliminary
papers.

But after receiving a cram course in home radon levels, the
week ended with our sad decision to pull out of the buyer’s agreement.

This is not going to be one of my light, chatty pieces, or
one that makes you smile. But I’m hoping it will motivate you to ask some
questions, do some research on your own and perhaps to even take action.

Very simply, radon is a colorless, odorless, tasteless
radioactive gas formed during the breakdown of uranium in soil, rock, and
water.

Radon is found everywhere on earth, even in small quantities
in the air we breathe. But because it is denser than air, contamination occurs
when radon from these sources
accumulates in confined areas such as home basements or attics.

In October
1988, President Reagan signed the
Indoor Radon Abatement Act which set guidelines to make indoor air as free from
radon as the air outside. With the Radon Act 51, Congress set the natural
outdoor level of radon gas (0.4
pCi/L) as target radon levels for indoor air. But because two-thirds of all
homes in the U.S. already exceeded this level, the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency lowered its
standards and recommendations for the nation, targetting an acceptable indoor radon
level of 4.0pCi/L.

Unfortunately it
has taken over twenty years of continued research for the World Health
Organization to now ammend those figures and recommend that all countries adopt an even lower acceptable
indoor level of 2.7 pCi/L.

So how does this effect us living in the Brandywine
Valley?

According to a
2008 study done by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the highest radon
concentrations in the United States are found not only in Iowa but in the
Appalachian Mountain areas in southeastern Pennsylvania.

In October 2009, Exton’s John Lauber, a realtor with RE/MAX wrote: “We have not been told to change
our current level of 4.0 [to 2.7pCi/L] in Pennsylvania yet. I do understand
that it will be changed to align with WHO.”

The EPA and WHO
have listed the three leading causes of lung cancer as smoking, radon and
second-hand smoke. In 2005, U.S.
Surgeon General Richard Carmona noted that more than 20,000 Americans die of radon-related
lung cancer each year.

So Tom ordered radon
testing on our dream house prior to the final sale. The results- the basement
level tested at 9.9 pCi/L and the
first floor dining room, 5.7pCi/L.

We have been told
that even higher levels have been found in the area and are easily mitigated by
a fan located in the basement and vented to the upper exterior of the
home through PVC piping. But because
the high radon levels in this house were constantly supported by an open French
drain in the basement and an outside well, we opted out.

While Tom and I believe we made the right decision, many of
you with more experience in the matter will say we backed out of the deal
needlessly.

A dream deferred?

I don’t know. But hopefully we’ll all be able to breathe a
lot easier and healthier.

About Sally Denk Hoey

Sally Denk Hoey, is a Gemini - one part music and one part history. She holds a masters degree cum laude from the School of Music at West Chester University. She taught 14 years in both public and private school. Her CD "Bard of the Brandywine" was critically received during her almost 30 years as a folk singer. She currently cantors masses at St Agnes Church in West Chester where she also performs with the select Motet Choir. A recognized historian, Sally serves as a judge-captain for the south-east Pennsylvania regionals of the National History Day Competition. She has served as president of the Brandywine Battlefield Park Associates as well as the Sanderson Museum in Chadds Ford where she now curates the violin collection. Sally re-enacted with the 43rd Regiment of Foot and the 2nd Pennsylvania Regiment for 19 years where she interpreted the role of a campfollower at encampments in Valley Forge, Williamsburg, Va., Monmouth, N.J. and Lexington and Concord, Mass. Sally is married to her college classmate, Thomas Hoey, otherwise known as "Mr. Sousa.”

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