Guess who’s married
Leaving the chapel as husband and wife are Tom Hoey and the Bard of the Brandywine, Sally Jane Denk Hoey.
Guess who’s married Read More »
November 3, 2010
Local Republicans win big
.”For state Rep. Stephen Barrar, Tuesday’s big win for
Republicans was a “mandate” for the GOP.
Barrar, who won an eighth term as the representative for the
160th Legislative District, made the comment during a post-election gathering
at Pescatore’s on Route 202 in Chadds Ford Township.
He said it was a “great night for Republicans,” but that the
party needs “to restore fiscal responsibility.”
In an interview, Barrar said he has some definite plans for
his eighth term, but that finances are key.
“This voter turnout was about reforming the legislature, the
way we operate. They sent a message to Harrisburg that they want us to get our
financial house in order,” he said.
The Republican victory, both in the state and the country
was a reflection that voters want legislators to be fiscally responsible,
according to Barrar, but it’s up to the legislators to make it work.
“We have a huge mandate…but, then again, we have to live up
to the expectations of the voters. The next legislature has a huge task in
trying to solve this $5 billion budget deficit without raising taxes,” he said.
During the interview, the issue of ballot access was
broached. Candidates for statewide offices from the Libertarian, Green and
Constitution parties were kept off the ballot when the Republicans and
Democrats threatened costly challenges to signatures collected. Third party
candidates needed more than 19,000 signatures to get on the ballot for those
statewide races, while Republican and Democratic Party candidates needed only
2,000.
Barrar said he wants to see ballot access procedures
simplified for all parties, and that he has some ideas he wants to work on. He
did not elaborate.
“I think we need to do an entire comprehensive package of
voter reform bills that deal with ballot access and fraud…and then make it
easier for a third party candidate to get on the ballot,” he said.
Barrar’s 18,070 votes in the district—that also includes townships
in Chester County—represents more than 66 percent of the total. Democrat Nick
DiGregory took 7,755 votes and independent Dave Cleary picked up 1,307.
Fellow Republican Chris Ross also won re-election with 63.69
percent of the votes in the 158th Legislative District. The totals
were 15,480
for Ross and 8,769 for Democrat Susan F. Rzucidlo.
In the 16th Congressional District race, incumbent
Republican Joe Pitts again beat Democratic Party challenger Lois Herr. Totals
there were 25,140 for Pitts, 18,351 for Herr.
Other Republican wins went to Pat Meehan over Bryan Lentz
for the 7th Congressional District race. That seat was vacated when
democrat Joe Sestak opted to run for U.S. Senate. He lost to Republican Pat
Toomey in that race. Also winning was Tom Corbett who defeated Democrat Paul
Onorato for governor.
Chadds Ford Democratic Party Chairman was not pleased with the results: “My general thoughts are that the Chinese are rubbing their hands
with glee over the elections results watching the slide of our country to second
class status, initiated by Reagan, accelerated under Bush and now to culminate
with the ultimate purveyors of ignorance, vengefulness and incompetence: The
Tea Party.
“My personal thought is to leave Pennsyltucky and return to
civilization (NYC or London),” he said in an e-mail.
This election, Chadds Ford residents voted at Calvary Chapel for the first time. No problems were reported. Indeed, election worker Gail Force, the majority inspector said it was great.
“We have heat. We have light.We have hospitality.”
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.
Local Republicans win big Read More »
Police log for Nov. 4
• State police said an 84-year-old man from New Hampshire
was cited for failing to yield the right of way following a two-vehicle
accident on Route 1 at Hickory Hill Road in Pennsbury Township. The police
report said the Oct. 30 accident occurred when Robert L. Raley was driving
south on Route 1, but turned left into the path of a northbound vehicle. No
injuries were reported.
• State police from the Media barracks reported a one-car
accident with injury and transport on Route 202 south of Dilworthtown Road
shortly after 3 a.m. on Oct. 30. A report said Latarrence Patterson, 42, of
Coatesville, was driving north on Route 202 but ran onto the shoulder after
being distracted or falling asleep at the wheel. Patterson suffered an injury
to his head and was transported to Riddle Memorial Hospital.
• Police said Newark man was cited after a rear-ender
accident on Route 1 near Creek Road on Oct. 28. The report said Jonathan R.
Downes was cited after he failed to stop in time and hit another vehicle that
had slowed for backed up traffic. A minor injury to the victim was reported,
but there was no transport.
Police log for Nov. 4 Read More »
Don’t buy stock in tea
There really were no surprises in the midterm elections,
especially not the elections around here. State reps. Stephen Barrar and Chris
Ross were shoe-ins for re-election, as was U.S. Rep. Joe Pitts. All three are
Republicans.
Statewide, Republican Tom Corbett won the gubernatorial race
as most suspected, and fellow Republican Pat Toomey won the U.S. Senate seat.
That race was expected to be close, but it played out as anticipated with
Democrat Joe Sestak taking an early lead based on votes cast in Philadelphia,
but then losing that lead as results from the central and western parts of the
state came in.
Pat Meehan defeated Bryan Lentz for the congressional seat
vacated when Sestak opted to run for the Senate.
While tea-party movement candidate Christine O’Donnell lost
her senate bid in Delaware, others across the country did win and the U.S.
House of Representatives is back under Republican control, as are numerous
state houses and governorships.
But will this be a true change or just another phase in
business as usual? Each of the Republican candidates talked about smaller
government, less intrusion and getting out of the way so business can create
needed jobs. Did they mean it or will 2010 be just another 1994 when the GOP
took back control of the congress, then went back to being just as big a
spender as the Democratic Party?
As one Chadds Ford Republican commented as the polls were
closing, “If it’s like 1994 again, the Republicans are finished.”
The party may not be “finished” under those circumstances,
but it would prove the point that many people contend, that there’s no
difference between the Republican and Democratic parties.
Even the victory this year doesn’t point to a difference
beyond rhetoric, not yet anyway.
It should be noted that none of the tea-party movement
candidates (all Republicans)—or any of the Democrats for that matter—spoke at
all about the continued military involvement in Afghanistan, keeping 50,000
troops in Iraq, Predator drone strikes in Pakistan or maintaining more than 700
military bases in 130 different countries. None of the candidates said anything
about making peace with the rest of the world, how that would cut spending and
help restore sanity to the nation’s economy. And none spoke of the presidential
decision to order the assassination of an American citizen without any due
process.
Will the newly elected Republicans actually do anything
worthwhile, or will they revert to the same mindset their predecessors have had
since the days of Richard Nixon when the GOP turned its back on small
government and focused on dictating what people do in their bedrooms and what
they may or may not ingest?
Will they really do anything to cut spending and restore
fiscal responsibility, or will they be like George W. Bush who increased the
national debt by 54 percent? That’s more than Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton
combined.
Time will tell whether they were worth the votes—and the
hopes—of Americans.
Don’t buy stock in tea Read More »
Mind Matters:Stieg Larsson’s novels and their significance
Lisbeth Salander has been on my
mind a lot lately. She is the protagonist in Stieg Larsson’s trilogy of novels,
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.
These Swedish novels are now also rendered in Swedish films.
Interestingly, the first
novel’s Swedish title was Men Who Hate
Women. Why I address these books and movies here is that I believe they are
far more than entertainment. There is, I think, a profound significance that
they appear now, to capture the psyches of so many of us.
Briefly, The trilogy
intertwines the lives of the characters, Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist.
Lisbeth is a young woman who witnessed the brutal abuse of her mother by her
father, and was then brutally abused herself over the years by so called
professionals and caretakers.
However, she used her brilliant
mind and her cunning to face traumatic events with a solitary sense of “I will
not be a victim.” Blomkvist is the investigative reporter whose life becomes
entangled with hers. Together they solve in the first book, a mystery
disappearance of a young woman of a wealthy business family, only to discover
sexual abuse within the family, along with vicious hate crimes against many
women.Abuse of women is not “over there,” somewhere or nowhere—“only a movie.”
Domestic violence, rape, sexual
abuse remain in all societies to one degree or another. Stieg Larsson’s novels
and the movie versions thereof are graphic and difficult, but somehow also
compelling because their portrayal of violence against women is not
gratuitous.There has been both a fear and a putdown of women for thousands of
years with the rise of patriarchy. Just as in the dialectic of master and
slave, neither men nor women win in patriarchy.
When we denigrate a people by
nationality, gender, religion, socio-economic class, we eventually denigrate
ourselves. And so the patriarchy, in its creating a hierarchical structure
based on power, greed, wealth, material resources, territory—in the end
subsumes itself. Patriarchy, in its denial of the feminine principle (within
all of us) cannot sustain itself forever.
I think Stieg Larsson got this.
His novels are not simple escapism/crime fiction. I believe he had set out to
influence—perhaps even unbeknownst to him—the collective psyche to see the
elephant in the living room. That is, that the abuse of women, the rape of the
feminine, was not only to individual women (millions though they are) but that
there is a global rape created by a patriarchal, hierarchical perspective which
cannot abide the rising feminine.
Larsson’s Lisbeth depicted the
young wounded feminine evolving from her abusive history to reclaim her power.
Larsson’s alter ego Blomkvist was the epitome of the new man—carrying his own
gentle receptivity to meet the assertive feminine embodied in Lisbeth.
Fiction can be like a parable.
Some people get the message. Others simply twist the message into some literal
narrow meaning. My hunch, however, is that there’s got to be something afoot in
the collective mind (interesting image—foot in mind) that prompts Larsson’s
trilogy to be as ubiquitous as a Sarah Palin pun. And there the similarity
stops—cold as a snowy day in Sweden.
* Kayta
Curzie Gajdos holds a doctorate in counseling psychology and is in private
practice in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. She welcomes comments atMindMatters@DrGajdos.com or
(610)388-2888. Past columns are posted towww.drgajdos.com.
About Kayta Gajdos
Dr. Kathleen Curzie Gajdos ("Kayta") is a licensed psychologist (Pennsylvania and Delaware) who has worked with individuals, couples, and families with a spectrum of problems. She has experience and training in the fields of alcohol and drug addictions, hypnosis, family therapy, Jungian theory, Gestalt therapy, EMDR, and bereavement. Dr. Gajdos developed a private practice in the Pittsburgh area, and was affiliated with the Family Therapy Institute of Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, having written numerous articles for the Family Therapy Newsletter there. She has published in the American Psychological Association Bulletin, the Family Psychologist, and in the Swedenborgian publications, Chrysalis and The Messenger. Dr. Gajdos has taught at the college level, most recently for West Chester University and Wilmington College, and has served as field faculty for Vermont College of Norwich University the Union Institute's Center for Distance Learning, Cincinnati, Ohio. She has also served as consulting psychologist to the Irene Stacy Community MH/MR Center in Western Pennsylvania where she supervised psychologists in training. Currently active in disaster relief, Dr. Gajdos serves with the American Red Cross and participated in Hurricane Katrina relief efforts as a member of teams from the Department of Health and Human Services' Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.Now living in Chadds Ford, in the Brandywine Valley of eastern Pennsylvania, Dr. Gajdos combines her private practice working with individuals, couples and families, with leading workshops on such topics as grief and healing, the impact of multigenerational grief and trauma shame, the shadow and self, Women Who Run with the Wolves, motherless daughters, and mediation and relaxation. Each year at Temenos Retreat Center in West Chester, PA she leads a griefs of birthing ritual for those who have suffered losses of procreation (abortions, miscarriages, infertility, etc.); she also holds yearly A Day of Re-Collection at Temenos.Dr. Gajdos holds Master's degrees in both philosophy and clinical psychology and received her Ph.D. in counseling at the University of Pittsburgh. Among her professional affiliations, she includes having been a founding member and board member of the C.G. Jung Educational Center of Pittsburgh, as well as being listed in Who's Who of American Women. Currently, she is a member of the American Psychological Association, The Pennsylvania Psychological Association, the Delaware Psychological Association, the American Family Therapy Academy, The Association for Death Education and Counseling, and the Delaware County Mental Health and Mental Retardation Board. Woven into her professional career are Dr. Gajdos' pursuits of dancing, singing, and writing poetry.
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Crozer-Keystone Center for Diabetes to present free presentation featuring appearance by NBA Hall of Famer Dominique Wilkins
Professional basketball great Dominique
Wilkins will make an appearance at an upcoming free, informative presentation
offered by the Crozer-Keystone Center for Diabetes on Nov. 10 from noon to 1 p.m.
at the HealthplexÒ Sports Club, 194 W. Sproul Rd. in Springfield. The event
is free and open to the public.
Mary Jane McDevitt, R.N., B.S.N.,
CDE, director of the Center for Diabetes, will talk about nutrition and
diabetes prevention; exercise and its relationship with diabetes; obesity and
its relationship to insulin resistance; and understanding diabetes terminology.
After McDevitt’s presentation, Wilkins, who has type 2
diabetes, will speak about his experiences of living with the disease and his recommendations
for following a healthy lifestyle. Wilkins will greet attendees following the
presentation. Wilkins, nicknamed the “Human Highlight Film,” played 16 years in
the NBA and was a nine-time All-Star and two-time Slam Dunk Contest champion.
He entered the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2006.
For more information about the event, call 610-328-8920. For
more information about the Center for Diabetes, visit http://diabetes.crozer.org.
About Press Release
No tax increase in Birmingham
Birmingham Township supervisors are scheduled to vote on the
2011 budget during their Dec. 6 meeting. There is no planned tax increase in
the new budget.
The spending plan shows an anticipated $1,789,407 in revenue
and $1,265,897 in expenses. The excess revenue of $523,510 is the anticipated
carry forward into 2012.
As usual, the single biggest revenue source is real estate
taxes that amount to an estimated $759,500. Real estate transfer taxes add
another $120,000.
The largest expense to the township is its police
department. Expenditures there total more than $544,000 in salaries, insurance
and equipment costs. The second highest expense—more than $98,000—goes toward
the township office staff, salaries for the secretary/treasurer, the office
assistant, supplies, training and treasurer’s bond.
While there’s no tax increase planned for next year, taxes
did go up in 2010. The township instituted a Local Services tax that was levied
against those who work in the township. That tax was $1 per week. Supervisors
also increased the property tax from 1.5 to 1.6 mills. That tax cost the
average taxpayer about $.63 per week.
Other business
• During the Nov. 1 meeting, supervisors voted to add one more part time
police officer at the training rate of $16 per hour.
• Township resident Doug Marshal expressed concern that
there was a communication problem between the supervisors and residents
regarding discussions over a trail extension down Meetinghouse Road. He said
there was a lot of unconfirmed information floating around the township without
any discussion from the supervisors.
Supervisors’ Chairman John Conklin said that any current
discussion was at the Recreation, parks and Open Space Committee level, not the
supervisors. He said RPOS has not yet made any recommendation to the board.
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.
No tax increase in Birmingham Read More »
A little rhyme about reason
(Editor’s note: The following is from Kayta of Chadds
Ford Township. She attended the Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert “Rally to Restore Sanity” last
weekend.)
We went to DC
And stood politely, elbow to knee
To proclaim to the nation:
Let’s have SANITY.
Oh sure, there was fear:
That’s why we’re all here.
Our concern, to be told,
In signs multi-fold,
Is that sanity has got creamed
In a 24/7 media scream.
Oh would that those others,
Who really are our sisters and brothers,
Could see that we too
Drink patriot tea
And that indeed we are
Part of this country,
That we honor and cherish
To keep free.
Signs seen included these messages:
- We
love infrastructure. - We’re
moms, we have enough insanity in our lives without Fox News. - The
fox lies in Your hen house. - You
can raise my taxes a little: I’ll understand! - This
is patriarchy’s last gasp: Do not resuscitate. - Real
patriots can handle a difference in opinion. - I
prefer facts, nuance, and intellectual debate (probably not a “real”
American.) - I
understand the difference between communism, fascism, and socialism and
don’t us the terms interchangeably. - FACTS
are not decided by how many people believe them TRUTH is not determined by
how loudly it is shouted. - It
could be worse, but let’s not make it that way. - I have
considered that I might be wrong, have you? - I
disagree with you, but I’m pretty sure you’re not Hitler. - I’m
pretty sure that none of us likes paying taxes, but I do understand that
they support our societal needs. - I’m
here! I’m not gay! But it’s okay if you are! - Let’s
respect each other? - Death
to Nobody - Tolerance
- Hugs
and/or rational discourse.
About Kayta Gajdos
Dr. Kathleen Curzie Gajdos ("Kayta") is a licensed psychologist (Pennsylvania and Delaware) who has worked with individuals, couples, and families with a spectrum of problems. She has experience and training in the fields of alcohol and drug addictions, hypnosis, family therapy, Jungian theory, Gestalt therapy, EMDR, and bereavement. Dr. Gajdos developed a private practice in the Pittsburgh area, and was affiliated with the Family Therapy Institute of Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, having written numerous articles for the Family Therapy Newsletter there. She has published in the American Psychological Association Bulletin, the Family Psychologist, and in the Swedenborgian publications, Chrysalis and The Messenger. Dr. Gajdos has taught at the college level, most recently for West Chester University and Wilmington College, and has served as field faculty for Vermont College of Norwich University the Union Institute's Center for Distance Learning, Cincinnati, Ohio. She has also served as consulting psychologist to the Irene Stacy Community MH/MR Center in Western Pennsylvania where she supervised psychologists in training. Currently active in disaster relief, Dr. Gajdos serves with the American Red Cross and participated in Hurricane Katrina relief efforts as a member of teams from the Department of Health and Human Services' Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.Now living in Chadds Ford, in the Brandywine Valley of eastern Pennsylvania, Dr. Gajdos combines her private practice working with individuals, couples and families, with leading workshops on such topics as grief and healing, the impact of multigenerational grief and trauma shame, the shadow and self, Women Who Run with the Wolves, motherless daughters, and mediation and relaxation. Each year at Temenos Retreat Center in West Chester, PA she leads a griefs of birthing ritual for those who have suffered losses of procreation (abortions, miscarriages, infertility, etc.); she also holds yearly A Day of Re-Collection at Temenos.Dr. Gajdos holds Master's degrees in both philosophy and clinical psychology and received her Ph.D. in counseling at the University of Pittsburgh. Among her professional affiliations, she includes having been a founding member and board member of the C.G. Jung Educational Center of Pittsburgh, as well as being listed in Who's Who of American Women. Currently, she is a member of the American Psychological Association, The Pennsylvania Psychological Association, the Delaware Psychological Association, the American Family Therapy Academy, The Association for Death Education and Counseling, and the Delaware County Mental Health and Mental Retardation Board. Woven into her professional career are Dr. Gajdos' pursuits of dancing, singing, and writing poetry.
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A little rhyme about reason Read More »