Author: Sally Denk Hoey

Blogging Along the Brandywine: Lynch lights up the village

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A projected image of Andy Wyeth on the Sanderson's front porch.

Anyone driving through the center of Chadds Ford Sunday evening, Oct. 9, may have been puzzled by a warm glow emanating from somewhere on Creek Road.  No, it wasn’t just the full Hunter Moon rising in the east, as the light seemed to be coming from… the Sanderson Museum? Wait. Did I just see Sanderson Museum founder Andy Wyeth sitting on the porch steps? And was…

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Blogging Along the Brandywine: Kennett Symphony springs back to life

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The Kennett Symphony is back in action.

Last Saturday afternoon was the perfect first weekend of Spring. It was the kind of day that makes you want to run out and listen to music by the Russian composer, Igor Stravinsky. Wait, did I hear you say “No”? To most people Stravinsky (1882 – 1971) might bring to mind Disney’s 1940 Academy Award-winning movie Fantasia, with Stravinsky’s discordant and jagged music from his…

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Blogging Along the Brandywine: Zoom-zoom

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Zoom-zoom

Until two years ago, when someone said “zoom” I would recall the now-classic commercial, featuring a Mazda speeding over open roads. Watching the car from the side was ten - year- old Micah Kanters in shirt and tie, who turned to the camera and whispered “Zoom-zoom!” It became a media sensation and sold a ton of Mazdas. In the Summer of 2020 during the isolation…

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Blogging Along the Brandywine: Congratulations, I think

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Congratulations….I think. It’s been one full year since we first became aware that life might not be the same for a while. 2020 started out really great. On Friday, Jan. 31, my husband and I went to a preview party at the Brandywine River Museum. We stood around with our cocktails, mingling with hundreds of people viewing exhibits commemorating the centennial of women’s right to…

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Blogging Along the Brandywine: Pluto went viral

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Pluto Living, photo by Nancie Wight

It was sometime around mid-March of this year. It seems like an eternity ago. I was well into what I call my “COVID Freak-Out Period.” And after my first 6 a.m. trip to the Giant wondered if I’d have to resort to paper napkins or paper towels for — you know — toilet paper. It was about that time my sister received a viral YouTube…

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Blogging Along the Brandywine: Recalling old lessons

As children, my sister and I used to tease our father. Even though he was now a successful patent attorney, he was still the child of German immigrants, who grew up during the dust bowl and depression days in North Dakota. After breakfast, if his paper napkin was still more or less clean, he would fold it and put it in his pocket. Often that…

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Blogging Along the Brandywine: ‘It might have been’

Many people of a certain age are familiar with the facts of the evening of Sept. 20, 1973. A single-engine Beechcraft E18S took off from the Natchitoches Regional Airport in La., failed to clear a tree at the end of the runway and crashed, killing all six aboard. One of them was famed singer-songwriter, Jim Croce. He was 30 years old.  His album “You Don’t…

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Blogging Along the Brandywine: Surprise at Rolling Green

If I told you that the creator of the Moon Walk was buried in Rolling Green Memorial Park in West Chester, some of you younger readers might be quick to point out, “Hey- Michael Jackson’s buried in Los Angeles.” But the smooth backwards dance move is in fact 90 years old. I started out to write about Pearl Bailey, the internationally famous African-American actress and…

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Blogging Along the Brandywine: Be a hero in 5 minutes

When I was in high school, my sister and I would run home from the bus stop, throw our books down on the kitchen table and dash into the den to watch “Dark Shadows,” a soap opera about Barnabas Collins, a tormented vampire roaming the docks of 1795 Collinsport, Maine, looking for his next victim while seeking the face of his lost love Josette, and…

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Blogging Along the Brandywine: Christy’s ‘Gran’

I had two grandmothers. One quietly entertained my sister and me with tea parties, taught us German, to sew, to color inside the lines and to write in neat cursive. The other laughed out loud, feared nothing, wore slacks in the 1950s, and taught my country mouse sister and me to ride Washington, D.C.’s buses by ourselves. Tuesday evening, I had the pleasure to see…

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Blogging Along the Brandywine: First day of school blues

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You know those days you wake up and think, “How did the world pass by without my noticing?” I went to Strafford Elementary School in the Tredyffrin-Easttown School District, and now that I think about it, in those days there were still a few dinosaurs grazing outside the playground. On the first day of third grade, Miss Dewees handed out school pencils, little scissors, wood…

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