All tagged 2020/05
The Swarthmore Farmers Market is opening on Saturday, June 6. There will be strawberries and scallions, cheese and chickens, peanut butter cookies and portobello mushrooms, just as there are every June. Other things will be different.
A marathon plus five: That’s how many miles you have to run to cover all the streets in Swarthmore. Will Starr did just that earlier this month, embarking a journey that he named “Swarthmore in a Day.”
If you walk down Bowdoin Avenue in Swarthmore, it might escape your notice that number 232 is not a residential house. This is Wesley African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. The building opened its doors in 1927, to serve the small black neighborhood that had grown up at the end of the nineteenth century around Bowdoin, Brighton, Kenyon, and Union avenues. We wanted to share a bit of the church’s story as it approaches its 100th anniversary.
Looking back on the last weeks of normalcy before the coronavirus pandemic took hold is surreal, to say the least. The shift was sudden: a day off from school, then a full-blown lockdown. At the time, no one could fully grasp the magnitude of what was coming. But people had to adjust and accept it — quickly. When I look back on the 2019-2020 school year, as any bored but reflective teenager would, I recall conversations where a friend would say something like, “I would do anything for a break.” Or, “I wish everything would just pause.” In a sense, we got that, but it shouldn’t take a global pandemic for students to feel like they can take a break or prioritize their mental health.
Several years ago, I dipped my toe into reporting youth sports by covering Chester Panther youth football. Back then, there was one 8-year-old on the Chester Panthers peewee team who stood out. Every game this kid played, he was the highlight reel. As he grew up and moved into the upper divisions of the football program, he continued to dominate. He kept growing, and he kept getting better. I was looking forward to seeing him play this fall as a 13-year-old. And then I got the text that this 13-year-old boy was shot in the head. He died the next day.
Adjusting to remote learning was the focus of the Wallingford-Swarthmore School Board meeting on Monday, April 27. Also, proposal to lease 1,300 Google Chromebooks — one for every student at Strath Haven Middle School (SHMS) — was unanimously approved by the board. The board also voted unanimously to appoint Gregory Hilden principal of SHHS, starting July 1.
This spring has been one of the coolest in memory. Cool days without excessively cold nights have extended the blooming seasons for many plants. These include Swarthmore’s profusion of magnolia trees, especially the incredibly floriferous saucer magnolia, Magnolia x soulangeana. Some saucer magnolias have bloomed for three to four weeks this spring! Likewise, tulip season has seldom been better.
I remember my last day of in-person school. Never in my wildest dreams had I imagined that we would be heading into a seemingly endless quarantine. As I was getting ready for school, I stopped myself. I wondered, “What if this is the last day I will go to school?” Later, as I was giving a friend a ride home, I asked, “What if we just had our last day of school?” “That would be crazy,” he said. I interviewed a few Swarthmore residents to learn about their last regular days.
Although the award ceremony is put off until September, the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia recently announced its Preservation Achievement Award winners, which include the renovation of the “Lazaretto” in nearby Tinicum. Bill and Carol Menke, of Ogden Avenue, were landscape architects for the project. Bill notes that this was one of the last projects they undertook before closing their business, Menke & Menke, LLC, after a nearly 35-year run.
