Last Saturday, I attended the memorial service for the late Larry Luder, who faithfully served the Borough of Swarthmore as a member of the Swarthmore Fire Company for almost 50 years, and as President of the Swarthmore Fire and Protective Association for 38 years.
While others began their summer with backyard BBQs, pool parties, talks of vacationing, our family was reluctantly saying goodbye to the world’s best dog.
The Swarthmore Public Library would love to invite you to help us continue our mission to empower our community to Read, Meet, Discover and Grow. It takes an involved and active community to support a library as active (and as small!) as ours. There are many ways you can volunteer and support our wonderful library and the programs we offer, and there’s something that’s right for almost everyone.
I recognize the challenge to my “inner NIMBY” and my compassion fatigue, and I want to honor my connection to the human family. I want to honor it with action, however small and limited, in the face of the enormous challenges that are facing us as we peruse our morning papers over our coffees.
On Saturday, President Trump abruptly canceled secret peace talks scheduled at Camp David with Afghan leaders and Taliban insurgents. Assuming these talks were even a “real” thing and not simply another presidential fabrication, Trump acted swiftly, trying to show strength. But, what is the president’s strategy? Or is this simply one more example of how truly transactional this President is?
Recently, a social media post asked why the corn at the Co-op costs more than the corn at Trader Joe’s. It’s a common question. I’d like to flip it around and instead ask: why is the corn at TJ’s so cheap? “Cheap food” makes me wonder: who in the supply chain was exploited? Because certainly, someone was.
My family and I are extremely disappointed that Swarthmore council voted to enforce the new street parking policy, in which all cars must face the same direction. While we understand that it’s a state law due to safety concerns, we also know that not every town has to enforce it.
311 Cedar Lane is my family’s house, owned by my uncle Robert Keighton. The address of the adjacent property is 409 College Avenue, which backs away from Cedar Lane. 409 was originally owned by my ancestors as a single dwelling around the 1870s, and 311 was built onto it as an addition in 1899. My great-grandfather Charles Paxson, an amateur architect, designed 311.
The abandoned house at 311 Cedar Lane in Swarthmore was recently brought to my attention by a resident of Swarthmore who was lamenting its demise and invited me join him for a visit.
Swarthmore may seem insular in its boundaries and insulated by its grand tree cover, but within our borders, diversity reigns. Nothing indicates this more to the casual visitor than the fact that almost no two houses in Swarthmore are alike. This suggests that no two people in Swarthmore are alike. Almost all Swarthmore people and their houses are, if not “grand,” still alive and well, and diverse.
Bicycle riders traveling from Cornell and Rutgers avenues to downtown: please stop using the driveway of 107 Rutgers Ave. (the building next to the post office) as a cut-through.
I want to give a huge shout-out to the Co-op employees who rallied to help me on August 21, when I tripped and fell on the outside steps and badly twisted my foot. After a passerby alerted them, several rushed out.
Last month, a team of neighbors and other nature lovers got together to make the wonders and surprises of the outdoors more accessible. In a weeklong project led by Jim Audley, more than 1,200 feet of chronically muddy segments of trail in the Saul Wildlife Sanctuary were converted from unpleasant to exemplary, thanks to the efforts and commitment of volunteers who worked about 250 hours.
I have a new pet peeve, and it’s not trivial — in fact it could be life or death. It concerns the relatively new pedestrian crosswalk lights installed at key, busy Swarthmore intersections. They are not working as intended, and the answer is simple.
Like others, I woke Tuesday morning to the news that author Toni Morrison had died. Stumbling upon it online, I must have caught sight of the headline just as the story was breaking. In an effort to be a responsible consumer of the news, I searched the internet for other sources reporting the same thing and came upon Morrison’s Wikipedia page, which began with the opening description, “Toni Morrison is an American novelist, essayist, editor...” “Is.” The present tense was reassuring: maybe this was yet another example of falsely reporting the death of a celebrity. I checked back to Morrison’s Wikipedia page within the hour and, sure enough, “is” had been changed to “was.” I had an odd feeling, as though I had just witnessed her death in real time. News and information are rapidly available in the internet age, including death.
Thanks to all who came out to last Friday’s Co-op Movie Night. For our first time running this event, it was very successful. From admission donations and sales of food from our grill, we raised more than $600 to go towards essential freezer repairs. Everything was run by Co-op owners who volunteered their time to make sure all profits went directly to the freezer fund.
It was wonderful to read Chris Reynolds’s piece on the Stones concert at Lincoln Financial Field. I, too, was there, with a couple of girlfriends, and we were sitting in the nosebleeds as well — thankful for the protection from the rain, if finding Mick’s spoken words a little garbled from the windy distance at times! My first Stones concert, too.
I think we all enjoyed your review of the recent Rolling Stones show in Philly. I’d like to add a few bits of light Stones trivia…
The voice on the phone was furious. Atta Arghandiwal, Co-Director of the Swarthmore-based Global Kindness Revolution, was reacting to President Trump’s recent rant about how he could end the war in Afghanistan by bombing the country into oblivion, killing 10 million people…but he just “didn’t feel like it!”
Solving the problem of ever-spiraling college tuition may not require either Jim Riviello’s or Mary Gay Scanlon’s solutions. Rather, can we now question why college tuition has spiraled this high and whether all the expenses are necessary?
