All tagged 2020/04
The Longwood Gardens Community Read program is in its eighth year. This year, two book selections explore how one finds a passion for nature, and how that spark can grow. Their featured book is “The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair With Nature,” by J. Drew Lanham. For younger readers, they selected “Ruby’s Birds,” by Mya Thompson.
Swarthmore Borough and the Children and Adult Disability and Educational Services (CADES) reached an agreement on Sunday allowing for the continued use of the Rutgers Avenue school as a quarantine location for CADES clients with COVID-19 who normally live in group homes in the community. Swarthmore Borough had filed an injunction in the Delaware County Court of Common Pleas on Tuesday, April 14, seeking to remove patients diagnosed with the coronavirus.
Five Chinese women, all local residents, raised over $6,000 from 60 families over just a few days in early April to buy masks and other personal protective equipment for local medical professionals and first responders.
“Thanksgiving on steroids.” That’s how Swarthmore Co-op General Manager Mike Litka refers to the tempo of grocery shopping at the store on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays during the pandemic. Since mid-March, Litka has supervised the transformation of grocery shopping at the Co-op.
On April 13, the Wallingford-Swarthmore School Board (WSSD) convened (over Zoom, due to the COVID-19 outbreak). Board president David Grande opened the meeting by thanking parents, teachers, and students for their efforts in adjusting to online learning. “Our community and our children are going through an unprecedented challenge right now,” he said.
Occasionally Yours remodeled its restaurant last fall, and revamped its menu. This spring, amid the coronavirus outbreak, it’s recasting its mission too. The restaurant is not only continuing to feed the local community (though now only through curbside take out and no-contact delivery), but it’s also taking on a new goal.
Strath Haven Middle School eight-grader Isys Nelms decided to make a questionnaire and send it to various members of her community, including teachers, students, principals, and the superintendent. It turns out we are much less alone than it may seem.
The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (PLCB) this week began accepting orders by phone for curbside pickup at 176 locations statewide. Phone orders can be placed between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m., or until a store reaches its maximum order capacity each day.
This aspirational edition of the community calendar comprises a collection of events we wish were happening this week.
Swarthmore Borough Council held a Zoom legislative session on Monday. Approximately 14 people, including borough council members and staff, attended. Much of the evening’s business consisted of ratifying resolutions related to the pandemic. The council ratified Mayor Marty Spiegel’s March 12 declaration of a state of emergency in the borough, as well as the council’s decision to hold meetings virtually as long as the emergency declaration remains in place.
Swarthmore Borough filed an injunction in the Delaware County Court of Common Pleas on Tuesday, April 14, seeking to stop CADES (Children and Adult Education and Disability Services) from housing COVID-19-positive clients in the Rutgers Avenue school, according to a press release from the borough.
Passover is one of the central holidays in the Jewish tradition. It’s a time when families congregate, eat traditional foods, and retell the biblical story of Moses leading the Jews out of slavery in Egypt. This year, because of the coronavirus, few could congregate. Instead, the seders of 2020 were largely held over Zoom.
Ruba Ahmed’s book “Bring Now the Angels” was published on April 14 by the University of Pittsburgh Press, which has published such poets as Sharon Olds, Ross Gay, and Richard Blanco. We spoke recently by phone about the poems, her teaching, and how she got to Swarthmore, with her kids occasionally audible in the background.
We now know that comets – small icy bodies left over from the formation of the solar system – pass by Earth regularly. Astronomers discover dozens of them each year. Most of us are unaware that this is happening overhead because only rarely does a comet become bright enough to see with the unaided eye. This May, however, we may be fortunate enough to see a rare naked-eye comet. Or we may not.
Phil was like my big brother in the newspaper business. I watched him run the Daily Times when I worked there, and it was clear to me Phil knew what he was doing and how to get the most out of his staff. I was one of the first let go in a wave of departures that has finally reached the top guy. I’ve often said, I don’t know how they put out a paper every day when they have less than 20% of the staff they had when I worked there. It’s only because of Phil they could pull it off.
The COVID-19 Response Fund of the Foundation for Delaware County has made a first round of grants to local organizations. A total of $73,655 was distributed to 11 nonprofits to address emergency needs.
In response to the disruption brought about by the COVID-19 public health crisis, Swarthmore College is suspending its requirement that applicants submit SAT or ACT test scores for the next two years. The policy will affect student applicants seeking to be admitted for any term from fall 2020 through spring 2022.
The Swarthmore Public Library and the Delaware County Library System are offering programs to help alleviate isolation while we commit to social distancing.
In my last column,“Herp Alert,” I mentioned two snakes in the act of mating that were undeterred by my approach, fleeing into the creek, still conjoined in flagrante. Continuing that theme, Lily Scott of Swarthmore submitted a photograph of two American toads doing the dance with no pants, making the beast with two backs, or whatever your euphemism of choice may be.
