The Swarthmore Zoning Hearing Board unanimously approved a special exception for Kit Raven to build a “family/caregiver suite” at her house on Dartmouth Avenue. Raven’s is the first application for a family/caregiver suite to come before the board since the borough amended its zoning code to permit them in 2018.
“The demand of Black Americans is clear: ‘Stop killing us.’” This assertion by state senator and Swarthmore resident Tim Kearney (D-26) framed a July 28 Zoom discussion on ending systemic racism and reimagining public safety. Attended by about 80 people, the conversation was part of a “racial equity tour” sponsored by the Pennsylvania Senate Democratic caucus and co-hosted by Kearney and State Senator Anthony Williams (D-8). Swarthmore resident and civil rights lawyer Jonathan Feinberg and Swarthmorean contributor Stefan Roots, among others, also participated.
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.
Helen Mangelsdorf is one of 28 artists participating in the third iteration of the Souls Shot project, which connects artists to the families and loved ones of victims of gun violence for the purpose of painting their portraits. The project memorializes the victims, while also calling attention to the breadth of the United States’ gun problem. Individual by individual, the portraits present the vibrant faces of the lost.
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Pamela Boyce Simms, an environmentalist, activist, herbalist, leadership coach, and neurolinguist who recently moved to Swarthmore, envisions Community Supported Enlightenment (CSE) as preparing people for the problems that will inevitably come with climate change. And she sees plant medicine as a portal to a larger mission of self-transformation.
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Jill Gaieski has worked for the state attorney’s office in Broward County, Florida, and collected DNA from Bermudians. She has started an organization to fight gun violence, served (almost) two terms on the board of the Swarthmore Co-op, and earned her advanced sommelier certificate at the Wine School of Philadelphia. Since a swearing-in ceremony on Monday, January 6, she is now a Swarthmore Borough Council member as well.
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It’s Thursday evening at the Swarthmore Community Center, and Michelle Frumento is getting ready to teach “drop it” to a room full of humans holding the leashes of excited dogs. This is beginner manners, one of several dog-training classes Frumento has been offering out of the community center for the past five years. Manners, not obedience.
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How to inventory a whole year? What to remind you of, and what to skip? What would you rather forget, but maybe shouldn’t? What have you already forgotten that might interest you to recall? Collecting (recollecting) these happenings and lives and milestones is a way to consider what we have accomplished and aspired to and worried about as a community, as we take the first steps into 2020. To think about where we have succeeded, where we have more work to do, and where we might want to start all over again.
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Monday night’s final Borough Council meeting was enlivened by interruptions of official business to celebrate Borough Council President Creagan, who has served for a total of eight years. Creagan’s calm and measured demeanor, cited by many of his colleagues throughout the meeting, was on display last night as he simultaneously ran an efficient meeting, paused to address a community-merit-badge-seeking Boy Scout in the audience, and found affectionate words for all.
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The Swarthmore Senior Citizens Association (SSCA) Sidewalk Committee met in June with Borough Manager Jane Billings and Ross Schmucki, chair of council’s Public Works Committee, to discuss sidewalk regulation and repair. Homeowners in the borough are responsible for maintaining their own sidewalks, and the borough code is precise in its specifications. At the same time, repairing a sidewalk can be expensive. Getting rid of the sidewalk permit fee was a recommendation of the SSCA. Was it approved?
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Later this week, in a pretty Victorian house on Park Avenue in Swarthmore, a group of six women artists and makers will carry half the furniture upstairs. They’ll move the remaining tables and cabinets around until they’ve created just the right backdrop. Then they’ll begin arranging their work: jewelry, handbags, photographs, candles shaped like pinecones and beehives. Hat stands, tea towels, bowls made from salvaged wood. By Thursday evening, they’ll be ready to pour the wine, set out the cookies, and welcome the public. The fifth annual Handmade Holiday Home Sale will have begun.
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The thorny subject of Swarthmoreans renting out their homes for short periods of time was debated by the Planning and Zoning Committee of Swarthmore Borough Council at its monthly meeting on November 14. The issue was brought to the committee’s attention by neighbors of a house frequently rented out on Airbnb—sometimes to large groups—when the owners are away.
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“I was invited to throw out the first pitch this year for the Swarthmore-Nether Providence T-ball game…I throw out the first pitch, and then they throw all the balls at me.” Such are the pleasures and perils of life as a small-town mayor. Marty Spiegel has been serving as mayor of Swarthmore since February, when Borough Council appointed him to replace Tim Kearney, who resigned after being elected state senator of the 26th district. On November 5, Spiegel was elected to the position by the borough’s voters.
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