CLOSE UP by Brian Rudnick

Early spring wedding at Valley Green

 IS THIS YOUR JOB OR ARE YOU ASSOCIATED WITH THE PARTY? Oh, no, I’m friends of the party. I’m just doing courtesy duty. SO WHAT’S THEIR STORY? They met at Trinity Baptist Church which is in the Fairmount section of the city and unexpectedly to most people, I guess, they eventually started dating, which a lot of people didn’t see coming. They announced their engagement, I think, last fall and decided to go with a short engagement, and today’s the big day…I knew both of them before they were dating but once they started dating it just kind of seemed like, yeah, this seems right. A great couple, really great people.” Rob Rineer, friend of bride and groom, before the wedding.

I WAS HERE EARLIER AND IT LOOKS LIKE YOU TIED THE KNOT. Michael Reyes: “Yes, we did .. happily so” WELL, CONGRATULATIONS! Lisa Gale: “Thank you.” YOU PICKED A BEAUTIFUL DAY. MR: “It was stunning, everything we could have imagined happened today. It was perfect.” LG: “It’s hard to plan for sunshine but we got it. I’m so glad”. WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS NOW? MR.”Enjoy each other” WHERE YOU’RE HONEYMOONING IS A SECRET, RIGHT? MR: The immediate honeymoon is Montego Bay, Jamaica then later on we’ll be going to Costa Rica, in the summertime, for an extended honeymoon.” EXCELLENT. Newlyweds Lisa Gale and Michael Reyes, Valley Green.

Watch video interviews here.

Weavers Way boosts other cooperatives

I’M SPREADING A RUMOR THAT THE COOP’S NEXT PROJECT IS TO EXPAND ON THE AVENUE AND OPEN A COOPERATIVE BOOKSTORE… “Not for us. We’ll help other people start coops like in Powelton, Elkins Park, South Philadelphia, Fishtown, Kensington.. Bob Noble’s working on that. He sits on our board. There’s like seventeen coops he’s working with, buying clubs and small seed coops in the region. It’s really very exciting.” Glen Bergman, General Manager, Weavers Way Coop. Rick Spalek, Operations Manager on right. Watch video interview here.

West Philly artists open their studios: BBC video enrty

Stuffing Newsletters for OMC

"[We are] promoting this year’s Spring Soiree, Saturday April 10th (Buy your tickets now!) and the value of our parish school, what a good place our parish school is.” Mia Grogan, Our Mother of Consolation (OMC)Parish School volunteer.

Recruiting summer campers

I SEE YOU’RE IN UNIFORM WITH THE MARINES AND YOU’RE STANDING IN FRONT OF ONAS QUAKER SLEEPOVER CAMP. “I’m actually with Valley Forge Military Academy around the corner. WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO OFFER SUMMER CAMPERS? We have a day camp that goes from age 6 up to 14 years of age, an overnight camp, sports specific camps. We have a football camp that’s run by Glenn Foley, a former NFl player, captain of the Jets, a fitness camp for high schoolers…HAVE YOU SEEN SERVICE OVERSEAS? “I started years ago. My first deployment was Lebanon. I was in Beirut. I was in Desert Storm, Desert Shield. The only active hot zones I’ve been in were in Lebanon and the middle east.” CPT, Peter Ross, USMC, Director of Fitness, Valley Forge Military Academy. Watch video here.

Alice McBee stirs sap by day and lights the stage at night

Alice McBee: “Sap’s coming from the maple trees” Bystander: “Does it get cold enough at night for a run?” McBee: “Oh, definitely. It’s going down below freezing every night.” Rudnick: SO, BY DAY A MAPLE SAP STIRRER? McBee: “And first grade teacher and graduate student, don’t forget!” AND AT NIGHT A THESPIAN! McBee: “That’s right, absolutely.…The show opened last night. It’s called “The Countess” and it’s at the Old Academy Theater and I play the Countess. It’s a true story about a Victorian love triangle between the lions of the art world in the 1850s.” CAN YOU DO A VERY SHORT MONOLOGUE? “Scotland is my home and the country, even in this weather, is delightful to me. I’m so happy to be able to dash into the woods, cross the trout streams without a bonnet or to walk across the moors to a mountain lake and watch a great flock of seagulls flying.” Alice McBee at the Andorra Natural Area Maple Syrup festival. Watch video interview here.

Nancy Peter and Mom work at the Carver Science Fair

“This is the 31st anniversary of the Carver Science fair. It is one of the oldest, urban, city-wide science fairs in the country and each year 250 kids in 4th, 5th and 6th grade and over 600 kids in 7th through 12th grade compete in the citywide science fair….And let me introduce you to my Mother. She’s one of the special award givers. She and her colleague, Marilyn Young, who used to teach at Jenks give out a special award that honors team projects.” Nancy Peter, Special Awards Chairperson, G.W. Carver Science Fair, with her mother, Marian Darmstadter. Watch video interview here.

SO THESE PHOTOS HERE.. are all mine. I did them during the course of my last year at the Antonelli Institute. THEY SEEM TO BE FROM ALL OVER? Yeah, Coney Island, central New York, Baltimore, rural Pennsylvania like out in the middle of nowhere. A lot of them are taken from inside abandoned buildings like the old mental institution called Pennhurst, an old church… AND WHAT DO YOU DO TO THEM TO GET THIS BLUISH? I use a cross processing technique it’s taking film and developing it through the wrong process so if like you have color slide film that’s E6 you take it and develop it through C41 or vice versa C41 through E6 and it causes all the colors to shift. Gair Wissenbach, Chestnut Hill Coffee Shop. Watch video here.

Tales of a hippie bus driver

In the 1996 Olympics, the Lithuanian basketball team arrived without uniforms because they were too poor to buy uniforms so the Grateful Dead offered to buy them uniforms and what they bought them had the Dead insignia, the skull, playing basketball and it was tie-died. I got this at the Olympics in 1999. A lot of Lithuanian social clubs sell this t-shirt. CAN YOU MODEL THE BACK? I don’t know what it says back there…For 8 years in California I worked for a hippie bus company. We did cross country trips, national parks, we went to Baha, Alaska, all through Mexico, Costa Rica, Guatemala. WHAT’S A HIPPIE BUS COMPANY? They take an old coach and pull out all the seats, set it up with bunk beds, tables that collapse down in to bunk beds. And the back, say two-thirds of the whole bus is all one big foam covered platform. You take off your shoes and leave them there and crawl back onto the platform. They called them camper tours. They had another name for them I can’t think of right now. AND THESE DAYS YOU’RE DOING SOMETHING A LITTLE MORE CONVENTIONAL? Just a tiny bit. Anita Fackenthal. Watch video interview here.