CLOSE UP by Brian Rudnick

Living in Princeton U's 1860s President McCosh's House

David Meadow leads a short tour through his home, known to the Princeton NJ community as “the McCosh house” because it was the residence of the James   McCosh, president of Princeton University from 1868 -1888.  

In recent years, the mansion had been divided into two large condominium units and last year, Meadow and his wife Lisa Mirin have taken up residence in the larger side.

Meadow relates that McCosh had built the structure in 1887 as his retirement home. Before it was moved to its present location on Princeton’s main street, Nassau Street, in 1906, it was originally situated on Prospect street, where it had housed a student eating club [the “Quadrangle” of which novelist and Princetonian F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote about in “This Side of Paradise.”] 

On Nassau it sat on a large tract of land and its owner in 1980, Architect Robert Hillier sought to tear it down for a townhouse development. The Historical Society and the community waged a battle in the local newspapers to preserve the historical house. Hillier relented, and was able to comply with regulations concerning the housing development by moving the house once again, but this time only 20 feet closer to the street.

Meadow points out the elaborate, original stained glass work, woodwork, and scrollwork in the main entrance area and along the grand stairway to the second floor. 

When the house was moved in 1980, some of the original stucco was uncovered a curious feature was revealed: The year “1888” and McCosh’s initials where McCosh presumably had scratched them into the wet stucco.

Watch video interview and tour here.

Jyoti Indian Foods to open in Mount Airy

Kevin Belmonte, a builder, was applying finishing touches to the about-to-open eat in-/take out Indian restaurant, Jyoti, pronounced “joy tea’ in Mount Airy. Belmonte has been acquainted with the husband and wife owners for 10 to 15 years and worked on moving them from Sharon Hill, PA into their new larger processing facility near the airport. Jyoti, which had been doing trays for the airlines, expanded to canned and then to plastic packaged foods. Now they are branching out through their son with a retail operation in Mount Airy. Belmonte says the vegetarian fare will reflect the culinary skills of Jyoti who, Belmonte says has a “PhD in healthy food.” Watch video here.

Patrons find Chestnut Hill library closed due to staff shortage

John Rauch and other library patrons arrived at the Chestnut Hill Branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia early Monday afternoon and unexpectedly found it closed. A sign posted in the front door window read, "The library will open at 3:00 today due to a staff shortage." (two hours late) The library has been closed before due to staff shortages but this was the first time Rauch had encountered an unexpected closure. He reacted with equanimity, expressing his support for the Mayor, and sympathized with the City's budgetary woes. And he extolled the Free Library system. Watch video here.

Why Thoreau went to the woods

On a walk around Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts we stopped at the site where Thoreau had built his cabin. I asked another tourist if she might not read aloud the quote from Thoreau carved on a sign. "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." Watch video here.

Dances midst sculpture: Philly Fringe

     

Watch video here. Ellie Goudie-Averill of Stone Depot Dance Lab performs structured and improvisational dances amidst art installations in the warehouse space of Pieri Creations in the  Frankford section of Philadelphia. She talks about how a poetry workshop by Philly poet C.A. Conrad inspired her to write dance instructions for her "Serpent" piece for her part of the bill of "Make it, Break it, Rebuild it," a series of dance performances for the Philadephia Live Arts/Fringe Festival. Averill narrates her first of two dances with a large, branch braided shield-like object, Averill talking about how it's hard to go to sleep with the television on and how 60 some percent of people aged 20 to 37 get their news primarily from Jon Stewart.

"Experimental movement artist Zornitsa Stoyanova. Often times theatrical, her collaborations explore non linear stories, movement invention, spoken word, and object installation." From the Philadelphia Live Arts Fringe Festival 2012 program description. When we walked into this performance, Stoyonova, dressed in large inflated, translucent plastic bags including one over her head was making fine and deliberate movements, sometimes just with her hands which drew our focus, trying to elicit meaning or purpose to their transformation. Watch video interview here.

Swifts descend school chimney

Chimney swifts by the hundreds, perhaps thousands, gather swirl in a circle around the tall chimney at the J.S. Jenks Middle School in Chestnut Hill.  The circle becomes denser and then they begin pausing then plummeting down inside for their nighttime roost. Once they start descending, they are all down, stragglers and all, within ten minutes. At daybreak they emerge but at a more relaxed pace. In late August and early September, swifts are beginning to make their annual migration south to Florida and South America where they can continue to feed on insects on the wing.  Jane Henderson, who related the above, is shown here scouting out the Jenks nesting site in preparation for a field trip she will lead for the Wyncote Audubon Society at the schoolyard on  Wednesday September 5, 2012. Watch video interview here

Chestnut Hill mural is artist's romp-l'oeil of Wissahickon Valley

I ask mural artist Ann Norththrup to take a break and hold up her paint-spattered hands. We chat about the watercolor she painted of the Wissahickon Park that she and her crew of helpers are now installing on the wall of Bredenbeck's Bakery, the first mural in Chestnut Hill, Northwest Philadelphia. Watch video here.

Video transcript below

From Kickboxing to Childcare: Children of America opens in Chestnut Hill

Children of America greeters with Mascot Bentley

Watch video tour and interview here.

Assistant Director Katie McDonnell and coworker Mary Catherine of the Lansdale Children of America   “Educational Childcare and Academy” were on hand to welcome the Chestnut Hill community to the company’s newest location on Saturday June 16^th at the site of the former Borders Bookshop at the top of the Hill.

According to its website, “C-O-A” has about 60 sites from the east coast west to Wisconsin and plans for another 30 locations. The Chestnut Hill center, its largest, can accommodate up to two hundred and ninety one children ranging from 6 weeks old up through third grade. WHYY Newsworks.org reports that COA is in the process of seeking accreditation to become a Pennsylvania chartered school for up to 5^th grade.

The school’s proprietary curriculum, developed specifically for COA by educational psychologist Vicki Folds and expounded in her books, is based on children doing tasks set up on what look like lunch trays (“traytasking”).  The concept is to get children to manipulate things left to right and up to down, the same spatial directions they will use for reading.

Upon noting that a youngster has completed a certain age specific task, such as simultaneously pedaling and steering a tricycle, a childcare worker dates and initials the accomplishment in a checklist file for the child.

A sixteen hundred square foot but windowless playground in the basement has slides, a tree house, green artificial turf and purple rubber tiles for scrape free falls.

Children may go for rides aboard four or six-seat buggies through the hallways or, for some fresh air and a change of scene, along the building’s sidewalks. There is no outdoor playground.

Six-week olds start out in Infant Room A and after mastering sleeping in their cribs will graduate to Rooms B and C to begin sleeping on cots.

Security, which features prominently in the company’s marketing, is highlighted by its “Always Close By” system. A camera or two in every room can be monitored in the office by the director or assistant director. For $19.95 additional a month, (enrollment fees run $1600 a month) parents can view their children in real time remotely through the Internet. Mary Catherine reports that one mother at the Lansdale site will call in and have a talk with her child if she sees that her child is misbehaving.

In one classroom we visited, a menagerie of small plastic animals on a table top is ready for children to manipulate, learn their names and the sounds they make.  At COA, dogs go “Woof.” 

Walls are adorned with an illustration of the school’s mascot a dog named Bentley with a black circle around one eye who strongly resembles “Petey” from the 1920s and 30s television show “Our Gang.” Bentley is the main character in stories being written at all the COA centers and to be published and available to parents online.

There is a real life Bentley. He runs around on a beach in Florida where he lives with his owner, “Mr. Thad” [Pryor] a former world kickboxing champion and owner of the Children of America enterprise.

Parents with infant speak with director at reception desk

 

Children of America opens Monday June 17th at the site vacated two and a half years ago by the defunct Borders Bookstore chain

Argentine bases Philly visit from Chamonix Mansion

Alejandro Martinez, an Argentine who works in the agricultural field, was staying in the American Youth Hostel Chamonix Mansion in Fairmount Park while taking in the historical sites of Philadelphia. Watch video interview here.

Quiet fallen firefighter played "Prince Charming"

Bishop McDevitt High School Admissions Director Christopher Seifert smiles recalling the memory of former  schoolmate Daniel Sweeney. The  young Philadelphia firefighter  died from injuries suffered battling a blaze in a vacant building in the city's Kensington section. Sweeney, a junior when Seifert was a senior, was so quiet around school, that Seifert was surprised when Sweeney assumed the lead role of Prince Charming in the musical Cinderella they were both acting in. Sweeney's mother still teaches at the school and his  youngest sister  just graduated. There will be a memorial service at the school with the family in the next month. Wyncote, PA. Watch video interview here.