CLOSE UP by Brian Rudnick

How would pro-life student regulate abortion?

A student who attends a Christian high school describes himself as "pro-life" and ponders how he would regulate abortion.

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I had off because I didn’t have a midterm test at school. I came in to work, 10:30 and after I’ll go sit down somewhere and study for the exam. WHAT’S THE EXAM ON? History, U. S. History. AND THIS IS AT..? Philmont Christian. AND WHAT ERA OF U.S. HISTORY DO YOU HAVE TO KNOW TODAY? It actually goes from the creation of the Constitution to modern day so we learn about cases and amendments, that stuff. DO YOU TALK ABOUT ROE V. WADE IN AMERICAN HISTORY CLASS? Yeah that’s one of the cases. WHAT DO YOU UNDERSTAND ABOUT THAT DECISION? Which one is that, again? THE ROE V WADE RIGHT TO ABORTION DECISION? I’m definitely pro-life. I’m against abortion. A small percent of circumstances like rape and stuff like that obviously is really tough, a tough call but I think that even if someone isn’t born, the life is still important. HOW DO YOU BELIEVE THAT SHOULD BE REGULATED? It’s tough to say. I’m not sure, yeah, I’m not sure. Brett Steiger of Abington, Cedars Café, Forbidden Drive and Northwestern Avenue. Watch video here.

Was near death, now teaches balance, Tai Chi and shenanigans

I am the only child or Roscoe and Virginia Pauline Warner… HOW DID YOU GET INTO PHYSICAL THERAPY? Football injury in high school. Then I went to Shepherd University played four years as starting center at Shepherd. So if I messed up, everybody knew it and the play was toast.  ARE YOU STILL ACTIVE ATHLETICALLY OR SPORTS-WISE? Keystone Senior Games. I did ten events. Shot-put, discus, hammer throw, foul shooting, badminton, tennis, swimming…. March first I will be seven decades. But I was getting all ready last summer and I just didn’t feel right. And in February my intestines blew. And so I went from playing tennis to emergency surgery. Eight days of induced coma. During the coma (I’m sure it was sometime there) I went, ‘God, are you sure you got the right guy?’ And he didn’t answer. And then he came back in and He says, ‘George, I will take you home some day but I got some things for you to do.’ ‘God, please tell me it’s a long list.’ During that time I felt no fear, anxiety and it’s true. I think they did shift work between God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit- you know, around the clock. And the surgeons told my wife, ‘There’s no way he’s going to survive this’ because I had pneumonia, peritonitis …and it wasn’t to be my time. So since that time I teach a class once a week- balance, flexibility, isometrics, tai chi and shenanigans.  And I do it for free. CAN YOU SHOW US A SHENANIGAN?  Do you want my wife to really do me in? [To his wife] Young lady, do you know what a shenanigan is? George Warner of Hershey, PA spending New Year’s in Carlisle, PA.

Watch video interview here.

 

 

At age 85, her Mom becomes a nun

 

“’Nobody dies at the end of this book. Try not to let this fact mislead you. As far as my Mother is concerned, it is important to distinguish between what death actually is and what it isn’t. There’s a body and there’s a soul. One dies, the other doesn’t, ever. And then there’s how I feel about it, which is complicated.’”

“My name is Susan Morse and I have written a book called, “The Habit” which is the story of my Mother who at age 85 in the middle of a health crisis which I was shepherding her through the medical system, became an Orthodox Christian nun. And it’s the story of our relationship…

She was on a quest. She was spiritually hungry her whole life. In the 1940s during the wartime she met my father and married him just as many people did -married a man who was about to go off to war. It was a relationship that was never really a true, passionate romance and there was a lot of trouble there. But they stuck it out. They raised four children together and end up actually quite content with each other by the end.

After the kids moved, out she started experimenting with lots of different religions and kept changing, Episcopalian to Roman Catholic to a different kind of Roman Catholic back to Episcopalian, all these different things. And she’s an artist and at one point she began taking these workshops painting Byzantine icons. And that is something you have to pray when you’re doing it, the workshops tell you.  The whole system is really, really strict technique. And she discovered that her icons which she was feeling very satisfied with the process of doing those, were not legitimate in the Orthodox Church because she was not an Orthodox Christian.

My Mother really believes in- if you believe in something you really have to throw your whole self into it. So for her to be a Christian is not enough. She needed to go all the way.

She says now she dreamt about being a nun from when she was a little girl. She was 85 when she became a nun and she was frail. There was no question of her taking on a job. For the frail and elderly ones – she became, literally, she’s called a ‘house nun’, which means she stays in her house, and she prays. And that’s what she does!”

Susan Morse, reading from the preface to her newly published book, “The Habit.” Morse will be reading from her book on Wednesday, January 25^th in the Bombay Room at the Chestnut Hill Hotel and on January 26^th at Headhouse Books in Society Hill. Both events are from 7:00 to 8:30.

Watch video here.

 

 

 

Gasland comes to Philly - fracking for natural gas in the Delaware River watershed?

Punctuated by first hand accounts  of health problems caused by fouled air and water and scary stunts  by homeowners across the country setting their polluted tapwater on fire, the film “Gasland”, an Academy Award nominee,  documents the dirty production side of  what’s marketed as clean natural gas.

On Tuesday evening,  about seventy five people attended a showing  of the banjo-playing filmmaker Josh Fox’s movie at the Germantown Jewish Center, organized by the synagogue, Weavers Way, the Neighborhood Interfaith Movement and the Unitarian Society of Germantown.

Afterwards. a panel of scientists and directly affected individuals and activists from the Marcellus Shale region of upstate Pennsylvania described the adverse health and environmental  impacts of hydraulic fracturing for natural gas (“fracking” in common parlance, “frac jobs” in industry terms). SEE PANELIST INFORMATION BELOW

It’s a process that injects water combined with several of some hundreds of available chemicals, many known toxins such as benzene,  at high pressure, to release the gas.  Developed by former Vice President Dick Cheney’s Haliburton company, fracking was exempted from the Safe Drinking Water act by the 2005 Energy Policy Act.

Under newly elected  Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett, it appears to be open season for the drilling of new wells in Pennsylvania which may extend into the watershed area which is the source of drinking water in Philadelphia. This is cause for serious local concern as expressed by Linda Cherkas, a Mount Airyite attending the filming  and the subject of a  Philadelphia city council forum the very same evening.

After the showing, attendees flocked to tables to sign letters urging President Obama, who voted for the 2005 Energy Act, to direct his representative on the Delaware River Basin Commission to vote against finalizing draft rules on gas drilling and urging the President to call a nationwide moratorium until an Environmental Protection Agency study is complete.

Watch video here.

This account makes use of critical analysis of the film and counter-allegations of its critics in the New York Times by Michael Soraghan of Greenwire athttp://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2011/02/24/24greenwire-groundtruthing-academy-award-nominee-gasland-33228.html

Valentines Day roses - does love hurt?

[Alexandra Serfass, Robertson's Flowers greenhouse employee]

In the 2004 movie, “Maria Full of Grace,” a pregnant young woman trades the harsh conditions of a flower packing operation in Colombia to come to the United States with a friend as a “drug mule.” It doesn't turn out well.

The flower export business is big business. Large, drab greenhouses, like those in Ecuador where “Maria” was filmed, can stretch for miles. From my bus window, I knew the eerily transformed landscape would not be on any picture postcard I would be sending home to the U.S.

Beauty has its cost to both the environment and people, however, according to “The Secrets Behind Your Flowers,” a February 2011 Smithsonian Magazine report. Because it may take three gallons of water to grow just one rose bloom, groundwater supplies become depleted.  The low-paying work is tedious and straining. In traditional growing operations, workers are exposed to the dangerous pesticides and fungicides that keep insects from taking the slightest nibble from an otherwise picture-perfect flower.

Public outcry in recent years has led to the introduction of fair trade practices.  Nicole Serfass, flower buyer at Robertson’s Flowers greenhouses in Wyndmoor, showed off the Veriflora label on the roses they import from South America.  Veriflora is one of a handful of certifying organizations that try to ensure that their growers are using sustainable agricultural methods and providing equitable, healthy conditions for their workers.

At Robertson’s showcase Chestnut Hill store, Sandy Robertson says they source their flowers locally  from New Jersey,  domestically from Florida when they can and even sees growing customer interest in organically or sustainably grown flowers. Serfass has been asking their growers about organic but believes it’s not yet economically worth it for them to invest the years required for organic certification.

“Aren’t they gorgeous?” Donna Beardell of  Chestnut Hill asks,  exiting Robertson’s with a brilliant bunch of pink tinged roses, destined for her nieces competing in a gymnastics meet. On Valentines Day, she’s hoping she’ll be the recipient.

watch video here

[Sandy Robertson]

 

[Donna Beardell of Chestnut Hill]

[Nicole Serfass Robertson's Flowers greenhouse, Buyer]

Med student preps for exam

Divya Arun, of Roxborough, a 3rd year medical student at Drexel University, studies the clinical manifestations of diseases at Chestnut Hill Coffee cafe in preparation for an oral exam.

I SEE YOU HAVE EVERYTHING SET UP HERE, YOUR DRINKS YOUR BANANA, YOUR BOOK, YOUR NOTEBOOKS, YOUR PEN. WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON? I’m actually in medical school. We have an oral exam coming up Thursday so I ‘m preparing for that. I have to pick fifteen different medical topics and know ever thing about them. And they’ll randomly ask me questions about the topics so I have to prepare the clinical manifestations of diseases and things like that. WHAT AREA IN MEDICINE ARE YOU INTERESTED IN? I’m not sure, Third year we go through the different specialties like medicine, pediatrics, ob-gyn, surgery, psychiatry, family medicine and you kind of decide from there. That’s what this year is about and I haven’t figured it out yet. DO YOU HAVE AN IDEA WHAT SETTING YOU WANT TO PRACTICE, WHETHER CLINICAL OR RESEARCH..? Definitely clinical probably not research although I’ll have research integrated in whatever I do but not totally research. WHAT INTERESTS YOU IN THE FIELD? It’s constantly changing, you work with people day in and day out. You get to help them most of the time. It’s pretty rewarding, feeling you’re doing something productive every day. CAN YOU THINK OF AN INSTANCE WHERE YOU FELT GRATIFIED HELPING SOMEONE? I volunteered last year at the Eliza Shirley Clinic which is a domestic violence shelter for women and their children who are abused and have nowhere else to go and I felt that was pretty rewarding. We had a student run clinic and you just see whoever wants to be seen with one of the doctors from Drexel who comes. WHAT KIND OF MEDICAL ISSUES DO THEY PRESENT WITH? They present with the gamut. We see the adults on the adult clinic day and the “Peeds clinic”, the pediatricians come in. Lots of colds, lots of gyn-related problems, really anything. AND YOU’RE STUDYING WHERE? Drexel University School of Medicine. AND THIS IS YOUR OFFICE AWAY FORM HOME? Pretty much.

Divya Arun, of Roxborough, studying at Chestnut hill Coffee cafe.

Watch video here.

 

Eating to Fight Hunger : Northwest's Empty Bowl Dinner

Featuring Mike McGrath, celebrity host, Thomas Uhas, Wharton Freshman interning with NWIHN and Frank Green.

From NWIHN literature "In every state in America, housing costs outpace wages. Approximately 2.3 to 3.5 million Americans experience homelessness at least once a year. 1 in34 children in Pennsylvania do not know where they will get their next meal. It is estimated that on any given night in Philadelphia as many as 1300 children stay in a shelter.... Please take a moment to sign the postcards at your table in support of stronger nutrition legislation."

From NPR site "Mike ..once again hosts [ Northwest Interfaith Hospitality Network's Empty Bowl Dinner at Chestnut Hill College] whose proceeds go to fund one of the best programs for homeless families in our area. For a small donation ($15 for adults; $5 for kids and students), you get to choose a bowl from a room full of wonderful ones (all handmade by local school children and artisans) and then fill it (or a disposable bowl if the 'real one' you picked is too cool to use) with all kinds of wonderful soups donated by area restaurants; as many different soups and as much of each as you want. (All you can eat bread and cookies too.) At the end of the evening you take home the bowl you picked out as a reminder of the empty bowls your donation helped fill"

From NWIHN's website:"Since our founding in 1991, Northwest Philadelphia Interfaith Hospitality Network (NPIHN) has moved 275 families—745 individuals— from homelessness to stability. We look forward to growing our network further as we expand to Northeast Philadelphia in 2011. The NPIHN program provides assessment and referrals, emergency housing, supportive service and transitional housing. Equipped with new skills and relationships, 92% of our families do not return to shelter programs after their NPIHN experience. We offer a safe and child-friendly alternative to more chaotic public shelter settings, allowing families to remain in tact. Because we are small, we accommodate in-tact couples, single father households, adolescent boys, as well as single women with children. We strongly emphasize taking a holistic approach to rebuilding from homelessness. We are proud that our guests call us "the shelter that's more like a home." Our hospitality network is comprised of 1,200 caring volunteers, 30 congregations, concerned citizens of the community, community businesses, and institutions, and we are growing! There is space in our network for you and your congregation or organization, in this richly rewarding service to your neighbors."

Leaf Blowers Roar in Chestnut Hill

In the tree filled neighborhoods of Mount Airy and Chestnut Hill, autumn brings the gentle, rustling sound of fallen leaves but, just as commonly, the roar of leaf blowers used to collect them.

Jenks students cheer on walkers for breast cancer cure

JM: The reason we’re doing this is for our sister-in-law who had breast cancer diagnosed three (?) years ago. LS: Three years ago. She had a double mastectomy at 40. JM: She’s a survivor and we’re doing this in her honor. WHERE ARE YOU STARTING OUT FROM? LS: We started out from Willow Grove Park Mall and we’re from New Jersey. WHERE ARE YOU HEADED? LS: Now we’re headed to lunch. JM: We got forty more miles to go. Sixty miles total. We’re going to end up at the naval shipyard. Jim Myers and Linda Schwartz, participants in Susan G Komen 3-Day for the Cure, Germantown Avenue. Watch video here