CLOSE UP by Brian Rudnick

She advocates to free an Orca at CH Garden Fest

Lolita is an orca “killer” whale who has been performing at the Miami Seaquarium (http://miamiseaquarium.com/Shows/Killer-Whale-and-Dolphin) since 1970 and Gigi Glendinning is the founder of 22reasons.org (http://22reasons.org), an organization that teaches “compassion and reverence for all animals” who believes Lolita deserves a rehabilitative retirement where she has round-the-clock veterinary care and the opportunity to return to the sea.

Glendinning was out advocating at a booth at the Chestnut Hill Garden Festival on Sunday with a niece costumed as a killer whale.  Kids were invited to paint a life size illustration of a killer whale on a huge tarp on the ground.  22Reasons and  several similarly missioned organizations are mounting a petition drive and urging parents to NOT buy tickets to shows like Lolita’s where animals are forced to perform.  It sends a contradictory message to children, Glendinning maintains, to attempt to instill respect for these animals while simultaneously mistreating them.

According to Glendinning, Lolita was illegally captured and is being illegally contained in a concrete pool so small her tail touches the bottom and where, as a member of an exceptionally intelligent and social species, she is deprived of necessary social contact and subject to many confinement-related afflictions.

She presented your correspondent with a copy of the book, “Death at Sea World: Shamu and the Dark Side of Killer Whales in Captivity” by  David Kirby  (St Martins Press 2012) about killer whales in the marine park industry, their advocates and the brutal and sometimes lethal attacks on  trainers over the years, attributed to captivity-related aggressiveness of the orcas. Watch video interview here.

Exchanging seeds to preserve heirlooms and feed people

For the third year in a row, Joel Fath and Mira Adornetto of Philly Seed Exchange, set up their table top with seeds and small brown envelopes for packing and labeling seeds on a recent sunny, spring day outside the Weaver’s Way Coop in Mount Airy. According to the organization’s website, http://phillyseedexchange.org, “Philadelphia Seed Exchange is a collective of gardeners and farmers in southeastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey dedicated to preserving open-pollinated species and developing new plant species to meet the nutrition and caloric needs of our neighborhoods.” The Exchange hosts events like this in different neighborhoods and encourages people to both bring and take seeds although it is not necessary to contribute any seeds to take some. They ask only that participants grow out the plants from the seeds they take and harvest some of the seeds to bring back to the Exchange. One enthusiast who took a seat at the table was Nate Kleinman, who works on community garden projects in the region. He had brought a plastic grocery bag full of seeds including purple bush beans, bloody sorrel, and Nanticoke Indian squash, an heirloom variety of the Nanticoke Indians who lived in South Jersey and Delaware. Raina Ainslie, who had brought some lavender seeds, picked up a packet from Kleinman’s bag of Kyoto moss spores, meant for growing under a bonsai tree or terrarium which she will try out. Through the afternoon, people came and went, congregating around the table, sharing their knowledge as much as the great variety of vegetable, flower and tree seeds. Some contributed bean seedlings were eagerly grabbed up. From left to right: Kleinman, Ainslie, Adornetto. Watch video here.

Japanese Cherry Blossom Festival - beautiful!

Catching rainbow trout with granddad

A few days after the start of the Pennsylvania trout season on March 30^th, Naiyfuz Smith shows off the rainbow trout he caught in the Wissahickon Creek with his grandfather Whitney, who, when he’s not out fishing, comes to the park three days a week to run. “I use this place like crazy. I love this place. It’s like you don’t even know you’re in the city when you’re out here.” Watch video interview here.

Mountain unicycles in hilly, rocky Wissahickon Valley

While taking a leisurely, easy bike ride along the relatively flat Forbidden Drive, my daughter and I were amazed to see a young man atop a unicycle on the opposite shore of the Wissahickon Creek, tooling up and down a hilly, narrow trail. High-schooler Peter Hildebrandt took up mountain unicycling after a knee injury ended his running career. With his high end, fat-tired, disc-brake equipped mountain unicycle, he meets regularly in the Wissahickon with other unicyle friends and enthusiasts and is preparing to compete in the 2013 North American Unicycling Convention and Championship to be held in Butler, Pennsylvania this coming July. Watch video here.

Visitors take photos of Seaside after Hurricane Sandy destruction

More than a couple months after Hurricane Sandy ravaged the Jersey shore in late October, a teenage girl from Toms River was making a repeat visit with friends to take another look at Seaside Park, the shore town that she would come to every day in the summer to enjoy the beach and boardwalk arcades. It was still hard for her to process all the destruction wrought by the unexpected fierce storm. Her group milled around along with a lot of other curious visitors who were taking photos from the rail of a still standing boardwalk entrance ramp of the expanse of sand where the boardwalk once stood. A lone Coca Cola arch and some battered stores and the now becalmed ocean in the distance completed the vista. The girl and her friends are hopeful that it all will be rebuilt by Memorial Day. Watch video here.

Offspring of the European Beech and its admirers

In October of 1999, Bill proposed to his now wife while sitting on a bench under their favorite tree at the Morris Arboretum in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, a huge European beech on the upper slope. The tree was badly damaged about a year later and only the decaying snag remains. But the tree is surrounded by its offspring, a circle of tall, closely spaced trees which had taken root where the original beech's long, pendulous branches had touched the ground. On a recent fall day, the family, now consisting of a 7 and 9 year old were revisiting the special place.

Watch video interview here.

Playing bluegrass, watching raptor migration

Kate Somerville was a long time birder before banjo playing took over and decided to combine her two interests by bringing some musician and bird loving pals from the Mermaid Inn to jam at the Militia Hill Hawk Watch. This is the 25^th year of the hawk watch. Volunteers count raptors, by species, migrating south for the winter. According to Marylea Klauder, they had already counted nearly one hundred bald eagles and a record-breaking twenty plus thousand migrating raptors by the time this video was taken in late September. Counting continues until the end of October, along with impromptu concerts, weather permitting.  Fort Washington State Park. Watch video 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

Three days on roof, survived Hurricane Katrina

NOTE: INFORMATION HAS BEEN RECEIVED ON 4/21/13 WHICH CALLS THE VERACITY OF THIS ACCOUNT INTO QUESTION.

Watch video interview here

Jo Quasney is a survivor of Hurricane Katrina. Of French Creole heritage, Quasney is a native of New Orleans who was living alone in her house in the eighth ward when the hurricane struck on August 29, 2005.  Quasney bred birds and had no way of transporting or finding shelter for the birds when New Orleans residents were advised to evacuate so she stuck it out. Her neighborhood began to flood after she heard an explosion that she attributes to a Halliburton company oil barge breaking through a levee. (For a discussion on the cause of the breech, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ING_4727)