CLOSE UP Video Interviews

On a six day visit to Bermuda, your correspondent became intrigued by the variety of accents.

On a ferry ride, a very zippy jet-powered ferry from Hamilton to the Royal Navy Dockyard, an elder ferry worker referred to his proper yet distinctive accent as “British Bermudian.” He distinguished it from the Queen's English and from a West Indian accent. Tongue-in-cheek, he attributed British Bermudian to the temperate sea breezes on the island, warmer than England and cooler than the West Indies.

Jean-Marie runs a “garden inn’ in Southampton and although our timing didn’t work out to stay there, we visited! She has a lilting accent from (warmer) Antigua. She married and settled with a Bermudian and settled here, but goes back to Antigua every year. A garden tour included the greenhouses full of smal,l green poinsettias which she imports as slips , feeds and grows, prunes back in September. In the following months she draws the curtains  to provide just the right amount of night darkness so that they turn brilliant red at Christmas. Unfortunately, two back-to-back hurricanes caused her to twice enlist neighbors and draft her sons to haul the plants into the house and back to the greenhouse; the salt mist blowing in the one semi-open side of the greenhouse could have “burned” the leaves brown and gotten into the potting soil.

At a lovely Airbnb, across the road where we stayed, the innkeeper’s partner, Danny, exhibited a British Bermudian accent, also. His heritage is very varied-including Scottish and Indian from India. Ironically, some of his family were originally settled in a more northern area of the island populated by Native Americans (American Indians) a legacy of the confusion attributed to Christopher Columbus in the 15th century who thought he had reached the east Indies. He recounted that the 300 year-old house was once a horse stable for an inn and brothel that had stood across the street; evidently it was popular with sailors on the then sparsely populated island!

Your correspondent also came upon other English accents- someone who spoke with a rather posh accent and yet another with more working class. Perhaps most surprising was the “Bermudian” accent that was American! Robert’s English family, whose genealogy he has been documenting (3000 individuals so far), has been on the island for a few hundred years. A grandmother may have spoken with an English accent, he recalls, but recent generations like his have been sent to boarding school beginning at age twelve following through with university in the States.

Your correspondent accompanied his spouse for the Public Library Association Conference in Nashville, Tennessee, February 25-29, 2020 and had a blast. Here are some photos and videos captured from that time.

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For two consecutive days, some attendees of the Public Library Association Annual Conference stood outside and nearby the convention center soliciting signatures on petitions in support of IMLS funding. According to one of the signature gatherers, the President has been trying to shut down the Institutes for Library and Museum Services (IMLS) for four years. IMLS is the major federal source of funding 123,000 libraries and 35,000 museums according to everylibrary.org, a political action committee for libraries.

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Our guide, Texas born, North Carolina raised Caitlin, belted out facts while walking backwards to groups of prospective students and their parents at the college she attended.
This prepared her well when she moved to Nashville with her partner recently to pursue a career in tourism. We heard her loud and clear as she informed and entertained us with fun facts aboard the tour bus which looped us around the city. After the tour, she obliged your correspondent for an interview touching on the serious flooding several years ago and current concern about the high level of the Cumberland River, the Woolworth's restaurant, site of sit-ins during the civil rights era and still open for business, her enthusiasm and hopes about Amazon's upcoming opening of its eastern U.S. headquarters in Nashville, line dancing at the Wild Horse Saloon and paying to get insulted when served at Dick's Last Resort.

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This is a collage of little videos from the Public Library Association conference in Nashville, Tennessee, February 25 -29, 2020. In order they are
- the steps with PLA 2020 on the risers at the Music City Center (MCC)
-dressing up for the "Wonderosity" green screen at Demco's booth at the exhibit area, MCC
-Michelle Bloom singing along with her album "Big Backyard" in the exhibit area
-Changing color light entrance to the children's area at the Nashville Public Library (NPL)
-Petitioning the government to fund public libraries through the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) outside the MCC
-"String City" History of Country Music puppet show at the NPL
-Country band at the Ingram party at the NPL
-Salt Lake City librarians partying at the Ingram Party, NPL
-Country line dancing at the Wild Horse Saloon along with Matt McAtee
-Time lapse view of street outside MCC
-Country singer in MCC lobby
-Revelers partying and pedaling on a Nashville Pedal Tavern
-Crossing music bar packed Broadway
-Music pouring out of Legends Bar on the corner of Broadway

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On her album of children’s songs "Big Backyard" , Michelle Bloom motivates kids to go outside, explore to find bugs and such, and just to experience nature! She encourages families to visit the national parks - "It'a big back yard” she exclaims. Bloom was promoting her CD at the Public Library Association conference in Nashville, Tennessee and obliged your correspondent by singing along to some of her songs, producing a wonderful stereo effect.

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Every day at 4:30 there's free line dance lessons at the Wild Horse Saloon on 2nd Avenue in downtown Nashville, Tennessee. Country line dancing continues for hours with a live performer. We were entertained by Matt McAtee, who says he always get asked to play his song, "I can't stand Tome Brady" and when he did, there didn't seem to be any Bostonians or Patriots football fans in the bar.

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Librarians pass the time in a lobby at the Music City Conference Center in Nashville waiting for the doors to open to the ballroom to hear an interview with comedian -personality-commentator Samantha Bee at the close of the Public Library Association conference.The soundtrack is singer KC Johns and fellow musicians singing at the Legends Bar on Broadway.

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Upper Bucks Chamber and Visitors Center Executive Director Danielle Bodnar treated your correspondent to a little tour of the Center's museum. A 1902 motorized buggy is one of the many treasures on display. The Chamber partners with The Quakertown Historical Society which provides historical artwork, memorabilia and binders of old newspaper clippings and photographs and more for the center museum. Bodnar says people like to come in and take a trip down memory lane by searching the archived Quakertown High School yearbooks for, say, pictures of their grandparents or to research some family genealogy. Outside the Center, she pointed out historic Liberty Hall across the way where the Liberty Bell was temporarily hidden on its way from Philadelphia during the Revolutionary War to keep it safe from the British. And Bodnar added that the Richard Moore house on Main Street will be honored this September 14th for keeping escaped slaves safe during civil war times. A historical marker will be placed at the building which served as an important stop on the Underground Railroad. Watch highlights of Quakertown visitor center tour here.

For more photos of the visitor center, click here.

Naturalists at the Wissahickon Environmental Center Treehouse are raising and launching monarch butterflies. In the Andorra meadow a short distance above the Trreehouse, Philadelphia Parks and Recreation staffers Christina Moresi and Maris Harmon harvest milk weed leaves on which monarch butterflies have laid their small white eggs. They bring the leaves down to the Treehouse where the eggs hatch into caterpillars. They demand an abundant supply of milkweed leaves to munch on and grow. Moresi has filmed the whole metamorphosis. The grown caterpillars will climb to the top of a screen mesh and spin into milky green colored pupae. As the pupae mature, their casings become translucent and the butterflies' distinctive orange markings become visible. Finally the encapsulated butterflies emerge out of the bottom and pump blood to stretch out their new wings.
The naturalists place a small round tag on each newborn's wing and register it in an online database so if it is found in Mexico or en route, it can be identified. Moresi (right in photo) explains that the butterflies which lay their eggs in the Andorra are the fourth generation of butterflies migrating from hibernation in Mexico. Before they are released, the young monarchs are fed a rich diet of nectar and become flight worthy in a tall netted enclosure. The Center announces when they are about to release a group of monarchs. They are bound for Mexico, an extraordinary 2000 mile journey.
(Interviewer's Note: Conservationists have been actively engaged in combating a severe long term decline in the population of the monarch butterfly, a beautiful and important pollinator, that has been attributed to habitat loss from logging and pesticide use)

Watch monarchs metamorphosis and interview here 

​When a thunderstorm kept the J S Jenks kindergartners from visiting the Chestnut Hill Library for a program, the library came to them. Author Cynthia Kreilick read aloud in Spanish and English with the children from her book "Lucha y Lola," illustrated by her daughter Alyssa. The story, about travel and change, is inspired by the Calveras (skeleton depictions) associated with the Day of the Dead that Kreilick encountered on a family trip to Mexico. It concludes with the protagonists starting a butterfly kite-making business to draw attention to the plight of the endangered monarch butterfly population. The Kreilicks were featured in the Chestnut Hill Local in 2012 www.chestnuthilllocal.com/2012/11/26/mother-writes-daught...

Watch video here

Chris Levey, a saturnine looking yet pleasant 3-day a week volunteer at the barren- looking Travelers Aide kiosk at 30^th Street Station in Philadelphia says that Travelers Aide doesn’t offer all that much.  The most common question is where the bathroom is followed by where the BOLT bus location is.  People also ask about tourist destinations and Levey directs them to the Independence Hall area and offers a map.

Not infrequently Levey gets approached by people who don’t have money and need a place to stay. Men he sends to the Roosevelt Darby Center, women to the House of Passage, emergency housing shelters. They relate all kinds of stories, he says. A guy the week before said he had come for a job interview, didn’t get the job and had no money to get home.  Levey supplies these down-on-their-luckers with a token to get to the shelter.

Watch video interview here.

Rashid Abdul/Majid, a practicing Muslim, turns to his Arabic language books during breaks in his substitute-teaching class schedule on a recent day at Parkway Northwest High School in Mount Airy. He is currently studying Arabic, taking one class on the Arabic language- grammar and sentence structure, and another, called Tajweed, on how to recite from the Koran. A recently retired driver of 38 years with SEPTA who has been simultaneously substituting for many years, he loves to travel around the world and has visited China and many countries in Africa. During the upcoming March spring break, with his wife and son, he is taking a return trip to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia. Watch video interview here.

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.

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.

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.