Award-Winning Literary Novelty

“Adorable” isn’t quite the description most people would give to a 38-year-old man and prize-winning author of three books. But that appeared to be the consensus of an audience of about fifty listening to Peter Manseau discussing his novel, Songs for the Butcher’s Daughter, recently at Keneseth Israel in Elkins Park.

“I’m a bit of a novelty act on the Jewish book circuit,” said the son of a nun and a Catholic priest. Which would actually make him a novelty act on any sort of circuit. He says his stock also includes French Canadian and Irish ingredients. He’s personable and grins even more impishly in three dimensions than the photo on his book jackets would suggest.

His novel – the previous books were non-fiction – is many things, though essentially a love story. It’s also a tale of immigration - out of pre-1917 Russian pogroms and into early 20^th century sweatshops and automats of New York City. Perhaps the loudest theme is the role of Yiddish – or perhaps any at-risk language – in identity and community.

The tale is spun by two narrators, a Catholic youth and a Yiddish poet. The authentic voice of the former sometimes fools the reader into needing periodic reality checks, while the historical fantasy of the latter expertly marinates the main dish.

Manseau was invited to Elkins Park by Ellen Sklaroff, retired instructor at Arcadia and educator in Cheltenham School District. The avid reader had been scouting for books to recommend to her book group, and was funneled to him by Amazon, based on her previous affinity for Junot Diaz and Nathan Englander. Intrigued, she shot him an email. He replied.

Sklaroff’s book group promptly received an early save-the-date and get-the-book notice, along with a dinner invitation to greet the author at her home.

A relatively new member of the Board at Keneseth Israel who serves on their Adult Education and Library Committees, Sklaroff arranged Manseau’s speaking engagement there.

The author subsequently accepted a speaking session with graduate students and faculty at the University of Pennsylvania for earlier in the day. He resides in D.C. with his wife – an international trade attorney – and two young daughters. Manseau occasionally teaches journalism at Georgetown and occasionally takes time from his preferred commercial book life to work on his Ph.D. dissertation in religious studies.

“The novel stirred something in me,” said Sklaroff, who has also read Vows, Manseau’s biography of his parents. “We’re used to thinking of Jews as the outsiders. It’s remarkable to have such a knowledgeable outsider provide such learned perspective.”

Manseau spent a number of years working at the National Yiddish Book Center in Massachusetts, where he thinks he was hired not because he’d graduated U Mass as a religion major, but rather because he could drive a diesel truck. “It was never a simple affair collecting Yiddish books from homes,” he explained. “A face would suddenly appear saying, ‘You look hungry. Sit, have some tea and kugel. My granddaughter will be here soon.’ ”

Manseau has studied Hebrew, Yiddish, Latin and Greek. He has read more Yiddish literature than most members of his audiences. When he speaks about tradition and transgression, he observes that the most effective transgressors are those whose actions are derived from and laden with tradition.

He also speaks about the transformative power of translation and the meaning and implications of the concept of bashert (destiny, fate).

Sklaroff was delighted, if a little surprised, that Manseau turned out to be so engaging and entertaining. “We’re lucky to have gotten him at this stage in his career. He has the capacity to become a very important person.”

No Need to Guess

Were you one of hundreds of voters November 2^nd who had no idea what in precinct they belonged?

Knowing this little detail could have saved you annoyance, embarrassment and time.

Here’s how.

You know when you show up at the polls, you sign in. Your name appears in the books of the precinct that includes the residence for which you’re registered.

The complication is that dozens of polling places host more than one precinct. You may walk into a large gymnasium, and wonder which set of tables and voting machines are yours (and why). What distinguishes them?

If you go to the wrong set of tables and books, they won’t have your name, and they may send you across the room to the other precinct.

Granted, not all voting tables have great signage announcing their precinct number. This should be improved. Sometimes they have nice maps to help you identify your residence, and this helps direct you to the correct tables and voting machines. Other times, you just try to remember which set of tables you went to at the last election, and return there.

Here’s how to avoid the guessing game. Your voter registration card has your voting precinct number on it. It’s generally part of two numbers, for example: 4-3, or something like that. The first number indicates your ward in your municipality; the second is your precinct.

If you’ve lost your card, you can get those numbers again by calling your county election board voter registration office (in Montgomery County: 610-278-3280) and asking.

Bottom line: You shouldn’t have to guess which set of tables contains the books with your name. Expect proper signage and know your precinct number.

Nothing Is Awesome!

A college class where students learn about NOTHING? Zero. Zip. Absence. And now they’re holding an exhibition, “A Lot of Nothing.”

Although that seems at first blush to be precisely the sort of fodder upon which certain politicians feast, Arcadia University Professor Peter Appelbaum patiently explains what it's all about. In the process, that seasoned educator makes this seasoned academician want to sign up for the course!

In addition to teaching, Professor Appelbaum also coordinates math education at Arcadia, coordinates the curriculum studies graduate program, and serves as director at large for the undergraduate curriculum steering committee.

Arcadia University has a relatively new set of undergraduate curriculum requirements, in which, among other things, students take two University Seminars (US) before graduating. These seminars are interdisciplinary and some expect students to integrate on- and off-campus learning. Small learning groups are taught and practice intellectual skills and processes through a variety of different subject contents.

For example, there’s a Spanish course that qualifies as a University Seminar in quantitative reasoning. How? Students read Latin American newspapers – in Spanish, of course – and analyze and discuss – also in Spanish - the statistics and implications associated with health, social policy and political news.

Appelbaum’s seminar qualifies as a US in visual literacy, in that students study visual communications. Students learn to analyze the concepts they’re studying and how these ideas are connected with visual representations.

Here’s where nothing comes in.

And this void is filled with new vocabulary and scholarly inspiration.

The formal name of the course is US 222 – Everything and Nothing: Visualizing Mathematics, Philosophy and Culture.

The subject of zero has a long and dignified history. A vacuum is a powerful concept in physics. And consider creation stories, says Appelbaum. Creating something from nothing? (Or at least creating something originally, before anything like it ever existed.)

Questions about creation, forever and infinity have been among the greatest in human history, Dr. Appelbaum notes. Creation stories are fundamental across cultures. The concept is truly awesome.

Then come questions about representing ideas and concepts visually – in written language, in art, in objects.

This takes us into worlds this blog can’t: into semiotics; of famed linguist Ferdinand de Saussure; of mathematician/philosopher Brian Rotman; of Zeno and zeno; of paradoxes and opposites as wholes.

But you can enter into this intellectual discussion without having to register for the course. At the entrance to the Landman Library at Arcadia this week, Appelbaum’s students have installed the first of three projects they’ll be working on this semester.

Go this week to see “interactive provocations” that students created to communicate their explorations of Nothing.

They’re accompanied by a looseleaf notebook of statements about their work. A statement by Professor Appelbaum also appears there, describing a presentation he will have this year at a professional conference. Some exhibits operate only at specified times because of the vulnerability of the technology. All are meant to be stimulating in an intellectual way.

There’s one that invites viewers to take a card from the bowl and add it to the installation on the table titled, “Creation.” There are already cards on the table surrounding the words, “Nothing Is.”

Another installation is called “Fingerprint Galaxy.” See what you think, and then read the student’s statement.

During my visit, I heard one viewer exclaim, “Geez, I wish I were taking this course!”

As did last year’s class, these students will use the commentary you write in the guestbook as part of their learning and discussions.

Don’t blow this off as ivory tower nonsense by an effete elite detached from the real world. Contemplate the questions posed by the students: Isn’t nothing something? Who says nothing is impossible? Is silence nothing, or something? Does our life start with nothing? End with nothing? What is infinity?

While you’re at it, ponder the symbolism of installing these exhibits the entryway to a library. And, as one student’s video urges, “Use your eyes to open your mind.”

[Contact Arcadia University: 215-572-2900; www.arcadia.edu]

Old Charm: Going, Going, Almost Gone

If you admire antiques and collectibles, this may be a good time to indulge. Recent reports document the decline of businesses in Center City’s Antiques Row on Pine Street, and dealers in Montgomery County must respond to similar market changes in the suburbs.

“Business is off. Tastes change,” says Charles Steinberg, owner of Abington Antique Shop. Steinberg is a purist about antiques, taking pride in the family business established by his grandfather in 1892, and defining antiques as items no less than one hundred years old. “There’s no shortage of money,” Steinberg notes, but buyers seem to be tired of spending it on serious heirlooms. Yet the expert says that for the quality, nobody today can make the equivalent, even for twice as much money.

“Everything is in limbo,” says John Mason, owner of Jenkintown Antique Guild for 38 years. “Business is at the verge and nobody knows where it’s headed.”

David Kirkland is owner of Kirkland and Kirkland in Glenside’s Keswick Village. The retired corporate executive began the business with his wife about 15 years ago. “Flexibility” is their key for buying, selling and serving customers. So instead of downsizing as the market swings, Kirkland expanded into relocation services.

Kirklands offer a menu of activities they perform for adults moving into smaller quarters – from staging a home for sale to finding the best destination for items being discarded. Kirkland says they sell some things over the Internet, direct some items to public auction and purchase others outright for sale in their shop.

Kirkland says he sells to a lot of designers. He also sees furniture being converted for alternative purposes. Small chests and drawers become cabinets for bathroom sinks and old sewing machine consoles become cabinets and tables. A woodworking professional on Kirkland’s staff has helped cut back some old church pews, turning them into facing couches in front of a fireplace and as benches for kitchen corners.

Housed in a remarkable piece of architecture Mason attributes to Trumbauer, Jenkintown Antique Guild offers unusually unusual items. For example, you’ll find a (shortened) propeller from a blimp; a wall of incredible oak and steel cubby drawers from a local hardware store; and vintage equipment from dairy farms and businesses. As cool as the items themselves, are the uses to which Mason suggests they can be put. He envisions the enormous milk and butter vats serving as ice chests for beer parties. The business records case could house an extensive baseball card collection. The hardware case would be a treasure for a craftsperson or a very large jewelry box. Mason believes that for every lid there’s a pot.

But don’t bother asking what items are hot or what makes a good investment. “It doesn’t work that way,” explains Kirkland. “People come in looking for something we don’t have, but they see something else they love and buy it. You never know what somebody will want.”

Steinberg doesn’t recommend buying antiques for investment purposes because the market is too uncertain. Buy items for their charm and to enjoy, the dealers advise.

And right now, many old finds are priced for your pleasure.

Sequel: Prequel to the Air Mail House

What is it with this community? Within a couple of days after publication about the Air Mail house in North Hills, we heard from the owner of the other Air Mail house – the one that had apparently inspired it.

As you may recall from that previous post, the Coates family didn’t remember the exact location or know whose home it was that sparked their decision to hang their own flying mailbox landmark some 17 years ago. But now we know.

The home from which the Coates family borrowed the idea is on New Second Street in Elkins Park. Stephanie Phillips explains that about 20 years ago, “We were driving down a peninsula in Down East Maine, admiring the purple lupines.” She says when she saw a mailbox dangling from a high tree marked “Air Mail,” she giggled. “I thought, ‘What a nice thing to have.’ There are so many things not to smile about – here’s a happy thing.”

Phillips and her husband, tree surgeon Lewis Ruberg of Lewis Tree Care, are on their second airborne mailbox already. “It’s a recognition thing,” she says. Like Coates, they appreciate its value as a landmark on a busy street and enjoy the instant identification it provides to strangers and visitors.

And like the Coates family, they’ve been asked if their letter carrier really puts mail in it.

Those aren’t the only coincidences shared by the owners of these matching aerial adornments.

Like Drew Coates, Phillips is a professional. With her background in art history, Phillips has long consulted to a number of the area’s prominent nonprofits. Specializing in cultural travel and customized trip design, Phillips owns Globe Travel, which she says is the oldest travel agency in the Philadelphia area. “Actually, it owns me,” she quips. She marvels at the pleasant irony that in 1961, the agency that booked the trip Phillips took to Europe with her grandparents had been this very one.

Also like Coates, Phillips is drawn inexplicably to the unusual. A compulsive multi-tasker, Phillips’ favorite freelance job was the restoration and decorative repainting she gave Isabella, a lifesize cow that had been auctioned as a fundraiser for the Waco (Texas) Art Museum some years ago. Apparently Isabella had faded in the sun and salt air of Florida, where her owner had moved her. Phillips came to the rescue.

She says the scariest job she ever performed was a treatment she conducted on a fine English sofa that its owner had upholstered – unhappily, it turned out - in expensive, bright yellow silk damask. The owner was in her 80s, and, recalling a procedure once executed by her mother, recruited Phillips to apply this strategy to tone down the glaring color. So, at the owner’s insistence, Phillips reluctantly sprayed the sofa with iced tea. It worked.

Phillips is a serious cat lady. She’s the originator, some thirty years ago, and owner of Plants for Cats (sold locally at places like Primex and the Philadelphia Flower Show), the little packages of seeds you can plant to detour your felines away from other houseplants. Her household is ruled by a rescued mother-daughter cat team, and Phillips also collects all sorts of antique cat treasures.

Gardening is another of Phillips’ obsessions. She adores what she calls the “hodgepodge” of English gardens, and cultivates “the world’s most expensive salad bar” for the unintended benefit of the neighborhood wildlife. In order to counter her involuntary generosity, Phillips is desperately devising strategies – from Irish Spring soap mobiles to fences made from sparkly tinsel sticks scavenged from her son’s Bar Mitzvah centerpieces. Her latest effort, derived from the concept of a scarecrow, is a “scare deer.”

Guess it’s open season for talented homeowners who take pride in distinction and creativity. Anybody else?

Crape Myrtle Envy

Air Mail House

It’s known as the Air Mail House.

Which is part of the point.

Owner Drew Coates explains why his North Hills home has a mailbox hanging some 25 feet above the ground from the branch of a venerable maple tree. On one side is painted Air Mail. The family’s name is on the other side. “It’s an easy way to identify the house,” says the partially-retired attorney.

Both Coates and his wife, Anne, also an attorney in the couple’s private practice, mention the flying mailbox when they’re giving directions to visitors and for deliveries. If you’re looking for an address on a street as busy as Limekiln Pike, it’s a helpful landmark to use. And it’s striking how many people do.

Coates gets a kick out of people’s reactions. When his chiropractor retired, Coates’ new chiropractor was making small talk and asked him where he lived. When he learned it was on Limekiln Pike, he asked if it was anywhere near the Air Mail House. Coates responded, “It is the Air Mail House.” The chiropractor immediately called his wife and said, “Guess who I have on my table!”

Coates admits that the idea didn’t originate with him. He’d seen something like it many decades ago – possibly on Second Street Pike, he thinks - and promised himself that when he bought a fitting house, he’d do the same.



It’s been hanging there for 17 years, “protected by the tree,” he says. The family has a regular mailbox on the front porch, so it raises no issue for the post office and Coates calls their letter carrier “a great guy.” In fact, Coates loves the area and thinks his neighbors are terrific.

He suspects that their five kids aren’t quite as thrilled by the Air Mail notoriety as he is. “They tend to think I’m a little wacky,” Coates acknowledges. Are there other things he does to deserve a “wacky” reputation?

“I can’t say anything. I’m an attorney. I have to maintain my image in the legal community,” he coyly replies. Then he reminisces about the days when he was president of the Philadelphia Chapter of the Friendly Raccoons. If you don’t remember the Honeymooners with Jackie Gleason and Art Carney, that’s okay.

Just smile when you drive by. Coates says that smile makes it worthwhile.