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.

Transition's Coming: Take Part in the Planning

“At least I won’t be around to see it,” is one approach. Or non-approach, as the case may be.

“Technology and free enterprise will take care of it,” is another.

The folks committed to Transition Town in Cheltenham and Abington aren’t willing to take that risk.

The risky “it” looming ominously on the ever-closer horizon is the “ecological debt” – in the words of David Orr, distinguished author and professor at Oberlin College - that has been resulting from over-consumption of fossil fuels in the past 200 years. Orr explains that we’ve been “drawing down Nature’s capital – living beyond our [environmental] means.”

Ecological damage requires “a new energy paradigm,” according the CEO of Lloyd’s. Even one of the world’s pre-eminent insurance market specialists urges “governments to identify a clear path towards sustainable energy which businesses can follow.”

In its 2010 White Paper Sustainable Energy Security, Lloyd’s warns that the “old model” of reliance on fossil fuels is “outdated.” The study concludes that “energy security is now inseparable from the transition to a low-carbon economy.”

Transition Town is about planning for “descent” in energy use, putting conservation ahead of growth in consumption and using innovative strategies to reduce waste and nurture vibrant local economies. Transition Town projects are taking place all over the globe. [www.totnes.transitionnetwork.org and www.transitionus.org or, in progress: www.transitionnetwork.org; also www.CheltenhamTransition.org ]

“We want to make Cheltenham a sustainable community,” explains Wyncote resident Judith Gratz. Gratz has retired from her work at the Academy of Natural Sciences and Wissahickon Valley Watershed Association, but remains an environmental educator and consultant. No naive flower child, Gratz nevertheless emphasizes the importance of “living closely with basic environmental principles.”

Over 70 people attended a Transition Town working session at Curtis Hall on May 27. They came from Cheltenham, Abington, Jenkintown – from Philadelphia and New Jersey and beyond. Most of them believe in their power to make a difference at the local level. They met in interest groups to brainstorm ideas for transitioning to greater harmony with the environment. Energy, food, education, governance, health, transportation and livelihoods were among the organizing directions to which participants contributed their thoughts.

Transition Town doesn’t impose a plan on any community; instead, it’s a broad, inclusive framework through which interested citizens can come together and collaborate to reduce dependence on carbon-based energy. Outreach to and engagement of diverse organizations already operating in the community help propel meaningful, viable action plans.

Bill Mettler of Wyncote spoke of his vision for Cheltenham in the year 2020. It included the sweet aroma of freshly picked strawberries from neighborhood gardens and new yogurt produced by Ashbourne Farm, the former country club property. In his vision, green streets host more bicycles than cars, and rail stations now serve as cargo depots, as well as lively passenger sites. Walkable commercial streets are bustling with coffee houses, repair and recycling shops, and artisan studios. Children enjoy playing along clean creeks and parks. Fishing is attractive and Curtis Arboretum is stocked with nut trees for the public.

This isn’t just futuristic daydreaming, urges Judith Gratz. Choices belong to each of us each day. We don’t need to use plastic bags at all. We can eat more locally-grown vegetables and reduce our intake of the meats that require high-intensity, big-agriculture with its petroleum-based fertilizers, growth hormones and long distance transport. Gratz notes that the use of petroleum-based fertilizers for growing food accounts for about 35 percent of carbon emissions.

We can pass regulations to stop buses and trucks from idling their engines for an hour or two, fouling our air and our ears. Even the EPA ranks diesel exhaust as a major public health problem and urges schools (and other organizations) provide drivers with indoor space in which they can wait instead of idling. “There should be sidewalks throughout the Township, and bike routes where possible,” Gratz adds.

New developments can be required to set aside land for community gardens or trees for all to harvest; new construction could be expected to include adequate solar panels to generate a minimum amount of electricity or hot water.

The can do list is endless. And essential, in order to avert more catastrophes like the oil leak in the Gulf or the most recent Marcellus Shale explosion in western Pennsylvania.

At our house these days, we’ve been using a muscle-powered push reel lawn mower. It’s our green compromise with the toxic culture that still believes in golf course-style lawns. Meanwhile, we’re gradually moving toward more appropriate and resilient native flora.

What are you doing?

Transition Town’s Next Event: Alternative Modes of Travel Made Easy

Sunday, June 27: 4:00 – 7:00 p.m.

Robinson Park and Calvary Presbyterian Church

More Info: 215-896-7804 or www.TransitionCheltenham.org