Monthly Archives: October 2015

collecting: shipping breakables

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This is why you have to be so careful when you’re shipping breakables.

 I love Royal Copenhagen Christmas plates. I collect them and I use them. Some people like to hang them on their walls, but I checked with the Royal Copenhagen company and you actually can use them as luncheon or hors d’oeuvres plates as the glaze is safe and not containing lead. (They were very funny they sent me photos of the plates being used with cheeses and pickled herring on them!)

I bought these from a dealer on eBay and they did not use a large enough box or the proper packaging to send me the plates.  They also did not remove the plate hanging wires from the plates. I am fortunate only one broke.

Now I fully understand they did the best they could and this was an accident, but there is a takeaway  lesson on this. It is better to go up a size in boxes and pay a little extra postage then run the risk of having something break. 

Now mind you, sometimes packages just get manhandled and there’s nothing you can do about it. But the case with this box was it arrived in perfect condition, it was simply too small with insufficient packaging around each plate.

Thanks for stopping by!

giggles all the way.

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I read this article just now that had me rolling laughing.  I want to have a drink or lunch with the author just because I loved it so much and I totally don’t even know her.  Ladies, it is something we can all appreciate if we are honest: dating hell.

Remember the good old days? When you wanted the dates to be debonair like Bogie above, only sometimes they were just…less so?

Here, read an excerpt:

Dating in Philly After 30: Ugh.

What’s it like to reenter the dating pool in your early 30s … after a divorce … when the last time you were single, Facebook was a print product? A tale of iguanas, E-A-G-L-E-S chants, and one really big glass of panic pinot grigio.

By  |  October 18, 2015

I was a little nervous. Maybe more than a little nervous. It had, after all, been a solid 10 years since I’d been on a first date, and if my memory served me correctly, I wasn’t all that good at them.

But I relaxed a little when he finally walked through the door of Johnny Brenda’s. Tall, well-dressed, seriously great smile — this was going to be just fine. We had met a few days before while waiting for our tables at brunch, and he was so charming that I agreed to follow-up drinks before remembering that I wasn’t ready to date…..“I’m so sorry I’m late. I was waiting on a friend,” he explained as he pulled out a chair and put his book on the table…..“His name is Jesus Christ.”  It was then that I realized the book on the table was a Bible.

Ok she had me at Jesus. This article was so honest and funny I got to thinking, maybe it was time to share a couple of horror date stories. When they are so bad they are funny. Enough time has passed….one of the benefits of hitting 50 and above you give yourself permission to tell these occasional stories.

I hated dating. From the time I was a teenager, I was a lousy recreational dater. My mother whether she realized it or not piled on the dating pressure…always. And  I was always infuriating my mother because if I was not dating someone I was particularly wild about, I came solo to date bearing occasions as decreed by her. I disliked blind dates and set ups. I just was never very good at it or the juggling of people aspect to it. And my mother would make these declarations of how I couldn’t go to such and such without an escort like it was Victorian England or some episode of something on Masterpiece Theater.

Every once in a while my mother would  attempt a set up. It was always after tales of what a fabulous date she was back in the day and so on. One time early on in the set up of it all was The Philadelphia Charity Ball. 1981 to be precise — which was my cotillion year.  I was not dating anyone in particular and settled on doing the cotillion dance part of it with a guy friend of mine. Lots of other girls and guys I knew were doing the exact same thing…and their parents were fine with it.

Well my mother was having none as in N-O-N-E of that.  He wasn’t her choice. She set me up with an “appropriate” date from Wharton. Now she had not interfered quite so much since my sophomore year in high school when she decided I could not go to my sophomore prom with whom I wanted to go with.

I was mortified. 17 years old, a freshman in college and my mother chose an “appropriate” Charity Ball Date…her version. (Translation: Mommy’s taste was so 1950s.)

Yep, so I just decided to get through it. She could not foist this guy into the middle of the cotillion so Bobby Scott would still be announcing my name with the guy friend. So date shows up with flowers from Robertson’s (gorgeous). The date? Not so much. We had nothing as in zero in common and nothing to talk about and he was way shorter than I was. I am only 5′ 6″. It was painful…for both of us.

Like any infuriated at her mother teenage girl, I eventually ditched him at the Bellevue Strafford in Philadelphia.  Mama San was furious. He showed up in the program book the following year photographed sitting on a bench all alone in the Bellevue somewhere reading a program book with some slightly sarcastic photo caption. Oh the drama in my house when THAT happened. It took my mother years to get over that.

That was not her only set up attempt during the course of my singlehood.  Then there was the guy who was a son of a social friend of hers. The mothers connived because shock and horrors they had single adult children. The guy called a couple of times and he seemed nice. Good conversationalist so I thought ok one dinner wouldn’t be so bad.

He picked me up in a filthy dirty car with some smelly old duds in the back.

He took me to one of my favorite BYOBs at the time. Dinner was the best part of the date. My date spent the entire date talking about himself. Nothing about what did I like to do, so on and so forth. It was all the world according to…him. And I found out later he took me to an out of the way BYOB in case I was unattractive. (Nice. And amusing considering he is not what one would consider pretty or handsome…)

So date ended I said thanks politely and thought that was the end of it….nope…he called like the next day to critique the date and tell me why he wasn’t going to take me on a second date.  I thought I was on candid camera or being punked or something. I actually had no witty retort since it was just so astoundingly rude. He married someone off a dating site a few years later I am told.  God bless her.

My mother gave up on mommy pre-approved and contrived dates after that. (Thank goodness)

Other dates that are memorable in their horribleness was the portfolio manager type years ago from a rather important local investment concern.  We met for coffee.

Again, seemed nice enough…until he decided to tell me his dating philosophy. He viewed these coffee dates as like….wait for it…tryouts. Yes, really.

So I am just sort of sitting there like a deer in headlights and he goes on to say after tryouts there will be “cuts”.  At that point I found I could not sit still a moment longer and told him varsity football was so 1981 (when I graduated from high school). I was out of the door like a shot. “Coach” is probably somewhere still having try outs. That was the date where I learned no coffee dates.

I think bad dates whether you are male or female are a funny part of life.  Kind of like the job interviews we have all gone on for jobs we don’t really want.

‘s piece tickled my funny bone. And my it made me realize how lucky I am NOT to be single.  (And how lucky I am God did a lift-out a few years ago and landed me where I am supposed to be and with whom I am supposed to be with!)

breakfast casserole

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A crisp fall morning on a weekend occasionally begs for a hearty breakfast doesn’t it? So make yourself a pot of French Press coffee and try this breakfast casserole:

8 slices of bacon, cooked and broken up into small pieces

10 large eggs

1/2 cup milk

1 1/2 cups leftover mashed potatoes (Get out of refrigerator a good 25 minutes before you prepare this so it comes up to room temperature)

Tabasco sauce

Worcestershire sauce

1/2 teaspoon dill weed

1/2 teaspoon powdered (dry) English mustard 

Salt and pepper to taste

4 large slices Swiss cheese

1 cup shredded Mexican blend cheese (not flavored, just the cheese)

A couple of tablespoons of butter for dotting

2 quart Pyrex glass baking dine buttered (11 x 7)

Pre-heat oven to 350°F.

In a bowl whisk together well the eggs, milk, dill, mustard powder, dash or two of Tabasco sauce and 3 or 4 dashes of Worcestershire sauce. I do not add salt, but I do add pepper ( fresh ground). Set aside.

In buttered baking dish layer bacon pieces in bottom, do NOT use pre-processed bacon bits they will make it gross.

Next dot by teaspoon the leftover mashed potatoes evenly over bacon.

Layer shredded Mexican cheese blend (like Kraft or Sargento) on top of potatoes.

Pour egg mixture evenly over everything in baking dish and evenly lay slices of Swiss cheese and dot everything with a couple tablespoons of butter.

Bake in oven 35 to 40 minutes – it will be golden brown and slightly bubbly on top.

When you remove casserole from oven it will be steaming hot. Let sit 15 minutes give or take before cutting into squares and serving.

It’s like a deconstructed quiche or rectangular frittata!

Enjoy!


remembering beth

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beth3On Wednesday morning a text came in from a life long friend, Liza:

“I am not sure if anyone posted anything, mom passed away this morning at 5:30 a.m. Such a relief to see the suffering over.”

I don’t text and drive, but I pulled over to the side of the road for a few minutes.

She was gone. Beth was gone, and wow, I knew it was coming but it was so fast.

She had that kind of Leukemia that killed my friend Jim McCaffrey and another friend’s dad.

Beth knew my parents long before I was born, so I have literally known her my whole life. And she made me laugh and smile for 51 years and I  think that is pretty cool. What made me laugh about were just life things you had to be there at the time to get. She had a zany sense of humor and the most wonderful laugh and a smile that lit up her eyes. She even made me laugh when I was younger about her mother-in-law, who quite frankly was a bit terrifying to me. (She was the older person you never, ever wanted to disturb!)

A lot of memories growing up are tied to her and her kids. They introduced us to Avalon, and when I wrote the post where I spoke about the log cabin on 13th street that once belonged to Woodrow Wilson? That was their house at the beach.

They were one of the two families we knew when we were little who had an English Springer Spaniel. It was definitely because of the one they had when I was about 11 that we ended up getting out first of a long line of Springers.

She was also my Confirmation sponsor.

beth 4In May I had a belated birthday present thanks to Liza: I got to spend the afternoon with the two of them.  I made lunch and we spent the afternoon on my deck and in the garden.  It was such a nice afternoon.

I have memories of Beth and her family going back to when I was the littlest of girls in Society Hill. I remember their house in Ambler and talcum powder mysteriously getting all over the third floor and when they moved to Blue Bell. Avalon memories of 13th street, looking for stars with my father and her husband Ed and all the kids and Beth and my mother on the beach at night. The sound of how quiet the sand was at night when we jumped on an off the lifeguard stands. The merry sound of Beth’s laugh in the darkness as she told a funny story.   And American Pie by Don McLean on the 8 Track in Avalon….And fireworks around the pool in Blue Bell

Beth has raised remarkable children and taught all the children who weren’t hers, (but loved her like we were) to be better human beings and to stand up for what we believed in. Yes, including me. She is one of the best most truly kind and Christian people I have ever met. I have loved every conversation with her (and over the past year or so we have had quite a few I will always treasure.)beth1

As her children prepare for this final goodbye, the upcoming funeral, I am sad, I admit I have cried like a baby over this. But I am grateful for having known her and inspired by her capacity to love other human beings.

Beth, among other things, was the longest standing docent at The Philadelphia Zoo.  She was also a volunteer and volunteer coordinator at St. Johns Hospice in Philadelphia.

So Beth this is for you, with love always…only love.  And for Liza, Andy, Martha, and Joe for sharing her with all the other kids too all these years.

Gone but will never be forgotten.

someone a little testy at devon horse show?

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This  circulated briefly . Seriously? Wowza. Still so threatened by historians and preservationists? And still foaming at the mouth over a historical marker that if DHCF collectively removed their heads from their posteriors should be thrilled with that, right?

Apparently the only people in Chester County more dumb that West Vincent Ken Miller “operatives” are the folks from Devon Horse Show.  I was told that this appeared for a small window of time on the website and apparently it was actually a letter that went out on Wednesday to all the members of the DHCF Inc. BOD’s and the Foundation? Really???

And did they think this hot potato wasn’t going to make the rounds privately?  Wow they need to be schooled by teenagers on chat programs and social media, or bloggers.

Oopsies. (And now for a resounding chorus of deny, deny, deny….only they sent it, didn’t they?)

What a disgrace and mess this current regime continues to make of a proud tradition.  I am so terribly sad for Devon. These people just don’t get it.

d1d2d3d4

devon nonsense redacted 10.16.15a

will bryn coed become chester county’s next chesterbrook?

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Overnight a brave lady posted on the blog’s FB page. A resident of West Vincent who lives on Bryn Coed property. Bryn Coed was recently mentioned in a development post I had put up, because if developed between the land in West Vincent and the land in a neighboring municipality, the land is well like close to twice the size of what was Chesterbrook Farm and what is the development Chesterbrook that when the first house was built in 1977 forever changed the face of that part of Chester County. So built up today, you would never know it was once an important agricultural site.

Also do not forget Foxcatcher Farm off Goshen Road and 252 in neighboring Delaware County. Don’t forget what Toll Brothers has done there in what is known as the Liseter. Remember the barns, the rolling fields, the ponies, the horses, the trees, the woods? You would never know one of the most grand DuPont estates was once there. And no matter how they advertise (New York Times and tacky “buy now” signs all along West Chester Pike until you are practically in the borough), are those houses selling like proverbial “hotcakes”? Doesn’t seem to be does it?

Tredyffrin Township can barely handle Chesterbrook and all other responsibilities involved today and well Tredyffrin is a much larger better functioning municipality than West Vincent. I hate that once again West Vincent is the focus of a Chester County blog post, but this is a municipality in crisis, isn’t it?

Between West Vincent and Upper Uwchlan, this part of Chester County is in serious crisis from development. Remember another post I had up a couple years ago? Once again about Toll Brothers…in Upper Uwchlan. Toll Brothers is everywhere. And if it is not Toll Brothers it is other developers.

It’s too much.

Bryn Coed is one of the last relatively unmolested land parcels of its size in Chester County, isn’t it? Neighboring farms and homes voice bragging rights due to their proximity to Bryn Coed.  I once saw a real estate listing with this description:

This small but wonderful farmhouse is …situated on a country road on 3.9 very usable acres that are fenced in for three paddocks and riding ring. The bank barn has 4-5 stalls, and huge hayloft. It adjoins open space owned by Bryn Coed farms. You can ride out to trails right from the property. Chester County, Pennsylvania hosts many equestrian events of all disciplines.

Descriptions of listings like that will change if Toll Brothers or another developer buys the land parcel, right?

Think I am making it up? Here are the screen shots:

Toll Brothers1

Bryn Coed Evict

evict family

Developers don’t care about existing tenants and rent producing tenant properties when they have a “vision”, do they?

There is a sugar would melt in their mouths bless their little hearts page on Facebook for West Vincent residents supposedly even though I really thought it was created to promote a certain supervisor’s desperate bid to remain in office. I was sent a screen shot just now:

hear voices

My, my, my.  I guess this “lady” is the “official” spokesperson for West Vincent Township? Why bless her heart!  People keep sending me screen shots where she seems to speak FOR the township and the elected and appointed officials? Guess they do things differently there? Hope Miller keeps her in cheese and veal sticks, right?

So you know if you had such “influence” in the community wouldn’t you be trying to find the nice lady and other residents on Bryn Coed places to live? Or would you dismiss someone posting publicly that they had a notice to quit or something similar posted on their door as a “rumor”?

Everything is always a rumor it seems with Bryn Coed, right? Remember the meeting in March where the meeting notes reflect addressing a gentleman who expressed concern including about Bryn Coed? (West Vincent-2015-03-09-minutes)

Toll Bryn Coed

So it’s all always a rumor while quietly things get looked at, measured, tested, filed with DEP I am told?

This lady has SIX children. Now I know I know you rent there is always a risk the property will be sold but why post a notice like that if it is not true?  At any time they could be put off where they call home.

Oh and speaking of Bryn Coed, saw a cool restoration on an architect’s website (click here).

For the historical perspective Chester County resident should read if they haven’t the history of Chesterbrook as complied by the Tredyffin Easttown Historical Society. (Volume40_N1_027 TE History of Chesterbrook ) . It is a grim reminder of what could be seen again, on Bryn Coed, isn’t it?

This is why residents in NOT just West Vincent but elsewhere need to change the faces of who govern them sooner rather than later. The lure of the developer’s song (and dance) is far too tempting for local politicians who are shall we say…deeply entrenched? And what about term limits in local government? Not a bad idea, eh?

I am a realist. I know it is nearly impossible to preserve giant swaths of land like this – no one wants to deal with a 350 acre estate (Ardrossan, Radnor Township) or an 800+ acre estate (Foxcatcher Farm Newtown, Delaware County) Look what happened at Ardrossan, after all and that 350 acres has been carved up by relatives, and rumors abound there about the future of the mansion too, isn’t there? And we know the horror show that occurred at Foxcatcher Farm.

But between no one wanting to deal with big estates, and hearing about this lady on Bryn Coed made me think about all the tenant houses on Ardrossan.  What has happened there? Are the people still living there? I know different people over the years who have rented cottages and small farm house on Ardrossan. But I digress.

So, development of parcels like this is inevitable unless someone like Natural Lands Trust buys and conserves the land. And sometimes land conservation groups can only acquire a portion – and a lot of times it is the portion of the property that would just be too difficult and expensive for a developer to develop, right? Swamp? Wetlands? Steep Slopes? (You know like the pig in a poke purchased by Radnor Township at Ardrossan?)

The problem with all this development throughout Chester County and elsewhere is there is no true planning, it is just shoving in as many plastic houses as possible. No gardens, no lawns, no sweeping vistas, just row after row of plastic boxes sometimes slab on grade. All lined up like plastic soldiers or Legos.

So think about all the crammed in plastic and stucco boxes on Chesterbrook. Then think about Bryn Coed. Is that the appropriate vision for Chester County, or more like a nightmare waiting to happen?

Local government will always play Pontius Pilate when it comes to development won’t they? Just like monkeys all lined up when you ask questions. Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil?

monkeys

Yeah. About that. If that is what you get, another reason to change the face of who governs you.

Preservation and conservation and so on and so forth can’t just be buzz words. They actually have to mean something.

Once the land is gone, it’s gone.

I will close with another old article I found on Chesterbrook:

Pre-development History Of The Farm At Chesterbrook

By Michelle R. Davis, Special to The Inquirer

Posted: September 26, 1991

Mary Cavanaugh arrived at the Berwyn train station on an icy winter’s day in 1909. Snow was piled high on the land around her as she stepped into a horse-drawn sleigh, bundled robes around herself to keep warm and began the three-mile trek across the frozen ground to Chesterbrook Farm. She had just arrived in the United States from Ireland and had never seen snow before.

Cavanaugh, a parlor maid in the main house on the farm, was the mother of John, Edward and Marie Boland, who gathered Monday evening with about 80 current residents of the Chesterbrook development for a presentation on the history of the 600-acre farm in Tredyffrin Township.

The three children’s father was Peter Boland, a second coachman at the main house who became the farm manager in 1932.

The Boland children reminisced about growing up on the farm in the early 1900s, swimming in its streams, sledding and hunting on its fields and making its open space their playground.

Now, the same land is populated by condominiums, townhouses, office buildings and a shopping center…….. Audrey Baur, chairman of the DuPortail History Group, and Clara Bondinell, a member of the history group, painted a picture for the audience of the dimensions and the location of the farm…..Some former residents of the farm are unhappy with the development of the farmland.

“It makes me sick. It’s terrible,” said John Boland, who now lives in Berwyn. “My wife and I were on the committee to save Chesterbrook. We had hopes the state would annex it to Valley Forge Park.”

election season cowards in west vincent

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Vandalism? Really?

Come on now all you fine folks of West Vincent Township Chester County, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t lather and fluff up the fighting feathers at me demanding I stop blogging about the sordid underbelly of West Vincent Township when you as adults vandalize private property and send out harassing emails from  johnsmith@yahoo.com like they can’t be traced and you can’t be found.

 

You can be found, West Vincent isn’t such a big place. What will you all do when you are unveiled? How will you explain it to the people you have been shoving phony baloney horse manure at for years?

I know the twisted psychology and reasoning and it doesn’t wash. Vandalism and harassing emails are against the law.

To the other residents of West Vincent: this is why you need to retire Supervisor Roadmaster Farmer KenOcrat Miller. Any individuals who would do THIS to keep some lower level life form of the lowest tier local yokel politician in office is yet another  valid reason why the tyranny and dictatorship need to come to an end. This isn’t medieval Europe, it is the 21st century. We live in Chester County, Pennsylvania and wow isn’t this why Quakers and others settled here in the first place? To escape mob mentality and behavior such as this?

It should not be acceptable  to anyone that your friends, fellow residents, and neighbors should  be subjected to cowardly acts of petty vandalism and other harassment.

Vote to end this behavior.

 Vote Miller OUT of office. 

Retire him, and you remove their power. It’s that simple.

You know it wouldn’t take much to visit every hardware or home improvement store in the area asking who had bought spray paint recently. Most of the stores keep track of who buys spray paint because of vandalism.