Soooo Tredyffrin ? Got students? Rumor has it that students just moved in?
Do you know about it? Is there a certificate of occupancy?
The neighbors I am sure are thrilled.
Also… no off street parking so how will that work?
So Advaite….a bit of a thing, right? It was the next best thing after sliced bread and dark chocolate….until it wasn’t….
So the beat goes on in Advaite and it is STILL in court, because remember when the Emperors New Clothes of it all happened, it went to court…..
Yeah so then there is this other thing going on, no more website.
It once looked like this:
Now it looks like this:
But…But….wait there is more. Now there is a new company at the samey same address in Malvern???
So what’s in a name when the players are somewhat the same?
Anyway it’s a Hardy Boys Mystery this one: The A Name Pharma Mysteries.
So what is going on here? Did Chester County ever get any money back? Inquiring minds want to know….
Taa Taa For Now dear readers….
More of the not so distant past on Advaite below and gosh you would think Chester County would have updated residents right? But have they? I can’t find anything recent-ish can you? Will this be like getting blood from a stone for Chester County?
https://www.phillyvoice.com/covid-19-antibody-tests-chester-county-sues-company-advaite
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1372299/000162828020015862/R12.htm
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1372299/000110465924063049/tm242989-1_pre14a.htm
https://biopharmguy.com/company.php/Advaite
I used to write about this cemetery from time to time. Mostly blips on the blog’s Facebook page. I wrote about Shiloh on this website in May of 2024:
Shiloh is a church that no longer exists….but there are still black civil war soldiers and others buried on what is now private property. I just do not understand why the property owner wouldn’t allow for the dead to rest properly. It was one of those places where I was told headstones disappeared over time. The church itself closed in the 1920s and then around 1960 the land was first (?) sold and the church razed and graves too. I remember when I first found out about it. I have always wondered if any headstones are under the earth over there? But again it is PRIVATE property so you can’t go wander.
Anyway there is a group – Friends of Shiloh AME and they need the help of the public to find descendants of the old souls buried there.
Can you help?
Shiloh predates Ebenezer – it’s so historically important.
Here is the find a grave link:
https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/2390668/shiloh-african-methodist-episcopal-cemetery
If one of your people over time was laid to rest here kindly email Shilohamefriends@gmail.com
What is really truly sad? There are lots of babies and little buried here. Not just adults. Not just at least 12 black civil war soldiers.
Here’s the property ownership. It says the owners live up in the York area? So who lives there? It’s two separate parcels, same owner. Guy with same name in Shrewsberry Township in York County PA is on the Agricultural Review Committee and someone with the same name own an unassuming cute little house in Cape May NJ too?
The property sits on some historic list for Westtown.
West Goshen is across the road from part of this property and on the West Goshen website I found this written by Stephen Lyons:
[ARCHIVED] Shiloh and the Beloved Community
A Little Black Church, Bayard Rustin and the Bird in Hand.
(Part I in a series of stories highlighting Black History in our Community)
-Written by Stephen Lyons West Goshen Historic CommissionWhen you stand at the intersection of an old stone wall built by Scots-Irish and a road called “Daisy Lane” in the place known as “Falcon Crest” you can almost hear a whisper among the pin oak through the valley…‘Shiloh’. It is Biblical word which almost sounds like a prayer. I remember as a young boy about 5 or 6 climbing that stone wall and a breathtaking vista of a golden meadow on what was Forsythe land in the 19th Century. Just over the hill in Westtown Township at the intersection of Shiloh and Little Shiloh Rd. a historic black community once thrived for 100 years and a little black church known as Shiloh African Methodist Episcopal Church and Cemetery. While this Historic Church and Cemetery lies within Westtown Township members of this Black Community lived and worked in West Goshen. Shiloh Church was built of simple Brown Fieldstone in 1807, for the White Methodist church and deeded to the AME Church in 1817. It is believed to be one of the first, possibly the first ‘connection’ Churches established after the famous Mother Bethel in Philadelphia was officially organized in 1816 by Rev Richard Allen and Absalom Jones. Famous Preachers such as Rev Jarena Lee and Rev Henry McNeil Turner preached here. There were Grand ‘Meetings in the Woods’ held within West Goshen, oftentimes including both Blacks and Whites. There are 140 Graves within this ½ acre parcel of Earth including 15 United States Colored Troops. The sad reality is this hallowed Ground has been desecrated for generations by neglectful property owners who attempted to erase this Hallowed Ground by demolishing the remains of the Church and removing the headstones left to disappear within the weeds of time hoping that Townships and communities would forget.
A Group of concerned citizens have not forgotten and will not forget…
On May 25, 2024 in front of the old Courthouse in West Chester, the Friends of Shiloh AME Church and Cemetery sought to honor and bring recognition to the 15 USCT Veterans buried at Shiloh. On that extraordinary day commemorating Decoration Day the precursor to Memorial Day highlighted the Veterans buried there and to draw attention to the enormous Historical importance of this forgotten space. It was likely the first time in 100 years that any kind of formal recognition had taken place for these Veterans. Isaac J. Winters was one of the 15 United States Colored Troops buried at Shiloh. He was the Church Sexton for some 60 years. He lived across the Street in West Goshen Township and operated a Station on the Underground Railroad out of the Church basement and in his home. Many of the families of Shiloh also worked at the Westtown School for generations. There are multiple threads to this History.
I don’t understand why the property owner won’t allow the graveyard to be cleaned up. According to Find A Grave there are 156 records. So that is at least 156 people. It just seems eternally cruel somehow. Maybe the property owner will change his mind. I sure hope so. It’s not his fault the land was cleared, etc as that was prior to the current ownership. But a great legacy for this small bit of land would be to restore it sort of. You will never get all the headstones back, but maybe some sort of memorial might rise in the future? Well we can all dream of that, right?
Here is the list of the inhabitants of what was once a cemetery:
I have no idea who will read this or who will care. But people should. And I wish the property owner would. Anyway, there is nothing to be done with that for now, so if you have an ancestor on the graves list, let Friends of Shiloh know please.
First, we had the issues with Republic and then they just dumped everyone in our area as trash customers.
Then we had AJ Blosenski, who was good until they weren’t, and then they really sucked.
Both of these companies had no art of customer service. You can’t get people on the phone. They don’t call you back you don’t matter. they are all about collecting the money, but there’s nothing in between.
So we chose Opdenaker out of Delaware County.
Ever since we signed up with them, it’s been easy. And it’s been well over a year at this point because we switched to them probably the middle of 2023. They show up when they’re supposed to. You can always get someone as in a real human being on the phone and they’re happy to talk to you and if for some reason you get voicemail, they call you back and it’s generally the same day.
This week was the first time they didn’t come. And it was because of the snowstorm on Monday. I wasn’t particularly perturbed. I didn’t expect them to show up. They put out a notification and said they would be in touch with people about when they’re trash day would be rescheduled to.
But the difference between them and everybody else that’s out there is we got a personal phone call to tell us that our trash was being picked up tomorrow.
A customer service outgoing phone call from a really nice lady who apologized profusely for not being able to get there because of the snow and they want customers to know when they were getting their pick ups and not just put out something on social media or email.
I’m nobody special. I’m just your average customer.
Real customer service is so rare these days that I wanted to take just a minute to point this out.
Thank you, Opdenaker.
So Westtown East Goshen police a.k.a. WEGO issued the following statement today via CrimeWatch- I will note they didn’t post it on their socials that I can find.
The Westtown E. Goshen Regional Police Department was asked to review information provided by the West Chester Area School District (WCASD) involving Rustin High School after the resignation of the principal. No criminal activity was found, and the matter is closed. For any further information, please contact the WCASD. Created Jan 6, 2025 @ 1:50 PM | Updated Jan 6, 2025 @ 3:04 PM
Sourced via CRIMEWATCH®: https://chester.crimewatchpa.com/wegopd/53548/post/rustin-high-school-0
So this started mid-December remember?
Michael Marano resigned as the Rustin principal. He’s only the second one I think since they opened the school. And this high school had issues before with the problematic swim coach before Marano came to work there.
So you have the school district are sending out the original notice and then nothing. His wife is also an employee of the school district in and administrative capacity, correct ?
The rumors have been flying since this started. Also flying around? A little teeny weenie snippet of a video that you can’t really prove and yet everybody’s sharing it. I can’t tell you how many people asked me to share it and I said no because I don’t know the man nor can I prove it’s authenticity.
There were even comments received, supposedly from students, but again I don’t know and I’m not going to just publish random comments speculating because nobody knows what went on.
The whole thing is very strange and how does a guy go from being like a superhero principal on the West Chester Area School District Instagram feed a year ago to resigning before Christmas ?
So was he accused of something he didn’t do, or was he accused of something they couldn’t prove? I mean, seriously can we ask at this point given this latest blip out of the police what the sam hell is going on?
If the police have closed their investigation out here then the school district needs to say what’s going on? Don’t they owe that to the parents at a minimum and the students.?
This story right before Christmas made the local TV news and the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Daily Local . And I know that the police department was not super forthcoming because there was chatter with the media, which in and of itself is not unusual because they won’t comment when they’re investigating. But now this is the only comment so is anybody going to tell people what went on?
Anyway, that’s the latest on this great mystery of life with this particular high school.
This was directed my way yesterday with a message:
Dumped at some point today, on School Lane across from Sugartown Elementary playground fields.
Obviously some really crappy person or persons dumped their construction, and/or flipping house and/or clean out project, here on School Lane.
We’ve left a message with the Township and the Police Department.
I don’t know what’s wrong with people, but this isn’t something that would have fallen off a truck. It had weight to it, and it was placed according to the witness.
This is where people‘s kids go to school and even if it wasn’t, it’s not where it belongs, which is in a dumpster somewhere. That means somebody doing something was feeling cheap and just dumped the trash.
If you know who did this, or if for some reason, you know of a security camera that may have picked this up, or you saw it happening, please call Willistown police at (610) 647-5300.
This is completely shameful and unacceptable.
Most probably don’t remember the movie Finian’s Rainbow. But it is a 1968 American musical fantasy film directed by Francis Ford Coppola and adapted by E. Y. Harburg and Fred Saidy from the 1947 stage musical of the same name. It was about an Irishman and his daughter, who steal a leprechaun’s magic pot of gold and emigrate to the American South, where they become involved in a dispute between rural landowners and a greedy, racist U.S. senator. There was this song in it called “How are things in Glocca Morra” and it always made me think of Narberth Borough in Montgomery County, neighbor to Lower Merion Township.
Narberth used to be this ideal place and so sweet…then the wheels started to come off and things happened like what happened in 2011 and then what happened in 2014 made it out into public view:
by Carolyn Davis, Inquirer Staff Writer
Published Aug. 2, 2014, 3:01 a.m. ET
For a while after Sean Metrick came in during 2015 as Narberth Borough Manager (he was assistant manager for a year or so before this in Narberth) things were better. There was also a some decent borough council people with local institutional knowledge and not necessarily politically entrenched. For a few years they worked hard to reform Narberth and then Metrick went to West Chester Borough when Ernie McNeely left West Chester for Lower Merion Township. Since Sean Metrick left in 2020 it has been an odd parade of multiple managers.
First up after Sean Metrick left was assistant manager Matt West.
So for some reason they didn’t give this Matt a real shot at being manager and when he left in 2021, they hired a woman named Samantha Bryant. Matt West went to become manager in New Britain Township in Bucks County, while Samantha Bryant came from New Britain Borough in Buck County.
But Samantha was fairly short-lived and two years later poof she was gone…to Maine…quite a difference in salary, except cost of living is probably much less and well, quality of life might be better for her.
So after that great mystery, in came the next manager. A man named Ken Cammilleri. He was barely in Narberth before he was gone. As per his LinkedIn he was literally there 5 months. He came here from the Minnesota
Ok keeping up? Next Narberth Borough bought back former Assistant Manager and acting Interim Manager Matt West for 2024. I still don’t get why they never offered this guy the manager job full time, yet he’s been a pinch hitter what twice? Always the Narberth bridesmaid?
So Matt is now at Plymouth Township and Narberth has yet another new manger as of like today or last week or something.
Who’s on first is now Maggie Dobbs who was at New Hanover Township for a year and prior to that? Westtown Township.
So Narberth, I have to ask, what’s in the water over there in your Glocca Morra?
Remember 2023 with the EV Charging Stations thing?
https://montco.today/2023/04/ev-charging-stations-narberth
And then there is the whole trying to sell Sabine Park for development thing, right?
And now Narberth is supposedly all pissy because a kid, as in a quite literally high school journalist wrote about this in December because well Narberth hasn’t stopped the madness here so what’s the problem? And WHY is it that the Borough of Narberth STILL hasn’t killed selling municipal park land for development????
Sabine Coalition is the group working hard to save the park and has a website:
https://www.sabinecoalition.com
And they have a tremendous lawyer so I am still waiting with popcorn because I know this attorney and they really don’t want to take him on…
https://www.sabinecoalition.com/meet-our-zoning-litigator
https://www.sabinecoalition.com/white-paper
Narberth has issues it seems.
But the manager thing? It’s a municipal merry go round. Is anyone taking bets on how long this one will last?
So this contretemps began this afternoon and after much mansplaining by one unknown quantity, I decided as a woman I had to take a closer look.
It started with a conversation about how Lower Merion Township has traded on the phrase “First Class Township”. The phrase is amusing because Upper Chichester, Uppet Darby, Darby Township and Caln Township are also “First Class Townships.”
The “first class” designation has to do with size, not how good a municipality is. But it does lend itself to “first class” spin. The actual phrase is “Township of the First Class” . You can learn more by reading the Pennsylvania Code for Townships of the First Class.
Here allow me:
https://www.legis.state.pa.us/WU01/LI/LI/US/HTM/1931/0/0331..HTM
So this silliness (as silly as those who don’t know what the actual origins of the Main Line are, etc.) ensued because there is a new fake newsletter called Spotlight on Lower Merion:
It reads like an AI thriller. Weird snippets of poached-feeling content and not much substance. And this is not an actual Lower Merion Township publication as in the local municipality putting this out. And it is suspiciously similar to a thing in Upper Merion:
And the common denominator is a Keller Williams Realtor:
She’s a hustler –
https://carolynkaufmann.realscout.me/
https://freshplaces.com/associates
Hey I admire the hustle but ummm she’s not being particularly discerning. These newsletters are dumb and read like nonsense.
I know realtors with newsletters. Some are actually pretty good. But they don’t have that feel of misrepresentation, you feel me?
But hey if you want your own Spotlight newsletter, you can buy one too:
Anyway, just wanted to put a pin in this.
Somehow I don’t think my blog was the “spotlight” they were searching for? But hey, being on my blog costs them nothing!
Cheers!
Well here we are, ode to a potential snow storm.
We have not had real snow in quite a while.
So allow me to share some memes. Do not fear, you won’t be playing the Beatles’ White album backwards or whatever.
The Surrey Services Holiday House Tour completed their second successful year this past December. I am a proud supporter of this tour and it was magical, and my friends enjoyed themselves tremendously.
I have written about Surrey before and it is a particular favorite non-profit of mine. They quite literally do good things.
This year I was one of the photographers of the event as well as a tour attendee and sponsor. I have to be honest, it was one of the most fun events I have photographed in years. Why? Number one it was pretty, and secondly, there was no artifice to the attendees. People were there because they wanted to be, and the joy on attendees’ faces as they went from location to location and finally to lunch and the shops showed you how great of a day it was.
And I will give a little feedback of my own, having been on 2 years of tours.
First of all, Surrey Services knocks themselves out for this. The staff and volunteers could not ben nicer. And this event has a lot of moving parts. They work hard.
The shops were even better than last year, and last year they were fabulous. The shops I think have found a perfect home at St. David’s Church, and I hope they secure this location for next year. The one thing I will repeat which I stated last year, is the people who have subscribed for the entire day (tour/lunch/shops) should have dibs on parking. They should have people at the shops location at the parking lot entrances to direct patrons, with again, dibs on parking being given to entire event subscribers. And they need to have volunteers literally check the lots for people inventing a parking space where none exists, people not handicapped taking handicap spaces just to go shop, and those who feel the need to take up multiple parking spaces with one vehicle. This is NOT Surrey’s fault, it’s the simple fact that humans can be selfish.
The homes this year were wonderful. My feedback is the homes which were enjoyed the most were the homes where they followed the assignment: that this was a holiday house tour. I think some might feel that decorating for the holidays might be a wee bit passé, or clash with the interior design, or they are a bit fearful of holiday decorating. Look, that is what the patrons are signing up for. No matter what holidays you celebrate, as long as it isn’t a lawn full of blow up figures that are the stuff nightmares can be made of, decorate for the holidays. We aren’t only here to see the interior design, we are there for the Christmas and holiday of it all.
I also need to comment on the fact that the tour goers need to remove their floor protective booties between houses. If you don’t, then it defeats the purpose of wearing the booties to keep from dragging dirt into these beautiful homes. The other reason is just practical: if you don’t take the time to remove them, you are creating a slip and fall risk for yourself and we saw that when we go to St. David’s for the shops and lunch. A woman who still had her booties on in the parking lot at St. David’s slipped and fell.
My two favorite houses were in Bryn Mawr and one of the Wayne houses. They were not only spectacular houses, but they let their holiday spirits fly and the love showed. Those were the homes people connected with and you could see people trying to figure out if they could create a similar look. They were inspirational.
Technically Christmas can stay up until epiphany, so I hope you all are still enjoying at least some of your holiday decorations still.
I am sharing some of my favorite moments of the Surrey tour this year.
I look forward to next year’s tour and a big thank you to Surrey and the homeowners who shared their holidays with us!
