So I was somewhat gob smacked this morning when I logged into the Delco Times and saw an article about Fearless Restaurants and a lawsuit they recently lost.
Fearless Restaurant Group as in White Dog Cafe etc and my head is spinning. Is this guy still employed by them? How long has he been employed by them? How many of their restaurants has he worked in? Why would they have somebody on staff like this for so long? I have to ask what is the point of having a “good employee” from their owner perspective if he ends up costing them money in litigation later on? Is he still employed by them?
Philadelphia-area restaurant group won a $200,000 verdict after suing the company for protecting and enabling a sexual predator.
The lawsuit, filed in Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas by attorney Ryan Grace, alleged two claims of negligence against Fearless Restaurant LLC, and two claims of assault and battery against Daniel Razionale, 37, Philadelphia.
Two former employees of a Philadelphia-area restaurant group have filed a lawsuit alleging the company protected and enabled a known sexual predator, allowing him to continue victimizing female employees while transferring him from property to property.
The lawsuit, filed in Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas by attorney Ryan Grace on behalf of two women, alleges two claims of negligence against Fearless Restaurant LLC, and two claims of assault and battery against Daniel Razionale.
“In the complaint, we allege that a restaurant group that owns White Dog Cafe and other large establishments hired a man who was already on sex offender probation, let him molest multiple female co-workers, then sided with the abuser and tried to ostracize the victims from the Philadelphia area restaurant industry,” Grace said in a statement. “Fearless Restaurants seems to think that waitresses have to put up with being victimized and that getting groped is just part of their job. We are honored to help these women fight back against that toxic attitude in the service industry.”
After I posted the Delco Times article, people on social media said this wasn’t the first time litigation had been levied against this restaurant group for sexual harassment related things which I had never known. I thought they were making it up until I found the Philadelphia Magazine article from 2016:
Dad Sues White Dog Cafe for Sexual Harassment on Behalf of Late Daughter
The restaurant’s owner Marty Grims calls the suit, which he has yet to be served with, “totally ridiculous” and says there is “absolutely no basis” for it.
📌…”The lawsuit was filed last week by an Upper Darby father on behalf of his late daughter who, according to health department records, died by suicide on August 24, 2011, at the age of 21. The daughter, a West Philadelphia resident, worked at the Wayne location of the White Dog Cafe starting in 2010, and according to the lawsuit, she was subjected to unwanted advances and other forms of sexual harassment while employed there. (The names have been withheld out of respect to the family.)”📌
OK, I wasn’t aware of a toxic work culture, but if somebody who just patronizes a restaurant or two in a restaurant group occasionally, how would you know? Of course now this makes me wonder why sometimes when you go into one of these restaurants, they seem shortstaffed, right?
Then people started saying “oh well this isn’t the first time this guy has been charged with stuff like this.”
I am literally just shaking my head. I am having a disconnect in my head of how a successful restaurant group with the founder’s daughter also at the helm had an employee like this? And all this stuff which amounts to a toxic work environment and culture?
I just don’t understand how as a woman in a managerial/ownership/leadership position you would want an employee like that? And I am bearing in mind that they want to give this person a second chance at a rehabilitated life but how long do problems continue before you deal with them?
And this man who’s been charged with this stuff, he’s sick, isn’t he? So why move him around like the articles indicate from restaurant to restaurant like a freaking pedophile priest in the archdiocese of Philadelphia and not get him help?
Here we are at 2026 and women are still being sexually harassed like it’s nothing in the workplace and when will it stop but then again women are still being raped at frat parties in college so when will that stop? Are young women new to corporate America in some cases being warned like I was once upon a time decades ago to keep my back to the wall when a certain male employee was in the copier room?
Sign me really disappointed in this restaurant group. Suffice to say it’s been a bad news cycle week for restaurants and restaurant groups in this area lately hasn’t it?
I’m about to share the verbiage on a petition that the Wayne Business Association is circulating on behalf of Wayne business owners, property owners, and Radnor Township residents. If you are in any of these categories, please contact them to sign.
Radnor Township has done some screwy things in recent past (like the Radnor commissioners and specifically commissioner Jack Larkin threatening a church in Wayne with them eminent domain over parking, and then attempting eminent domain poorly with Valley Forge Military Academy until one of their lawyers came calling at a meeting) but this takes the cake.
Essentially, they want to Lower Merion downtown Wayne (think Schauffele Plaza attempts every few years)
What does this mean? Essentially, they want to take a significant portion of valuable parking and turn it in to a fakakta pocket park. Do they forget about across Route 30 from this and down further east is a pocket park that no one uses now? And it was a little plot of land that former disgusting commissioner Bill Spingler had Radnor purchase. It was turned into a pocket park that no one uses. Also not the only one they don’t use. I will further note that Radnor now does not sufficiently care for all of the parks they own and for example when there’s a problem with a tree most places, do they try to treat it or keep on top of regular pruning? Or is it they just take the trees down?
I don’t know about you, but I think twice about going to downtown Wayne now just like downtown Ardmore and why?
Simple: parking.
This is not what the businesses nor residents need and this is somebody’s vanity project. I don’t know if it’s that stupid commissioner Cathy Agnew or the collective of them.
It’s not just the space they would lose for parking, it’s also common sense like the circulation in and out of these parking lots they want to mess with. I have to wonder if Septa has any thoughts about this not that they’re particularly intelligent these days.
I will note that when I go through Wayne on the way to Penn Medecine, that all the little North Wayne neighborhoods are packed with cars for the train and shopping already.
This is another bad plan for Radnor and it really needs to be stopped. Residents and businesses need to lawyer up. Someone like Phil Rosenzweig or from his firm. I don’t work for the man, but I do know the man and he works for people, not local governments.
📌 Support of WBA Statement| Signature Appreciated THIS LETTER IS TO BE SENT TO THE RADNOR TOWNSHIP COMMISSIONERS. IT IS FROM THE WAYNE BUSINESS ASSOCIATION(WBA)
The WBA requests support from the local business community by providing your name and email on this form.
Dear Commissioners, The WBA is writing to convey (and reiterate) our thoughts regarding the proposed parklet/public space on North Wayne Ave. After a meeting with commissioners to review the proposed plans / Q&A session; attending the public Board of Commissioners meeting; and subsequent review of the draft Wayne BOD Master Plan, we wanted to memorialize our understanding of the direction going forward.
The business owners on North Wayne Ave and the members that have signed the attached support letter are in consensus that the public space should be designed with the flexibility to allow egress to the N Wayne Ave parking lot, and to accommodate parking when the Wayne Commons does not have an event programmed which would require closing off the area to traffic and parking.
As was expressed during public comment, daytime use of this area for ingress/egress and parking is essential to the businesses on North Wayne Ave. and our understanding (after the BOC meeting) is that this will be accommodated in the design. These shop owners have significant investments on the street and are already operating under difficult conditions, maintaining convenience for their customers is extremely important. We do support the beautification and redesign of the space for public events but feel that it will cause more problems than its worth to have this blocked to traffic and parking when not in use with scheduled “formal programming”. We also support the notion that designing and constructing this area to the full scope will be better received by the businesses and community if it is planned with this flexibility in mind.
We are interested in having a role in the planning and discussion of this project and have a voice in its program and execution. The WBA values it relationship with the Township and we look forward to working together to continue to better our beautiful town.
This is a crappy vanity project. It will come at the expense of small businesses, property owners, and residents.
Radnor Township is a Home Rule Charter municipality. When is the last time residents gathered together to find out if they were actually following what they were supposed to be doing? I asked that question because their neighbors in Tredyffrin are also Home Rule Charter and they don’t seem to be doing what they’re supposed to be doing, do they?
Wayne is actually a walkable community and I think they’re about to ruin it. Please support the businesses in Wayne and the residents in North Wayne. This is plain and simple an Emperor’s New Clothes plan.
You know, as a kid fall was always almost anticipatory. The weather started to change you got new clothes for school and so on.
As we grew older, grew up, got out of school started our lives fall was still a season of change. The way you can feel the weather changing at night, literally the air changes.
But now in later middle age, fall is changing again. I have friends just a few years older than I who are retiring.
Today I said goodbye to one such friend. We first met as young girls quite literally. She went to school with my cousins and was first their friend, then a close friend of another childhood friend of mine. We became actual real time friends after we realized she lived a few miles from me in Chester County.
Once upon a time, she and I even worked at the same company. For me, I took a temp position because I wasn’t sure if I would like it, and she began in a full career trajectory that took her from Philadelphia to other places in the country and back again.
This is now my first friend who is officially becoming an American ex-Pat and moving to Europe. I’m very excited for them. I think my friend and her husband will have grand adventures.
I also think they’re really brave. After all, it’s not easy to literally sell your home and pack up your life and move to another country.
But given what this country has devolved into, I can’t say that I blame them. They will always be Americans, but they have a rare opportunity at a really fun next chapter.
Today we met for lunch to say goodbye. We met locally at Anthony’s in Malvern and we both can recommend their new fall menu. (Specifically the artichoke appetizer and the fall grilled cheese. Yes, we both had the same thing.)
We had a good yak, and a couple of almost tears, and a bunch of hugs. I will miss her, but look forward to visiting once they are settled, and look forward to seeing them when they occasionally come stateside.
Yet still, I felt like in a weird little way I was losing a piece of my childhood. Which is probably not particularly rational.
It’s more emotional.
After all, we weren’t the closest to friends growing up. We just kind of knew and were aware of each other through other people, but there’s still that feeling.
And then there is the general sadness with understanding that people I know in this country are actually for real leaving this country because America is so fractured. I can’t blame them. And most importantly, I can’t blame them for wanting an adventure for the next chapter. To me, it sure beats moving to Florida or some other retirement centric state.
I wish my friend the very best. But it’s not goodbye forever, just relocating.
It was a historic farm. Farmed until the bitter end. Part of a Penn Land Grant. But when Jack Bogle passed away, Vanguard which had bought the land at some point during his tenure, sold it….for development. Next is the old historic resource survey form, which seems to have disappeared from Pennsylvania websites?
So listen, if this had to be mega warehouses or whatever why is the whole site a ghost town? You can apparently just drive in and someone I know did that and sent the following video with this note:
Not one tire rub mark where truck drivers are always turning wheels hard leaving black marks. Not one oil drip. Pure virgin concrete.
Here, you look for yourselves:
So this begs the question which is a horrible thought and that is what else could this site be used for and does Uwchlan Township know or keep tabs on this? The sad fact of life is don’t you wish you could look at swaths of land like this and not worry it might someday become a freaking data center?
This morning is a memorial service for a woman I knew. It actually started a bit ago.
Her name was Sara. Her obituary actually didn’t really sound like she wrote it, or I should be more specific, it didn’t sound like the obituary she originally wanted. It also didn’t contain any information about making contributions in her memory to things that were important to her.
For decades, we have all known this adorable little house as Sara Pilling’s house. Sara died in early July. The always too absent while being the more local son is cleaning it out.
Yes there’s been stuff all over the lawn this week. And yes, we know this is what happens. It’s not like it’s cruel. It just feels cruel and there’s a great finality to those of us who knew her. I kind of wish that dumpster could have waited until after the memorial service to appear.
I said goodbye to Sara when she called me in January to tell me she had cancer and it was terminal. Back then she thought she only had a few short weeks and she actually got a few extra months.
We had been mostly disconnected almost the past year prior to this, because to be honest, I couldn’t deal with the other things that were ailing her. I chose that route because I didn’t wish to fight with someone that I actually loved who was turning 89 years old. I wanted to remember her as I knew her for more than a couple of decades.
She was a bright, yet complicated and fiercely independent woman who did not have a very nice life at times. She did her best in a time that was often not really nice to women, and honestly, sometimes I felt she was born in the wrong time. That leaves its mark. She had the most basic human desires to be liked, loved and more importantly? Belong.
I also chose to remove myself because when she was in that last stage of life, literally the death watch beetles appeared out of nowhere. People who were in a lot of cases incredibly hypocritical because they really weren’t friends with her. Some I know neither cared for her nor respected her. I also chose not to bear witness to that, and I don’t know why people do that.
I also felt something was wrong healthwise prior to her 88th birthday and she didn’t want to go to the doctor. Let’s face it, if you knew her you knew she didn’t like hospitals and didn’t trust a lot of medical professionals.
We also had differences of opinion about her constantly going to “No King’s” protests when she was becoming far less mobile and no one knew what was wrong with her but healthwise you knew something was off because she was getting quite frail. One of the protests I was most concerned about ironically is where they arrested the man with all the weapons in West Chester Borough, and where she had been that day was probably only a block or so away.
As a result of those different opinions between us, she really sniped at me after that. And that did hurt at first because we had been truly close. If you didn’t agree with something Sara decreed, she was unpleasant. I always thought that was a defense mechanism on her part.
Sara died in early July, after the Fourth of July.
That has made a lot of us who cared for and knew Sara at one point in time or another very sad. She’s literally one of those women that you just thought would go on. I’m really grateful that a mutual friend helped find her beloved dog a new home.
After she died, people kept waiting for an obituary to appear. One didn’t appear until a couple of weeks ago, and it seemed more perfunctory than personal and not really capturing the essence and life of the deceased. Sara gave and gave her time to many people and many things over the course of her life.
Then came the planning of the memorial service. If you were really close to Sara, you knew for probably the last seven years what she wanted to happen when she passed on. You knew the music, you knew whom she wanted to speak. You knew what about her life she wished to be remembered. And above all else, you knew that it didn’t have to be the last supper after the service, but she wanted it to be gracious. Well, along comes the literally brown bag, potluck email. Cheap and mean and petty IMHO.
As a result, there are those of us whom you will not see at her memorial service now in progress. It’s not a sign of disrespect to her. It is actually a sign of respect because we knew her wishes. We know where the grave will be, and we will take her sunflowers at another time. Hopefully someone at least has remembered that Sara wanted a church full of sunflowers.
I’m also not going because of the people in Radnor Township (politicians and others) who literally were not nice to her most of the time who are all now saying “Oh such a great loss blah blah blah” when you know in their heads they’re thinking things like “Oh good she won’t be at meetings anymore or emailing us.”
Sara should be remembered for being a driving force behind the Skunk Hollow Garden in Radnor.
She should be remembered for her big part in working with volunteers to help save the Willows Cottage, which now is a train wreck because Radnor and the Radnor Conservancy allowed it to rot after the crazy amount of money that was raised to restore it.
She should also be remembered for the one who tried to get Radnor to pay attention to what was being sprayed in the fields close to Ardrossan near the cows. This was after the land was subdivided for lots of mansions in part.
She should be remembered for her work in Haiti, which was considerable.
She should be remembered for being a master gardener who shared her knowledge. She didn’t lord over people with it. I will remember with fondness our many trips to Lancaster County for plants over the years.
She should be remembered for more ordinary things like her wonderful quilting and the knitting and other things that she did. She taught me how to make jams and preserves. She taught me many things about gardening.
She was also incredibly knowledgeable about the history of the region because she descends from a family that just went back far enough.
She should also be remembered for having been the last surviving grandchild of Charles Barton Keen the esteemed architect of places like the….Willows. (Willows Park Preserve as a related aside should do better remembering her that just a tree like I heard.)
Again, Sara was a remarkable, albeit complicated human being. I will honestly miss the many conversations we had over the many years I was connected to her. I will miss the random acts of email or text messages that were often quite amusing.
Until she didn’t like the fact that I didn’t agree with her on everything, she often referred to me as another daughter and being an other mother to me, which were incredibly meaningful compliments as I always knew how much she missed her real daughter, who had died shortly before we really became real friends. She also never got over that loss. I have two baby trees off of the redbud tree in her garden that she planted in honor of her daughter.
Soon her house will be on the market. I bet you it becomes a teardown because so many people can’t be bothered with old houses. It’s really sad and that will truly leave its mark. Sara made that house her home and she had a lovely garden.
I don’t feel badly about not being at the memorial service. I do not do death circuses even if they are small.
Please refrain from telling me you’re sorry for my loss. I have already grieved this loss. This is like the period on the end of the sentence.
Sara had a quote that she had on every email at the bottom where her signature was. I always liked it and I will close with that:
“Do what is fair and just to your neighbor, be compassionate. Don’t take yourself too seriously. Walk humbly with your God .”[Micah 6:8]
How we will remember the house.
POST SCRIPT:
They didn’t even get sunflowers and the eulogy? Well when someone gives a eulogy that no one will remember particularly?
Yesterday we traveled up into Berks County through places like Coopersburg into Emmaus, which was originally founded as a Moravian community in the mid-18th century. (All of these places are on the edges of Allentown.)
It was a pretty ride through lots of farmland. But even out there, we saw some predatory development starting to creep in, which is a shame. (But I digress.)
We went to Emmaus to say goodbye to a family friend of mine. He was older than I, but our families were friends for decades.
His name was Andy. He was one of four kids. He was a bigger kid who was always nice to me a slightly younger kid. (He was about 3 years older.)
Our families shared many memories and they are the reason we started going to Avalon in the summers, we originally were down in the gardens section of Ocean City. This family was also the reason we got our first English Springer Spaniel.
As a result, my memories of Andy really were childhood years. When I was a much younger adult and working in Philadelphia, I would see him occasionally and quite literally on the street in Philadelphia. He was always headed in one direction, and I in another. Always a big hello and a bear hug.
Andy loved music. He played multiple instruments. He composed and arranged and was in bands and sometimes the mad genius behind others. Baby Flamehead, Big Mess Orchestra, Wild Bohemians, and Emmaus Public Singing Society, and I am sure more.
It was a very big memorial gathering and no one wore funeral clothes. There was music and memories. Lots of laughter and Andy stories. Anyone could share, and it was great to hear everyone speak. As they spoke, these people from different stages of his life, reminded me of a lot of childhood memories with his family in general. That was very nice.
As they spoke, I also had my own memories floating around in my head. Nothing profound, just childhood memories that were often quite funny. His family was bigger and more boisterous than mine. It was ok to be occasionally messy. The memories were of everyone. Snapshots in time. Family barbecues and beach days. His mom’s friend Weezie giving all the kids a dollar to go to the penny candy store on 7th Street in Avalon and telling us to “blow our minds.” Or how excited he was when my father gave him this giant blown up black and white photo of Louis Armstrong on poster board from an ad campaign he had worked on.
It was great to see his siblings and everyone’s children.
But I think for me the kaleidoscope of memories belonging to so many people showed me another part of childhood memories that in a sense will now fade away a little more. It’s the whole thing about when the storytellers die.
These people we lose at various stages of our life are equally mourned and celebrated. But with the people from our early days, it’s another bit of childhood slipping away. It’s sad but beautiful at the same time.
I am glad I was part of yesterday by bearing witness, essentially. And the music was fabulous. After all, everything is better with music and art.
Fly with the angels, Andy Bresnan. You were a complicated, talented, and special human. Heaven has a lot more music about now. Thanks for the memories, you will be missed and are gone too soon.
I rode in my friend Barry’s flag balloon on 9/11 in 2012 over Chester County.
Twenty- five years. Let that sink in for a moment. Twenty-five years and a not so long from now, the first plane was hitting the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan.
Where were you? I was pulling in to my office garage at 2 Tower Bridge in Conshohocken, PA. I heard the news come across the car radio. I sat there in silence with tears running down my face saying to myself (out loud, actually) “They came back.”
I know I’ve told this story since 9/11 but I really did come out of the World Trade Center shopping concourse above the garage when they blew up the garage in February 1993.
It’s 8:45 AM and 8:46 AM the moment of silence at the World Trade Center Memorial in NYC begins.
25 years ago today, everything changed. 2983 people lost their lives.
On February 23, 1993 there was the first attack on the World Trade Center. The attack is one that people don’t talk about.
The years move away from the dates, but we never forget. They are literally dates which live in our minds in infamy. To paraphrase FDR, who was in his time, referring to Pearl Harbor.
One of the photos in this post opens with is one I took one summer and it is the controversial 9/11 Memorial in New Jersey. Known as the “teardrop memorial”, it is located in Bayonne. I think it has a kind of strength and beauty to it.
In 2006 I wrote a piece for the local paper:
Sept. 11, 2006, is the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and United Airlines Flight 93’s crash in the field in Shanksville, Somerset County. This date has special significance to every American, and intense personal significance to far too many individuals who lost friends and loved ones.
But September 11, wasn’t the first time terrorists visited the World Trade Center. In truth, Feb. 26, 1993. was the date of the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York City. I worked in New York at that time at an office located downtown in the financial district.
On that day, I had accompanied an office friend to the World Trade Center to grab an early lunch and to check out some stores in the shopping concourse. We were back outside the Trade Center buildings, getting ready to cross the street, when suddenly the ground shook and moved. I remember that we were looking directly across the street at Century 21, a department store in Lower Manhattan. Then something happened that rarely happens in New York: Everything went eerily still and quiet. We looked up at what we first thought were snowflakes beginning to float and fall from the sky. After all, it was February. Then car alarms began to go off one by one like the cacophony of many distorted bells. The snowflakes, we soon discovered, were in reality ashes.
People began yelling and screaming. It became very confusing and chaotic all at once, like someone flipped a switch to “on.” At first, we both felt rooted to the sidewalk, unable to move. I remember feeling a sense of panic at the unknown. We had absolutely no idea what had happened, and hurried back to our office. Reaching it, we were greeted by worried coworkers who told us that someone had set off a bomb underground in the World Trade Center garage.
I will never forget the crazy kaleidoscope of images, throughout that afternoon, of all the people who were related to or knew people in my office who sought refuge in our office after walking down the innumerable flights of steps in the dark to exit the World Trade Center Towers. They arrived with soot all over their faces, hands and clothes. They all wore zombie looks of shock, disbelief and panic.
Of course, the oddest thing about the first terrorist attack on New York City is that I don’t remember much lasting fuss about it. I do remember that President Bill Clinton was newly sworn into office, but I don’t remember him coming to visit New York after the attack. Everything was back to normal in Lower Manhattan in about a month, maybe two. After a while, unless you had worked in New York, or lived in New York, you simply forgot about this “incident.”
So, on the morning of 9/11, as I pulled into my office building’s garage and listened to the breaking news on the radio announcing that a plane had struck the World Trade Center, tears began to run down my face unbidden. I knew in my heart of hearts what happened. I said to myself, “Oh no. They came back.”
I remember picking up my cell phone to call my father, whom I knew to be, at that time, on an Amtrak train bound for New York City. I remember him telling me it was fine and he’d be fine. I wanted him to get off in New Jersey and take a train back to Philadelphia. But the train was already pretty much past all the stations and getting ready to go into the tunnel to New York. That very thought terrified me. To this day, I still do not understand why Amtrak did not stop those last trains from going into New York City as the news of the World Trade Center attacks first broke.
I next remember getting in the elevator and getting off on my office floor to find people clustered around television sets and radios. And the news kept getting worse: first one plane, then a second, then a third, and then a fourth.
The images and news just didn’t stop. Camera cuts from lower Manhattan to Washington to Somerset County. They are images that have to be ingrained in everyone’s mind forever like indelible ink.
It took a couple of days for my father and brother-in-law (who had already been in New York on business) to get out of the city, but eventually they got home safely with many stories to tell of what New York was like in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. A lot of people weren’t so lucky. They never saw their loved ones again after that fateful morning. Many people in the Philadelphia and greater Main Line area lost friends, coworkers and loved ones.
On September 11, I knew people who were lost, but fortunately I didn’t lose any loved ones. I remember for a brief time it seemed we were all a little nicer to each other, and politicians actually seemed to come together as one and grieve as a nation grieved.
But here we are five short years later. I have only seen the site one time where the World Trade Center once stood proudly. That was about a year after the attacks. I remember a distinct pit in my stomach and looked away from the car window. This past June I was in Washington, and had the same intense, awful feeling in my stomach as we drove on the highway past the Pentagon.
Life must go on and time can’t stand still, but all in all I can’t help but wonder: What have we learned since about our country and about ourselves? Five years after 9/11 what have we learned and what have we forgotten? What do we need to remember?
So back to the morning of 9/11 when the first plane hit. I realized then my now late father was on a freaking train to New York City. I pulled out my cell phone, which looked like a weird small brick from Nokia I believe.
I called him. Miraculously he answered. I asked him where he was, and he said Metro Park I said good is it stopped at Metro Park? He said yes why and I said a plane just went in to the World Trade Center. I think it’s a terrorist attack get off and take a train back before you can’t get out of Manhattan.
I will never forget what he said, and it was that the Amtrak conductor assured all of the passengers there was nothing to worry about, and he was just going to continue into New York City.
We didn’t actually talk to him again for a couple of days because you couldn’t get phone calls in or out of New York right after 9/11 for a good couple of days.
I remembered this particular part of 9/11 over the summer when I was at my nephew’s wedding in the Hamptons. It was there I literally saw a guest I hadn’t seen since my late brother-in-law’s funeral many years ago. It was a friend and someone my late brother-in-law used to work with whose family literally lent my late brother-in-law and late father an apartment for a few days because they couldn’t get off the island of Manhattan after 9/11.
People kind of forget that part of the chaos post-terrorist attack. The being cut off from people we knew in all sorts of places, who had ties to places like NYC or Washington, DC.
Other things I remember? Having a couple of childhood friends who were siblings show up on missing and possibly dead lists. One worked for Marsh & McMcLennan and the other for the Port Authority of NY and NJ. One sibling in particular was on that list for days after 9/11. Turns out one or both were out of town.
But I will never forget that feeling of combing through those lists looking to see whom we knew was on those lists. On one list were two guys that went to college with me. One I knew peripherally the other not at all, but I knew who he was. Both were close friends of another friend of mine’s husband.
I remember having a conversation with someone after 9/11 who had a job in the Pentagon. They were the opposite side from where the plane hit.
So many people had stories. I also remember speaking with someone well after 9/11 who if I remember correctly was from like Michigan or something and they knew people who physically went to NYC after 9/11 because they were trying to find family members that worked in the financial district and in the World Trade Center buildings.
A related aside is many years ago before 1993 or 9/11, I had a couple of interviews with brokerage firms or financial places in the World Trade Center buildings. I remember I did not like going up in those elevators. And I also remember there were like big escalators in that building as well. People thought it was such a cachet to work in those buildings and I remember thinking back then they’re just too tall, even in a city of skyscrapers.
I think a lot of us also knew first responders who were from other areas who went to New York City to help. I also know a couple of people whose family members were first responders in the New York Metropolitan area.
In that vein over the years, you’ve had the people who claimed they went to New York to help after 9/11. But didn’t. You even had a guy who said he was assigned from NYPD down to the financial district after 9/11 to help look for people or whatever they were all doing, but really wasn’t he was in the Bronx or something. You also have the tall tales with the current president when it comes to 9/11.
I really despise the people who fake things about being part of efforts post 9/11. I don’t understand people that need to build their own images on a national tragedy.
Someone I know who was the first responder said today that the best way to honor people on 9/11 is to be the people we all were 9/12.
I saw this drone show thing from New York and it’s very moving. I’m sharing a snippet from the ABC affiliate up there:
As a country from the most local things to national, we are a cesspool of messiness. People wanna tell you what it’s like to be a patriot or an American. They don’t have the first clue. We have become an international embarrassment, not strength. And because of the current administration, we are once again I believe wide open to incidents like what happened 9/11 25 years ago.
We have a president who wants to tell tall tales about 9/11 and even issue AI generated ridiculousness to make himself look like a hero on whatever his truth social account is.
We have a president with an administration which kowtows to him when they know they shouldn’t. I can’t decide if it’s because they are actually afraid of him or they can’t admit they made a mistake in getting behind him. of course the other point to ponder is some of them simply put are just stupid especially the women I have never seen so many ridiculous women in positions of power. It’s embarrassing to be a woman and look at them. Bad plastic surgery and Botox-laden twits. And the men? Half of them who are in positions where they have anything to do with the military have no military background. They’re just there because they’ll do what what’s his name wants.
We are an international joke. We are also because of the actions of this administration creates increasingly vulnerable situations. Spoiled boys shouldn’t be playing war.
And I keep waiting for elected officials to find their spines to stand up to this stuff and write the ship that is capsized that is our country and democracy. And all they do is talk.
The 25th anniversary of 9/11 falls on the 250th anniversary of this country.
Liberty weeps and so do I.
Remember, 9/11 accurately.
Remember those who lost their lives. Remember the first responders and others from all over not just New York City, who are still alive and struggling with health issues and what not because of what they were exposed to on that fateful day and the days thereafter. Honor all those people and this event by getting your asses to the polls on election day.
It’s time to right the ship of democracy.
To be an American is who we are. We come from all walks of life. We come from all races, creeds, colors, nationalities. We are a nation, literally born of immigrants, and it’s time to start treating those people with respect which means getting rid of the frozen feds.
Be a real patriot, not one that just expects a check from a crazy old man who seems to think that’s what it takes to get people to vote. we all know the phrase. The check is in the mail and if you think he’s gonna pay you anything I can sell you a bridge in Brooklyn.
Well, that’s my rant for the 25th anniversary. As Americans, we have an obligation to be better than what we currently are allowing in this country.
Oh East Whiteland Township climb up out of the twisted rabbit hole you seem trapped in by choice would you please? I mean does anyone want another Bishop Tube situation? You know that site that is never cleaned up yet the plan(s) keep getting the kick the can down the road treatment for how many years now?
So the other day I popped up a telling email from East Whiteland:
So then I saw this from East Whiteland which must have come out around the same time?
So let’s ponder this.
Let’s chat cap ok?
Isn’t the entire point of a cap to keep the contaminated soil in place? Grading up the land to make it equal to the cap completely ruins the point and the groundwater and storm water run off is going to infiltrate the cap isn’t it?
And maybe they aren’t digging on the cap but isn’t any kind of soil disturbance no bueno? You know like the tire tracks and where they are seen?
And then there is this letter:
I guess I just don’t understand what East Whiteland doesn’t understand, do you? Hope those politicians are enjoying their Waterloo right?
The next meeting is Wednesday, September 9 at 6:30PM at the East Whiteland Township Building (209 Conestoga Road, Frazer PA.) They did not get a bigger space, so pack the room and Zoom.
They will undoubtedly tell everyone that they should not express how they feel if it’s the same as the person before or after. That’s wrong. You have a legal right to express yourself politely.
They will say non residents can’t talk. Also not legally true is it?
They will also probably once again subvert the public record and violate sunshine by cutting out room reactions, comments from the audience, and public deliberations and they can’t do that either can they? (I have now emailed twice about this issue and have received no response.)
Also pay close attention to the public meeting minutes. They are cherry picking reporting who is commenting. Look at July 8 minutes for example- it is like State Senator Katie Muth was never there among others isn’t it?
And has East Whiteland or the data center developer ever said where soil, and fluids, and debris goes specifically? Foote Mineral is still an EPA site after all isn’t it?
IMHO East Whiteland is delaminating and residents are the losers aren’t they?
There’s good old Maggie Dobbs above. She is the current manager of Narberth Borough. I say current manager because they tend to change with the seasons or with fashion trends or something, right?
Maggie Dobbs is a trained city planner (Rutgers) who spent a decade writing comprehensive plans across Montgomery County before stepping into her current role as Borough Manager of Narberth, Pennsylvania, a half-square-mile community tucked inside Lower Merion Township just outside of Philadelphia. She arrived after a period of leadership turnover. What she found was not a small job. It was a dense one.
Host Brandon Ford and co-host Nancy Hesshave a wide ranging conversation with Maggie that moves through the real experience of borough management: the math of running a full municipal government — police, public works, library, eleven miles of road — with fifteen people and a fraction of a township’s budget; the intimacy that makes boroughs special and the same intimacy that makes criticism land close to the heart; and the reality that wearing every hat in the building demands more knowledge, not less, than specializing in a larger organization.
Hmmm first question: does Narberth Borough approve these outside activities? Or Lower Merion Township for that matter because Brandon Ford is the assistant township manager there right?
Next question: who is this PR stunt really for? Maggie Dobbs or Narberth? I ask because Maggie doesn’t seem to stay places long term does she?
In this podcast which I encourage everyone to listen to they further remark in the podcast comments:
Maggie is candid about walking into a community that had cycled through five managers in four years, what it took to steady that ship, and why her focus is on building standard operating procedures so the day-to-day can run itself. Along the way, the crew explores Narberth’s housing story
So her waxing poetic about this little hot mess of a borough is amusing since The Sabine Coalition exists to protect a park from residential development yes? And there are even more issues brewing in South Narberth, right?
Well today was a first. I was invited to a potluck funeral at a rather, very Main Line church.
Yes for real.
I am still sitting here gob smacked. Another friend who got the email said they literally sat there reading the impersonal email and felt their eyebrows raised and not going down. Another friend who got forwarded the email is still so angry, I am not sure the top of her head has returned to just above her forehead yet.
The email was completely impersonal. No emotion, it was like a perfunctory to do list….only it’s this email from one of the kids and it is his freaking mother. He is older than I am, and not destitute. She wasn’t destitute. He’s being left a nice inheritance. She adored him. Literally all she ever wanted was for him to spend time with her. And him? Emotionally and deliberately physically remote, yes?
Oh and the stooge getting stuck helping him with a headcount? Wasn’t even really a friend of his late mother. Like quite literally I do not know where she came from. Just a random task rabbit I suppose?
The magic list is amusing. Misspelled family names and mispelled names of generational family friends. And so many people who really weren’t friends. It’s a highways and byways list.
Now just for the humor of it, I went back to the woman’s death instructions as I have a copy. This woman was fairly organized and she began telling those of us who really knew her about her last wishes a few years ago. Even where to find her instructions in the house in case they got lost. Trust me there was never, ever a mention of a POTLUCK. There was a mention of she wanted lots of sunflowers at the church. We’ll see if that happens.
The email was so dear occupant. But that is this guy’s personality I suppose? I actually met the son before I met his mother. Back then he was dating someone I knew a bit. Didn’t care for him. Personality of a piece of cardboard.
Also never cared for the way he treated his mother. He was in my opinion, a prize shit most of the time. He phoned in his relationship, even as she lay dying. And this woman? Like a faithful old dog sitting by the door waiting for the one who left them to come home. Yes that is my opinion, I am not alone in that.
This email had no emotion, no sign of life. Not a kind word about his late mother. Nada. Junk email solicitations have more feeling.
And it was who is coming, and wow have you ever been required to RSVP for a freaking funeral? Yeah that was a first too. Is he selling tickets or something? Should we bring our garden spades as well to help dig the grave?
You don’t have to break the bank for a funeral, but when the departed has made arrangements including financial, what is the big deal? Is that cheap or emotionally stunted? Or both?
This will be a funeral on the smaller side. What would be so difficult about a few sandwich trays? Cookies? Cheese and fruit? Tea? Water? Coffee? Hell you can even get those platters made up at the grocery store, and buy the rest of it. It’s not that hard and certainly less gauche then telling people to essentially brown bag the funeral and reception. Ok yes, I also found it rude. And tacky. And appalling.
But mostly I found it utterly disrespectful to a woman who gave him life that maybe was messy at times, but can we say she did her best? She didn’t grow up or have children in a time that was necessarily kind to women.
I am not going. I had decided this before the dear occupant potluck funeral e-mail, and I knew the decision then was right. I know where she will rest, and I will pay respects privately. But that guy? Hope he chokes on his inheritance.
