Chestnut Hill Local

It takes a ‘Village’ to raise a Chestnut Hill movie actress

by ED MAHON

She may not have a marquee name like her fellow movie actors Sigourney Weaver, Academy Award winner Adrian Brody and Joaquin Phoenix, but 10-year-old Chestnut Hill resident Pascale Renate Smith also has a speaking role, just like the aforementioned household names, in Hollywood filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan’s latest blockbuster film The Village, which opened last weekend in multiplexes all over the United States.

Pascale, known by friends and family members as Calla (from the Greek kalos, which means “beautiful”), is an integral part of Chestnut Hill’s own village. The Project Learn School (Mt. Airy) 5th grader plays one of 60 residents of the fictional village of Covington, surrounded...

Buddy Rich, an American jazz drum virtuoso who accompanied major big bands before forming his own popular big band in the 1960s, played the song “Keep the Customer Satisfied,” originally composed by Paul Simon. At the Mt. Airy Train Station, the one-year-old 19-member SDH (“So Damned Hot”) Big Band will play a variety of music—salsa, swings, blues, contemporary jazz, ballads, and fusion—to keep the customer satisfied.

And as an added bonus for this concert, the customer doesn’t have to pay anything for this free concert at Gowen Avenue and Devon Street on Thursday, August 5, from 7-9 p.m.

The fates that govern the weather weren’t kind to the Quaker City String Band last Wednesday evening out in Chestnut Hill’s Pastorius Park. In fact, one might suspect that they have a cruel — even wicked, dare I say? — sense of humor.

Early on into the Mummers’ second set when the band was starting to perform that grand old anthem of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first run for the presidency in 1932 — “Happy Days Are Here Again” — those opening and fateful lines were sung: “Happy days are here again, the skies above are clear again.”

As it turned out, not quite right. Virtually as though on cue, the skies — rather than clearing — opened up...

This Germantown jazz ‘Trane’ is in high gear

by BEN CAKE

Raymond Wood, entrepreneur and chairman of the TraneStop Institute’s executive board, stands admiring a row of irises and marigolds outside his home at the corner of Washington Lane and Musgrave Street. “During concerts,” he says, “people would come and stand along this fence here. So I decided to plant a garden there to encourage them to c’mon in.”

The concerts he’s referring to are the TraneStop’s free annual community jazz concerts, the ninth of which was held on Sunday, July 25. As in past years, approximately 300 people were present to relax in the half-acre yard — filled with daylilies, peach trees and rose bushes — and enjoy some of Philadelphia’s finest jazz musicians perform the music of...

Pollution getting worse, says Hill clean air expert

By KARA DADDARIO

When I step outside and take a breath of air, I seldom think about who maintains the quality of that air. Joe Minott, executive director of the Clean Air Council and part time educator of environmental policy at the University of Pennsylvania, constantly thinks about just that — making sure that the air we breathe is of the highest quality. Minott works tirelessly to manage the staff at the Clean Air Council, fundraise for the nonprofit organization and handle the legal matters concerning air quality and often the government.

Minott, a Chestnut Hill resident and father of Chris Minott and stepfather to John Wells, was not always involved with the Clean Air Council. Son of a U.S. diplomat, Minott lived in both Africa and Europe before graduating from Chestnut Hill Academy in...

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