News
City's top political watchdog to step down
After nearly 30 years of advocating good government, Chestnut Hill's Fred Voigt will step down as executive director of the 100-year-old Committee of Seventy
by MICHAEL J. MISHAK
One hundred years after muckraking journalist Lincoln Steffens famously declared Philadelphia "corrupt and contented," Chestnut Hill resident Fred Voigt is poised to step down as executive director of the Committee of Seventy, the city's esteemed political watchdog group.
After nearly 30 years of advocating for good government, Voigt, 61, expects to shift positions early next year, but will assist his as-yet-unnamed successor in the transition and continue to serve the committee in an emeritus role. He is widely acknowledged as an expert on election law and has been at the center of every campaign since June 1976, joining the committee just four days before the petitions to recall Mayor Frank Rizzo were filed.
Founded in 1904 in response to the pervasive corruption that defined the worst governed city in the country, the Committee of Seventy has been an instrumental force for reform with a focus on ensuring free and fair elections.
Its name hails from a passage in the Book of Exodus where Moses...
Community fund a way to spread generosity around the Hill
by JAMES STURDIVANT
Marianne Dwyer speaks in no uncertain terms about the importance of the Chestnut Hill Community Fund.
"It helps us tremendously. It keeps us going," Dwyer, the only paid staff member of Teenagers, Inc., told the Local recently.
"The fund keeps us vital and current in trying to improve our offerings to the population of teens that I deal with ... [which] is pretty varied and always changing," she said.
Dwyer's sentiments are echoed by representatives from many of Chestnut Hill's most important institutions, from the Chestnut Hill Youth Sports Club to the Friends of the Children's Park at Jenks School. The fund is recognized as providing a vital source of income that allows for the activities and services Hillers have come to count on over the years to continue.
Chestnut Hill Youth Sports Club president Dennis Primavera said the money his organization received from the fund this year was used to refurbish baseball equipment. The money also helps the organization to keep its fees affordable for its 1,300 participating families, 80 percent of whom reside in Northwest Philadelphia.
"It allows us to keep our costs down and our fees down to the parents ... we don't want to be in the position of having to turn anybody away from a sport, and [so] we...
Springfield Township hedges on Black Horse
Though the board president called the potential demolition and sale of the historic inn "harsh" options, he did not officially rule them out
by MICHAEL J. MISHAK
As the Springfield Township board of commissioners was set to vote on the 2005 budget on Dec. 15, dedicated financial support from the municipality for the restoration of the embattled Black Horse Inn seemed unlikely.
At the board's last regular meeting of the year on Dec. 8, the commissioners did not act on the requests of a newly formed task force, despite that group's public appeal to the board during a packed workshop session two days earlier.
Working with the Black Horse Inn Advisory Committee, the Friends of Historic Bethlehem Pike detailed a strategic plan for the historic inn's restoration at the Dec. 6 meeting, petitioning the board to rule out demolition and commit promised township funds to winterizing the structure.
Though prevented from taking official action during workshop...
Noted in the Northwest
A brief look at news in Chestnut Hill and surrounding neighborhoods
Both sides mum on Woodmere negotiations
Closed door-negotiations between the Woodmere Art Museum and its near neighbors over the museum's expansion plans are still ongoing, but neither side is revealing details on the progress of the talks.
"The neighbors and Woodmere people are continuing to meet and exchange information," S. David Fineman, lawyer for the North Chestnut Hill Neighbors Association, which opposes the museum's expansion plans, told the Local last week.
After a special hearing before the city zoning board last month, board chairman David Auspitz instructed counsel for both sides in the dispute to present a statement of their position to the board by Dec. 3.
Fineman said that a letter from his office was sent to Auspitz
Book offers fresh look at biblical stories
By James Sturdivant
Some stories make us happy; others, melancholy, proud or fearful. The best stories do all of these things, their effect varying over time and among the millions who may hear or read them.
Such is the case with the stories of the Bible, accounts that have peopled the spiritual and ethical landscape of Jews and Christians for thousands of years. Perhaps no more blood and ink has been spilled over any narrative in human history than that used to defend one or another interpretation of the Tanakh, or Old Testament, the sacred history of the Jewish people. Yet, the stories refuse to be tied down.
"The fact that these stories changed is what makes them so powerful," said storyteller and mythologist Diane Wolkstein, who has turned her love of Biblical tales into a collection of retellings, Treasures of the Heart: Holiday Stories That Reveal the Soul of Judaism.
Wolkstein, author of 21 books including the...
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