September 27, 2007 Issue                                       

©2007 The Chestnut Hill Local

Local Life

Hill lawyer’s CD appeals to spiritual truth seekers
by JOEL HOFFMAN

Sam meditates under the Katsura tree at Morris Arboretum. (Photos by Elan Gepner)

Sam Rossitto slowly unstraps his sandals and sinks into an overstuffed blue sofa. He smiles and begins to speak, but his words are muffled by the staccato rattling behind him. Light glints off the gold wedding band on his right hand as he stands up and turns toward the storm door of his East Meade Street home.

He greets a woman in her late 30s and directs her upstairs, where his wife, Patricia, is prepping the makeshift massage-therapy suite. Sam hands me a CD and sinks into the sofa again; this time he tucks his right leg beneath his left and sits perpendicular to the black Yamaha piano against the wall.

Had survived 45-foot fall
‘Special’ slain cat had big impact on lives in G’twn
by DIANE COLLINS

Rumi was able to survive a 45-foot fall but not a vicious attack by a wild dog.

Rumi, our  beautiful male cat, died last week on a drive to the emergency room after being attacked by a stray dog. Ordinarily the neighboring church (in Germantown) has its gates closed, which would have prevented the attack. But on this very sad and uncommon occasion, it was left wide open.

His suffering lasted about 45 minutes, as best as I can tell. Attah, one of my dogs, and I were with him. I was speaking with him when he finally died.

I am reminded of finding him on that hot summer roof two years ago in Germantown — a dehydrated bag of bones. (The building I found him on was bulldozed a week later.) He immediately befriended Cody (my other dog) and Attah.

Lafayette Hill psychologist is happy to ‘Cook for You’
by BARBARA L. SHERF

No time to cook? Angela Walden, cooking in her Lafayette Hill kitchen, has started a new business called “Cooks For You.”  Her idea is to send a cook to your home to prepare and serve meals for you and your family. She can be reached at 215-438-4005. (Photo by Barbara Sherf)

No time to cook?  That’s the headline entrepreneur Angela Walden has placed in ads for her fledgling business called “Cooks For You.” Walden, 43, a longtime Germantown resident and one-month Lafayette Hill resident, knows about not having time to cook. She and her husband, John, have four children, ranging in age from 3 to 14. With a Masters in Psychology and 14 years in the social services field, she often found that the last thing she wanted to do after coming home from a full day of work was cook. 

Her most recent position at the Wissahickon Charter School did give her some after-school time, though, to play in the kitchen while her children were busy doing homework at the kitchen table. 

“I enjoyed being able to cook a meal for my family and create something in the kitchen,” she said in her white kitchen on a sunny afternoon. With the move to a new school district and the adjustment for the whole family, she decided not to go back to the traditional work force this September and is focusing on her new small business. 

Walden talked to other working parents and concluded that there is a real need for her service. “I don’t necessarily want to go into someone’s home to cook,” she explained. “I need to do that here. But I want to serve as a clearinghouse for people who like to cook and individuals who would cherish walking through the front door to spend quality time with their family while a healthy meal was being prepared for them.”

Learn how to be ‘Handi-Women’
by SALLY COHEN

Retired engineer David Decker teaches women how to be ‘ Handi-Women.’

Like so many contemporary men and women, Patricia Scarano has been hiring handy men, plumbers and other service workers to fix her broken toilet, repair damaged walls and replace door locks for years. As a single parent, she is responsible to make sure her house is kept in good shape and things are in working order. 

She wanted to learn how to fix a problematic toilet herself. “I’ve spent a fortune on plumbers over the years,” she said, adding she’s called them five times in the last 18 months alone.

As a member of the Delaware County Chamber of Commerce, she learned about local handyman David Decker, 53, who runs a company called Handi-Women, which he started on January 1 this year.

Decker came to her house, but instead of doing all the work himself, he put her to work. “I had to physically do it myself,” Scarano said. “He told me, ‘You are going to have to do the work, so you’ll know how to fix it the next time something happens.”

Can she lose weight with Weight Watchers? Fat chance
by JENNIFER NAGEL

I have been a weight watcher on and off for my entire life. And that’s not an exaggeration — I do mean my entire life. My childhood, which was largely spent with my grandmother and her seven sisters, featured special afternoons in which a group of the sisters (at least four) would come over, stand on the scale in the kitchen and weigh in.