June 5, 2008 Issue                                       

©2007 The Chestnut Hill Local

Local Life

You’ve never seen acts like these before!
Great events are in store for Hillers this summer
by JIM HARRIS

One of the amazing treats in store for Hill residents this summer will be a free concert featuring medieval chamber music played by porcupines. You just don’t find entertainment like that in Mt. Airy or Wyndmoor, where concerts are performed mostly by human beings.

It’s been a long, cold, lonely winter for local entertainment. The Sixers and Flyers both faltered in the playoffs, the big art show in town was Frida Kahlo’s paintings of herself with nails in her head (thanks for sharing, Frida), and most of the movies were expensive adaptations of cartoons originally aimed at six-year-olds. 

Just as an example, production costs of the latest abomination, Speed Racer, are estimated to be well over $100 million. By comparison, President Bush pledged $3 million to help cyclone victims in Myanmar, and no, I’m not a communist (although I am a columnist).

The arrival of spring brought back a familiar form of local entertainment — the Schuylkill regattas, or as I like to call them, rich kids in rowboats. I still find it puzzling why these regattas draw so many young people to our area. I suspect that they are really just big frat-parties for future bank presidents and CEO’s. Even that I could stand if they just didn’t close down Kelly Drive for days on end, forcing us working shlubs to take time-consuming detours through the park.

Saving money on organic food: Hill moms growing their own
by PAULA M. RILEY

Chestnut Hill resident Jennifer Reed has been trying to grow all her vegetables in a garden on her small property. (Photo by Paula M. Riley)

With the rising costs of organic food, Jennifer Reed has been trying to grow all her vegetables in a garden on her small property. Her close friend and fellow Chestnut Hill resident, Colleen Yard, had hoped to purchase a small, sunny plot of land behind her twin home to plant a garden and do the same.

Both ran into problems.

Yard’s plan to purchase the property did not go through, and Reed’s 15 by 20-foot backyard garden was simply not enough space. By joining forces, they found the perfect solution. They decided to lease an organic garden plot at the Schuykill Center for Environmental Education (SCEE) in upper Roxborough.

They went into the endeavor with simple expectations, “Our goal is to yield one vegetable,” Reed explains with a grin.

The first step was choosing their plot. Reed and her son Nate, 5, along with Yard and her son Eli, 5, and daughter Lucy, 1, toured the available plots. The plots they viewed were in all different conditions. Some were very overgrown and needed much work; others had been worked the previous year, were cleared and, thus, were more attractive to the pair.

Local art legend, 97, now exhibiting at Hill Gallery
by PAMELA ROGOW

John Lear (far right) is seen here at Woodmere Art Museum in January of 1989 just before the opening of an exhibit as part of the centennial celebration of the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Others are (from left) committee member Anita Brooke and her mother, Sallie, committee chair; Dr. Michael Schantz, director of Woodmere; the Rev. Scott O’Brien, then-rector at St. Martin’s (now deceased), and committee member Whim Lynch.

In John Lear’s case, it was surely beauty before age. Now almost 98 (born June 19, 1910), Lear looked back on a life in art in our recent interview and explained that he — and his art teacher at the Chestnut Hill Academy — knew he was destined to be a professional artist even from his high school days.

After 19 years, Mexican pioneer better than ever
by LEN LEAR

Zocalo is still a teenager, but at 19 years of age it is almost certainly the city’s oldest upscale, authentic Mexican restaurant. The stunningly beautiful outpost in the unlikely location of 3600 Lancaster Ave. in Powelton Village (a press release calls it University City, but that is a stretch) was owned from 1989 to 1997 by the founders and put on the culinary map by chef Jackie Pestka, who later served briefly as head chef at Solaris Grille.