CHBA election slate raises questions

Most people in Chestnut Hill are getting ready for a big holiday weekend. Easter Sunday is here and Passover will have begun by the time most people pick up this paper. And spring has finally arrived after some real environmental mood swings.

But on Germantown Avenue, the buzz is about the coming CHCA election and whether or not a group of 10 candidates billed as the Positively Chestnut Hill Team represents a power grab by the Chestnut Hill Business Association or not.

Launched a week ago by business association vice president Mike Hickey — who read a manifesto for the new slate that claimed the community association was not a positive force for change — the new slate has some residents concerned that the business association wants to exert undue influence on a community association with a lot of clout. Not only does it own a substantial paper but it has had standing with the city on zoning matters — a standing that has, at times, put it squarely in opposition to business interests.

In an interview last week, business association president Greg Welsh told me that the group had no ulterior motivations beyond infusing the association with new blood and new ideas. The business association, Welsh said, could help reinvigorate the community association and help it grow its membership through organizational and marketing expertise.

In conversations with others supportive of the slate, this seems to be the case. In private, they say the association no longer represents Chestnut Hill. It’s not young, not progressive, out of touch. It should be hosting Beef and Beers instead of Black and Whites. They’re not observations without merit.

Perhaps there is nothing dubious going on. No putsch. No plot.  A lot of the candidates on the business association’s slate are clearly not double-agent material. Many have lived their whole life in the community. They’re no less invested than any current member of the board. In many ways they’re more representative of Chestnut Hill than many on the current CHCA board.

But after last fall’s assertion by the business association that the Local through its coverage of neighborhood discord is a consistently negative force that has steered business away from Chestnut Hill, it seems fair to be suspicious. Even the group’s name suggests not only a contrast to that which they’ve already described as negative — the Local and the CHCA — but it also indicates a PR-driven unwillingness to grapple with the real issues facing the Hill.

It is for these reasons that several “minority-party” members of the CHCA board decided last week to defect and start a rival organization, detailed in a front-page story this week.

It’s hard to say how this new slate will work. Will it be independent? Driven by a passion for service and their neighborhood? Or will it be driven, instead, by a desire to reduce the community association and the Local to marketing tools that will be used to drive foot traffic and establish a Chestnut Hill brand?

These are questions that should be discussed before Chestnut Hill Community Association members cast their votes. We hope to engage the candidates on the issues in an upcoming CHCA candidate’s forum at the Chestnut Hill Library on Wednesday, April 15 at 6 p.m. All CHCA members are invited to attend and hear what these candidates have to say.     


Pete Mazzaccaro

Another child saved — A heartwarming detox story
by HUGH GILMORE

In a typical week I write my column at home over the weekend, send it as an e-mail attachment to my editor at the Local on Monday and it appears in print on Wednesday when the Local “hits the stands.”

 I’m seldom privileged to receive a written response to what I’ve had to say. Perhaps a dozen people e-mail me in a year. A few write a message to the editor. Most of the time I must assume my call went into the canyon and just isn’t going to echo back.  

You can imagine the delight I felt, therefore, when I received the thoughtful letter that follows. It was written by a young mother and it concerns children and TV. Not having a child in my house anymore, I have little real idea of the challenges of raising a youngster in today’s media-governed world.

That’s why I asked this young mother’s permission to work her comments into my column this week. She said yes, but after I reread her story several times, I decided that I could not improve on what she had to say. I wrote back and asked permission to print her letter in its entirety, with some slight editing (though she asked me not to use her name). Here it is:

Hi Hugh,

We have never met, but I feel I know you through reading your column (of which I am a big fan). I just read your piece on “Trying to pry the remote control from Melissa Dribben’s hands” (Ed.: March 25 issue, online at www.chestnuthilllocal.com) and wanted to relate my own household’s experience with the boob tube.

Our daughter is a pretty smart cookie. We have read to her since she was born, and she has always been surrounded by books. Now, at 3, she is reading. Not just “A, B, C ... ,” but picking up novels with no pictures and sounding out entire sentences. 

We have let her watch TV since she was about one year old.  At first it was just Elmo and that lovable Grover, limited to an hour or less each day, how bad could that be?  Then we let her roam into the wide world of kids’ cable TV channels.  (Did you know that they have something called “The Goodnight Show” — targeted at toddlers and preschoolers — that runs from 6 p.m. until 9 at night!)  Recently, on our regular trips to the local library, we started picking up kids’ DVDs too.

One cold winter afternoon about a month ago, I realized that my smart, reading preschooler had watched about four hours of TV and DVDs in one day. Any ruse to try to get her off the couch set off an uncontrollable crying fit. Even on sunny days, when crocuses were poking up through the mulch and the playground was beckoning, she could not be pried off the sofa without a fight. Upon waking in the morning and getting home from school each day, her first words were “I want a kids’ show!  TV!!! TV!!!!!!”  We (and PBS and Noggin) had created a not-so lovable monster.  

Addict’s detox.  The cries of “Kids’ show!” and chants of “TV!! TV!!” and crying jags still marked every entrance into the family room. She still sometimes asks “What can I do?” when faced with a room full of toys and books and no TV, but her recovery has been steady.  

Last week, she drew me a picture of our family.  I didn’t even know she could draw people. Last night, after dinner, she laid out a blanket on the floor of the den (after a few feeble cries of “TV?”), and then she and her little brother happily played “picnic” for a good half hour.  

There has been a lot less crying in our house this week, and a lot more laughter and creativity. She and our 2-year-old son have started playing together a lot more and even hugging each other from time to time. As for my husband and I, we still watch TV after the kids go to bed, and sometimes we even surf the internet at the same time.  There are a few shows that make me laugh, and I need some laughter in my life. But I am happy to report that I am on schedule to actually finish my reading for book club before the meeting this month!   

PS: The “Goodnight Show” is a poor substitute for a bedtime story ... TV is insidious, especially for children, and I have certainly come to realize that any claims of its educational value are pure hype, dreamed up by marketing people. 

I am appalled to report that Sprout — the PBS kids network — is the worst, with more commercials than the Superbowl, and billions of dollars of character products to boot.

And I know it’s a huge cliché, but my relationship with my daughter has been blossoming anew since our TV “broke.”  One day at a time...

Thanks, Hugh, for a great read each week.

A Glenside Mom       

Thank you. The compliments made me feel good, but hearing that a child has been swooped away from that huge, phoney operation makes me feel better. Let’s face it, the ultimate function of Children’s Television is to ensnare a new generation of passive television watchers.

Learning enough facts to do well on Jeopardy! is not the same thing as learning.