The Skyline's Limited

This column originaly appeared on Sunday, Dec. 30, 2007

There is no easy way to put this.

If there was an easy way to put this, you can be certain that I would take it. We in the news businesses – with the possible exception of Dan Rather, Jim Lehrer and some of the folks who work at E! Entertainment’s crack Britney Spears Division -- are very comfortable, shall we say, with taking the easy way when it comes to life.

Believe me, I don’t like the hard way. I avoid the hard way like the folks at the E! Entertainment's crack Britney Spears Division avoid discussions on Salman Rushdie’s latest novel. If the hard way was walking down the street and I spotted it coming in the opposite direction, I would cross over and pretend to do some window shopping at Fairman’s Skate Shop.

So believe me when I say it is not easy to admit that the skyline that greets me when I return to Chester County on the Pennsylvania Turnpike from traveling out west makes me want to yawn.

There, I said it. The sight of Chester County’s border along about mile marker 300 is boring with a capital “Is that it?” It’s unidentifiable. It’s non-descript. It’s a vacuum in the skyline sense. My sister once drove to Chester County from her home in Cincinnati and didn’t even know she had passed the so-called “most beautiful place on earth” until she hit the New Jersey Turnpike.

You cross into Chester County on the Pennsylvania Turnpike from Berks County and you might as well be left in a time/space warp in which you continually return to the same Berks County landscape that you just left, only with fewer animal food processing plants.

Travelers the world over get awe-striking views of the cities they enter that stick with them for years. New York City’s skyline upon boating in on the Staten Island Ferry is one. Driving around the bend in the Schuylkill Expressway near the Philadelphia Zoo when that city’s Boathouse Row comes into view at night is another. Even coming into my hometown of Cincinnati from the south, where the skyline emerges above the stately Ohio River, always left me with a bit of a tickle on the back of my neck.

Coming into Chester County from the west on the Pennsylvania Turnpike leaves me thinking, “What should I cook for dinner?”

This calls for action. This calls for change.

We need to create some better skyline, some identifiable landscape, that will stand up and be noticed. We need to create a skyline that speaks to the Chester County-ness out there, something that will leave travelers passing by open-mouthed and drooling and leave residents coming home from the west with a warm feeling in their souls like they just rescued the neighbor’s puppy.

What that scene should be is not up to me. No, I’ve fulfilled my role in this situation. I’ve identified the problem, and now I’m leaving it up to others to deliver the solution. It could be politicians, it could be business leaders, it could be -- dare we say -- Lani Frank. I don’t care. As I said before, I’m about the easy way.

And when they come up with a new skyline for the entrance way to Chester County from the west, I’ll be here, waiting.

As for the eastern skyline, we’ve got the Gateway Shopping Center and that’ll do.

Will The Real Chester County Stand Up?

This column originally appeared on Dec. 23, 2007

Have you ever closed the refrigerator door and wondered whether the light inside has actually gone off, or is rather still burning, illuminating all the leftover meatloaf and pasta with pesto and rapidly deteriorating lettuce that is taking up space in there?

Ever shut the front door behind you on the way to work and imagined your kids had stopped running around like 5-year-olds and had sat down calmly on the sofa to discuss options for reducing the family household’s carbon footprint, rather than tracking actual carbon footprints from the Webber grill detritus through the living room?

Then you can understand the way I feel at this time of year, when I leave Chester County behind and travel to my original hometown.

I have spent the past 25 years as a resident and registered voter in Chester County, and have stayed relatively put during that quarter century. I don't move much. Suffice to say, the state constables know where to find me if -- or more accurately, when -- my parking ticket warrants reach maturity.

But I have never spent a single Christmas Day in Chester County. Each year I make the sojourn back over the Alleghenies and across the Monongahila and the Ohio to Cincinnati, Ohio, to visit my family. I may stay only a day or two, sometimes as long as a week, but I have never failed to return there for Dec. 25.

And that has me thinking, as you do when you shut that refrigerator door, what in the world goes on in Chester County when I’m gone? What if it’s nothing like I'm used to? What if everything changes? Could it be that for the few days I’m absent from the Brandywine Valley, the lay of the land reverts to some other reality that only exists just after the Winter Solstice?

Could it be that all of those quaint Revolutionary War stone farmhouses that dot East Bradford are replaced by cheesy Yeadon-style rowhomes? That the breathtaking beauty of Route 162 through Unionville transmorphs into a streetscape comparable with the Golden Outlet Mile outside Lancaster?

Could it be that for a few days the Democrats start running the county courthouse, and that they vote to replace the Ten Commandments plaque with a framed copy of “It Takes a Village?” That Bill Scott and Andy Dinniman have a quick holiday luncheon at Rex’s Bar and not a word passes between them besides, “How ‘bout that Bam?”

Could it be that former Commissioner Colin Hanna whips up a batch of tacos and margaritas and invites his favorite atheist, Margaret Downey, over to the family manse to join him in a few verses of “Feliz Navidad?”

Could it be that while I’m sitting down to a plate of Skyline Chili (onions, no cheese, and two Coneys on the side, please), noted defense counsel John Duffy is standing up in a courtroom somewhere and saying, “Now that I think about it, You Honor, my worthy adversary on the prosecution just might have a point there?”

I don’t know if any of these things actually happens, but if they do and you know about it, keep it to yourself, please. I’ve got one reality and I’d like to stick to it.

Trump Trumped

This column originally apered on Sunday, Dec. 9, 2007

Did you see the news item the other day about the Scottish landowner who is standing up to billionaire egomaniac Donald Trump and his plans to build a $2 billion golf course and condo development project on the Aberdeen Coast?

Did you hear how Michael Forbes, a multi-tasking fisherman and farmer, has refused to sell his 23 acres of “wind-scoured coastline” even though Atlantic City’s favorite comb-over casino mogul had offered him more than three-quarters of a million dollars for it?

Did you tell the story around the dinner table of how the local Scottish business community was up in arms about Forbes refusal to sell, seeing the golf complex as a boon to the local economy?

Did it remind you of anything?

No, I am not referring to that paltry little dust-up in Coatesville over the Iron Eagle Golf Course and one man’s refusal to give up his family farm so that duffers would have a place to shoot a round within spitting distance of a beleaguered steel mill.

I’m talking about the epic confrontation involving Knox Oil and Gas Inc., the residents of Ferness, Scotland and crusty old beachcomber Ben Knox, who owned the beach at Ferness and refused to sell out so that Felix Happer could build a multi-million dollar oil refinery there.

If you didn’t read about that situation in the papers or see it on CNN, don’t feel loop challenged. The confrontation took place only in the sublimely comic imagination of Scottish writer and director Bill Forsyth.

In 1983, Forsyth released the film, “Local Hero,” a story about a Texas oil company executive named “Mac” McIntyre who gets orders to travel to Scotland to wrap up the Ferness land purchase for the oil refinery, an assignment that fell to him largely because of his Scottish heritage. Except that Mac is the descendant of Hungarians and really doesn’t like to travel (“I’m more of a Telex man,” he says.)

The film has everything you’d want in a comedy, if by everything you mean an injured rabbit with two names; a small town populace looking to make a killing and pick up a few Maseratis on the way; a mysterious and beautiful marine researcher who may or may not be a mermaid; a Russian fishing boat captain with a serious investment portfolio; a crazed motorcyclist; the aurora borealis; and a red telephone booth.

The film does in fact have a character that refuses to sell his beach property because he loves living there. Old Ben Knox turns down Mac’s offer to buy him a beach anywhere else in the world, and tricks the exec when he offers to set a price equal to the amount of sand he holds in his hand. It’s wonderful to hear the dialogue between characters as they discuss the modern world versus the traditional world, as in the exchange where Mac wonders how one negotiates business deals with a man who has no door and is told: “The ethics are the same.”

I don’t think The Donald is going to end up with a plan like oil company owner Felix Happer (deliciously played by Burt Lancaster), who eventually decides to scrap the refinery plan and build an institute dedicated to the sea and the sky at Ferness.

But it is wonderful to see life imitating art in some small way, and to know that there are people off the movie screen who regard a stretch of beach as being worth something more than money.

Some Words to the Wise (And O'Rourke, Too!)

These posts go out to my Google Groups list, and show up in (at least) my e-mail without any paragraphing, just one big blog blob. (Say that five times fast!)

If you want to see how the columns/stories look with paragraphing, go to www.michaelpcolumns.blogspot.com.

Good night, and have a pleasant tomorrow.

Ode to a Road

This column first appeared on Sunday, Dec. 2, 2007.

While taking in the sights and sounds of Old Fashioned Christmas in West Chester Friday evening, it occurred to me that although there have been literally dozens of Christmas carols written for our listening enjoyment, there are exactly no poems available to those of us who want to sing the praises of state Route 926.

Forgive me, but that’s the way my mind works. You do not even want to know what occurred to me after taking in the sights and sounds of the Phoenixville’s Blogfest.

In order to correct that situation, I hearby submit the following, “Ode to a Road.”

926! 926! 926!
Your lanes cross open fields.
And the homes that dot betwixt
All bear security shields.

We adore your wooden barns
And landfills named SECCRA.
And across from Landhope Farms
A chiropractic Mecca.

Oh, your ponds must have toads
And your pastures fine horses,
And round about Lamborton Road
There’s room for golf courses.

Springdel and Chatam and 841
Post a speed limit 45.
But squinting at morning’s new sun
On you at 30 we drive.

Your balm of Friends Meeting,
London Grove, is like talcum,
Owning much to the greeting
First Day School, “All Welcome.”

We think as New Bolton nears
“With joy must come woe.”
And then we raise up our beers,
And toast Barbaro.

It’s the watershed of Red Clay
That get’s us to thinkin’
Where will come the day
You’ll be a highway like Lincoln?

For although your number
Is more than 30 times as sweet
We can’t help but wonder
Why this road’s name is “Street.”

New Justice Center Emphasizes Security

This article first appeared on Monday, Nov. 26, 2007.

WEST CHESTER – Chester County’s new Justice Center on West Market Street has one district court, seven floors, more than a dozen cells – group and individual size -- for prisoners, enough space for 18 courtrooms, and a stairwell with 152 steps.

But most tellingly, it also has 172 individual panic buttons to bring courthouse security personnel on the run.

That final figure is the result of changes in design for the 422,000 square foot, $100 million building brought about by a bloody attack in the Fulton County Courthouse in Atlanta two years ago.

In March 2005, a man on trial for rape overpowered a court deputy, took her gun and killed three people – the judge overseeing his case, a court reporter and another deputy who confronted him as he fled the courthouse. He later pistol-whipped another man whose car he stole and shot and killed a federal marshal unconnected to his trial.

The courthouse killings in Atlanta came just two weeks after a federal judge’s mother and husband were found murdered in their home, and set off a flurry of concerns about the safety of judges, prosecutors and others who work in courthouses across the country.

What had thus been planned as a somewhat standard-issue building housing the county’s Common Pleas courts and court-related offices underwent a metamorphosis into a high-tech structure whose complexity rivals hat of a hospital and whose security suggests something close to a modern maximum security prison.

“This is in no way a run-of-the-mill building,” explained Don Thompson, the county “owner’s representative” who is overseeing the work on the Justice Center, as he did for the Chester County Prison expansion in Pocopson and the county’s Juvenile Detention Center in West Bradford.

“This is a big building. A really, really big building. It is a special place that requires service you can’t ever imagine would be done at another facility,” Thompson said during a recent tour of the building. “The normal frame of reference of an office building that you and I would work in just doesn’t apply.”

Among the security measures that are incorporated in the Justice Center include a basement sheriff’s lock-up that is state of the art in its safety measures to keep prisoners from escaping; judges chambers that are accessible only by security card or electronic entrance; separate elevators for the public, judges and prisoners; and courtroom corridors that are inaccessible to the public and are used only by sheriff deputies and their charges.

It is a far cry from the current courthouse facility, where shackled prisoners walk down hallways in plain view of the public, and can be brought into the courtroom only one at a time. No longer will someone riding one of the courthouse’s four elevators be ordered off so that the deputies can transport a defendant to the courtroom of his or her destination.

“I think the county is going to get a good building,” said Thompson. “Perfect, no. What they paid for? Yes.”

The decision to build a new court facility was years in he making. As long as a decade ago the county’s judges began urging the commissioners to expand the court facility to make room for the new judges the county gained because of its striking increase in population, and all the component personnel – extra prosecutors and public defenders and courts clerks, for example.

The decision was first made to expand on the footprint of the current courthouse, located in the center of West Chester bordered by High, Church, Gay and Market streets. But a dispute between the county and the borough over the density of the planned construction and the proposed demolition of historic properties led to the ultimate decision to relocate the court facilities to the 200 block of West Market Street, across from the site of the county’s new parking garage.

In some ways, the delay itself became a favorable circumstance; because construction did not begin until after 2004, the county was able to incorporate the security changes brought about by the Atlanta courthouse shooting into its design while the building was still being built, instead of after it was completed.

Thompson said that when he came aboard the project, the design by architects Bernardon Haber Halloway of Kennett Square were already on the books. It became his task, he said, to go to all of the county’s court-related department heads, show them the design and ask them what changes they needed.

Which leads Thompson, a friendly man who needs only a small invitation to talk about the project in his hands, to tell the story of the district attorney’s restroom.

In the original design, the DAs office had no interior restroom facilities. In his conversations with District Attorney Joseph Carroll, however, Thompson discovered what a mistake that had been; if left unchanged, it would have put criminal witnesses and victims in the uncomfortable, if not unsafe, position of having to share the facilities with someone connected with their case – perhaps even the defendant.

The DAs office now has its own washroom, Thompson said.

The original design also showed judges having to share courtrooms; now, each judge on the bench currently will have their own courtroom – although they may have to trade off during criminal sessions. Not all courtrooms have been given the necessary individual prisoner lockups, so a judge who hears mostly civil cases would have to move to another courtroom temporarily if he or she is hearing a criminal matter.

When the Justice center opens in late spring or early summer, it will have 15 completed courtrooms, one for each of the county’s judges. There are three additional courtrooms that will remain unfinished until more jurists are added.

Thompson says that special touches in the building – terrazzo floors and milled cherry wood paneling, for example – make it somewhat elegant. Those touches also prove less costly to maintain, however, so that the county will end up spending less money in the long run. He refers to the center as a “50-year building,” ready to stand up for the long haul.

The commissioners, who every month or so are faced with the decision to approve construction change orders that add to the cost of the building, have expressed faith in Thompson’s proposed changes.

“I’ve got lots of confidence in Don,” said Commissioner Patrick O’Donnell, who owes that nevertheless he has ridden Thompson hard on some of his requests.

“I think there were design flaws in (the center) that hadn’t been thought out clearly,” he said. “But Don does not come in with changes lightly.”

Thompson predicted that the final cost of the building will be within three percent of the original budget.

“I’m very proud of that,” he said.

All The Dirt On Dirt Roads

This column originally appeared on Sunday, Nov. 25, 2007


Why would you think that I would just flat out tell you where he penultimate Chester County dirt road is?

Why would you think that after discovering it by accident on recent misty morning I would give up its location without so much as a second thought?

Why would you think that I would immediately spill the beans when the people who live and frolic on this rut-strewn cart-way have obviously gone to some lengths to keep their wilderness wonderland private?

Is that what you think of me?

Well, if that's the case then all I will tell you is that I was driving along a local highway on that misty morning, not truly paying attention to the road ahead, when off to the side I noticed a set of joggers running through a wooded area I had always thought as just a mess of native Chester County underbrush. The fallen foliage had made their presence clear; had they been running their route in mid-summer, they would have been hidden.

Being the curious sort, I made my way to the area I thought their hidden road would emerge. And there it was: a glorious stretch of prime country back road, with enough character to populate any Brandywine Valley picture postcard.

I knew it was designed to meet the requirements of Frost's a "less travelled road" for a number of reasons. First, the potholes marking the path were deep enough to hold cauldrons, and I remembered from my cub reporter days the folks who live up in the Mount Misery area of Tredyffrin begging the supervisors not to pave their roads, so that the tourist traffic would be kept to a low boil.

Second, dirt roads in Chester County mean, "Oops, you're off the beaten track." They don't put up new auto dealerships and banks and lifestyle malls on dirt roads around here.

And third - as Maxwell Smart might say -- was the sign on the post and rail fence that read "Posted: Private Property" within 10 feet of the road's beginning.

I knew the road was mean to be private because of its quiet, simple beauty. On the one side of the road was an outcropping of Wissahickon Schist, plopped there as if waiting for a passing watercolorist to notice it. On the other side sat a ruin of an old stone farmhouse, which I imagined had housed runaway slaves in their journey on the Underground Railroad And meandering all along the way the sight of the Brandywine Creek itself. The affect of the mist in the autumn trees made me appreciate its twists and turns all the more.

I say this is the penultimate dirt road in Chester County because I know you are wondering where the ultimate dirt road is. And just to get you off my back, I'm going to tell you.

Blackhorse Road, Chester Springs, West Vincent. Just don't speed.

An Andy Moment

This column first appeared on Sunday, Nov. 18, 2007

There must be a category somewhere in the register of Chester County Citizenship Requirements that dictates that you have to have at least one Andrew Wyeth Moment.

That is, a time when you or someone close to you have a brush with the most famous painter ever to eat at Hank’s Place.

I thought about this when I saw him on the front page of Friday’s Daily Local. Andy – you get to call him Andy if you’ve lived here long enough and run into him once or twice -- was honored as a recipient of a 2007 National Medal of Arts at a White House ceremony Thursday morning.

Wyeth, now 90, is no stranger to White House honors. In 1963, President Kennedy gave him a Presidential Medal of Freedom, and he got the first Congressional Gold Medal given to an artist from Bush One is 1990.

But it was still good to see him up there next to the president – smiling what must be a trademark smile and wearing what must be the only lapel-less, collarless suit jacket in America. It’s the “local boy makes good” story on a grand scale.

And Andy remains a local boy at heart. He was raised here in the land around Chadds Ford and Birmingham and Pennsbury, and if you pick up the West Chester telephone book today and page through to the “W’s,” you’ll find a listing for an “A. Wyeth” on Route 100. It’s his business office mind you, but you still can call him up if you’d like.

It was just that kind of neighborliness that marked the two encounters I’ve had with him. In November 1986, as a major exhibition of the works of Andy, his father N.C. Wyeth, and Andy’s son Jamie Wyeth was about to open in the then-Soviet Union, I picked up the phone and dialed his number. The phone rang a couple of times, then someone answered and I asked to speak to Andrew Wyeth. A moment later, he came on the line.

I probably didn’t ask him any questions that could have been considered probing or thoughtful, but he was jovial and responsive during the interview and seemed pleased when I told him of an evening a few nights before that we’d spent together – and by together I mean we both occupied space in the same large auditorium at the Metropolitan Life Building – in New York City.

The occasion was a preview of the hour-long documentary, “The Wyeths: A Father and His Family.” After the viewing, I approached Andy for a few words and a quick photograph. He was sitting with his older bother Nathaniel and his sisters Henriette Wyeth Hurd and Ann Wyeth McCoy. When I mentioned I was from the Daily Local News, Andy turned to his siblings and said, “It’s the man from the hometown paper!” I snapped off three or four shots and took my leave.

I was looking at one of those photographs recently and felt pleased. One, it’s in focus. Two, I didn’t cut anybody out of the frame. But best, Andy is wearing that lapel-less suit, holding his sister Ann’s hand, and smiling a smile as big as the Brandywine.

Not bad for an Andrew Wyeth Moment.

Bar Light, Bar Bright, First Bar That I See Tonight

This column originally appeared on Sunday, Nov. 11, 2007


We gathered together Friday evening, a lively group of friends and me, in a beautiful, historic home on the west side of High Street in West Chester, for a flavorful meal of spicy soup, crisp salad, leg of lamb and lightly fluffed potatoes.

Naturally the talk turned to old bars. Old West Chester bars to be exact.

I will state for the record here and now that it was not my decision to bring up the subject. I understand I have a reputation for enjoying a memory or two about saloons I have inhabited in the past. I am well aware that I have, on occasion, mentioned my fondness for certain old West Chester bars that no longer exist. I am fully cognizant that I have been accused of bringing the subject up whenever it struck my fancy, even if the conversation into which I inserted myself dealt with the root causes of the Civil War, or current monetary policy in Trinidad and Tobago.

But I’m pleading innocent on this one. I did not start the conversation this time, although I merrily went along with it. I believe it was Paul, a former borough resident now exiled to the rural pastures outside Marshallton, who broached the subject. I could be wrong.

Paul and his wife lived in the borough for a decade or so, and he became fond of the myriad pleasures the borough had to offer, pleasures I have described on these pages in the past: the historic architecture, the cozy neighborhoods, the alleys that open up newly discovered treasures almost daily.

But what he missed most, it seemed, were the bars.

He told of days spent exercising, finishing up a bicycle ride or a long run and finding himself quenching his thirst at the Square Bar, the best bar in town without a sign on the front door. Or ending a night of fine, upscale urban dining with his bride at a pub where the bartender had no teeth.

We compared notes on those taverns we missed, either because their ambiance was friendly and warm or because their ambiance was slightly threatening and edgy. I’ll let you be the judge which was which.

There was Carlini’s on North Church Street, The Shingle on East Gay Street, Donohue’s at the corner of High and Gay, and the bar they called Joe’s Sportsman’s Lounge on the west side of town. They all echoed a time and place when the borough was something different; an earlier version of its current self, like a teenager just growing into an adult skin.

Most of those places are gone now, replaced by other tap rooms of slightly pricier menus. West Chester endures with or without Carlini’s and Donohue’s, and constantly reinvents itself.

Mosteller’s Department Store becomes the annex to the Chester County Courthouse. The Mansion House Hotel becomes a bank and office building. Mr. Sandwich’s Coffee Shop becomes home to first stockbrokers, then politicians. W.E. Gilbert’s appliance store, where I once bought a VCR, is now Carlino’s Foods, where I recently bought chicken parmesan.

The beer may cost more now at the new spots that have replaced the old, but it doesn’t taste any better.

Just ask Paul.

Worrying About Ben

This column originaly appeared on Oct. 28, 2007

We all have worries that keep us awake at night.

Some of us worry about events worldwide that we wish we could control, but we can’t. Some of us worry about our children or spouses or siblings or parents, and hope that we can help them through the struggles that life serves up. Some of us worry about paying the mortgage or getting the Smithson Report ready at the office or having to spend the holidays with the in-laws.

Lately, I’ve been worried about Franklin Township.

You know, Franklin Township down southern Chester County way. Stuck right there between New London to the west and London Britain to the east. Home of the historic village of Kemblesville, parted by the waters of the West Branch of the White Clay Creek, and bisected by Route 896. Sorry to say, but its shortfalls have kept me awake for several hours these past few weeks.

The folks who live there don’t worry me so much. They tend to keep mostly to themselves, and their only complaints seem to stem the fact that people steal stuff out of their cars when they are parked unlocked in the driveway. Parents there concern themselves mostly with whether to attend Toddler Tuesdays at the Avon Grove Library or Homeschoolers Happenings.

What’s got me fidgety is the lack of honor that is apparently being paid to the township’s namesake, one Benjamin Franklin.

We have had this discussion before, about the disconnection between the names given to places in Chester County and reality. As I proved conclusively some time ago, for example, there are no Elk in Elk. Lower Oxford, you may recall, is located north of Oxford, and Highland has a lower elevation than Elverson. We can’t be certain how many Vincents there are in East or West Vincent, and don’t even get me started on the role Robin Hood and His Band of Merry Men may or may not have played in East and West Nottingham.

But there is clear evidence that Benjamin Franklin did spend time in Franklin, and by clear evidence I mean my conversation with Wendy Toman, until recently the chairwoman of the township’s Historic Commission.

Toman, who now lives across the border in Delaware, said that research indicated that Franklin owned land in the area of Kemblesville, and paid taxes on it to boot. He may have also scouted around the area for cheap paper from one of the paper mills for use in printing his newspaper, and as an inventor of farm equipment he is almost certain to have provided technology to help the farmers nearby bring in the fall crops.

Most importantly, Toman told me, Ben liked to stop off at what is now the Kemblesville Inn and quaff down a tankard or two there. “He apparently liked to go to taverns,” she said, with a knowing chuckle.

What has me bothered, however, is that in the century and a half since the township broke away from new London and named itself Franklin, no one has seen fit to memorialize the connection in some physical way. No statues. No monuments. No public portraits. On the township web site, you can find out more about the Colonial Pipeline Co.’s plan to mow its right of way than you can about the ties to Founding Father Franklin.

I think it’s time to correct this deficit. If not for Ben’s sake, then just so I can get my full eight hours of shut eye in.

Kidnapping McCullough

This column appeared on Sunday, Oct. 21, 2007

The law defines a criminal conspiracy as an agreement between people in which each member of the group becomes the partner of every other member of the group in deciding to carry out a criminal act.

So let’s just keep this between me and you. I think we should kidnap David McCullough.

You know, the historian-slash-Pulitizer Prize winner who authored the book “1776,” which every person in Chester County is supposed to be reading as part of the Chester County Reads program -- no matter what else they’re doing, even if they’re presently involved in open-heart surgery, on either side of the table.

If you’re not reading “1776,” then let’s just keep that between you and me, because if anyone else finds out then you are going to have to be referred to Diane Gring, public relations maven of the Chester County Library, who will personally assign someone to come to your house and read the entire book to you. And the first name on the assigned readers list is a certain Pennsylvania state senator whose last name rhymes with “dinner mint,” so I’d be extra cautious about not getting to it yourself first.

I’m in the middle of the book now and I can personally say that it among my favorite books about the year 1776. It has taught me quite a bit, including the up to now unknown fact, by me at least, that Revolutionary War soldiers were really bad dressers. It is a marvelous book, between you and me, and I highly recommend that you pick it up at your earliest convenience, and not just because of the aforementioned penalties for not doing so, either.

I think we should kidnap McCullough because I think he would fit in very well in Chester County. And between you and me, I have an inside track to get the job done.

McCullough, you see, was involved in a television documentary about the Wyeth family – you know, Andy and N.C. and the lot, and I was assigned to cover its premier in New York City. I heard him lecture briefly about the film that night, and thought he was brilliantly convincing. If he had told me that the defining moment of American history was when “Come On, Eileen” by Dexy’s Midnight Runners topped the MTV rotation in 1982, I would have repeated it as fact during my next dinner conversation.

But my “in” with McCullough comes because I spoke to him once, in 1990, on the telephone, from his home in West Tisbury, Mass., by pre-arrangement with his literary agent, about the death of Nathaniel Wyeth, the older Wyeth brother who invented the plastic soda bottle. He was kind and gracious and brilliantly convincing, and when he was done he asked me to send him a copy of his story. I did.

So I figure I’ll just saddle up to Dave when he speaks at Immaculata University on Friday and remind him that I still have some left over notes of my story if he’d like to step outside and see them. Then we’d hoodwink him and spirit him away to a quiet house along the Brandywine Creek, and he could and read and write and occasionally lecture us on the importance of classic music videos, or whatever.

Because between you and me, I think he’d do well at it.

New Posts

Hello all from the Chester County Courthouse.

If you read further down, you will see that I have left my cubicle at the main office of the Daily Local News and returned to the bowels of the Chester County Courthouse, where I will be filing stories as the "senior staff writer" and Courthouse Bureau Chief for the Daily Local. It's sort of like sending Mary Richards out to scout down stories for Ted Baxter to read over the air, except nobody watches when I toss my cap in the air at the intersection of High and Gay in ol' WC.

I thought that in addition to the weekly ... well, semi-weekly, column posts, I'd throw up ... well, put up, some of the stories I had the most fun writing, or which I thought would be of most interest to my diverse audience.

Hope you enjoy.

Oh, and everybody say hello to the new kid on the block, Mike Sherman, the sports editor of the Daily Oklahoman. You can catch more about him on YouTube.

Naming Names in Chester County

This column originally appeared on Sunday, Oct. 14, 2007

Brothers and sisters, friends and neighbors, Democrats and Republicans, tall guys and short gals, please hear my words. We here in Chester County, most glorious county on Earth, most noble county in the Solar System, most awesomest county in the Known Universe, have a problem.

I noticed the problem on Saturday in Downingtown, on my way to the annual Downingtown Friends Fall Festival, the kind of event that is meant to provide absolute faith in the notion that all is well and good in the world, and that funnel cake with powdered sugar is just as nutritious as mother’s milk.

I noticed it not because I was stuck behind the annual Downingtown Halloween Parade, which was held on Saturday, which I personally believe is a perfect time for a Halloween parade, since it gives parents and kids the opportunity to spend even more money on their real Halloween costume, which they will wear in two weeks, on the official Halloween Day, which is actually two days before Halloween.

But who’s counting.

No, I had beat the parade traffic jam by a good 90 minutes and had quite enough time to wait a few minutes at the traffic light in Downingtown, where I am accustomed to seeing all manner of real estate signs pointing me to the latest grand opening of whatever subdivision is seeking to relieve me of a sum starting in “the high 900s,” as they say in the real estate biz.

And it hit me then. There, to my left, was a directional sign pointing me toward ... Round
Hill. And another, showing me which way to get to … Tall Trees.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we have run out of names to give our developments.

Time was that it seemed obvious that the builder of any new cul-de-sac or luxury housing project with a stone gate at the entrance could just dip his hand into the name basket and come up with some variation of the county’s historic/geographic/ancestoral/natural/ cultural background to name his latest masterpiece.

You know. Like Hummingbird Farm. Or Serpentine Acres. Or Fox Knoll. Or Brandywine Estates. Or Meadows at Summerhill. Or Deer Valley. Or Deer Run. Or Deer Pointe. Or Deere Ticke. (Sorry. Couldn’t resist.)

But like a shopper driving into downtown West Chester for the first time and condemned to circling the block for hours trying to find the perfect parking space, the ringmasters of Development Land have realized that all the good names have been taken.

After all, what self-respecting pharmaceutical marketing consultant specialist wants to spend $560,000 to buy a new McMansion in the Village of Cross Keys when the guy across the cubicle from him just spent $775,000 on a pied-a-terre at the Keys at Cross Village. Who wants to move to Beaver Creek Estate when you’re already living at Quail Hill Acres?

So we’re moving to generic place names like Round Hill and Tall Trees. It’s almost sad to know that the days of Brandywine Manor Farms and Brandywine Pointe and Brandywine Terrace are behind us.

So line up very soon, brothers and sisters, for the grand opening of Small Creek and Gentle Slope and Asphalt Driveway and Crumbling Curb Estates.

I hear the Halloween parties there start in July.

Funeral Scofflaw

This story originally appeared on Sunday, Oct. 14, 2007

WEST CHESTER — Seventy five dollars.

That’s all that Douglas Daniel “Dusty” Ditmer had to pay each month to live up to his end of a bargain he made with the family of the man he killed 10 years ago in a violent crash in the center of West Chester after a night of drinking at a borough bar.

The money would have gone to reimburse the funeral costs that William Lynch Jr.’s family had paid to see him buried at the Philadelphia Memorial Gardens in Frazer. But despite repeated promises to the judges overseeing his case, Ditmer continues to fall short of that goal, causing frustration among court officials and anguish in the East Goshen home where his wife and daughter live today.

Probation officers and prosecutors are set to go to a court once again to convince Judge Phyllis Steitel that Ditmer, an itinerant worker who has a record of sporadic payments for other legal obligations, including care for his 5-year-old daughter, is once again in contempt of the court’s restitution schedule. But this time it may be harder to collect, since Ditmer’s whereabouts are unknown.

“Part of our job is to help make the victim whole, and that means getting the restitution paid,” said Christopher Murphy, Chester County’s chief probation officer, in a discussion of the generalities surrounding Ditmer’s case. “It’s offensive if defendants don’t pay it, especially if its money for a funeral. It really reopens old wounds, and the victims have to go through (the case) all over again.”

Lynch’s family agrees.

“We feel like every time we have to contact the district attorney’s office to tell them that he’s fallen behind again, that we are victimized over and over again,” said Sandra Lynch, William Lynch’s 49-year-old daughter. “It’s been a real hardship on my mom financially.”

Ditmer, now 31, owes $5,497. He has not made a payment since May, when he was threatened with six months in prison if he did not pay.

“We put him in a holding cell and he eventually came up with $200,” said Craig Geisel, the adult probation officer in charge of collections, describing the last time Ditmer was brought to court. “We haven’t seen anything from him since.”

Ditmer’s saga began the morning of March 8, 1997, when West Chester police were dispatched to an accident at the intersection of North High and West Chestnut streets about 4:40 a.m.

As was described in the arrest affidavit charging Ditmer, he was driving between 56 and 69 mph when he collided with the driver’s side of Lynch’s 1992 Honda. He knocked the car into the parking lot of a pizza parlor once located at the intersection, the impact of the crash causing severe injuries to Lynch. By the time police arrived, Lynch was dead.

In the back seat of Ditmer’s car was a bottle of Bicardi Gold rum. Under the driver’s seat was a 12 ounce bottle of Bud Light, and in the rear of the car a bottle of Milwaukee’s Best beer. Neither Ditmer nor his two passengers that night suffered more than minor injuries.

Ditmer’s blood alcohol at the time was tested as 0.17, almost twice the legal limit for driving under the influence.

Lynch, a ceramics teacher and owner of a pottery store in East Goshen, was making deliveries for the Daily Local News that morning, earning extra money to supplement his income and pension from the telephone company. March 8 was his 60th birthday, and his family, including his 92-year-old mother, was planning a large party for him.

Instead, a few days later, they watched as he was laid to rest in Frazer. His mother was beside herself, Sandra Lynch said.

“She couldn’t understand why she had to bury her son,” she said.
Six months later, Ditmer entered a guilty plea to homicide by vehicle and DUI in exchange for an agreed upon prison term of two years to 59 months in a state correctional institution.

At his sentencing hearing, Lynch’s widow, Joan Lynch, went out of her way to express forgiveness for Ditmer and to wish him good fortune after his release from prison.

“Dusty, I miss my husband very much,” Joan Lynch told her husband’s killer. “I know I will greatly miss him the rest of my life. With the Lord helping me and with all my heart, I forgive you for what you did because I know you did not do it intentionally.”

“Your future is up to you,” she continued. “I am hoping, and it is my prayer, that you will come back (from jail) a changed person, a law-abiding person, and that you can make a good contribution to your community and to society.”

Ditmer seemed to be moved by her words and apologized. “I’d like to say I’m terribly sorry to cause the pain that I did to you and your family,” he said. “I’ll do to live in God’s light and do what I can for your restitution.”

That restitution was set at $10,418.58. Upon his release from state prison, Lynch did begin paying, whittling down the amount he owed to slightly over $8,000 by early 2003. But the money was slow in coming, Sandra Lynch said. “We even had to wait one whole year for one payment,” she said.

In May 2003, at the behest of the adult probation office, now retired Judge Lawrence Wood signed an agreement with Ditmer allowing him to pay $75 per month until the balance of the restitution was paid. It was a remarkable agreement since by law Ditmer was not under the supervision of the county’s probation department. He had served state time, and was therefore responsible first to the state probation authorities.

Three years later, Ditmer was back in court on contempt proceedings, still slow in paying. He was ordered to pay $500 up front, then $100 a month for six months until he was caught up on his back payment, and then, again, at the low rate of $75 a month.

According to a petition for contempt filed last week by Assistant District Attorney Beth Bowers, after Ditmer paid $100 in July 2006 he didn’t pay anything on his account until his mother came into the probation office and paid $400 for him.

By May of this year, the arrears had stacked up again, and Ditmer was hauled before Streitel to pay $200. At the time, he signed a wage attachment for the $75 monthly payments, but shortly thereafter he was fired from his job at Target in West Whiteland and no payment was ever made on that amount.

Authorities are not hopeful of getting Ditmer in front of Streitel at a scheduled Dec. 11 hearing. According to Bowers’ contempt petition, his current whereabouts are unknown. The house listed as his last address is apparently abandoned, and his last known phone number is disconnected.

Sandra Lynch does not blame Chester County authorities for the situation with her father’s killer. She blames the system which makes the court officials intermediaries between her mother and Ditmer, and believes that the state should pay her mother’s restitution, making Ditmer liable to the court.

“He’s more likely to pay it back if he had to be responsible to the court system and not my mom,” Sandra Lynch said. “But he’s just back in court, over and over.

“My mother should not have to do this again,” she said.

Drive Like An Egyptian

This story origoinally appeared on Friday, Oct. 12, 2007

WEST CHESTER — The Chester County Adult Probation Office supervises thousands of defendants each year, most with the relative ease that comes from an experienced staff and a well-tuned system.

But even Common Pleas Judge William Mahon acknowledged that they may have some difficulties in the case of Baha Eldin Zidan, who entered a plea this week to an assault charge stemming from a hit-and-run accident in Phoenixville in early 2006.

Zidan, you see, is Egyptian. He does not speak or write English, only Arabic.

And he is deaf.

And he is mute.

Taking all those factors into account led Mahon to offer the probation department the option of making the bulk of the time they are now responsible for supervising Zidan non-reporting probation — meaning that he will not necessarily have to come to the Chester County Courthouse to speak to — or rather meet with — a probation officer.

“I’ve been doing this for 24 years, and I’ve never seen anything like it before,” said Chris Murphy, head of the county’s adult probation office.

Zidan entered an Alford plea to a single count of simple assault for the traffic accident in February 2006 that left an 83-year-old borough man in intensive care with a broken arm and multiple leg fractures. In the plea, Zidan does not acknowledge guilt, but agrees it is in his best interest to accept the sentence offered.

Zidan, 42, of West Bridge Street, Phoenixville, entered his plea Monday in front of Mahon with the aid of not one but two American Sign Language interpreters — one of whom traveled all the way from Richmond, Va., to attend the proceedings.

Multiple interpreters are necessary in cases involving hearing impaired defendants because one must translate what is said to the defendant, while the other must translate what the defendant signs to the court.

This case was unusual, those involved said, because not only does Zidan not understand English, but also does not understand American Sign Language — a form of “signing” that combines various hand signals, palm orientations, movements of the hands, arms and body, and facial expressions.

The interpreter “speaking” to Zidan, thus, was forced to use a series of simple gestures to make certain that he understood what was going on. Zidan was represented at the hearing by Phoenixvlle attorney Elliot Goldberg, who could not be reached for comment.

According to an arrest affidavit in the case, the victim, Fred Fisher, was walking east on Pothouse Road bout 6:30 a.m. Jan. 3, 2006, when he was struck by a vehicle travelling east on the road. The car, identified as a 1997 white Ford Escort, left the scene without offering assistance to Fisher or providing drivers’ information.

Police were able to track the car to the Vale Rio Diner, where Zidan works as an assistant. Damage to the car matched some debris left at the accident, and police then tried to interview Zidan.

According to the affidavit, Zidan later went to the borough police department, where he was read his Miranda rights and admitted to striking the victim and not stopping. He was charged with accidents involving death of personal injury, a felony.

But after a hearing in April of this year, Mahon threw out both a statement Zidan gave in the diner parking lot concerning the accident and the videotaped statement he gave police at headquarters. He did so after Goldberg contended that the statements were taken improperly because there was no certified Arabic-language interpreter with signing skills present to accurately translate what the officers were saying to him.

Zidan, Goldberg argued, “could not have made the statements and explanations in any event as he is unable to speak.”

In his sentence, Zidan will spend two years on probation and pay $4,730 to the victim for medical expenses.

Murphy said his department was required by law to provide an interpreter at county expense for Zidan when he reported. “Defendants have a right to that,” he said. “I can’t not do it.”

Zidan is restricted from driving during the first five months of probation so that he can travel only to work, to visit his mother in northern Virginia, and to the probation department.

Assistant District Attorney Steve Jarmon, who prosecuted the case, declined to comment on the matter, other than to say he was satisfied with its disposition and of the relief it gave Fisher’s family.

Valentine's Day Assault

This story originally appeared Thursday, Oct. 4, 2007

WEST CHESTER -- Valentine’s Day is normally a time for couples to express their affection for one another with flowers, chocolate or even just an intimate, candlelight dinner.

But for Lisa Platt of Spring City, this year’s holiday turned violent and bloody.
According to statements made during a court hearing Monday, Platt spent Valentine’s Day evening in the hospital, courtesy of her then-boyfriend, William Monroe Mathues.

Mathues had struck Platt once in the head with a snow shovel the two were fighting over outside their South Main Street home the night of Feb. 14. The two had admittedly been drinking heavily that day after a snow storm struck the region, and began arguing around 8:30 p.m. as they tried to clear the walk in front of the house.

Borough police said they found Platt in her home, bleeding from the scalp. She was taken to the hospital, where emergency room doctors closed her wound with five surgical staples.

In a hearing at which he pleaded no contest to simple assault charges, Mathues was sentenced to 235 days to 23 months in prison for the attack. The time-served plea allowed him to be paroled Monday.

Assistant District Attorney Lorraine Finnegan told Judge Howard F. Riley Jr. that Platt and Mathues have had “a long, ongoing turbulent relationship, that is now hopefully behind them.”

She said that Platt had been granted a protection from abuse order that requires Mathues to stay away from her or face jail time.

Mathues’ attorney, Robert J. Donatoni, said after the hearing that his client would be getting treatment for his drug and alcohol issues and had agreed not to have any contact with Platt, even though Spring City, where his family lives, is a close-knit community. Mathues plans to live in Royersford with his mother when he is released.

Mathues, wearing a turtleneck, striped sweater and olive khakis, said little during the brief hearing except to acknowledge that the prosecution could have proven its case against him and sought greater prison time than the seven months he has spent in jail since the incident.

He must also make restitution of about $12,500 for Platt’s medical expenses.

Party House Wanted

This story originally appeared on Tuesday, Oct. 2, 2007

WEST CHESTER — The Chester County District Attorney’s Office is seeking to take control of a former mushroom company executive’s posh Kennett home, arguing that it was used as a illicit haven for drug use in violation of state law.

Richard Basciani, a member of the Basciani Foods family, growers and sellers of fresh mushrooms in southern Chester County, pleaded guilty in November 2006 to drug possession charges stemming from a raid of his home by state police earlier that year.

Police seized a numbers of drugs, including marijuana, cocaine and Oxycontin, from the home. According to authorities, Basciani kept drugs, weapons and drug paraphernalia in a safe room in the Kaolin Road house where he held drug parties for local teens.

Now, almost a year from his sentencing, prosecutors have filed paperwork to seize the 113,932-square-foot home, complete with swimming pool, as well as 3.2 acres of land it sits on and $8,011 in cash police found during the raid.

In a petition filed Sept. 21, the prosecution states the property is subject to state forfeiture law because Basciani admittedly committed drug violations there.

Between Dec. 24, 2005, and Jan. 6, 2006, Basciani used, stored and delivered controlled substances to others on many occasions that were recorded on a security video system at the residence, the petition says.

Generally speaking, any property that is used in a drug transaction — such as a car or home — can be forfeited to authorities after a person’s arrest and conviction. The county can then use the proceeds from any sale or settlement on the property during further drug investigations.

But in many cases this action comes shortly after the prosecution ends. One of Basciani’s attorneys noted the length of time it took prosecutors to seize the property.

“I was surprised that this action came at this time,” said defense attorney Robert Donatoni, who represented Basciani during a plea agreement in the case. “It’s almost a year since the case was negotiated.”

No hearing has been set in the forfeiture petition. But last month the prosecution won a temporary injunction forbidding Basciani from transferring or selling the property.
Donatoni said he had just become aware of the forfeiture action and would be meeting with Basciani’s family later in the week to determine how to proceed.

Donatoni’s co-counsel, West Chester attorney Thomas Schindler, could not be reached for comment. But earlier this summer, Schindler helped negotiate the return of some guns and Basciani’s passport, which were taken during the state police search of the home.
Judge Howard F. Riley signed an order Sept. 4 allowing Basciani to reclaim these items, but the judge left open the question of what would happen to the $8,011 and made no mention of the prosecution’s claim on the property.

The property itself would bring a tidy sum on the open market. One West Chester real estate broker estimated its value at $450,000 to $650,000.

Assistant District Attorney Norman Pine filed the forfeiture action but declined comment
on the matter.

Basciani is serving a five- to 10-year state prison sentence for his crimes. In addition to
pleading guilty on drug charges, he admitted to corrupting minors and possessing firearms without a license. During sentencing, Basciani, 51, said he had undergone drug treatment programs to get better.

The case against Basciani began when a housekeeper at his property told police he had supplied her with drugs, sometimes after they had sex. During their search, police found video recordings of drug parties attended by teens Basciani had invited.

Assistant District Attorney Lorraine M.B. Finnegan prosecuted the case and called Bascini’s sentencing a benefit to the community.

“I’m happy that the community feels it is better off without the parties and drugs he provided,” she said. “It was a party house, and I’m happy that this put an end to that.”

Holiday Displays Controversy

This story originally appeared on Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2007

WEST CHESTER -- The Chester County Commissioners are set to approve conditions under which groups can get permission to erect winter holiday displays.

The new policy, scheduled for a vote Thursday at the board’s formal session, would requite that the display conform with current First Amendment law concerning religious displays such as creches or Menorahs.

The move comes in the wake of a dispute last year after a Menorah was erected on the courthouse lawn for the first time. Its presence led a former county commissioner to argue that the commissioners had opened the door to other displays, and soon the board approved the display of a nativity scene on the lawn.

At their work session Tuesday, the commissioners made it clear that they did not want the courthouse lawn to become a central point for groups to put up displays year-round. The only times that displays would be permitted under the policy are during the winter holiday season -- roughly from the end of November to mid-January. An exception is also made for the United Way of Chester County, which has historically put up a sign indicating its fund raising activities on the lawn.

“it would be our practice to not have other displays on the courthouse lawn,” said Commissioner Patrick O’Donnell. He suggested that it would be unseemly to have groups “start hanging stuff up all over the eaves” of the historic courthouse.

Commissioner Donald Mancini said he was in favor of an even more restrictive policy that would ban all displays from the courthouse front lawn. He noted that the building had just undergone a $2 million renovation and that there was some concern that displays would detract from the historic character of the building. But he said he would go along with the new policy allowing winter displays.

“I recognize that’s not going to be workable,” he said of the ban. “As long as things are workable, and so everyone knows what’s going on” he would support the policy’s adoption.

The proposed policy states that groups may erect winter holiday displays so long as the commissioners determine that the display “will not have the effect of causing a reasonable observer to believe that the count is endorsing religion” and “will not adversely affect the appearance of the courthouse”

It also requires that any group proposing a display mus provide proof of general liability insurance in the amount of $1 million.

Former Commissioner Colin Hanna, who last year led the charge for the presence of a creche on the courthouse lawn, said the policy appeared workable.

“It seems like a reasonable attempt to develop a policy that both honors our traditions and doesn’t cross the line into constitutional impermissible establishment of religion,” Hanna, now head of the Pennsylvania Pastors Network, said Tuesday.

“The policy also leaves the final discretion in the hands of the commissioners, and I think that is appropriate,” Hanna said.

In late 2006, the commissioners were approached by former Commissioner Andy Dinniman, now a Pennsylvania state senator, with a request from the Chabad of Chester County, a Jewish organization, to allow a Menorah to be erected on the lawn, next to the traditional Christmas tree and snowman displays. The commissioners agreed to allow one to be placed here. Soon after, Hanna wrote the commissioners and demanded that they allow a creche -- a traditional Christian display.

The commissioners agreed, and soon an East Bradford woman, Helene Eissler, paid for a creche that stayed on the lawn during the Christmas season.

The Chester County Courthouse became part of the battleground over the debate on what religious symbols are permitted on a public building in 2001, when two residents objected to the presence of a plaque listing the 10 Commandments on the front of the courthouse. Both Dinniman and Hanna, commissioners at the time, supported the presence of the plaque, and a federal court eventually allowed it to remain.

The new holiday display policy requires groups wanting to erect displays to make application to the county by Nov. 15, and to pay all costs associated with constriction and maintenance of the displays. The commissioners suggested that if there are a large number of requests, not every organization would be granted approval. But they also said approval would not be made on a first-come, first-served basis.

If adopted, the full text of the policy would be posted on the county’s website, www.chesco.org.

Drop Kick Baby

This story originally appeared on Sunday, Oct. 7, 2007


WEST CHESTER – A Honey Brook man has abandoned his quest to assert an insanity defense against charges he dropped his one month old son on the floor of his girlfriend’s house and then kicked the child in the head, instead entering a guilty plea.

Dwayne Allen “Chopper” Zeimer, 29, of Horseshoe Pike will ask Common Pleas Court Judge Thomas Gavin to determine how much time he should spend in prison for the assault on his son. He entered an open plea of guilty on Wednesday to charges of aggravated assault, endangering the welfare of children and terroristic threats.

The assault charge, a first-degree felony, carries with it a mandatory minimum prison term of five years because of the age of the victim. But Elizabeth Pitts, the deputy district attorney prosecuting the case, said Thursday she would seek a “significantly” longer prison term.

In his plea, Zeimer admitted that on Feb. 20, 2006, he intentionally injured his 30-day old son during an argument with his then-girlfriend, Heidi Allison Hatton, who had told Zeimer that she intended to end their relationship.

He was arrested by state police at Embreeville, after a high speed chase through western Chester County and eastern Lancaster County, during which troopers clocked him traveling over 100 mph in a 1992 Pontiac SUV.

A year after his arrest, Zeimer gave notice to the court through his attorney, Assistant Public Defender David B. Miller, that he intended to pursue a defense of insanity at trial. Based on an interview with psychologist Elliot L. Atkins of Marlton, N.J., Miller contended that Zeimer suffered from major depression that left him psychotic, an obsessive compulsive disorder, a dissociative disorder and a dependent personality disorder.

Those psychological disorders would have left him incapable of appreciating the nature of his actions that night, Miller said in his notice.

Although his guilty plea has left him without of the possibility of being found not guilty by reason of insanity at trial, Zeimer can still claim his mental condition as a mitigating factor at his sentencing hearing, now scheduled for Dec. 3.

According to the description of events given by Pitts during Zeimer’s plea, Zeimer and Hatton were arguing about their relationship when Zeimer went into a bedroom where his son was sleeping and brought him back out in the kitchen. He held in by the head for several minutes before he stood up, held the baby in the air and then threw him to the floor.

He then kicked the child twice in the head before Hatton was able to throw herself on top of the baby and protect him. Zeimer also threatened to kill both the baby and Hatton during the incident.

The baby was flown to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where he was hospitalized for 12 days, some of the time in the intensive care unit. Pitts said the baby suffered from two broken legs, a broken arm and internal bleeding. The child is still being treated for the after affects of the injuries today, she said.

Back to the Future

This column originally appeared on Sunday, Oct. 7, 2007

Chester County, one of William Penn’s original land subdivisions, turns 325 this year.
The Chester County Courthouse – that amalgam of buildings that occupies the center of downtown West Chester turns, by measure of its different annexes, new wings and awkward additions, 161, 115, 43, and 26 this year, give or take.

On May 12, I celebrated my 50th birthday. And on Thursday of this week, I will commemorate 25 years working for the Daily Local News.

They say that home is where the heart is, but they don’t really stamp with that idiom with an image of what that home should looks like. For my money, home stands about five stories tall, is made of part Indiana limestone, part brick and part Nova Scotia Pictou stone, and has a doorway that reads, “Justitia” above it. It’s got a clock tower on its top and a frieze on its side that features not only Yankee Hall of Fame pitcher Herb Pennock but also the Marquis de Lafayette.

I started covering news as a reporter/drudge out of the courthouse in the late 1980s, and moved there on a semi-permanent basis in the 1990s.

If you want to count numbers, I composed an estimated 1,200 stories during the six years I was at the courthouse regularly, covered 15 murder trials, sat in three different press rooms, and received about 18 haircuts.

The latter may not have anything to do with the quality of the news accounts I was giving at the time in the overall scheme of things, but certainly concerned my employers at the time enough so that the publisher would make a point of coming into the newsroom expressly to comment on length of my hair when it had retreated to a space above my shirt collar.

I began falling in love with the courthouse when I began covering the courts beat – trials, pleas, filings, legal arguments, lawyerly foibles, Judge M. Joseph Melody, etc. After awhile, I learned the rabbit warren of back stairways and basement tunnels that allowed me to get places where the normal person wasn’t going, and used that knowledge to spend my time avoiding work as much as possible by gossiping with some of the most interesting people you’d ever want to meet – usually while they, too, were taking a break from their underpaid, overworked jobs.

I knew I’d found a home the first time a judge heard me yawning and said to one of the lawyers in front of him, “If you can’t keep him interested, what do you think you’re doing to me?”

I say all this because The Management at the Daily Local News has seen fit to ship me back to the courthouse, presumably to continue where I left off 11 years ago.

I know I will miss my post as news editor, as much I know as the newsroom callers who asked me to send a reporter to their daughter’s school play will miss my polite responses, but I am looking forward to the changes that I know I will find, and to seeing once again the old faces who still populate the courthouse’s hallways and courtrooms and back stairways.

I see it this way: Home may be where the heart is, but it is also where the Motion to Dismiss is filed.

The Best Meal in West Chester

This column originally appeared on Sunday, Sept. 16, 2007

Here’s a little bit of historic detritus, courtesy of the Daily Local News afternoon edition, Sept. 19, 1983. Under the headline, “Festival crowd … called ‘enjoyable mob,’ appears the following paragraph:

“Organizers of the festival, which brought more than 50 restaurants to the five-block-long Gay Street Mall, were quick to proclaim the event a success. Along with unofficial estimates by the West Chester police department, the organizers set the crowd at 26,000.”

It should come as no surprise that the event in question was the fourth annual Chester County Restaurant Festival, which has morphed into the West Chester Restaurant Festival, which is set to kick off sometime around noon today on that self same Gay Street — although no one refers to Gay Street as a mall anymore, not unless they want a sour look from the Chamber of Commerce for simply bringing up the dreaded “m” word.

I bring this account to your attention because the person who wrote it seems so overtaken by the “well controlled … friendly … sunny skies … party spirit” that it’s a wonder his cynical, hard-bitten, crusty old editors didn’t fire him on the spot for becoming so besotted with the success-proclaiming organizers that it appears he swallowed their proverbial Kool-Aid as easily as he must have swallowed the wine they sold to benefit the Chester County Hospital.

Luckily for me, however, they didn’t, since I’m the author.

Now that I’ve turned into one of those cynical, hard-bitten, crusty old editors, I see the festival for what it truly is — a great time for people to come to the borough and get either acquainted or reacquainted with the grandeur that is West Chester, and an even better time for those of us who live here year-round to either stay inside all day or get acquainted/reacquainted with anyplace outside a five-mile radius from the center of West Chester.

It’s not that we don’t appreciate the attention the festival brings our fair borough. We know what a great place this town is, and we don’t mind showing it off every now and then. What makes us uneasy about the whole experience is that we know that the greatest meals in West Chester don’t get served at the Restaurant Festival.

No, the best meals come from a combination of dishes at a variety of venues scattered throughout the borough.

You start, obviously, with an appetizer of hummus, grilled pita and Baba ghanoush from The Mediterranian on West Gay, then dart across the street to Tony’s Meat Market and pray that Kenny has some chicken pasta left over at the end of the day. You’ve already made sure that Anthony at Penn’s Table has a quick Greek salad to go on hand so you won’t have to stop too long before picking up the seared tilapia filet from High Street Caffe on your way home. A bottle of Pinot Grigio from Stargazers that you picked up earlier from Brian and Jen at the Growers Market is already waiting for you, so you’re pretty much set, except for the dish of mint chocolate chip from West Chester Scoop for dessert.

And hopefully the only mob you have to deal with is the Corleone crew on DVD.

Before the Sun Sets

This column originally appeared on Sunday, Sept. 9, 2007


Bookmarked on my computer is a handy little Web page that shows a calendar that lists the times of sunrise and sunset, moon rise and set, and various types of twilight. I’ve been watching it regularly the past few weeks as I try to hold on to the last days of summer and prepare for the coming of autumn.

I’m not really complaining about the waning of summer; the fewer the days when the heat and humidity combine to line my brow with sweat and make time spent outside feel considerably akin to time spent behind prison bars, the better for me. But it seems that there are facets of the season that I am trying not to let go.

It’s all a little like watching the clock on a large scale, a bad habit that the unlucky of us fall into in grade school and do not relinquish even into our 30s and 40s with their workday world. From this online calendar, I can see that sunset today comes at 7:21 p.m.; Monday at 7:19 p.m., Tuesday at 7:18 p.m., and on and on until the day in late September when the sun rises at 6:52 a.m. sets at 6:51 p.m., giving us almost exactly 12 hours of light and 12 hours of darkness. We all know where this ends up — the day you walk out to your car at 4 p.m. and have to use a flashlight to get your key in the car door lock.

Believe me, I don’t get all misty-eyed and “Fiddler on the Roof” about this, humming “Sunrise, sunset/Sunrise, sunset/Swiftly fly the years …” in between hanging up on irritating newsroom callers. This is no existential longing to extend my youth and delay the coming of the autumn of my years.

I just like the taste of a fresh ear of corn, preferably from the farm stand along Creek Road in Cossart, Pennsbury, where clerks throw juicy peaches to the workers on the scrap metal train from Coatesville as they slowly pass by on the Conrail tracks that follow the Brandywine Creek south to Wilmington, Del.

I just like the way you feel invigorated when diving into a cool wave as it crashes over you at the beach after you’ve baked long enough in the heat of the midday sun, sitting on a chair in the sand with the proper amount of SPF 45 on your melanoma-free skin.

I just like the sunny stillness that you get in the morning on South Church Street, when the neighborhood boys come out with their mother to wait for the yellow bus that will take them off to the classroom where they will learn their history and math and English and, most importantly, their clock-watching skills.

I just like the warm evenings on the porch with the quiet conversations among neighbors or pleasant encounters with strangers, who say they are going uptown for ice cream and wonder if you’d like some and really do come back with a cup of mint chocolate chip stored in the bottom of the baby carriage.

I just like knowing that even if/when they lose today, the Phils are going to be playing tomorrow and that maybe Ryan Howard will launch one that actually leaves the entire ballyard.

Those things could all technically happen come autumn. But they just wouldn’t feel the same as they do when sunset comes after 8 p.m.

Alien Astronauts Around?

This column appeared on Sunday, Sept. 2, 2007


Saturday had an air of discovery about it, so I went looking for a little island of Chester County that plays host to a place called Point Lookout. Ultimately, however, the journey took me to Nazca Lines of Peru and taught me the meaning of the word geoglyph.

Discoveries often come during searches for something you’re not looking for. Christopher Columbus discovered the New World while looking for a route to the West Indies. Frank W. Epperson was simply being forgetful when he left that stick in some flavored water on his back porch overnight but, when it froze, he still had discovered the Popsicle. So understand that I was looking for Point Lookout when I came across the geoglyphs of Chadds Ford.

The lookout sits on a triangular piece of land that sticks up like a pyramid along the Brandywine Creek, on the border between Pennsylvania and Delaware. The area is detached from Chester County, surrounded by Chadds Ford on two sides and Delaware on the third, but remains a part of our fair county nonetheless.

Parking my car, ducking a fence, crossing a meadow and following some railroad tracks, I came to a spot that I guessed was the Point, all the while wondering what the purpose of the lookout could have been. Early settlers scouting for marauding Lenape Indians? Colonial troops spying on the British Army? Or just wary Chester County gentry trying to catch Delaware County riff-raff sneaking into the county to open greasy pizza parlors.

I left the area without any resolution, but not really disappointed. I’d taken a quiet walk through a sunlit forest on a cool morning, and on the way back I came across a roadside vegetable stand that had great freshly picked corn and tomatoes. At home, I sat at my computer and tried to find any sign of the Point on an aerial map.

When the program loaded, however, what amazed me was not by an image of the lookout, but something nearby.

Across the Brandywine was a field of clearly visible lines cut into the ground in a strange, interconnected series of loops and circles. I stared at the image dumbfounded, struck suddenly by the memory of that 1970s sensationalist hoax “The Ancient Astronauts.” You remember: the book that sold us on the theory that structures like the pyramids of Egypt and the Andes village of Maccu Picchu were created with the help of visiting aliens?

One “proof” of this theory is the presence of the Nazca Lines, etchings carved into rock on a high South American desert plateau — figures called geoglyphs, I learned. The characters they depict can only be coherently visualized from high above, so the argument goes that their creators must have had help from a spaceship full of bored alien doodlers. But had they stopped off here to do the same thing, I asked myself. Could there be alien communities still operating in Chester County? Has Hollywood director M. Night Shyamalan anything to do with this?

In the end I indeed answered the mystery of the geoglyphs of Chadds Ford, but am keeping the information largely to myself. Some discoveries are just worth savoring in private, like a nice Popsicle.

The Other Side of Paradise

This column originally apperaed on Aug. 26, 2007

OK, class. Geography discussion time.

Get out your copy of Franklin’s “Chester & Delaware Metro Street Atlas,” and turn to map number 3182. See that little corner of Upper Uwchlan labeled Lyndell? That’s our topic for today.

The folks who decided to dam Marsh Creek and inundate the village of Milford Mills back in the early 1970s knew there would be unintended consequences to their actions, but they likely figured those would be on the order of unplanned-for growth in the population of bass fisherpeople in Chester County.

What they did not foresee was the creation of a separate colony of residents who are citizens of, but somewhat alienated from, the larger Upper Uwchlan community. Call them, as one wise man did with me in a recent conversation, “The Folks on the Other Side of the Lake.”

This is not to say that homeowners on Davenport Drive and Reeds Road and Colts Meadow Run and Fox Hollow Road live on the proverbial wrong side of the tracks. In a township where the median income for a household is $96,711 and only 2 percent of residents are below the poverty line, you’d be hard- pressed to hard to find any sort of housing distinction in Upper Uwchlan that would qualify as your average shantytown.

But the Folks on the Other Side of the Lake are disadvantaged in that the rest of the township — the vibrant, functioning, car dealership-laden part of the township — is cut off from them by the 530 acres of Marsh Creek Lake. To get from Lyndell to Eagle is a nearly impossible task, requiring a switchback series of back-road turns reminiscent of the outdoor maze that Jack Nicholson got trapped in at the end of “The Shining.”

I normally don’t have sympathy for the woes of the people who populate DevelomentLand. It’s hard to break spiritual bread with people whose low point in life comes when their Blackberry loses reception in the jacuzzi.

But I do feel for the Folks on the Other Side of the Lake. They want so much to be part of the swank wine, cheese and horse dung life of Chester Springs, and yet they find themselves tied geographically to the rubble of “historic” Guthriesville.

While their neighbors in the village of Uwchland (Motto: “No, We Are Not Going To Explain The Extra ‘D.’”) are deciding whether to shop at the Lexus dealership or stick with the SUVs at CarSense, folks in Lyndell have to worry that some renegade paper mill owner might drop roofing tacks on their driveway. It has to be hard to realize that it is easier to get a burger at the McDonalds in Downingtown than it is to have dinner at the Eagle Tavern.

I believe, however, that there may be a solution to the “East of Eden” dilemma that the Folks on the Other Side of the Lake face. Passage of SB 90210, the “Chester County Open Space Creation Act of 2007 (As Amended),” would require the Army Corps of Engineers to fill in Marsh Creek Lake. When accomplished, Lyndell residents would be able to scoot over to Eagle in no time.

Plus, there’d be the natural side benefit of the drop in the bass fisherpeople population.

Lazy Bones' Mea Culpa

Sorry, folks. I haven't been posting my columns in the past few weeks because I, well, uh, becaue .. I had a hangnail? Had to wash my hair? Had to defrost the refrigerator? Had to defrost my hangnail?

Face it, people. I get lazy every now and then and neglect my duties. Don't believe me? Check my kitchen sink. There's a plate at the bottom of the pile that contains scraps from a dinner I had sometime around the end of July.

Hope you have found other things to occupy your time with since I disappeared, and that you'll enjoy reading these musings.

Happy end of summer!

Chester B. DeMille

This column originally appeared on Aug. 12, 2007

Maybe you saw the news that a New Mexico production company is proposing building a multi-million dollar film and television studio in the Philadelphia area. Maybe you didn’t. But then again, maybe you saw the major motion picture “Chubb-Chubbs Save Xmas,” and maybe you didn’t. I will tell you that from what I can gather, both productions rate about one star on my grading scale — out of a possible 100.

It’s not that I don’t love the idea of saving Xmas, or the whole Mid-Winter Holiday Season Concept for those of you atheists and pagans celebrating at home. Nor do I object to the idea of locating a film and television production facility in the Philadelphia area, for that matter.

No, when I read the story, the sentence that struck me as something for the cutting room floor was this one: “Pacifica” — that’s the name of the production company from New Mexico — “is looking at sites in Bucks, Delaware and Philadelphia counties.”

“Cut!” as they used to say in those Hollywood movies about Hollywood movies.

Never mind the fact that we’re dealing here with a company named Pacifica that’s located in a state that does not currently border the Pacific Ocean, or any ocean that I’m aware of. But here they are practically slapping us folks in Chester County who are of the firm belief that our hometown would make the perfect place for a studio, slapping us like Moe would slap Curly.

The announcement comes about a month after state lawmakers approved $75 million in film tax credits for the fiscal year that started July 1. Gov. Ed Rendell said at a news conference with the film production company’s chief, who is trying to put together a $10 million incentive package to get the studio project off the ground, that the idea was a natural for the Philly area.

Rendell said the Philadelphia region should be attractive to filmmakers for its variety of shooting locations, from rural farms to the gritty neighborhoods of the inner city. “This area has unlimited capacity for different scenes,” said Rendell, the former Philadelphia mayor and current Eagles acolyte. “You can't get urban grime in Albuquerque.”

Hey, yo, Ed! If you hadn’t looked, we got it all. You want rural, we’ve got rolling hillsides that roll into other rolling hillsides. You want grime, take a walk around Phoenixville sometime and see what ends up on the soles of your shoes. You want drama like the Western standoff in “High Noon”? Check out the battle between Borough Council in West Chester and their historic preservation comrades. You want comedy like the confused townsfolk in “Blazing Saddles”? Do the words, “Hear ye, hear ye! The Council of the City of Coatesville is now in session!” strike your funny bone?

According to the Associated Press, the Delaware Valley studio would need to grow to about 1 million square feet, comprising sound stages, production offices and other space. One million square feet is about the average size of a foyer in a Mcmansion in Upper Uwchlan. We’ve got square feet just sitting around waiting to be used — a lot of it in strip shopping centers that have nearby Quiznos, so catering wouldn’t be a problem.

And did I mention that Bam’s all set for his close-up?

My Gift To The Midwest

This column originally appeared Aug. 5, 2007

The folks in Hawarden, Iowa, and Centerville, S.D., might think about sending me an invitation to come out their way for a quick camping trip.

Since they have little-to-virtually no precipitation at all during the month of July and are suffering a Stage Two Drought as a result, my presence there with a tent and a sleeping bag could be counted on to change things overnight, bringing cool buckets of rain to their parched landscape.

It is, after all, axiomatic: Wherever I camp, it rains.

If you think I am exaggerating, then I hasten to point to the family vacation the Rellahan family took in the summer of 1973 to Old Orchard Beach, Maine. Word had it they’d been having a dry spell that summer until my family pulled up in our 1972 Dodge Dart. It was past dark when we arrived, but I confidently pitched by canvas pop tent out in a field near the resort hotel where we would be staying.

I woke up about six hours later in both darkness and about two inches of water. The point in the field where my tent was situated was the outdoor equivalent to the bottom center of a swimming pool, with me acting as a drain plug. Things have ever been thus when I venture out into the world of outdoor recreation.

It is not simply that it rains where and when I camp. It rains when I make reservations to go camping, my actual physical presence not being needed to open up the heavens.

Don’t believe me? Ask the rangers at Bowman Lake State Park in Oxford, N.Y., who had not had appreciable rain the third weekend of August since the late 1990s. But when I paid my fee for a camp site for that weekend last week, the front started moving in almost immediately. The town got 2.73 inches of rain in one day — the day I was scheduled to arrive.

Ask my friend Julia about the weekend when we were supposed to spend a relaxing weekend in September 2005 at Worlds End State Park in central Pennsylvania and instead spent an afternoon dodging the overflowing banks of the Saucon River. They tell me that folks up in Sullivan County had never seen rain clouds so big and black and wet.

Coincidence? Is it a coincidence that sales at local beer distributors increase when West Chester University opens for its fall session? Is it a coincidence that when the phone rings at 1520 WCHE-AM that Tony Polito is on the other end? I think not.

The point hit home again last weekend when I made my way to New York for a go at camping at Bowman Lake. (Last year I saw the writing on the wall, or the storm centers on the weather radar, take your pick, and stayed home.) Thursday evening was cool and dry, Friday dawned with blue skies, the noontime crowd at Cooperstown outside the Baseball Hall of Fame was bathed in sunshine, and by 2:30 p.m. there was enough rain, hail, thunder, winds, fallen trees and lightning to make a television weather broadcaster reach for his GoreTex jacket and waterproof microphone.

Take note, thus, you residents of Hawarden, Iowa and Centerville, S.D. My services can be arranged, for a nominal fee. Just keep the umbrellas handy.

What A Beach!

This column appeared on July 22, 2007

We consider this column to be, among all other things, an extension of the Daily Local News’ commitment to public service.

Over the years, we have endeavored to bring attention to various social, environmental and gastrological needs that have gone unmet in the general West Chester/Chester County area.

It is well established that we have campaigned vigorously for the addition of the township of Chadds Ford to our county’s boundaries, unchaining it from the tyrannical yoke of Delaware County; that we have urged the powers that be to open a public swimming pool within walking distance of the 300 block of South Church Street, preferably one with a diving board and a cool, shaded area for sitting; and that we have decried the absence of authentic Cincinnati chili from the menus of restaurants across the county’s landscape.

Although to date none — give or take — of those causes has received so much as a passing nod from cartographers, politicians or restaurant owners, we are proud to have raised them as issues of concern.

But now we come to an even more pressing need that has yet to be addressed by any responsible party involved in county government or business.

Folks, we need a beach.

Chester County has been around for more than 300 years (I checked), and although it has amenities such as a world-class public gardens, a historical Revolutionary War battle site and a potato chip factory tour, it does not have a large expanse of sand and shells and horseshoe crabs that sits beside a large body of water, one that features waves.

We, meaning I, recently spent several days at two beaches that find themselves attached to the Atlantic Ocean — one in Delaware, one in New Jersey — and we can say with confidence that days spent lounging on a beach with the sun overhead and a breeze at one’s back is good for the soul. Maybe bad for the skin, but good for the soul.

Why, we would even venture to suggest that the estimable former county Commissioner Colin Hanna would declare, “¡Estoy teniendo un tiempo muy, muy bueno! ¿Puedo tener otro mojito?” (Translation: “I am having a very, very good time! Can I have another mojito?”) if he were sitting on a beach in the county.

But we hear you say that Chester County does have a beach already, up at Marsh Creek State Park, right next to the snack bar. We have seen this beach. We have spent time on this beach.
We, however, do not consider it worthy of the name “beach” and would suggest that anyone who does has spent too much time in the sun.

(Besides, we have it on good terms that the lake at Marsh Creek is going to be drained soon to make way for additional open space in the county.)

We are confident that once this idea gets in the hands of the proper authorities at the Army Corps of Engineers that the day will come soon when we can all enjoy a day at the beach without having to drive to New Jersey or Delaware.

Or having to cross any large bridges on the way.

Fear Strikes

This column appperaed on July 8, 2007 (weeks befor the Minnesota tragedy)

I can cite for you at least 15 reasons why I appreciate life in Chester County, and those are the 15 covered bridges that call this place home.

But lest you think that I love them for their antiquity, their unique architecture or their rough-hewn grandeur, let me steer you off that path before you get too misty-eyed. No, I love covered bridges because when you go over them you can easily pretend you are not driving over a bridge.

I have an unreasonable fear of crossing bridges.

The people who know call this gephyrophobia, and here’s what I learned about it from the good folks at MedicineNet.com (Motto: “We Bring Doctors’ Knowledge To You”).

“Fear of crossing bridges is a relatively common phobia, although most people with it do not know they have something called ‘gephyrophobia.’ However, the derivation of the word ‘gephyrophobia’ is perfectly straightforward (if you know Greek); it is derived from the Greek words ‘gephyra’ (bridge) and ‘phobos’ (fear).”

Why thank you, MedicineNet.com, for being so helpful and so condescending, all at the same time.

If you think for a moment that knowing my fear is “a relatively common phobia” or that its name is derived from the “perfectly straightforward” Greek is going to help me the next time I’m confronted with the impending upstroke of some upcoming span, you are sorely mistaken.

Every Greek in the world, common or not, would not be able to convince me that the moment that this particular bridge would completely come apart and dissolve like steam, plunging me into the emptiness of the abyss, would be the exact moment that I am at its apex, helpless and alone.

I am going camping in Delaware this week and that means two things: One, that it will rain sometime between now and when I decamp and two, that I have been mentally preparing myself for a forced bridge crossing over the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal for about three weeks. And it is not going to help.

When I drive over a bridge I keep my eyes locked on the blacktop in front of me and both hands firmly on the steering wheel. I sweat and hum a lot, too. If my eyes drift over the side and glimpse an instant of the space and water below, I am convinced that my subconscious will involuntarily jerk the car to the right over the edge and into the water below.

Here’s MedicineNet.com again. “High bridges over waterways and gorges can be especially intimidating, as can be very long or very narrow bridges.”

Yes, and bridges where traffic gets jammed and you are stuck at the top of the span and with each passing of a semi you can feel the bridge shake and roll and you think that in another five minutes the only thing to do is put the car in park, get out and crawl on your belly to the other side.

I have friends who also have this affliction and we keep it mostly to ourselves, the fear of embarrassment being almost as gripping as the gephyrophobia itself. Except when we get together and share the joy of living in a county where bridges have covers.