MOSAIC accepting registrations Saturday morning at community garden
Mosaic Community Land Trust is holding registration and orientation for new members of its community garden at 423 Chestnut Street on the following Saturdays: April 28, May 5, and May 12 from 9 AM to 12 PM at the garden.
On May 5th gardeners will be able to choose the plants they would like in their own plot, and the plants will be delivered to the garden on May 12, which will be a day for planting.
There are plots still available for this season. Plot rates are $25 for households with incomes below $30,000; those with incomes above this level will pay $50. Groups and organizations can plant a plot for a flat $100.00 season fee. In addition to offering families a safe place to grow healthy, organic food, this fee includes the choice of plants, water on-site, the use of Mosaic tools, workshops, and advice from experienced gardeners. Children are welcome and the garden is available for field trips for students.
To apply and register for your plot or to set up a field trip, please contact Sue Repko at 609-658-9043 or srepko@mosaiccommunitylandtrust.org or Mary-Beth Bacallao at flyeredup8831@gmail.com.
MOSAIC Community Land Trust was established in 2011 and is a registered 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization. MOSAIC Community Land Trust provides permanently affordable housing and healthy living choices to people of modest means, and through education and participation, creates a vital community with a focus on arts and culture to stabilize neighborhoods and improve the quality of life in Pottstown.
Positively Pottstown Happy Hour at MOSAIC & Girls’ Night Out at Belle Rouge
The next Positively!Pottstown Happy Hour takes place TODAY at MOSAIC Community Land Trust’s office & gallery at 10 S. Hanover Street from 5-7 pm. Food by Grumpy’s! Pop art by James Enders and photography by Karl McWherter on display. Learn about Mosaic’s community garden, now under construction at 423 Chestnut Street. It’s not too late to RSVP to positivelypottstown@gmail.com.
Ladies can follow up the happy hour fun at the monthly Girls’ Night Out held by Belle Rouge Salon at 257 E. High Street. The Belle Rouge Girls’ Night Out includes complimentary wine and hors d’oeuvres. Their speaker on Friday will be heart specialist Anna Cousins. She has worked in the cardiology and vascular field for the past 25 years and holds degrees in adult, pediatric, and neonatal cardiovascular technology. Currently Anna is working as a consultant to Dr. Rajiv Dhawan, M.D. as a vascular specialist. They diagnosis and treat all types of vascular disease. RSVP to Tracy Williams at 610.326.5400.
PEAK holding event this Saturday to celebrate Pottstown’s young children
PEAK (Pottstown Early Action for Kindergarten Readiness) will sponsor a community-wide outreach event for the Month of the Young Child. This year’s event will be held this Saturday, April 21, 2012 from 1-3 pm at the Freedom Valley YMCA at 724 North Adams Street in Pottstown. We will have Smokey the Bear, a petting farm, Pipper the Clown, moon bounce, and free snacks. Community agencies will provide family activities.
From Peak’s website: “The PEAK initiative is funded through the Pennsylvania-Pre-K Counts, United Way of Southeastern Pennsylvania, Pottstown Area Health & Wellness Foundation, Montgomery County Foundation and Children’s Trust Fund and focuses on building partnerships with the early learning programs in the Pottstown community. The goals of PEAK are:
- Every three and four year old child has access to high quality child care, early childhood education, pre-kindergarten and kindergarten.
- Every parent of young children has access to the high quality skill building and resources needed to prepare them to be their child’s first “teacher” and to prepare their children for success in school.
- Every child has access to health and wellness services to ensure that they are prepared to maximize their potential in school.”
I’ll be at the YMCA on Saturday afternoon, along with other representatives of MOSAIC Community Land Trust. Stop by our table to learn about Pottstown’s first community garden being built at 423 Chestnut Street and to become a member. Joining the community garden is an affordable, fun way to grow fresh veggies for you and your family; beginner gardeners are welcome. We will offer workshops and help every step of the way. Plots are still available. Come find out what this exciting project is all about! We’ll have a fun project for kids at our table!
Contact the PEAK Coordinator at 610-970-6655 if you have any questions. We hope to see you Saturday afternoon at the YMCA to celebrate Pottstown’s young children!
“Fill the Media Lab” food drive approaches goal!
Wow! Thanks to the sustained and last-minute generosity of residents, businesses, schools, churches, and community groups in the Pottstown region, the “Fill the Media Lab” food drive, spearheaded by The Mercury and other newspapers and bloggers, is nearing its ambitious goals in the final days of the drive. 
The Mercury reported today that items were still being collected over the holiday weekend. The latest tally put the food items collected at 14,711 and the number of bottle of laundry detergent at 669. The goals were 20,000 and 1,000, respectively.
There’s still a chance to participate in this unprecedented collection. The Mercury article states: “Anyone who may have missed the opportunity to drop-off items for our collection effort can still do so Monday as The Mercury offices were closed to the public over the holiday weekend. Our offices are located at 24 N. Hanover St. in Pottstown and the lobby is open from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.”
Author of AMERICAN WASTELAND to speak at Hill School
Jonathan Bloom, author of American Wasteland, journalist, and blogger, will speak on the topic of food waste at The Hill School on Thursday evening, April 12th.
Bloom is the author of American Wasteland, a book on food waste. He is also journalist and the blogger who created WastedFood.com. Bloom comes to The Hill as the third in a series of speakers who visited campus this year as part of The Hill’s academic theme for the year: Community. He will raise awareness about the issue of food waste.
Bloom’s address will take place in The Hill School’s Center For The Arts Theatre at 7:30 p.m. It is free of charge and open to the general public.
Bloom’s blog examines “why we waste food, why it matters and what we can do about it.” His work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Variety, The Philadelphia Inquirer, TimeOut New York and Boston Magazine, among others. He lives in Durham, N.C.
Support TriCounty Community Network at Friendly’s on April 4th
Friendly’s Fundraiser
Visit Friendly’s at 200 Shoemaker Road, Pottstown
Wednesday, April 4th
Between 4pm and 9pm
Support TCN and its programs in youth development, caregivers support, environmental awareness, family literacy, homeless services, domestic violence awareness, and workforce development.
Get together with family and friends to help us, while you help yourself to some great food!
When you visit Friendly’s on the date and time above,
Friendly’s will donate 10% of the proceeds to our fundraising efforts!
Enjoy great food and great fun while benefiting
TriCounty Community Network
For more information about TriCounty Community Network, contact:
Jennifer M. Doyle, MPA
Executive Director
TriCounty Community Network
260 High Street
Pottstown, PA 19464
Phone: 610-705-3301
Fax: 610-705-3304
Partnering to improve health, social and environmental conditions.
Last chance! Get tix to Fashion Plates fundraiser TODAY!
Fashion Plates 6: Carnival in Venice
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The Gallery School of Pottstown presents Fashion Plates 6: Carnival in Venice this Saturday, March 31 at Brookside Country Club! The Gallery School’s signature fundraiser returns to its roots as an evening, couples-friendly event. Guests will enjoy amazing food, unlimited signature cocktail, and wonderful entertainment, from a fabulous fashion show, sponsored by Boscov’s Department Stores, to a strolling magician, a harpist and more. They will give away fun door prizes, and their fabulous silent auction will bring out the bidder in everyone. Purchase your tickets TODAY! NO tickets will be sold at the door! $70 for one ticket; two for $120. Sponsors VIST Financial Table Sponsors Boenning & Scattergood, Inc. Entertainment Sponsors Pete La Rosa Productions |
Creative MontCo wants your input!
Are the arts important in your life and the life of your family? Do you spend time and money to learn how to paint or play an instrument or knit a sweater? Do you enjoy going to galleries, performances, or outdoor festivals? Would you like to see a few cafes with open mics in your downtown? Does the perfect nut roll or shoo-fly pie make you want to write poetry? Does a surprising piece of whimsical art in a public place bring a smile to your face?
These are just some of the ways that arts and culture touch our lives, and Montgomery County would like to hear from you about what specific places and activities are important to you in your town and throughout the region. Check out the survey here.Last fall Montgomery County launched a large-scale planning process called Creative MontCo. Their website bills Creative Montco as “a bold partnership of community members and organizations developing a comprehensive cultural and creative economy plan for communities throughout the county. Creative MontCo is dedicated to making Montgomery County a more vibrant place to live, work and play.”
The beautiful thing about the arts – besides just being, well, beautiful – is that arts and culture can be an economic engine for a local economy. All over the country, there are towns, small cities and even neighborhoods within larger cities, that have discovered their identities as centers of art, culture, and history and they have generated jobs and stabilized their tax base by understanding, expanding, and promoting their assets.
The Creative MontCo Steering Committee is being led by Montgomery County Community College president Dr. Karen Stout. The County has hired some really knowledgeable planners – The Cultural Planning Group – who understand how arts and culture can be good for residents and visitors alike and can stimulate economic growth. They have have been surveying and meeting with artists, organizations, and groups ever since to find out what residents like, what they want more of, and what they envision for their towns in the way of arts, and culture, which I take to include historic and heritage resources as well as the natural environment (i.e., parks). 
To me, the term “culture” gets at the history of a place and how that is reflected today in the people that live there, the work they do, the traditions that live on, and the natural and built environments that are tied to all of that. For me, “the arts” includes any creative endeavor, including, say, beautiful cupcakes or the really old mosaic tiles in many of the entryways of the stores in downtown Pottstown.
So… what arts and cultural activities and events are important to you? Please take a few moments NOW to respond to their survey here. And feel free to spend some time at Creative MontCo’s website, reading what others have to say and sharing your vision for the creative future of your county.
Happy Hour at Ranieri’s nets support for two worthy causes
More than 60 people attended last Friday’s Positively!Pottstown Happy Hour at Rich Ranieri’s Flooring & Carpeting center at 218 E. High Street. In addition to introducing the fine products and services offered by Rich and his staff for over 30 years in Pottstown, we also wanted to raise awareness of The Mercury‘s Fill the Media Lab food drive going on now and a fundraising campaign for Lindsey Havyer, a Pottstown High School student headed to Utah for a national DECA competition to showcase her 2011 downtown cleanup project.
Thanks to the generosity of our guests and the generosity of Craig & Sue Bolinger of The Ice House, who donated food to the event, we were able to collect 50 food items, $50 for the Grumpy’s collection/food match, and an anonymous donation for The Pottstown Cluster. We were also able to raise a whopping $400 toward the $1,200 cost for Lindsey’s trip! PDIDA is helping to raise funds for Lindsey and for a scholarship for future students who undertake projects that directly benefit downtown businesses. Contact Sheila Dugan of PDIDA to learn more or to make a donation (610-323-5400).
Thank you to everyone who came out to celebrate a local business and to support these local causes. It always astounds me the way that people in Pottstown do not hesitate to help out and then dig a little deeper. It’s awesome.
Positively Pottstown blog 