Tag: Pottstown

WPAZ –Community Radio for Pottstown

Before I tell you all about WPAZ and their really cool vision for what community radio is going to be in Pottstown, I have to make a confession:  I am a total radio geek. I love radio.  Don’t ever ask me who is on Dancing with the Stars or American Idol because I actually have no idea when or where to find those shows.  But, if you want to know what’s on NPR at 2pm weekdays or who the guests are this week on Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me, well, you’ve come to the right person.

Ross Landy, Station Manager of WPAZ

So, when I got the chance to visit the WPAZ studios last week and see what’s going on, I was pretty excited.  Actually, everyone in Pottstown should be pretty excited about what the new WPAZ radio (1370 on you AM radio dial) is doing here in town.

Station Manager, Ross Landy, who worked hard and long with General Manager, Rick Rodgers, to get WPAZ back on the air as a local station, is absolutely passionate about what radio can do for Pottstown.  “We are Pottstown people,” he says. And the station is going to be about local issues, organizations, businesses, musicians.  It has the power to raise awareness and cover topics with a local focus and be entertaining at the same time.

Station Manager Ross Landy and morning DJ Brian James

While I am not old enough to have sat around the radio at night instead of the television, I do have a real appreciation for radio shows.  I remember fondly listening to Rock and Roll Roots, an old WMMR show that was hosted by Earle Bailey.  It kept me company for many Saturday mornings when I had to be at work.

For me, good radio is conversation. It’s not about someone pushing the shuffle button on an enormous playlist and then jumping in every now and then with a commercial break.  It’s the idea that the person playing the music has something to share with the audience.  WPAZ gets it.

WPAZ is offering plenty of good radio and tons of conversation.  I took some time during this, their inaugural week, to listen to the station and you should, too.  It’s not like a regular broadcast station where you know exactly what you are in for when you choose country music or Top 40 or even Oldies.  Instead, you will be part of a conversation which might include music or talk or a little bit of both.

Here’s a look at some of what’s lined up at WPAZ so far:

6-9 AM           The morning show with Randi Ellis and Betsy Chapman

9-Noon            Brian James –an eclectic mix of music with a little extra

1-3 PM             Ken’s Koffee Shop-music and call in conversation

You can also tune in Wednesday nights for Notes from Home with Mike Holliday, a live music show featuring local musicians. And, look for much more in the future.  The Hip Places to be Scene in Pottstown girls, Janet Flack and Gina Stango will have a show soon.

Landy and his crew of radio aficionados have big plans to make WPAZ both a voice for the community and part of its ongoing revitalization. You can look forward to live appearances in the spring at events and a real presence on the local music scene.  The station is broadcasting 24/7 right now and will offer live internet streaming in the near future.

So, even if you aren’t a self-professed radio geek like me, it’s worth tuning in to see what’s happening over at WPAZ.

WPAZ Radio   1370 AM

www.wpazradio.com

find them on facebook:  www.facebook.com/wpazradio

Call the station at 610-326-4000

Snow daze!

The last few weeks have been full of inside-out pajamas, spoons under the pillows and ice cubes in the toilet.  All these superstitions are supposed to bring feet of snow and no school until spring. Of course, if you don’t have elementary school aged children, you might be dreaming of a tropical winter getaway or worrying if you remembered to buy rock salt to put on the sidewalk for yet another “wintry mess” as meteorologists like to call it.

At my house, we are knee- deep in snow-crazed children, so these two most recent snow events have come not with cups of cocoa and long sessions of reading by a fire. Instead the snowstorms have forced me out of my warm home to accompany my kids as they face the Rupert Elementary Hill.  It’s a good place to sled and most of the East End of town shows up there at one time or another when there’s fresh snow (and old snow, truth be told).

What you might not know, however, is that there are places in Pottstown that are specifically designated for sledding.  The Parks and Rec department of Pottstown Borough lists the following streets::

              #1: South Price Street (Between South Street and Center Avenue)
              #2: Rosemont Alley
              #3: Loop Drive (Between Burden Drive and Winding Road)
              #4: Hawthorne Avenue (Between N. Hills Blvd and S. Hills Blvd)  
              #5: South Evans (Between Cherry Street and Laurel Street)

And, here are the details about sledding in these spots: 

  • Rules: Barricades should be placed in proper position by first sledder to arrive at area, and removed by last person(s) using the hill. (Put it back to curb)
  • Hours: 4:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. (School Days) 9:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m. (Weekends/Non-school days)

After a nice conversation with the Parks and Recreation Department, I also learned that there are great sledding hills at Brookside Country Club and Lincoln Elementary, just in case the snow has already melted on the street sledding areas. I was really surprised to hear that at one point in Pottstown’s history you could sled all the way down Mervine Street, which would be closed off for just this purpose. 

That sounded like fun, even to me and I am not a big fan of winter or snow or even being cold.

sledding at Rupert Elementary

Back at Rupert, the wind was blowing, but that didn’t stop kid after kid from showing up at the hill, some with air filled and gravity defying tubes, others with saucers, still others with the newest thing in sleds that are just a little slip of plastic and require the rider to throw themselves down the hill headfirst and reward them with a super fast ride.  My own kids have a mixture of sleds:  a saucer, an old-fashioned two-person model and the newest addition, a snowboard.

We stuck it out for an hour and a half, down the hill and back up, braving the frigid wind.  The kids raced each other and I spent a lot of time yelling for them to bail out of the sleds before they hit the street.  Finally, we all walked back home.  More accurately, I dragged two of my kids home in a sled, listening to them plotting the next snowstorm and reminding each other to turn their pajamas inside-out.

Got a favorite place to sled in Pottstown?  How about a memory of winters past and your favorite sledding spots?  We’d love to hear about it.

Art Goes to School

If you pose the question “what is art?” to a room full of kindergarteners, you will get all kinds of answers. As usually happens with kids, the first answer kind of sets the trend for the rest.  So, if the first child says “art is when I play with play-doh,” you are bound to get at least four more answers pretty much like the first.  Then, you will get a few who want to tell you about their dog, or their sister, or even what they had for lunch

But if you keep calling on them, you might get the kind of answer that art teachers really love, just as I got last week in my first volunteer gig with Art Goes to School.  One round- faced five-year-old raised his hand and summed it all up in one sentence:  “Everything is art!”

Art Goes to School (AGTS) might just be the coolest program that you don’t know about. The local chapter of this non-profit volunteer organization brings art history and appreciation to kids in the Pottstown School District every winter, and has been doing so for the last 20 years or so. Another chapter visits the Owen J. Roberts elementary schools.  Started under the auspices of the Junior League in 1962, AGTS became an independent non-profit about 10 years ago and today has grown to include 52 groups in PA and NJ.

Basically, all AGTS volunteers work with the same portfolio, which changes from year to year. In the fall, chapters meet to discuss the works, this year ranging from the well known like Andy Warhol’s famous portrait of Marilyn Monroe to the obscure like The Poultry Market by Walter Henry Williams, and get familiar with all the works.  Then, each volunteer gets to bring their own particular style to their presentation, which, for me meant asking the kids what they think art really is.

Once we waded through some silly answers and I heard what about half the class got for Christmas, we got down to the business of looking at some art and talking about what they liked and didn’t like.  I, personally, loved having the little kids because there is something so unguarded about the way they approach art and they have no filter (for better or for worse) about sharing what they think. Because I have some idea of the average attention span of a kindergartner in the late afternoon of the first day back after winter break, I brought brand new crayons and asked them to draw something for me.

When they were done, we compared them to some of the prints I had picked to show the class.  They giggled over Picasso’s Portrait of a Woman and again at Frida Kahlo’s prominent eyebrows in The Frame.  But, eventually, we had a really great discussion about how not everyone sees things or will draw them in exactly the same way, and each kid left the room clutching their drawing and, I hope, knowing a little more about art.

The Pottstown Chapter of AGTS also encompasses the high school kids, with four students each year participating in the volunteer program as part of their senior project.  These students have a chance to observe other volunteers when they present at Blessed Theresa of Calcutta (formerly St. Pete’s for any Pottstown expatriates).  Then, once they have done their practice presentation for other Art Students at the high school, they can start logging the hours they need for their project.

The Art Goes to School program in Pottstown runs through the middle of February and volunteers will be visiting classes in all grades, 4K to 5th, at all five elementary schools.  So, if you have a child in a Pottstown school, be sure to ask them what they thought of The Yellow Cow (by Franz Marc) or The Road Menders (by Van Gogh). Their answers just might surprise you.

Literary dreaming

Okay, I’m here amid the snow-covered Green Mountains, hanging with my writing buddies at the end of  a long day of readings and workshop, and I get to spinning out part of my dream scenario for Pottstown’s revitalization. This particular version includes a writing center in Pottstown, where my buddies and other writers – maybe they’ve published books, maybe not yet – can stay in a gorgeously renovated Victorian bed/breakfast writers’ retreat for 1-4 weeks, for a modest weekly fee. Writers are always on the lookout for a reasonably-priced retreat, where they can get some work done. (Maybe we’d entice them with a tour of The Hill School, where Tobias Wolff spent some time, or maybe a trip to Shillington, home of John Updike.) We might even be able to get some writers to visit a class in the schools, do a program at the library, or give a reading at night. Some of my people here like the sound of all this. And, you never know — if we built a solid network of authors who had already been to Pottstown, the next step might be to invite them all back, along with others, and begin hosting an annual literary arts festival. Wouldn’t that just turn the world’s perception of Pottstown on its head? Would make a really good story, too…

Pottstown Roller Derby Rockstars

What started out as a quick facebook status update after a particularly tough day at work has turned into a force to be reckoned with.

When P Hitty (then and alternately known as Patty Fetterman) posted, “Bad day at work… anyone want to start a roller derby team??” she really didn’t imagine that she had put into motion the Pottstown Rockstars Roller Derby Team.  She met friend, neighbor and owner of Funky Lil Kitchen, Tonda Woodling, for a few drinks, and the idea sounded even better.  Woodling (who sports the derby name:  Hillbilly Hustler) had actually been looking to join the Philadelphia Liberty Belles Roller Derby team, but with the distance and the time commitment being an obstacle, thought her dreams of roller derby had been dashed.

Pretty soon, they found that a roller derby veteran was living in Pottstown and wanted to get back on her skates, so the two enlisted the help of  Lida Addison (who goes by the derby name of “Low-blow Lida” ) and got a group of 7 women together at The Brickhouse.  They wanted to figure out if they could really start a roller derby team right here in Pottstown.  Apparently, they could.  Fast forward a few months and plenty of planning and practicing; the team now has 19 members ranging in age from 25 to 40, with more of the women on the 40 side than the 25.

Fetterman describes the derby experience as something between nostalgia and girl power.   Listening to her talk about how much fun (and what a workout) derby practice is makes me wistful for the endless childhood days I spent at the roller rink.  The local rink where I grew up, Guptill’s Arena, was an old blueberry farm that had been converted into a roller skating nirvana, and amazingly holds the Guiness World Record as the largest indoor skating rink in the world.  I clearly remember lacing up my beautiful white leather skates with the purple and pink yarn pom-poms my mom helped me make out of leftover yarn. 

Of course, roller derby is quite a bit tougher than those elementary school skating sessions, but the feelings might just be the same.  It is almost enough to make me think even I could be a roller derby rock star (almost being the key word).

This coming Saturday, you (and I) can get that old feeling back again and hang out at Pheasantland Roller Rink and see what roller derby is really all about.   The Rockstars are raising money to get their team registered with the WFTDA (Women’s Flat Track Derby Association) and get their apprentice status in the league.

The event starts with an open skate from 3:30 to 4:30 and then the Rockstars will take the rink for a demonstration.  At 5pm, you can pay $3 to go up against either Low-blow Lida or Busty Cage (known in real life as Nikki Henry), who are the veterans in the group.  There will also be a bake sale and raffles all to help the team get into the WFTDA league.  The raffles listed for this event are pretty amazing-everything from a Starbucks gift basket to a trip for 4 to Mexico (yes, to Mexico).  You can check out more information about the event and the team by visiting their facebook page at:  www.facebook.com/pottstownrollerderby

Here’s the rundown of the event:

Location: Pheasantland Roller Rink

551 Manatawny Road, Boyertown, PA  19512

Their website:  www.pheasantlandrollerrink.com

Time: 3:30-6:30

Admission: Donation to the team.  Bring some extra cash for the raffles, bake sale and more.

Skate rentals are only $1 and they have inline and quad skates available.

Writing camp

Well, tomorrow I leave for 10 days in Vermont, where I’ll be attending lectures, readings and writing workshops pretty much from 8 am – 9 pm every day. All books, all writing, all words, all the time. About a month ago, I was in town at a meeting, and I described this low-residency master’s degree program (I do this 10-day gig twice a year; this time next year I’ll be giving a lecture & a reading and will get my degree.) Someone at the meeting – I won’t name names! – looked pretty horrified to hear that I think this is just about the best way anyone could ever spend 10 days 🙂

But will I really be leaving Pottstown behind? Impossible! I’ll be checking email and even posting here from time to time. The truly awesome news, though, is that Rosemary Keane, who took us on a whirlwind tour of some parks in Amity, Douglass, New Hanover and Boyertown last summer, will be filling in as a guest blogger. I know you’re in really good hands; she has some excellent posts lined up. The first story, which will be posted first thing tomorrow morning, is about a group of Pottstown chicks who really know how to roll! Thank you, Rosemary, and welcome back!

Cheers for 2011!

I took the plunge this morning, along with about 120 other more daring Polar Bears at Pottstown’s 4th Annual Polar Bear Plunge sponsored by the Parks & Rec Department and organized by Bill & Sue Krause. Hundreds watched from the banks of the Schuylkill in Riverfront Park. Here’s a link to The Mercury’s early coverage.

I only went about thigh-deep. My feet went numb within about 10 seconds. Yes, I wore a wetsuit. With the practically balmy air temp – in the 40s – the suit was more useful as a barrier against the Schuylkill River slop that got stirred up and squished between my toes. The smell coming out of the river rivaled that of a failing septic field.  Yes, it was a uniquely charming outdoor experience.

In a surprise appearance by my younger sister and her sons, I was accompanied in the river by my brave 13-year-old nephew, Patrick, who went in a lot deeper. Thanks, you guys!! The bonfire steamed everyone dry, people continued with the tree toss, hot dogs & sauerkraut and hot chocolate warmed people up, and there were some lucky winners of a community card game. This was one more community event that drew hundreds from all around the region – an awesome start to 2011!

(If I ever figure out how to upload the video shot by my other nephew, I’ll let you know :-))

WPAZ is back!

Pottstown’s got its radio station back. After going silent more than a year ago, WPAZ at 1370 AM returned to the airwaves yesterday afternoon. Check out The Mercury’s coverage here.

After months of hard work and negotiations, the nonprofit WPAZ Preservation Association changed its name to Community Broadcasting Group and recently purchased the station from Four Rivers Broadcasting.

General Manager Rick Rodgers and Station Manager Ross Landy have planned a line-up of old and new shows and increased local sports coverage within a 24/7 interactive format. The tentative official “opening” will be January 8th; keep an ear out then for new and returning personalities and shows. In the meantime, they’ll be running music and promos.

The station’s website is wpazradio.com. And you can find them on Facebook here.

Congratulations to Rick, Ross and everyone involved – looking forward to the programming!

Polar Bear Plunge Poll

As some of you may know, I recently opened my big mouth and said I would jump in the Schuylkill River on January 1st during Pottstown’s Parks & Rec Polar Bear Plunge.

You can read all about the Plunge in the Mercury article here.

Weather.com is calling for a partly sunny day on Saturday, high around 47 degrees. Not too bad for January 1st… I guess. The thing is, I don’t really like swimming unless the air temp is, like, 97 degrees and the water is about 90 degrees. Right about now I’m getting cold feet just thinking about this Plunge. So, I’m looking for some feedback in the poll below. Please, don’t be cruel. Cut me some slack. Think about my overall health and wellness. Help me find a way out of this!

SCORE scholarship deadline: Dec. 28

There’s still time to fill out the quick-and-easy application form to be considered for a scholarship to the upcoming Small Business Workshop Series taught by the local chapter of SCORE.

SCORE is run by volunteers who have had successful careers in business; they pass their experience and knowledge on to entrepreneurs in workshops and through individual counseling sessions. Positively!Pottstown is offering two scholarships to Pottstown-based businesses for the next series, which begins on Jan. 10th at the Tri-County Area Chamber of Commerce at 152 E. High Street. The 4-workshops and business plan manual offered by SCORE have a $100 value.

For more info, click here.

The application can be downloaded below.

SCORE Scholarship Application (pdf)

SCORE Scholarship Application (Word doc)

You can either email it to positivelypottstown@gmail.com by midnight tomorrow, Dec. 28 or get it in the mail so that it’s postmarked by Dec. 28th. Mail it to Positively Pottstown Blog, P.O. Box 1509, Pottstown, PA 19464.

(I was originally going to announce the winners on the blog, but in the interest of discretion, winners will only be announced if they specifically agree!)

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