(psst… it's all good… pass it on…)
TERRI B. from Sanatoga! Congratulations!
Terri has received 2 free tickets to opening night of RAGTIME, The Musical at the Tri-County Performing Arts Center on High Street. RAGTIME will run from June 3-20. Thank you to Tri-PAC and Village Productions for donating the tickets!
In the meantime, check out Positively!Pottstown’s calendar for all of this weekend’s happenings, especially events that honor those who gave their lives in service to the ideals of democracy and freedom.
Pottstown’s Memorial Day Parade, brought to you by the Joint Veterans Council of Pottstown, will be held Monday May 31 at 10 a.m., starting at Good Will Fire Company at 714 E. High Street, going to Manatawny Street, and then on to Memorial Park. Veterans and community groups should begin arriving at 9 a.m. at Good Will to line up for the parade. No special registration is required. Just show up!
I’d like to give a shout-out to my dad, veteran Richard Repko, who sometimes plays Taps at the funerals of area veterans. For the interesting history of this moving musical tribute, see this at the West Point Connection website. The last I heard, my dad will be playing Taps in Memorial Park at the end of the parade. It always brings tears to my eyes. A heartfelt “thank you” goes out to all veterans for their service.
This Friday, Positively!Pottstown will be giving away two FREE tickets to the opening night performance of RAGTIME, The Musical at the Tri-County Performing Arts Center on High St. The show starts at 7:30 pm on Thursday, June 3. Tickets are courtesy of Tri-PAC/Village Productions. There’s A LOT of buzz about RAGTIME, which was just featured yesterday on The 10! Show on NBC.
To enter the drawing, all you have to do is:
1. Become a subscriber to Positively!Pottstown using the box to the right.
OR
2. Become a fan of Positively Pottstown on Facebook.
OR
3. Send an email to positivelypottstown@gmail.com saying you’d like your name thrown into the proverbial hat. No other commitment necessary.
If you’ve already got your tickets, maybe you want to try to win some for a friend? Good luck! And keep spreading spread the word about this remarkable show!
The hot, humid air in Father Doyne Hall tried to smother the 45-50 former players who showed up for the last game ever, but it didn’t stop old-timers and youngsters alike from running up and down the court for about three hours last Friday night. Those guys from this year’s graduating class of 2010 sure can shoot the 3! There was also an impressive showing from the – ahem – older grads, some of whom are still playing regularly. Former coaches on hand included Joe Donahue, Pete Sovia, Michele Repko Dunleavy, and Randy Reber, who will take over the helm for Phoenixville’s boys’ program next season. Thanks for the memories, St. Pius X! 
While we’re on the topic of basketball, I’ve changed the photo in the sidebar to my beloved neighborhood hoop at Franklin Elementary School in the North End. I’ve stopped by to visit this hoop several times over the years, which looks to be the exact same iron pole, backboard and rim where I spent so many hours playing, practicing and shedding tears of frustration while growing up. I won’t go on here about the kind of love a person could feel for a simple thing like that, for that place. The blacktop is crumbling now, which makes me just plain sad, but also reminds me of why I’ve been coming back to Pottstown these days. There are a lot of complicated, interconnected and entrenched reasons why a playground blacktop would be crumbling. I’m just trying to do my part to move things in the direction of smoothing that out for the kids coming along now who deserve to have their ball come predictably back up to their fingertips when they make their next move. Game on!
Tonight I’ll be at Father Doyne Hall at St. Pius X for one last run up and down the hardwood. While I’m proud of a lot of things accomplished during my Pius years, being part of two Ches-Mont championship teams in 1978 and 1979 ranks right up there, mostly because a lot of people thought we couldn’t do it, but also because I now think of it as a defining period for me, personally and politically, although I would not have described it that way then.
In the course of doing research for a memoir I’m writing about growing up, I’ve spent some time at the microform reader at the Pottstown Public Library, reading old articles from The Mercury. As so often happens, while I was looking for one particular article, I got distracted by another.
Back in those days, a sportswriter by the name of Ken Murray* had a column in The Mercury called “Ken’s Corner.” On June 21, 1974 it was titled, “Is There Room For a New League?” and it was all about St. Pius X looking to get into a new league now that the Suburban Athletic Conference had disbanded. Murray wrote, “What league could the small Catholic school join without stepping in over its head?” He goes on to speculate about a league of smaller schools, perhaps including Pottsgrove, Upper Perk, Methacton and Landsdale Catholic.
I’m pretty sure I read that piece back then, even though I would have been just eleven years old. I was a sports junkie. I followed major league baseball, basketball and football. And that was the year that I – and a handful of other girls – barged our way into Little League baseball in Pottstown. Back then, competition – any competition – felt like a matter of life and death to me. (I’m not always proud of that, but that’s for another time.) As a tomboy, I’d had a chip on my shoulder for as long as I could remember. Anything a boy could do, I wanted to do better. And then sports opportunities for girls were federally mandated through the passage of Title IX in 1972, and I felt personally vindicated.
Another reason I’m pretty sure I was a regular reader of Murray’s column is because I’d met him right around that time. Eight days after the Pius piece, his column featured me, one of my teammates (Caren Holsberger), and our baseball team (M & M Green) in “A Lonely Battle for Sue, Caren.” (That’s the article I was actually looking for.)
In middle school at St. Al’s I dreamed of playing basketball for Pius (the Suburban Catholic League champs in 1974), and it’s not inconceivable that I carried a kind of “I’ll show you, Ken Murray and all you other doubters” attitude around for years until I got the chance. Pius entered the Ches-Mont my junior year. The league had some big schools – Coatesville, Downington, West Chester Henderson, West Chester East, Pottstown. Murray was absolutely right. Pius was a small school. It was the only Catholic school. And we were all white. Racial tensions from the 70s still ran high; I remember police escorting us off the bus at some schools. Playoff games and title games were fraught with emotion and a kind of danger. And we won. Yes, we had some amazing talent (shout-out to my classmate and teammate, Carol Glutz, the school’s all-time leading scorer.) But under Coaches Bernadette and Bill Travers, we also worked our butts off. Every day.
All of this opened my eyes to a larger world: laws got passed in Washington that affected me personally. Gender equity, race relations, and social unrest weren’t far-away concepts that just appeared in headlines. They played themselves out in our own towns and on basketball courts. I think I was also tuned in because I was in the midst of getting a Catholic education, steeped in the values of social justice. While I have not been a practicing Catholic for quite some time, that blood still runs through me. There’s no shaking that, nor do I want to.
So, when I step on the court at Pius tonight and pose for photos with our championship banner with my sister, Michele Dunleavy (varsity girls’ coach at Phoenixville), and my old teammates and friends, all this – and a whole lot more – will be running through my heart and head. And through my veins. St. Pius X will always be more than a building. Its spirit will continue to move through all those who walked its halls and played on its courts and fields – sometimes as though their lives depended on it.
* Could Ken Murray, former sportswriter for The Mercury be the same Ken Murray covering the NFL for The Baltimore Sun? That would be very cool. 🙂
The monthly meeting and speaker series organized by Citizens for Pottstown’s Revitalization will take place this Friday, May 21, from 7-8 pm at the PAL building at 146 King St., Pottstown, PA. The featured speaker is Tom Carroll, president of Preservation Pottstown, tireless community volunteer and all-around positive guy.
The theme of Tom’s talk will be “Building Community Vitality.” He’ll be telling a story that made a difference in his life and how he views communication with others. He’ll also touch on “What is a non-profit corporation?”, Preservation Pottstown’s history and where they are today. If you want to learn more or volunteer, call 215-316-6383.
If you’ve been thinking about getting involved in any aspect of Pottstown’s revitalization, or if you would like ideas and support for organizing a neighborhood watch or even a block party, come to a CPR meeting. They’re a group of friendly, engaged residents trying to make all of Pottstown’s neighborhoods the best they can be. CPR is online at http://www.vivapottstown.com.
I was in town last weekend for several activities, and first on tap, after my grilled cheese & pie at The Very Best, was attending the monthly meeting of Citizens for Pottstown’s Revitalization, a relatively new grassroots coalition of borough residents. (You gotta love a URL like http://www.vivapottstown.com!) The group’s mission is to instill pride and empower residents to get involved and take positive actions in their neighborhoods and throughout town. The two leaders, Katy Jackson and Anna Johnson, have lined up a series of speakers for their meetings, which take place at the PAL building at 146 King Street on the 3rd Friday of the month, beginning at 7 p.m. and lasting about an hour.
I had met Katy a few weeks before (and Anna briefly), when Katy took me on a walking tour of her block in the vicinity of King, Washington, Chestnut, and Franklin Streets. It was one of those gorgeous, sunny, warm afternoons when everyone seemed happy just to be outside. So, there’s this sweet park at the corner of Washington and Chestnut that was just abuzz with activity. Plans are in the works for neighbors to (hopefully) plant some flowers in one area, and for art students from the high school to use a block wall at the back of the park as a kind of rotating exhibit space to showcase their work throughout the year.
I’m not sure how far along the residents are in working out this next concept, so I’ll just say this: there’s a chance there will be a space available in the neighborhood for a community garden. Community gardens are growing in popularity, especially in places where wholesome foods, such as fresh fruits and vegetables, are not available or are too expensive. Basically, a lot is divided up among interested residents and/or groups/clubs. Someone who knows something about gardening coordinates & teaches, so that participants end up with a steady flow of food and even flowers. Of course, donations of tools, plants, seeds, soil are sought to make it all happen.
Community gardens get people outside, get neighbors working together, provide better food at a lower price, raise awareness about nutrition and food production, and put an empty or nuisance lot to good use. That’s a lot of win-wins in there. So, if this happens, maybe it could be a kind of pilot project for other gardens around town.
But this wasn’t what this post was even supposed to be about! I’ll try again in the next one…
Given the name and attitude of this very blog, and given I was a psych major in college, I was intrigued to see this article by Dennis J. Wright in today’s Mercury about Martin Seligman, the founder of the relatively new field of positive psychology. Seligman, who teaches and does research at the University of Pennsylvania, spoke at Ursinus on Tuesday.
It seems Seligman used to study “learned helplessness and depression,” fairly common stuff in a field that focuses on what’s wrong with people and how to fix them. His current emphasis on positivity, though, comes at happiness from the other end of the spectrum: find out what your strengths are and put them to work to ward off depression.
In this 2008 profile, Seligman said, “There are three levels to happiness: pleasure, the delight you get from chocolate, fast cars, and sex; engagement, the feeling of “flow” you get when you’re doing something you’re good at; and meaning, the fulfillment you get from being engaged in an effort greater than yourself.”
At Ursinus, Seligman talked about how to apply these principles in education, maintaining that happiness – or how to achieve a fulfilling life – can actually be taught.
Extending this concept to the community-level, I’d put out there that Pottstown itself is in the midst of figuring out what its strengths are, capitalizing on them and starting to feel the “flow.” Look no further than Citizens for Pottstown’s Revitalization and “Hip Places to Be Scene in Pottstown,” the latter of which should be releasing a new video any day now. I guarantee you’ll have no trouble smiling at that 🙂
Hello, Mercury readers and thanks for stopping by! I want to thank The Mercury for setting up the Town Square on their home page and giving me a chance to share all the things – old and new – that I love about Pottstown.
Tapping into my background in urban planning and creative writing, I’ll be blogging about arts, cultural and community events and revitalization… in addition to food, sports, wellness and business, with the occasional trip down memory lane tossed in for good measure. This blog is a new venture, having gone “live” just a few weeks ago, and I hope it’ll be a forum for others to share ideas and notes on cool happenings around town. Please feel free to jump in!
Positively yours,
Sue Repko
Thanks to Mike Holliday for tipping me off about this upcoming performance when I ran into him last weekend at Churchill’s. On Sunday, May 2 at 7:30 p.m., the Kinnara Choral Ensemble will be performing at Emmanuel Lutheran Church, 150 N. Hanover Street in a FREE concert. Check out the Church’s phenomenal music series, which is truly one of Pottstown’s performing arts gems.
Kinnara, a 20-voice chamber choir conducted by J.D. Burnett, hails from my neck of the woods here in central NJ. They’re in their second season and making quite a name for themselves.
The concert is called “all the letting go,” and Kinnara’s Facebook page describes the musical selection as, “An hour-long choral concert exploring music of death, loss, hope, and healing. William Schuman’s compelling Carols of Death and movements from the fresh and agitated a cappella Requiem by Zdenek Lukas anchor a journey through the gamut of human emotion.”
While all the concerts in the series at Emmanuel Lutheran are free, a free-will offering will be collected.
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