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School’s out for summer.
As of this week, it’s out forever … for star Stoga teacher Deb Ciamacca.
For years, the former Marine and beloved U.S. Government teacher has urged her students to get off the sidelines. “Democracy’s not a spectator sport,” she’d tell them.
After speaking out about gun safety here – and on national and international TV – she put her career where her mouth was.
Lindsey Renninger Schuster might just be the most photographed woman on the Main Line.
She takes multiple “mirror selfies” each day.
She stars in professional shoots up to 150 times a year.
She’s photographed incessantly on vacation.
Always camera-ready, she changes clothes five times a day.
No, Schuster’s not a celebrity, a socialite or even a model, at least not technically.
It’s been two weeks since the brutal murder at the Radnor Wawa and we’re still aghast.
We didn’t know Stephanie MIller personally, but her death seems personal. We’re taking it personally.
She walked among us.
Her 6-year-old son goes to school here.
We’ve bought coffee at that Wawa.
The store on Old Sugartown has reopened, its floors scrubbed. The only hint of the horror that happened here: a makeshift memorial on a window ledge.
Remember those ever-evolving plans for Devon Yard? How they once included a hotel, apartment building and parking garage near the old Waterloo site? And how, after a series of skirmishes, feisty neighbors thwarted all three.
Well, never say never.
The same developer – Eli Kahn, in partnership with Wade McDevitt – is back with new versions of each, all sited within spitting distance of Devon Yard and the Devon Horse Show.
When doctors at CHOP diagnosed Matthew Cramer with “classic” Autism Spectrum Disorder, his mother, Julie, a physician herself, had to excuse herself.
“I was retching,” the Merion Station dermatologist tells SAVVY. “I was absolutely sick to my stomach.”
“It’s not cancer,” her husband, Warren, had reassured her. “It’s not the end of the world.”
“It sort of is,” Julie countered. For a long time, she couldn’t even say the word, autism. “I used the A word instead,” she says.
Ten years later, Julie says the full word without flinching. More than that, she’s eager to share her son’s remarkable journey.
You smell smoke, call 9-1-1, first responders rush on over.
But what if – gulp – there aren’t enough first responders?
That’s the scary scenario laid out in a new report about the state of volunteer firefighting in PA.
Numbers have fallen off a cliff: from 300,000 volunteers in the 1970s to 38,000 today. The report calls the drop-off nothing short of a “public safety crisis.”
While the situation’s not as dire here, our Main Line fire companies – staffed largely by unpaid volunteers – are hurting for help.
The swankest dining destination this side of Center City – Eddie V’s Prime Seafood – just dropped anchor in front of the King of Prussia Mall.
Everything at Eddie’s oozes opulence: the white-coated waiters, the show-stopping chandelier, the caviar tastings, the oyster-and-champagne pairings, the walk-through glass wine cellar.
Not for nothin’ is “Living it up” the chain’s motto.
Hearts were heavy but heads were held high across the Main Line this week.
Hate would have no home here.
From Beth Chaim in Malvern to Beth David in Gladwyne, from the Chabad Center in Devon to Chabad Main Line in Merion, from Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy to the Perelman Jewish Day School, thousands gathered – somber and shattered, yes, but resolute in their response to the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in U.S. history.
There would be no cowering in corners.
With growing unease, Jewish friends had watched the rising tide of hate on their home turf: the toppled tombstones, the scribbled swastikas, the bomb threats. But a massacre? In their own state? In a neighborhood not so different from Narberth? If hate could kill in Squirrel Hill, it could kill anywhere, right?
On Sept. 7, three days after her sons started the new school year at Radnor Elementary, Heidi Diskin ended her life.
She was 44.
We share this with you because Heidi would want us to.
“One hundred percent, she would want her story told,” said her husband, J.D., in a phone interview. “My hope is that what happened to Heidi can be a teachable moment. As terrible as this situation is, it’s an even worse tragedy if it doesn’t help others.”
To family and close friends, Heidi’s suicide was a sucker punch – a heart-wrenching coda to 20 years of pain.
To those less close, it seemed, well, inexplicable.
Because Heidi had made mental health advocacy and suicide prevention her life’s work. She’d started a brain health foundation, she’d spoken to countless groups, she’d even hosted a cable TV show about mental health. How could Heidi Diskin – of all people – have succumbed herself?
It would be easy to write about Julia Rae, née Julia Rae Schlucter, as yet another precocious Main Line talent.
We’d tell you she was performing in regional theater at age 6.
That she was recording original songs professionally by age 15.
That she’s been a featured singer in the 6ABC Thanksgiving Day Parade for eight years.
That she skipped senior year at the Academy of Notre Dame to pursue a music career in LA. That, still a teenager, she walked the Hollywood red carpet with Brooke Shields after one of her original songs was featured in a Shields movie.
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