Bea Kelly Marks 20 Years at the Schuylkill Center

Posted on November 6, 2020 by Amy Krauss

If you’ve visited the Schuylkill Center anytime in the last 20 years, there’s a great chance you’ve met Roxborough’s Bea Kelly, who this week celebrates her 20th anniversary as a member of the center’s staff. Our program registrar, Bea served as our receptionist for 15 of those 20 years,so if you’ve walked in the front door to come to an event, see our art gallery, drop off a preschooler, or buy our special bird seed, you’ve likely said hello to Bea.

To mark the occasion, the staff created a bee-friendly garden (pun intended, get it?) at the front door near our new seating area, which overflows with plants that birds and pollinators like native bees find attractive, like viburnums, small flowering shrubs with fruits craved by birds, and fall-blooming asters that nourish migrating monarchs on their way south. She also was given a gift certificate to White Yak, the delicious Tibetan restaurant that’s scoring a lot of attention on the Ridge.

A native Philadelphian who grew up in Northwest Philly, Bea has called Roxborough her home for the last five years. Asked why she chose Roxborough, she responded, “well it’s obvious that being in close proximity to work is a bonus. The neighborhood is beautiful, vibrant, verdant, and conducive to sustainable living and healthy community. And it’s fun.

“My neighborhood,” she continued, “ is one of the most priceless areas of the region. I can walk just about anywhere from my house and find interesting nooks and crannies along the way. I love the views and the architecture and the history around every corner, and also the gardens. I enjoy the ease and comfort in exploring the area and I meet so many friendly neighbors everywhere I go.”

Bea came to the Center in 2000 as a part-time educator but quickly transitioned to become the “face” of the organization when she took on the job of front-desk receptionist. Bea recalls, “it was always satisfying to help anyone who came through our front door because everyone is usually surprised and delighted at what they find when they explore our trails.”

She’s also seen a lot of nature in her time with us, as the front desk is surrounded by glass windows. She’s the first to see new birds at our feeding station, often writing their names of an old-school chalkboard in the lobby, or deer coming too close to the front door, or Canada geese returning to nest on Fire Pond outside the front door, or blue jays stealing name tags from the native plants we sell at the front door (they love doing this, oddly), or fox droppings deposited on the front walkway by a fox likely snubbing his nose at us, and more.

She’s even our rainfall monitor, measuring how much rainfall comes each day in the rain gauge out by the solar collectors. And she’s been one of the go-to photographers I’ve leaned on for submitting alongside this column– you’ve seen her work on several occasions.

When asked about colleagues or mentors that influenced her, Bea gave a shout out to our diverse army of volunteers. “I think there’s something miraculous when people give freely of their time.” While the individual tasks may not seem significant, Bea notes, “their collective benefits are immeasurable. Their work over the years has made the Center run much more smoothly.” When asked about working with Bea, Director of Education Aaliyah Green Ross comments, “I’ve relied on Bea in my time here. She is always a great resource when it comes to what works when we’re planning education and public programs.”

When Bea isn’t at her desk, you might find her walking along one of her favorite places at the Center, our driveway. “There’s a place at the bend in our driveway that’s really quiet and there are trees on either side,” she muses. “When I walk along the driveway, it feels like I’m on an old country road. The bend is a spot that has a nice mix of ‘wildness’ with a dab of civilization.”

During her time, Bea has worked for three of our four executive directors, and just missed meeting our founder, Dick James, who retired in 1996. As the fourth in that chain, I think that it’s incredibly rare that people stay at one workplace for 20 years anymore, so the center is very lucky that Bea has been that warm, welcoming presence at our front door for all this time. In fact, Dick James, here for 31 years, may be the only other person in our organization’s history to hit this mark.

I’m hoping she stays on another 20 more! We’ll write about her in this corner of the newspaper again when she does.

Congratulations, Bea, and thank you.

By Mike Weilbacher, Executive Director

Halloween and Hermit’s Cave

Posted on October 24, 2020 by Amy Krauss

Kris Soffa as the “Woman in the Wilderness” at the Hermit’s Cave. Photo by David Soffa.

It’s Halloween, a normally festive holiday that’s been made even scarier by the pandemic. Lots of Halloween events have sadly been canceled this year out of care and caution; one of those was typically set in a very special place in Roxborough:

The Hermit’s Cave along the Wissahickon. Which amazingly was created by a Philadelphian who immigrated here from– you can’t make this stuff up– Transylvania.

You may have heard of the legend that a hermit lived in a cave along the Wissahickon for some time. While much of the truth has been lost and the legend has been greatly embellished, Halloween is a great time to dig up the skeleton of the story. And our tale is told by Kris Soffa, longtime Roxborough resident and Trail Ambassador for Friends of the Wissahickon who typically did a spooky night at the cave, which we’ll get to in a moment.

Johannes Kelpius, as Kris explained, “was the son of a Lutheran minister, born in 1667,” she said, yes, in Transylvania. “He was a scholar, writer, alchemist, philosopher, mystic, musician, and scientist,” she continued, “and part of the Pietist movement, breaking off from Lutheranism during the Reformation. He was the leader of a hotbed of people studying the Book of Revelation.” The group decided through their intense study that the world would end in 1694. Inspired by a passage in the book noting the importance of the “Woman in the Wilderness,” which to them signaled they should await the end in the wilds of the New World. As Philadelphia was close to the 40th parallel, and 40 was mystical to the group, and the city was tolerant of religious freedom, they came to Philadelphia, bringing 40 men to start their celibate cult in the New World wilderness to await the end. As Kelpius went to college in Germany, much of his group were highly literate German men, and they found a German patron to buy them land, not far from Germantown, again finding people sympathetic to their story.

It was America’s first Doomsday Cult. They set up shop off now-named Hermit Lane at the bottom of Roxborough near the Wissahickon, erecting a tabernacle 40 feet wide by 40 feet long, the 40 men living (near the 40th parallel, remember) in huts nearby. Legend says Kelpius himself lives in a cave here; some legends even say the group lives in caves along the creek, but there are not many true caves here– it’s the wrong kind of rock.

And while (spoiler alert!) the world does not end in 1694, the group stays busy. Learned men in a small growing town– Philadelphia has only 500 buildings when they arrive– “they become successful doctors and lawyers,” continued Kris, “so they are visiting Germantown, people coming to them for healing.” They grow a large botanical garden that includes many of the plants they need for their medical work. Kris says the group sets up the first observatory in the New World, at Lover’s Leap in the Wissahickon, using instruments Kelpius brought with him. He wrote the first piece of music in the New World, a book of hymns, some still used today. His follower Christopher Witt, a Brit expatriate, painted his portrait, the first oil painting in the New World. Wikipedia adds that Witt also “built them a pipe organ… the first privately owned organ in North America.”

As 1694 passes without the world ending, some of the followers become disenchanted, and the group struggles. Kelpius dies in 1708, many blaming his ascetic life in a cave for his death in his 40s. The effort ends with the land being purchased by the well-established Righter family who operated a shad fishery, mills, and ferry along the Schuylkill.

In 1848, the Righters sold the site of the tabernacle and one “hermit” cabin to the son of a Russian count, who built a country house here he named the Hermitage. Evan’s son sold the property in 1895 to Fairmount Park for $1.

The cave is downhill of the Hermitage off Hermit Lane. Carefully lined with rock and lintels, it appears more like a root cellar. While several websites claim it was a springhouse, no spring emerges from its solid-stone floor. Kris doubts this was ever a hermit’s cave, but where Kelpius really lived and whether it was a hut or a cave has been lost in time. That said, the Rosicrucians, another sect that has claimed Kelpius, erected a stone marker to him here in 1961– which stands today.

In recent years, Kris Soffa orchestrated a special evening event there. A prop coffin was wheeled into the cave, as she described, “and spooky re-enactors in full Halloween regalia lit candles and incense and laid out artifacts which Kelpius might have used, like an astrolabe, crystals, and alchemy objects. The hermit himself, in Renaissance robes and hood, waited inside the cave at a small table and chair.” As her group walked to the cave, costumed characters joined them as escorts, and at the cave, a vampire of course emerged from the coffin, a joyful mashup of history and Hallwoeen.

But not to be done this year! Stay tuned for next year, and in the meantime, Happy Halloween.

By Mike Weilbacher. Executive Director. Mike tweets @SCEEMike, and can be reached at mike@schuylkillcenter.org.

A Life of Quiet Giving: Dana Tobin, 1946-2020

Posted on October 21, 2020 by Amy Krauss

Editor’s note: Dana Tobin worked for many years at the Schuylkill Center from the 70s into the 90s, and was founding executive director Dick James’s right hand man for many of those years. We sadly heard he had passed away recently. Our friend Jon Roesser at Weavers Way Coop, where Dana was also very active, just wrote this essay for the Shuttle, their newspaper. We thought we’d share it with you, the Schuylkill Center family, as well. RIP, old friend.

A few years ago, Dana Tobin had an idea: Set up a way for Co-op members to have their five percent working member discount automatically donated at the register to Food Moxie, our affiliated non-profit.

From this idea, the Co-op’s “High Five” program was born. And every month since, a few dozen Co-op members forgo their working member discount and instead have it donated in support of Food Moxie’s various education programs. On average, it’s about $700 a month. So far, more than $66,000 has been donated.

The High Five program is emblematic of how Dana slowly, quietly made the world a better place. No grand gestures, no photo ops with bulky promotional checks — just steady, reliable support, delivered without fanfare and with no strings attached.

Last month, the Co-op lost Dana. He did not die of COVID-19, but his death in the middle of the pandemic adds to the sense of sorrow and loss we are feeling this year.

Up until the pandemic, Dana was a fixture around the Co-op, and while it was often to go shopping, just as often he was up to something else. Picking up cardboard for reuse. Dropping off used egg cartons for someone with backyard chickens. Returning a pile of slightly used paper bags.

A brilliant guy with an extraordinary intellectual curiosity, books helped him understand the world.

Above all, there were books. If you had a conversation with Dana, chances are he’d be back in a day or two, a book in his hand about the subject of which you had last spoken, with a note attached recommending this or that chapter.

He didn’t share his personal beliefs often, and it drove him a bit nuts when others would venture opinions on subjects they barely understood, not an uncommon occurrence here at Weavers Way.
Dana was generous with his time and his money, but never in a showy way. His gifts were small and frequent, and always anonymous, never with an expectation of anything in return.

He earned his Co-op hours by putting together two weekly email lists —“Thursday Food” and “Sunday Food” — in which he would compile links to articles about local food news, agriculture, food systems and the environment. These emails kept us informed and made sure we didn’t miss important news related to our industry.

More than anything else, he was a good friend. When I needed someone to talk to, I could always count on Dana. True to character, he rarely gave advice or opinions. Mostly he would listen, smile, comfort and help me find perspective.

And now that he’s gone, I am truly, deeply sad.

By Jon Roesser, Weavers Way Co-op General Manager

Manayunk and Manatawna: Our Lenape Place Names

Posted on October 11, 2020 by Amy Krauss

One of the pleasures of teaching and talking about our Roxborough land are our historic place names, so many of them Lenape in origin: Wissahickon, Conshohocken, Manatawna, Cinnaminson, Manayunk. Widen the lens a bit, and Philadelphia maps burst with Lenape words: Shackamaxon, Wingohocking, Kingsessing, Tulpehocken, Tioga.

Sadly, Phildelphians are taught too little, if anything, about the Lenape, the original people here, our First People, and too much that is taught is at best misleading and too often wrong. That statue of a Lenape chief that guards a bluff above the Wissahickon? He is carelessly outfitted as a Western Plains Indian, and historians agree there were no councils on Council Rock.

Deborah Del Collo, an archivist for the Roxborough, Manayunk, and Wissahickon Historical Society, and author of the excellent “Images of America: Roxborough,” wrote in its introduction, “The words manatawney and manaiung” the latter her transliteration of Manayunk, “are intertwined with the beginning of Roxborough.” Manatawna is, of course, the name of a narrow street that connects Ridge Avenue just past Cathedral Avenue with Hagy’s Mill Road; you can see the road in the 1926 aerial photo of Upper Roxborough included here– it’s on the far right; that’s Ridge Avenue slicing through the foreground.

But an 1895 railroad atlas in my office curiously shows the word “Manatawna” used to mark the small village of homes near where that narrow street connects to the Ridge, as if Manatawna was a small town just outside the larger Roxborough. Readers, could this be true?

Del Collo wrote that “the Manatawney, which is currently Ridge Avenue in Roxborough, is a path from the native plantations of upper Roxborough to the Falls of the Schuylkill in the current East Falls section of Roxborough.” So she indicates that perhaps Manatawney was the original name of the Ridge. A tawney, she writes, is an open road and mana could mean “raging” or “god,” so she translates Manatawney as “an open road from our creator.”

While I love this, Wikipedia– I know, don’t believe everything you read online– includes a long list of Lenape place names under the entry “Lenapehoking,” the Lenape word for this land where we all live. They include Manatawny on this list, here with no “e” before the “y,” and use it to refer to a creek just outside Pottstown, and say the name means “place where we drink.”

Which is ironic, as many people know the derivation of Manayunk, which is usually said to be “place where we drink,” everyone ironically chuckling at modern Manayunk’s collection of bars and restaurants. Del Collo writes, “The addition of iung (water or stream) to mana in manaiung translates to a ‘raging river’ which makes perfect sense since the waters of the Schuylkill bordering Roxborough were raging waters in Lenape days.” To make it navigable, the famous Falls of the Schuylkill of course were buried under water from the Flat Rock dam.

Wikipedia hews to the more traditional translation of Manayunk, “place where we go to drink.” I like Del Collo’s translations on both counts, but I’d love for Lenape scholars and native speakers to weigh in.

“Schuylkill,” of course, is a Dutch place name, translating to “hidden river.” But what did the Lenape call this important river? Pennsylvania Heritage published a 2013 piece by historian Joan Wenner, “A River Runs Through Penn’s Woods: Tracing the Mighty Schuylkill,” where she writes, “Once the grand watercourse was home to the Delaware Indians who called it the manaiunk meaning ‘rushing and roaring waters.’”

Apart from all the different spellings of the word, Benner indicates that the Lenape called the river itself Manayunk, and she backs up Del Collo on the “roaring” part. Manayunk: roaring water. Great name.

Nobody disagrees on Wissahickon; I’ve always heard it translated as “catfish stream.” But Del Collo writes that “Wisa can mean ‘catfish’ or ‘yellow,’ and hickon means ‘mouth of a large stream or tide;’ therefore Wissahickon literally means ‘a large catch of catfish found at the mouth of the creek.’” This makes way more sense to me: the catfish would have been in the Schuylkill– pardon me, the Manayunk– so the Lenape caught fish congregating in the Manayunk where the Wissahickon enters it, today where the Canoe Club sits.

Conshohocken translates to “pleasant valley” or “elegant land.” And Cinnaminson, that street that falls off the Ridge at the 5th District building, could either mean “rock island” or “sweet water.”

And my favorite place name? By translation, it’s Tulpehocken, the name of a creek and both street and train station in Germantown. That translates as “land of turtles,” as the turtle was sacred to the Lenape, all of us riding on the back of a giant turtle, the image that Roxborough often uses to describe itself, a la that mural above the 7-Eleven on Ridge. We all live on Tulpehocken.

And we all live in Lenapehoking, the ancestral lands of the Lenape, a people wrongly renamed the Delaware. The Schuylkill Center acknowledges that our 340-acre forest was once the haunts of the Lenape, and we would like to weave that story back into our landscape, and find more ways to connect more of us to that untold story.

I’ll continue to share what I discover with you all.

By Mike Weilbacher

Belated Earth Day at 50 exhibition in our gallery

Posted on September 22, 2020 by Amy Krauss

“There is no planet B” was one of the many slogans calling for environmental action during Earth Day in 2019. Even if this year’s celebrations of Earth Day’s 50th anniversary have been subdued in the wake of the worldwide pandemic, its ideals and insights are more vivid than ever before. After a significant delay, the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education is presenting for this occasion the new exhibition “Ecotactical: Earth Day at 50,” which opened to the public on September 21, in its newly reopened Visitor Center.

The turmoil of our own time and the increasing urgency of the climate crisis gives the historical roots of Earth Day new relevance. “Both the artists and myself, we have been following and adjusting the exhibition to the ups and downs of COVID-19 over the last months,” says exhibition coordinator Liz Jelsomine. “Putting this into perspective, I believe the artists in ‘Ecotactical’ offer exciting new thoughts on the meaning of Earth Day today.”

Following in Earth Day’s creative footprints, the artist collaborative Tools For Action created inflatable sculptures for the People’s Climate March in 2014; they reference a “survival performance” the group Ant Farm presented in 1970. A documentation of their inflatables for today’s climate and earth-related demonstrations and actions is displayed in the gallery.

The activism of Tools for Action is mirrored in an outdoor installation along our trails, “For The Future” by Julia Way Rix, of cyanotype flags that draw on signs and slogans from recent climate strikes and environmental demonstrations. Also on the Center’s trails one can find fragile sculptures by Nicole Donnelly whose arrangements with invasive vines and handmade plant-based paper draw our attention back to the liveliness of nature.

Another visual response is offered by local environmental educator and urban planner, Pili X, as he documents in a vivid photo album the rich community activities at the North Philly Peace Park. This self-identified ‘ecology campus’ champions alternative urban farming methods, fights for environmental and racial justice, and offers a holistic health approach in response to the Sharswood neighborhood’s profound needs for education, employment and food security. “We’re not going to be able to solve all these issues and answer all these problems overnight, but to begin to add some relief to people,” comments Pili X about his practice on philadelphianeighborhoods.com.

Close beside that series is Sophy Tuttle’s display “Solastalgia,” which offers a shrine for healing and grief. Resembling a cabinet of curiosities, Tuttle’s work is a memorial to the estimated 150-200 species that go extinct every day, and a prompt to reimagine our domination-based relationship with our surroundings. The gallery presentation is rounded out by “Curious: Think Outside the Pipeline!” a family-friendly eco-musical by music duo Ants on a Log that follows a young girl’s journey into community organizing, and “Water Ways,” a series of illustrations by Meg Lemieur and Bri Barton that depict water, health, and justice in relationship to fracking.

Calling for action, reflection and humor, the artists’ responses in “Ecotactical” demand our attention and accountability to the past, present and future.

Due to COVID-19 safety measures, masks are required in the gallery, with no more than three people per group, at 6 feet apart. The Schuylkill Center looks forward to belatedly celebrating this year’s Earth Day anniversary with you.

By Tina Plokarz, Director of Environmental Art

Schuylkill Center’s latest response to COVID

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Amy Krauss

While the Visitor Center remains closed during the week, we are open on Saturdays for the month of August. Hikers and visitors to our trails will be able to use our facilities and visit our gift shop from 9-5 on Saturdays only. The Visitor Center will remain closed weekdays

The gates to our main parking lot are now open 9-5.

The Wildlife Clinic is currently accepting patients for rehabilitation, but is unable to accept walk-in patient admissions. If you have found an injured or orphaned animal in need of assistance, please call our 24-hour wildlife hotline at 215-482-7300 x option 2. Please do not bring a wild animal to the clinic without first speaking with us by phone.

The clinic is functioning with limited staff at this time. If we are unable to answer the phone immediately, leave a detailed voicemail and we will return your call as soon as possible. For non-urgent wildlife questions or concerns, please email wildlife@schuylkillcenter.org.

Hours of Operation
Monday – Friday — 9am-6pm
Saturday, Sunday — 10am-4pm

All on-site public programming is suspended until further notice.

If you want to get your nature groove on, check out our virtual offerings about nature and the environment from our YouTube channel.

Thursday Night Live: Free weekly online events/programs presented by Schuylkill Center staff with special guests

Ask a Naturalist: Get your nature groove on with an environmental educator recorded from FB Live every Monday at 5

Schuylkill Saturdays: Live video recorded each Saturday at 10:30 with one of our environmental educators. Leave with an activity to continue your nature exploration at home.

Year of Action: Call-to-action videos to learn how you can help the environment

Backyard Biodiversity: Fun outdoor nature exploration right in your backyard

Nature Crafts: Make-it videos with natural materials

Our trails are open dawn to dusk, every day. Enjoying sunshine and fresh air will help get us through this unusual time, as nature alleviates stress and anxiety. Please practice appropriate physical distancing while on the trails and give those around you at least 6 feet of space—one full stretched turkey vulture, to be exact! As per the governor’s and CDC’s recommendations, please wear a mask when walking our trails.

We ask you to keep the nearby roads safe by parking appropriately in designated lots and take all of your trash and belongings with you when you leave. Please also keep your pets at home.

Thank you again for enjoying the Schuylkill Center.

Three Musketeers Walking our Trails

Posted on July 26, 2020 by Amy Krauss

If you’re out on our trails early on a weekday morning, most likely you’ll happen upon an energetic trio enjoying the sights and sounds of our 340 acre forest. Dr. Evamarie Malsch, Dr. Louise Lisi and Gail Harp are our neighbors from Cathedral Village, the continuing care community around the corner. As frequent visitors, they have come to know our trails intimately. “We’re really lucky to have the Schuylkill Center so closeby,” Evamarie comments, “and we’ve been going there at least twice a week to hike since the start of the pandemic.”

Three “masked” Musketeers walking our trails.

Evamarie took up hiking soon after she retired and was fortunate to meet Gail and Louise, avid hikers who also reside at Cathedral Village; together they are affectionately referred to as the Three Musketeers in their community. Evamarie is delighted to explore the far reaches of the Schuylkill Center because every time she goes out, she finds something new in bloom. “We have been having such fun learning about animals and ephemerals.”

One creature that recently caught their attention was a red eft, a stage in the left cycle of the Eastern newt salamander. The hikers disagreed about whether the bright red coloring was poisonous, but they eventually confirmed that, indeed, this was the most toxic stage of the eastern newt and a clear warning to predators.

Red eft salamander

Louise muses, “because the Schuylkill Center landscape changes so rapidly, our hikes never feel the same.” Her favorite spot on the property is Smith Run. “I feel like I’m in some far away country when I’m listening to the stream while enjoying the trees and foliage.” Now that restrictions have somewhat eased, she has extended her love of the Schuylkill Center to her grandchildren and even made up a scavenger hunt for their introductory trip. Gail remembers the pear trees in bloom. “You see these beautiful flowering trees and yet they’re only flowering for a short time.”

Evamarie has been a loyal member of the Schuylkill Center for five years and shares why she supports it.

“I get so much pleasure from going there so I choose to give to a place that aligns with my values of educating people about nature.”

She also appreciates the fact even though it’s “in the city limits, it feels like I’m in the wild. Here, everything is natural which is calming and peaceful.”

We invite you to explore our trails this summer. We’re open dawn to dusk every day and studies show that being in nature helps relieve anxiety and stress. Who knows? Perhaps you may run into our Cathedral Village friends. Ask them a question, they may very well know the answer given their time spent at the Schuylkill Center.

If you’re enjoying our trails, please consider helping us to maintain them by becoming a member for as little as $50/year.

By Amy Krauss, Director of Communications/Digital Strategy

Foraged Flavor: Eat Your Weeds!

Posted on July 9, 2020 by Amy Krauss

Visit almost any open space in Roxborough or Manayunk, and you’ll find a surprising cornucopia of wonderful taste sensations: dandelions and daylilies, Queen Anne’s lace and curly dock. That’s right, these are all weeds that simply taste great, and are free for the taking.

Wild plant forager Tama Matsuoka Wong has written a gorgeous cookbook, Foraged Flavor, featuring 88 recipes for the plants named above, and more. Recipes like chocolate-dipped wild spearmint leaves. Sumac and fig tart. Chilled mango soup with sweet spruce tips. Wild mustard greens and chorizo wild rice. Sound yummy? You bet.

Many high-end restaurants offer foraged food sensations on their menu

And foraging is catching on big these days. Tama supplies foraged plants to many, like Daniel in New York City, the acclaimed Michelin-starred restaurant whose chef de cuisine, Eddy Leroux, co-wrote the book with Tama. I walked into Whole Foods recently, and cracked up when I saw dandelion leaves on sale for a surprising high price. Dandelions? For sale? Really?

But dandelions are edible in so many ways, and were actually brought to the New World from European settlers wishing to bring greens with them. You can find green dandelion leaves deep into December, and find them again as early as February. Rich in vitamins, these greens saved many winter-starved colonial settlers. In fact, its long scientific name translates roughly as “the official cure for everything.” Those settlers planted it outside the kitchen door, where the plant of course escaped, and is now the bane of most suburban lawn owners and the featured pest in too many lawn chemical commercials.

Not only are its leaves edible. The sauteed buds are really tasty, the taproot can be roasted for coffee, and its flowers have been turned into wine. Tama of course kicks it up a notch or two: she creates a dandelion flower tempura with savory dipping sauce. Whoa.

What sets Tama’s book and philosophy apart from so many other similar books is that the previous ones would exhort you to boil the tough weedy leaves of many plants with like three changes of water, turning them into mush. Or fry them with bacon and butter– where everything tastes good, even cardboard.

Tama even eats devil’s walking stick, one of the most hated plants at the Schuylkill Center (we don’t hate many plants, not even poison ivy, but devil’s walking stick is hard on us). Not native to the America’s, this invasive fast-growing shrub sprouts long skinny trunks loaded with thorns, lending the plant its name. Heck, even its giant leaves are covered in thorns– if Klingons had vegetables, this would be them. But it crowds out native plants, and grows like a monoculture of one plant, which Tama notes are “clonal stands.”

In its native Japan, where it is better known as the angelica tree (Aralia elata), its buds are treasured as a delicacy called tara no me. So Tama forages for the buds, picking them at the exact right time of year, turning them into such treasures as tempura-fried Aralia buds and just-poached Aralia with mustard vinaigrette.

Intrigued? We’d love to introduce you to the charismatic Tama, one of the most dynamic people you’ll ever meet– just spending an hour with her is upbeat balm for the pandemic soul. Go to our website, look for the link, and join us on Thursday evening. When our gift shop reopens, which we pray is soon, Foraged Flavor is for sale; of course, you can purchase it online.

After the event, you’ll never buy dandelions at Whole Foods again. You’ll forage for them along Germany Hill and the Upper Roxborough Reservoir Reserve Park. And you’ll stop spraying your weeds– you’ll harvest them instead.

The Schuylkill Center’s Thursday Night Live! series includes additional events into the summer. Coming topics include the surprising lives of moths, climate change in Philadelphia, and the Green New Deal.

Love to have you join us.

By Mike Weilbacher, Executive Director

Help us Restore our Damaged Pine Grove

Posted on June 30, 2020 by Amy Krauss

Pine Grove is easily one of our most beloved features, kids climbing in its many branches, parents inhaling the calming scent, everyone grateful for its cooling shade. But the grove was devastated in early June from a derecho– a supercell thunderstorm– that slammed into the region, knocking down trees and branches everywhere, causing massive power outages, and killing several people.

The storm sliced through Pine Grove like a knife cutting butter, a straight-line of trunks tumbling to the ground, more than 20 trunks snapping off and piled unceremoniously on the ground– and each other.

We closed our trails for a week to wrestle with downed trees and dangerous branches overhanging our trails. While our trails are now reopened, Pine Grove remains closed even now– our staff needs to pull down lots of hanging branches before we allow you back in.

Which is where you come in. We are starting a fund to restore the grove, as we need to both remove branches and trunks while planting new trees in the canopy gaps now present there. Please go online to donate to the grove’s restoration; please help us bring back this unique feature of our campus.

About that storm: a derecho is a line of intense, widespread, and fast-moving windstorms, often thunderstorms, that moves a great distance. This one rolled 250 miles to the Jersey shore, where a gust was clocked at 92 mph, hurricane force. From the Spanish for “straight ahead,” derechos are associated with warm weather– they need heat energy for fuel. While no one storm event can be pinned on climate change, a warming climate increases the chances for large storm events. What we saw that day was weird, excessive, and points to large amounts of heat in the atmosphere in only early June. For me, that derecho was spawned by climate change, a stark reminder that, with power outages, people killed, and houses, cars, and trees damaged, the price tag for ignoring the climate crisis is steep, and rising. We will continue this conversation in our programming, of course.

And I hope you will join me in donating to the Pine Grove Fund.

By Mike Weilbacher, Executive Director

Natural Selections: Manayunk and Manatawna: Our Lenape Place Names

Posted on March 5, 2020 by Schuylkill Center

By Mike Weilbacher, Executive Director

Deborah Del Collo, an archivist for the Roxborough, Manayunk, and Wissahickon Historical Society, and author of the excellent “Images of America: Roxborough,” wrote in its introduction, “The words manatawney and manaiung,” the latter her transliteration of Manayunk, “are intertwined with the beginning of Roxborough.” Manatawna is, of course, the name of a narrow street that connects Ridge Avenue just past Cathedral Avenue with Hagy’s Mill Road; you can see the road in the 1926 aerial photo of Upper Roxborough included here – it’s on the far right; that’s Ridge Avenue slicing through the foreground.

Del Collo wrote that “the Manatawney, which is currently Ridge Avenue in Roxborough, is a path from the native plantations of upper Roxborough to the Falls of the Schuylkill in the current East Falls section of Roxborough.” So she indicates that perhaps Manatawney was the original name of the Ridge. A tawney, she writes, is an open road and mana could mean “raging” or “god,” so she translates Manatawney as “an open road from our creator.”

While I love this, Wikipedia – I know, don’t believe everything you read online – includes a long list of Lenape place names under the entry “Lenapehoking,” the Lenape word for this land where we all live. They include Manatawny on this list, here with no “e” before the “y,” and use it to refer to a creek just outside Pottstown, and say the name means “place where we drink.”

Which is ironic, as many people know the derivation of Manayunk, which is usually said to be “place where we drink,” everyone ironically chuckling at modern Manayunk’s collection of bars and restaurants. Del Collo writes, “The addition of iung (water or stream) to mana in manaiung translates to a ‘raging river,’ which makes perfect sense since the waters of the Schuylkill bordering Roxborough were raging waters in Lenape days.” To make it navigable, the famous Falls of the Schuylkill of course were buried under water from the Flat Rock dam.

“Schuylkill,” of course, is a Dutch place name, translating to “hidden river.” But what did the Lenape call this important river? Pennsylvania Heritage published a 2013 piece by historian Joan Wenner, “A River Runs Through Penn’s Woods: Tracing the Mighty Schuylkill,” where she writes, “Once the grand watercourse was home to the Delaware Indians who called it the manaiunk meaning ‘rushing and roaring waters.’”

Nobody disagrees on Wissahickon; I’ve always heard it translated as “catfish stream.” But Del Collo writes that “Wisa can mean ‘catfish’ or ‘yellow,’ and hickon means ‘mouth of a large stream or tide;’ therefore Wissahickon literally means ‘a large catch of catfish found at the mouth of the creek.’” This makes way more sense to me: the catfish would have been in the Schuylkill – pardon me, the Manayunk – so the Lenape caught fish congregating in the Manayunk where the Wissahickon enters it, today where the Canoe Club sits.

I’ll continue to share what I discover with you all.