The burgeoning visual arts program at Henry C. Lea Elementary School (4700 Locust St.) in West Philly needs volunteer artists to join kids who want to improve their school. The students want to make change happen at their school through an aesthetic/design intervention.

Artists are needed to help create murals in transitional areas in the school, including stairways and hallways at Lea.

“Research shows that these are the areas where kids feel the least safe, especially in urban schools,” said Yvette Almaguer, a professional visual merchandiser who along with Lea art teacher John F. Try is leading the program.

The visual team consists of sixth, seventh and eighth graders who will be part of the collaborative process of designing, producing and installing the works. The program is seeking help from a number of potential sponsors and hopes to get the program started in March. If you’re interested call 917-602-7998 or write Yvette at yarecess – at – gmail.com.

Philadelphia Magazine columnist Christine Speer wrote a nice piece today on the efforts of the micro-loan project Philly Stake, which supplies small loans to innovative and community-minded projects in Philadelphia. The column features Nic Espositio and Erica Smith, who started the sustainable urban farming non-profit Philly Rooted and won a Philly Stake grant last fall.

Philly Rooted in partnership with The Enterprise Center manages the Walnut Hill Community Farm (4610 Market St.), which is located in a pocket park on land that is leased from SEPTA.

Philly.com reports that 14 people reported injuries this afternoon when a Route 11 trolley collided with a SUV on Woodland Avenue near 48th Street. Eight trolley passengers, three passengers in the Mercury Mountaineer involved in the collision and three people outside the trolley reported minor injuries. The collision was the second in as many days involving a trolley and another vehicle.

This week’s issue of Philadelphia Weekly includes the story of West Philly couple Amanda Kole and Rachel Turanski, whose journey to Iowa last summer to marry is the subject of a documentary due out this spring.

The couple says that the film, Married in Spandex, is not overtly political and was never meant to be a film at all. It was supposed to be just a wedding video that included footage of their 18-hour trek to Iowa, one of five states where same-sex marriage is legal (plus the District of Columbia), and their wedding.

“I never thought we’d be people who were political or controversial. We just wanted to exercise our rights, and we had to go to Iowa to do it,” Kole told reporter Michael Alan Goldberg.

Kole’s sister and her sister’s boyfriend, both filmmakers, recorded the trip and the wedding, which featured a cast of zany characters but also family members who are conservative but came to accept, and enjoy, the wedding.

“We’re not Michael Moore-ing it up,” Turanski laughs. “Fighting fire with fire doesn’t do anything but make people more angry. Ideally, people will watch this and think, ‘They love each other, they’re stable, they have great jobs, they’re hilarious, they’re putting good into the world—why not just let them get married and have it be legal in Pennsylvania?’”

Here is a video released to help raise money for the production of the film:

His name is Oreo. He is lost from the 4700 block of Cedar. Not
wearing a collar, has no microchip. He is very friendly. If you see him or are able to safely capture him
please call:
267-978-2048 or 267-235-6692

This is from Linda Lee. Thanks Linda.

You have probably stepped on Toynbee Tile a hundred times – maybe a thousand times – and never took notice. The little cryptic messages are embedded in streets in about 30 cities in the United States and South America. You can find them all over Center City Philadelphia. The Toynbee Tiles mystery intrigued Jon Foy, a West Philly resident, so much that he taught himself filmmaking and cleaned houses to pay for a documentary he shot and produced called “Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles.”

His efforts were recently noticed. Big time. Foy has won the U.S. Documentary Competition Directing Award at the Sundance Film Festival.

“I had no idea that such things were possible in life. Just a few weeks ago I was a housecleaner,” Foy said. “This is for all the artists working in obscurity out there.” “Never give up, because if you do, you know what will happen. If you don’t give up, you don’t know what will happen.”

Here is an impromptu interview with Foy soon after he received his award. Needless to say, if John cleans your house you may want to start looking for someone else.