Rose Valley Turns 100

The Delco Times had a piece this week about Rose Valley Boro’s 100th anniversary. They have a year of events planned by organizations in the borough.

The events begin in grand style Jan. 21 with The Party of the Century, an evening of dinner and dancing at the Old Mill hosted by the borough. In a nod to the theme, guests are asked to don gala dress or period attire.

The festivities resume in April, with Hedgerow’s gala celebration, held at the Wallingford Arts Center, and May at The School in Rose Valley with a lecture on progressive education and May Pole dance and 1923 period garden party held by the museum at Thunderbird Lodge. The borough will host its annual Fourth of July parade, ending with a swim and picnic at the pool.

Fall activities will include the Minquas trail walk and reenactment in September; walking tour of historic homes, some of which are listed on the National Register of Historic Places in October and a conference on the theater, and on wood sculptor and artist Wharton Esherick in November.

The calendar will conclude with tree lighting and carols at Thunderbird Lodge and “A Delco Christmas Carol” presented at Hedgerow.

The DelCo Times article says a calendar of events was sent to borough residents and provides a link to the borough’s website, but I didn’t see anything there about upcoming events.

Garden City Fire Company’s New Website

Garden City Fire Company received a grant to improve volunteer recruitment. They have a new website, found here. The consulting group working with the fire company posted on Patch about their upcoming efforts.

“We are looking for community members who are interested in serving and protecting their neighbors,” said Michelle Carroll, an administrative officer and treasurer with the fire company. “Our volunteers embody our slogan — they’re trained to save and inspired to serve. Some have even gone onto paid careers in public service, through the training and experience they gained with us.”

So take a look around the new website. It sounds like they have more planned to drive up recruitment, which is needed across PA. Numerous news stories like this one cite a decline of 90% in the number of volunteer firefighters in PA over the last 50 years.

Covid In PA

Covid deaths in Pennsylvania have started to show an uptick since the start of the year. Because of unreported home testing (and lack of testing), case numbers have not risen noticeably, but deaths remain a lagging indicator of increased Covid spread. Note that because of a lag in death reporting, the graph always shows deaths declining, but that decline is likely not real, deaths have risen roughly 50% from the base level during the fall and do not appear to be trending downward yet. Pennsylvania now only updates this data once a week, so it might not be until February that we know how large this peak gets. But given the amount of travel for holidays, large indoor gatherings during winter and low uptake of vaccine boosters and masking, increasing viral spread is likely.