Germantown Arts and Craft Fair of Nov 13th, 2011

Starting at 10Am, the Israeli dance session gets underway. Under the leadership of Tamar Magdivitz and Grant Shulman, the session has grown over the years and regularly attracts 25 to 30 dancers each Sunday morning. A count was made halfway through the session on that morning and about 23 dancers were on the floor at the time. For this Sunday, however, the floor had changed. On normal Sundays, dancers use the Marcus auditorium but the auditorium was to be the center of the activities of the arts and crafts fair. So, Germantown that Sunday morning was dancing at its alternate site, the Temin canteen room in the basement. The surrounding pictures were not taken to provide detail: Their purpose is to show Israeli dancing that morning. Many of the dancers in these shots will be seen again as we cover the fair.

The Arts and Crafts show had several differences this year. Patrons were checked at the door, a fee was imposed, and a stamp was applied to the hand. last year no such fee was applied to the public and perhaps this is why it seemed as if there was lower attendance this year. In addition, the fair was in November this year and October last year so perhaps the timing also limited the attendance. The pictures above show various control points where hands could be stamped and fees paid. Even in this, we recognized several familiar faces. To the left is Amy, who has appeared at various times at the Sunday morning Israeli dance session. Last year she was manning a booth and this year, in what we will claim as a promotion, she was at the entrance to the facility used by the fair goers. In the middle is Dena who we caught last year as she was visiting a booth. Both years she has volunteered to help run this arts and crafts fair. However, in appearing on this web site on the previous script dealing with the 2010 fair, she enters into what we call the 2 degrees of Israeli dance freedom phoenomena. It appears the Dena takes classes with Wendy Friedman whose exploits in dancing and travelling have been touted on this web site. The final picture to the right shows a hand about to be stamped so that it can lead its owner into the fair.

Let's step outsode a moment to check out the several changes that already have occurred. Germantown puts out some advertising as you can see in the form of signs and balloons. Parking is altered for the day as a type of diagonal parking is allowed on Ellet street as opposed to the normal parallel parking. We've added a fourth photo here to show you that a variety of vendors came to this fair representing more than just Arts and Crafts as a Verizon truck is parked outside. Within the last year, Verizon has started to offer FIOS within Philadelphia and took this opportunity to explain (and probably demo) this high speed internet service to this part of Philadelphia.

We move back inside the building having had our hand stamped. On 3 floors of the building kiosks and vendors are showing their wares. Above are some general pictures of the arts and crafts fair in operation about 1PM, halfway through the scheduled hours. While some people will be surprised to learn that this is an Israeli dance web site given the extraneous scripts that reside here, our purpose is to generally follow what these dancers are doing. So, it was decided that we would let the dancers decide what kiosks and vendors to photograph as you will see below.

The first Israeli dancers that we run into is John and Elaine. John has been a subject of scripts on this web site before and both are frequent participants of scheduled sessions throughout the week. Elaine and John are both very active in the community and both have great enthusiasm in anything that they do and this fair is no exception. Since they live in the community (close to the Germantown facility) it is inevitable that they run into friends and acquaintences. Both have inquiring minds and many of the kiosks arouse their interest and curiousity. It's similar to what is displayed at dance sessions. Both have an interest and capacity to learn new steps and dances and they put this talent to good effect at the fair as they sample many vendor's wares.

Another couple who we enjoy seeing at dancing is Rochelle and Adam. We catch a few shots of Rochelle separately and both together. Adam recently has been on the sick and ailing list due to a head-on accident that occurred the day of the surprise snowstorm late in October. He has not been dancing as he recovers from severe bruising but has been attending sessions with Rochelle in addition to this fair. Rochelle has been involved with a charity, collecting cans of food for the poor and has publicized this at several sessions. In fact, before this fair, during the morning Israeli dance session, many of the dancers had brought in cans of food based on her request the week before. In our final shot above, both couples, John, Elaine, Rochelle and Adam, are captured together.

Speaking of being on the sick and injured list, we pan our camera and find an Israeli dancer who also is recovering. Not an accident or a sickness but an injury of some type. We're not positive about the details, but in watching Mark (or is it Marc) limp around it is obvious that he is suffering from some lower body injury although apparently recovering to the point of rejoining several sessions after several weeks of non participation. But, these pictures above allow us to also introduce the vendor, Beverly Bender, whose table Mark (or Marc) has been attracted to. Beverly runs Shadow's 4 Paws whose advertisement is "Beautiful Handmade Gifts For Your 2 and 4 legged Friends." When Beverly had a moment, we talked with her about her participation in the fair and about her wares. It was obvious that the products were geared to pets, for the most part dogs with some cat oriented items. Being owned by several felines, we purchased a cat oriented picture holder for our use. Beverly reported that in real life she is a nurse in the University Of Pennsylvania hospital system but enjoys her participation in these craft shows. She did think that the traffic was somewhat low this year, possibly because of the fee indicated above, but hoped that the traffic would pick up through the afternoon. We did our part, buying as indicated, the cat oriented picture frame. You can contact Beverly about her products at shadows4paws@gmail.com or 215-901-4788.

After talking with Beverly, we turned around and saw Adam deeply immersed in another booth. This one seemed to concentrate on what, at first, looked like wooden plates. It was more extensive than plates as you can see from the pictures above. We believe this to be a use of woodturning, applying pottery techniques to shapping wood. The vendor here is Nathan Favors who is based in Bucks County and exhibits through several Gallerys in that area. This word carving is quite impressive and we could understand Adam being drawn to it. After Adam left we took some additional pictures with the last one featuring Mr Favors at the left.

Elana Benamy is another Israeli dancer who frequents various Israeli dance venues over the week including Germantown. We spotted her (blue top in the first 3 pictures) in the midst of the fair and took some pictures as she browsed. There were many vendors and tables to look at and this web site is disappointed that it has limited resources or it would give you a list of all the vendors and their products. But, in the end, we concentrated on the vendor whose wares are in the 3rd picture from the left. This is the work of Melissa Mytty who teaches ceramics at a suburban educational center. In fact ,it was through her teaching that she became aware of this Germantown fair as one of her students suggested being a vendor. We have told you, dear reader, repeatedly that this is not a professional website, amd the last picture showing only half of Melissa proves this but her work is impressive and one could understand why Elana would be drawn to it. Melissa can be contacted at olivejuice215@gmail.com or 313-598-6679.

We are about to look at the other floors but before leaving the Marcus Auditorium, we did one more sweep to find any other Israeli dancers in the proximity. The stage was being used as a cafe with seating. Up there, on the stage, was Sylvia who seemed surprised to find a camera pointed in her direction. We did yell "cheese" before snapping this photo but apparently to no effect. Another dancer, Susan, was sampling Nathan Favors' wares. The last two pictures to the right are of Yona who generally makes it to most Sunday dance sessions. This day she was only attending the fair. As a photographer and video camerist herself, it was easy to pose her in these pictures.

Well, having walked around the Marcus auditorium, it was time to see what was occurring on the other floors. A stairway connects the auditorium with what is called the Silver Kiddish lounge and this was the destination. This can be considered a smaller anteroom to the auditorium. Here we find the White Elephant sale on one of the tables. White Elephant sales or exchanges are kind of cute in their concept. Many seasonal parties will have a party game designated as a White Elephant gift exchange where gifts that are more expensive to maintain than to donate are exchanged. A similar situation is done here where for several weeks prior to the fair a call goes out for such donations and these are sold in the Silver Kiddish lounge throughout the day. In addition, the lounge hosts another table where gift certificates to various local restaurants are bid upon. We looked for the restaurants that had previously hosted lunches of Israeli dancers after class. The most recent, Mi Puebla, was not a participant but the Trolley Car Diner, which was the scene of a luncheon at the beginning of 2011, was featured and you can see this in the enlarged photo in the middle (names and numbers have been colored out)

Last year as we were describing the 2010 fair in another script, we had tried to give an image of the layout of the facility. We had hypothesized that it seemed as if there were two buildings built separately with an connection established between them. It turns that this is what happened. The East side of the facility was built first and is the educational wing. The west side of the building, which we are in, was built afterward and contains the sanctuary and the auditorium we have just left. So, we are continuing down the steps into what is the main sanctuary of the facility although we have been told that other areas of the building are used as such when needed. So, the pictures in this montage show the first floor sanctuary being used for kiosks and tables. At this point we have not run into any Israeli dancers down here.

Well. our search for Israeli dancers has finally been successful on this ground floor. We see Ellen and Sharon in conversation with two individuals manning a table. What art or craft do these two possess or offer? This table represents an organization called Limmud Philly. It's an art and craft for the mind as limmud is the Hebrew word for learning. Seminars are presented throughout the year and a coming event, for Dec 10th to be held at the new National Museum Of Jewish History, is designated as "everything old is new again." One of the flyers on the table is publicizing this event and another flyer pertains to an event called "the Learning fest" to be held at Friends Select school this coming spring. You can see where this table fits in: several kiosks and tables represent Art that feeds the senses, other kiosks and tables represent crafts that are used or worn by the body and this table (and probably some others) feeds the mind. If you are interested, this group maintains a web site at www.limmudphilly.org.