To the left is an Email sent out on Saturday, June 8th, 2019 by Don Schillinger to the Philadelphia area Israeli dance community notifying the email's readers that Don was ceasing the operation of his Thursday night Israeli dance class. To some of us it wasn't really a shock. He had been doing this for at least 18 consecutive years - if not more - and for any teacher of dance - especially in Israeli dance where every one of the over 8000 dances has its own set of steps - that's a lot of teaching and preparation to ready oneself each week.This web site has been documenting the activities of the Philadelphia Israeli dance community for several years now and we thought we would document how several regulars/semi regulars of Don's session(s) have filled up the time gap that has now occurred each Thursday.
Three dancers were contacted and grudgingly - at least in one case - allowed us to delve into their rescheduling. In the first case we met the dancer close to her home. In the second case, we did visit the residence of our interviewee and in the third case we followed a dancer to several other facilities where she continued to pursue her interest in dance. If any other dancers would like to be a part of this, feel free to contact this website at diskcrd@thediskcoordinator.com.

In discussing our first dancer, we need to give you a little history of Abington, a Montgomery county township. The Abington Arts Center is situated close to where Meetinghouse Lane crosses Jenkintown Road. The center was probably established in the late thirties, but it really started to come together in the mid 1960's. This was due to a grant to the Art Center of a portion of an estate, Alverthorpe Manor, by the Rosenwald family (who we will discuss below). Today, the center holds year round art classes and creative events as the pictures in this montage show.

Who were the Rosenfelds? Julius Rosenfeld was born in Chicago and went to work in 1892 for the then somewhat small concern called Sears. The Sears of that day was hardly what it would become. Mr Rosenfeld would have a 40 year relationship with this company moving into the vice president position before taking over as president in 1910. In 1926 he would become Sear's Chairman of the Board until his death in 1932. During his tenure, and probably prodded by his foresight, Sears started the catalog that would make the company greatly successful during the first half of the 20th century. The last picture in this montage highlights the Sears catalog of 1897.

As Sears grew successfully Philadelphia became a large regional center for the company. Besides various stores being built and operated around the Delaware valley, a location in Philadelphia's great Northeast was chosen as a regional administrative center. This Sears tower was apparently built a bit after WWI - during the period of 1919 through 1920 - and when completed became one of the few structures existing on the newly created Theodore Roosevelt Northeast Boulevard, now known as Roosevelt Boulevard. The building became an icon for many generations of Philadelphians who lived in the great Northeast until it was demolished in 1994. Somewhat prior to the construction of the Sears tower, the Rosenwalds had relocated to the Philadfelphia area and had the Alverthorpe manor built as their home.

Rosenwald had his own high stardard for ethics and morals in his own life. While alive he would not allow his name to be used to designate any building or site. Yet, he was one of the most philanphropic bigwigs of the time. His prime interest was in Jewish and Black charities and he became a big force in funding educational opportunities for black youth - something quite a bit ahead of its time. Several books have been written about this as indicated here.

It should not be surprising that his family would eventually donate his estate for community usage. However, the part donated to the art center encompassed only the western half of the estate. The rest of the estate was used by Abington township to create Alverthorpe park which contains trails for hiking, baseball diamonds, a miniature golf course and a 9 hole chip and putt course for Abington residents. Note: For those not familiar with Chip and Putt, this is a smaller version of regular gulf with distances to regulation greens of anywhere from 40 to 120 yards. You nornally tour the course with at most 3 clubs: a high iron, a wedge or low iron and a putter.

So, on one Thursday night in the middle of the summer of 2019, a night freed up by Don's unexpected suspension of Israeli dancing, this web site met our first dancer, and now golfer , Jody Goldsborough, at the check in location to the park. Regular readers know Jody from some of the scripts on this web site. In this montage we've included several recent pictures of Jody doing Israeli dance.

You can see in this montage that Jody was dressed for our appointment. While we went around the course, Jody related how she started to golf after Don's classes were cancelled. "With Thursday night free, I called up a girlfriend of mine, one who I knew played golf on a regular basis, and invited her to play with me one Thursday night. Even though I played really bad that first evening, every week I have improved thanks to my son Eric's teaching - including a video session - and my persistance." We asked her if she had been playing with anyone else we might know from Israeli dancing and she replied "Yeah, I went a round with that Israeli dancer who throws the James Bond parties, what's his name? He's as bad at golf as he is at dancing! And who would mix in James Bond with Israeli dancing?" Who would, indeed! Coincidently, and interestingly enough, this same person was the next Israeli dancer we had scheduled to discuss his schedule changes when Don's class was dissolved.

As we move to our second subject, let's show some pictures from Jan 10, 2019, the last time this web site did photography at Don's session. We covered Israeli dancing that night because it was a special occasion to celebrate the Septuagenarians of Israeli dancing - especially the one who paid for the evening. You can see a preliminary script on this evening by clicking here.

While these pictures may seem completely out of context here, you should realize that they represent a set of scripts that are somewhat hidden in this web site although if you know where to look, you can find them. Every now and then they appear mysteriously. Looking left to right are inclusions from The magic of August 12,This is a tale of Two Men and one Island,December 21 and 23, 1964,Fleming, Ian Fleming: Recording the year from his death on August 12th, 1964 and The Big Bond sounds of the 60s.
Think about this: It's somewhat odd that a set of scripts about a fictional character and author would be embedded in a website dedicated to the Philadelphia Israeli dancing community. No other Israeli dance web site has such a split personality. And, as Jody intimated above, who would do something like this anyway?

Well, we can't answer every question posed above by Jody. But, we have a good idea as to who organized and paid for the January 10th night of dancing and who, every now and then, populates this web site with scripts about Ian Fleming and James Bond not too mention who puttered around with Jody at the Alverthorpe golf course in the summer of 2019. He is our second person of interest in this script. Below is Don's Email announcing the special night of Israeli dancing on Jan 10 of 2019.
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YOU ARE A GUEST on THURSDAY, 1-10-19!
From the folks who gave you the “Annual Homage To Scorpio” events, not to mention the annual Ian Fleming celebrations: Let’s kick off 2019 with a bash!
On Jan 10th dancing at Adath Israel will be held to honor all the Septuagenarians doing Israeli dancing (and let’s honor them while they can still move around).
Dinner will be served, catered by NaNa’s kitchen. So arrive early and arrive hungry!
Just like every week, dancing will commence at 7:00pm with beginners and then move toward regular programming after 8:00pm.
Admission is FREE for the night! So don't miss out on the opportunity to dance for free and get a great meal!
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We're pretty sure that this night of dancing was paid for by the newly minted septoagenarian, Marc Rauer, who everyone agrees was behind the annual Ian Fleming parties alluded to in Don's Email.

In fact there were three parties celebrating Marc's 70th birthday, one on Dec 13, 2018 at Germantown, the one indicated above at Adath Israel on Jan 10th and a final one on Feb 25th at Beth Sholom. Apparently the first one of these (at Germantown) was the most fun for everyone since Germantown turned the tables on Marc who thought he was going to throw his normal Homage To Scorpio affair at the facility. But it quickly turned into a surprise birthday party for him as he was excluded from Grant's Email indicated here. Notice that Grant lists Marc's interests and you can see the tie in to James Bond. When this web site visited a summer Wednesday night Germantown session, we also learned that Marc is part of an informal group meeting almost daily at the Valley Forge Barnes and Noble which organizes daily hiking forays along several trails (Chester Valley Trail, Wilson Park and Valley Forge National Park) in the Valley Forge/King Of Prussia area. We were told that if you want to talk to him about what he is doing to replace Don's Thursday night dancing, expect an invitation to join the daily afternoon B&N session. And, in due time, an invitation was extended to meet at the Valley Forge B&N which is located in Berwyn, a town in Tredyffrin township, Chester county.

If you have never been to a Barnes and Noble, you are missing out of a century old tradition. While it had been a book store in New York city since the 1890's, the name, Barnes and Noble, extends back to 1917 or thereabout. At the time bookstores, both independent or part of a chain, were a dime a dozen. Today, B&N stands alone as the one national book store chain that has survived the effects of the internet/digital way of life (although its survival is at all times touch and go). Its teaming with Starbucks - to allow selected B&N stores to provide Starbucks cafe services - makes the stores perfect for meetups with or without light meals Today, twenty some odd years since arriving in Valley Forge (technically Berwyn) in 1996, the bookstore is well known throughout this area as is our subject. Use a search engine to look up his name with Barnes and Noble and you will be fascinated to learn that nationally he was in second place in the use of his loyalty card through a six month period in 2013/2014. Generally mentioning that you are a friend of his at the store gives you a discount as we were able to prove. Here's a quote found on the internet which may or may not be true but is attributed to Mark DiAddezio who is a financial consultant:"Who is this Marc Rauer? A truly complex question shrouded in much mystery and intrigue. We all know Marc the computer guru, Marc the professor, Marc the Israeli dancer and Marc the James Bond aficionado. The lesser known Marc Rauer reportedly leads a pilot project launched by William Lynch, Jr. CEO of Barnes & Noble. In this role, Marc leads an elite team of commandos whose sole mission is to single-handedly rescue Barnes & Noble booksellers from a fate similar to that of its former arch rival Borders. According to classified internal memos obtained from Mr. Lynch's hard drive, this group’s powers were vastly expanded in the late winter of 2011 following the announcement of Borders’ bankruptcy on February 16, 2011. How else can one explain the 1400 transactions in just the last six months and the countless hours spent with “Rob the trainer?” Rumor has it that Rob, fittingly referred to as “Q” in internal Barnes & Noble communications, is charged with pushing Marc’s body to the limit to tolerate the ungodly amounts of coffee that must be consumed in his quest to save the company. Godspeed Marc Rauer! The fate of old-fashioned literature lovers everywhere is in your hands. Save us from the tyranny of the eReaders…". On a more serious note this montage contains some pictures of the store when we had our recent meeting with Marc at the VF B&N.

Once we posed the question "what are you doing with your Thursday nights, these days?", we were driven over to his nearby Condo unit where newspapers and books were thrown on the floor. "I do a lot of crossword puzzles, not to mention word and logic puzzles. On weekends we usually try to solve some 14 puzzles at a minimum in the New York Times and the Inquirer. On the other days we are trying 6 puzzles split between the daily Times paper and the Times internet site. Now that my Thursday nights are free, I now have more time to deal with this weekly load of puzzles." The pictures here are of his completed crosswords, kenkens and sudukas for one week in early August.

Of course, with such an opening, this web site was able to ask a most pertinent question to this obvious enjoyer of different puzzles. When was the first crossword puzzle created? Marc didn't know! So we'll fill in the blanks for both you, the reader, and him. The British type of crossword puzzle (first of the pictures in this montage) dates back into the late 1800's. The American type crossword puzzle (2nd of the pictures here) originates in late 1913 in the New York World, a daily newspaper that was merged with the New York Evening Telegram in the thirties. The author of the puzzle was a British born journalist, Arthur Wynne. While crosswords somewhat became a rage in New York during the 20's and 30's, the last newspaper in New York to provide such a puzzle was the New York Times which started providing a Sunday puzzle in February 1942 supposedly to take city dwellers minds off of the war news which at that time was nearly all bad. While most New York daily papers have long ceased publication, the Times has vastly expanded its games section both in the paper and on-line with a daily and Sunday puzzle, a daily mini (and midi) puzzle, ken-kens (which are like sudukos), the spelling bee and tiles. Since both Marc and our photographer have an online subscription to the Times, we have been told that they held a competition as to who could resolve that day's Spelling bee fastest in the midst of this interview. The last two pictures show the solution for the spelling bee that day which Marc did win in this impromptu contest. And, we should add, in honor of the New York Times, known as the Old Gray Lady of journalism, we have set the background color of this script to gray.

When the interview continued one more thing was added necessitating additional pictures. The newly freed extra night allowed Marc a few additional hours for reading books each week. In addition to the crossword puzzles laid out on the rug, a whole set of books also made it to the floor as you can see in this montage. These are the books Marc has started, finished or read on Thursday nights since Don's class was cancelled arranged by Military history, World history and fiction.

As this website was leaving, Marc specifically asked that we emphasize the Silk Roads book by Peter Frankopan. Or in his words, "this is a great book - when a class is cancelled and you have the time - to pick up and survey." According to Marc, there are few historians like Frankopan whose family simultaneously operates hotels in Europe. Frankopan, an heir to Croatian aristocracy, is a writer who encourages the reader to think although there are questions as to his interpretation of events. Based on the success of Silk Roads, Frankopan has written an extention called the New Silk Roads which Marc hopes to read shortly.

And, one more thing, this time contributed by our web site staff. Included in the books photographed above is a book by J. D. Robb (at least that appears to be the author). This is the pen name of one of The United States' most prolific authors, Nora Roberts, who has several different active book series among her 225 different published works. In 1980 Roberts began writing Romance novels for Silhouette. From that point Roberts has published works in many different genres including Sci Fi where she uses the pen name J. D. Robb. The recent books written under this pen name feature the protagonist Eve Dallas as a circa 2060 NY police lieutenant.

Our third and last Israeli dancer has already been the subject of a previous thediskcoordinator.com script as we tracked her travels and her attended dance workshops for a limited time. We've taken the liberty of displaying some pictures of Lee Friedman from that script.

In fact, while this script was being written (July/August 2019) Lee was travelling again, this time through Ireland. We're sure that this trip encompassed plenty of dancing - perhaps concentrating on Irish dancing - but also plenty of sightseeing throughout that country. The pictures here are courtesy of Lee

And this montage includes several recent pictures from Lee's facebook account after her return from Ireland. Some of these pictures are from the annual Philadelphia folk festival occurring every August near Schwenksville. Not surprising to anyone, Lee is a regular at the folk festival.

While Lee lives in the Northeast suburbs of philadelphia, her travels bring her into the King Of Prussia/Valley Forge area. As such, she is an irregular member of the Valley Forge Barnes and Noble group alluded to above. Every now and then Lee shows up at the store and joins this informal group. Lee also has been known to use Marc Rauer's phone number (who doesn't have it) to get a store discount and she was partly responsible for the story related above about the record breaking group use of his number at this and other B&N stores. While we are mentioning the group, let's see if we can put names to faces as to who are members besides Lee. In the first photo you can see John, Al and Marc discussing something around a table. Next is a picture of Nancy and then a picture of Susan and Cindy. The first picture of this montage was taken in the store. The last two pictures were taken at the 2019 Arden fair. Other members of this informal group who are not shown here are Tom, Anton, Rosalie and the couple Lew and Jo.

The B&N group does a lot of things informally, many times with little or no preparation as shown in these pictures sent to this web site at the beginning of October 2019 dealing with the opening of the 10th Nudys restaurant - opened next to the Barnes and Noble building in Berwyn. Nudys is an institution in the Main Line Philadelphia suburbs. On a whim, at 7AM on the restaurant's "soft" day of opening, several of the group became the first patrons of the restaurant. The last picture of John, Nancy and Marc (and with no other patrons in the restaurant) was taken by the Restaurant's manager, Annastasia.

This Barnes and Noble group, who apparently are led by John, trades information of all kinds and this information transfer resulted in Lee finding out about an interesting non profit organization. During a discussion in the Barnes and Noble cafe one evening, Lee heard about an organization, Surrey, that specialized in services for seniors. We've displayed one of their web pages in this montage. Since all of the members of the group, including Lee, are baby boomers, you can understand their interest in this organization.

At the same time one of the group had a copy of the Tredyffrin Township Newsletter sent to all the township's residents. Coincidently, in it was an article about Surrey accompanied by pictures. Once this was laid out on the table for all to read, several of the B&N members exclaimed: 'Hey that's our class at Surrey and that's Darlene. Darlene's great, Lee. You really have to take her class. Come on over some Wednesday at 11. Take her class and stay for lunch. You'll really enjoy it'. It seems that the discussion of the fitness classes really sparked Lee's interest as you will see. In this montage we've included the front of the Tredyffrin township handbook and a copy of page 35 where Surrey and Darlene appear.

As Lee would learn, getting to Surrey from Barnes and Noble was no big deal: about 15 minutes by car. While Surrey has locations all along the Main Line, its largest center, and its administrative offices, are in a building in Devon as indicated in this montage. Surrey's location was on Chestnut Way until that street was renamed Surrey Way and now we can say that most roads (and all ways) lead to Surrey.

Surrey has a wonderful reputation reinforced by multiple awards over the years. The first picture here lists several awarded to Surrey from 2017 through 2019 (click on any picture in this script to see an enlargement, if available. In this case you will see an enlargement where the awards are more readable). The second picture of this montage shows one of the reasons for this reputation: Plenty of lectures on plenty of topics (including historical as shown here). {coming/tos17.29|Additionally, Lee knows the mentioned Lew Neumann both through his participation in the aforementioned Barnes & Noble group and also through their mutual attendance each year at the "Taste Of the Suburbs" dinner sponsored by the King Of Prussia Rotary club (The dinner represented by the last picture in this montage is from the 2017 event). Lew has led several discussions at Surrey pertaining to the Valley Forge General Military Hospital given that a portion of Lew's Grandfather's farm in Phoenixville was appropriated by the Government during World War II to provide the location for the Hospital.|Additionally, Lee knows the mentioned Lew Neumann - and his wife, Jo, who is on the left of the last picture in this montage - through their participation in the aforementioned Barnes & Noble group.}

And speaking of additional research, this website did some research on Darlene, the instructor so highly recommended above during a conversation at Barnes and Noble. Doing our best in the use of internet searches, we found these pictures of her teaching at Surrey. Note: We've included the two pictures that were part of the Tredyffrin township writeup as mentioned above.

That week Lee attended Darlene's strength and balance fitness class on Wednesday as this montage attests. She liked it so much that shortly afterward Lee signed up as a member of Surrey. In fact, this became a habit as Lee started to make the trip along the Pennsylvania turnpike from her house to Surrey each week. Of course she realized another achievement although it was inadvertant: With these pictures she more than doubled Darlene's photographic presence on the web.

In addition, Lee stayed for lunch as these pictures document. Given that Susan, Nancy, Cindy, Rosalie and Marc also stayed for lunch, she told us that she realized that a kind of B&N group extension session was being born in the Surrey lunchroom.

Like her fellow regional Israeli dancers, Lee also was affected when Don ended his Thursday night dance session. Lee was a semi regular at that class generally showing up about once or twice a month. Like all the Thursday night deprived Israeli dancers, the stoppage of Don's class created a hole in Lee's monthly schedule. In Lee's case she found she had a very simple answer to this sudden change of activity. She just went and added Surrey's Thursday activities to her schedule including another Darlene led fitness class (this time on Thursday at 11) and lunch. Now taking multiple classes with Darlene, Lee began to inquire about Darlene's relationship with Surrey. She was surprised to discover that Darlene was an employee of the fitness group, Going fit. Going fit is the brainchild of Heather Wadsworth, pictured here, who in 2012 decided to provide services to organizations like Surrey. You can read about Heather's company at her web site at http://www.goingfitexercise.com. Heather trains her employees in a variety of fitness regimens and with this training her employees bring fitness to the organizations and not the other way around. Going fit employees (as trainers) manage multiple classes in multiple locations for Surrey. As Lee has related to this website, Darlene was a neighbor of Heather when this idea was developed and went through a training period before being assigned to Surrey several years ago. Currently, as this is writen, Darlene manages 4 fitness classes per week at Surrey of which Lee attends 2 regularly.

While Lee has been going to Surrey, the organization has been expanding its presence along the Main Line. The newest addition is at the Church Of Christ on Rt 352 in East Goshen. As this new annex starts in June, 2019, one of the offerings is an early morning line dance class led by the aforementioned Darlene. Those who know Lee know that this would be a natural complement to her schedule and life style. When Lee mentioned this addition to her schedule to our website, we felt there was a necessity for us to visit and document this class and Lee's progress in it. Effectively she had found a replacement for Don's class although the music and instruction would be a bit different. Unfortunately, the Thursday for our visit was a day after torrential rain with multiple trees down and traffic lights out. This cut the attendance to Darlene, Hattie (another regular attendee of this class) and Lee. Nevertheless we and they pressed on and we did our photography. This montage shows Darlene showing line dance steps for the song "My Girl", a hit from the early 60's by 'The Temptations'.

Above you can see Darlene demonstrate the steps for her students to this music. In this montage is a video of the class as it attempts to do this line dance. Line dances are classified as number of walls. This dance does four walls - Darlene moves the class clockwise in 4 turns - and our photographer captured these first 4 walls before stopping the filming - about half way through the music. Note: in some browsers the video controls automatically appear. If not, move your cursor over the picture and you should see the video controls appear.

Now about the music: 'My Girl' is an R&B song originated in 1964 by the five original members of the Motown group 'The Temptations'. 'The Temptations' was a consolidation in 1960 of two earlier groups. For a short while this consolidated group sang under the name of "The Elgins". The lead singer was David Ruffin. Presently "The Temptations" continue to perform their hits - 'My girl', 'just my magination', 'Papa was a rolling stone' - with a younger cast of singers. In 1989 they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the second picture in this montage shows the original members of the group, augmented by Daryl Hall and John Oates of the group "Hall & Oates", performing at the R&R HOF that night.
During Darlene's 45 minute line dance class that day she showed the steps to at least 6 other oldies: 'My Guy' by Mary Wells, 'Night Fever' by the Beegees, 'Respect' by Aretha Franklin, 'The Wanderer' by Dion, 'Ally Cat' and 'Popcorn' by Gershon Kingsley (although Darlene used the version created by Hot Butter).

Sadly, as many of the Israeli dancers found out when Don cancelled his class, all good things must come to an end. Darlene's line dance class was scheduled at East Goshen for June and ended by Independence day, 2019 - to be replaced by various fitness classes. For a while it looked like Lee (not to mention Jody and Marc) wouldn't have a place to go on Thursdays and do what she(they) likes doing best - dance. Well, The Email copied here arrived early in August announcing a new class - specializing in partners - on Thursday nights. This web site has been told that Beth Sholom, already hosting a successful Israeli dance class on Mondays, had planned to expand into another night with a class featuring Israeli dance partners. With the cancellation of Don's session, a Thursday night class dedicated to Isreali partners was a no-brainer. So, we end this script with the good news that the three subjects of this script (not to mention the other regulars of Don's session) have found a new home on Thursday nights.