#Kenley Residents Association

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How TfL's changes to 10 Croydon bus routes will affect you

There’s major changes coming to 10 bus routes serving the south of Croydon, including Purley, Coulsdon, Kenley and South Croydon, as well as Sutton and Wallington, coming into effect on Saturday March 2. Here’s TfL’s blow-by-blow breakdown of their bus route changes: Routes 455, 166, 312 and S4 Route 455 Route 455 will be withdrawn. Use alternative bus routes. Continue reading How TfL’s changes…

[ultraheydudemestuff]

Karamu House

2355 E. 89th St.

Cleveland, OH

Karamu House at 2355 East 89th Street, in Cleveland, Ohio, in the Fairfax neighborhood on the east side of Cleveland was built in 1952, was designed by Small, Smith, Reeb, Draz, architects, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is the oldest producing Black Theatre in the United States opening in 1915. Many of Langston Hughes's plays were developed and premiered at the theater.

In 1915, Russell and Rowena Woodham Jelliffe, graduates of Oberlin College in nearby Oberlin, Ohio, founded what was then called The Neighborhood Association at 2239 E. 38th St.; establishing it as a place where people of all races, creeds, and religions could find common ground. The Jelliffes discovered in their early years, that the arts provided the common ground, and in 1917 plays at the "Playhouse Settlement" began.

The early twenties saw a large number of African Americans move into an area in Cleveland, from the Southern United States. Resisting pressure to exclude their new neighbors, the Jelliffes insisted that all races were welcome. They used the United States Constitution; "all men are created equal." What was then called the Playhouse Settlement quickly became a magnet for some of the best African American artists of the day. Actors, dancers, print makers, and writers all found a place where they could practice their crafts. Karamu was also a contributor to the Harlem Renaissance, and Langston Hughes roamed the halls.

Reflecting the strength of the Black influence on its development, the Playhouse Settlement was officially renamed Karamu House in 1941. Karamu is a word in the Kiswahili language meaning "a place of joyful gathering." Karamu House had developed a reputation for nurturing black actors having carried on the mission of the Gilpin Players, a black acting troupe whose heyday predated Karamu. Directors such as John Kenley, of the Kenley Players, and John Price, of Musicarnival— a music "tent" theater located in Warrensville Heights, Ohio, a Cleveland suburb — recruited black actors for their professional productions.

In 1931, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston were negotiating with the Jelliffes to produce Mule Bone, their two act collaboration, when the two writers "fell out." A series of conversations between the Hughes and Hurston estates, the Ethel Barrymore Theatre presented the world premiere of Mule Bone on Broadway in 1991. Finally, sixty-five years after the production was originally proposed, Karamu House presented Mule Bone (The Bone Of Contention) as the 1996–1997 season finale. Karamu's production, directed by Sarah May, played to standing room only audiences in the Proscenium (Jelliffe) Theatre. The by-line in The Plain Dealer, as the Cleveland theatre season came to its end read: "Karamu returns to Harlem Renaissance status." Critic Marianne Evett shared Karamu's success story as the theatre began to recover from past hardships. The revival Karamu House needed so desperately had arrived. During this time, playwright and two time Emmy nominee Margaret Ford-Taylor held the position of executive director, and Sarah May, Director in Residence.

The Karamu House Theatre was added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 17, 1982. From October 2003 to March 2016, Terrence Spivey served as Karamu's artistic director. Tony F. Sias currently serves as CEO + President, Aseelah Shareef serves as COO + Vice President. In 2017, a major renovation of the facility was undertaken. The architect Robert P. Madison International, Ohio's first African American-owned architectural firm, founded by Cleveland architect Robert P. Madison, lead the 14.5 million dollar renovation. This included a new streetscape, bistro, patio, and enclosed outdoor stage; as well as updates to the Arena Theater, lobby, and dressing rooms.

[hadarlaskey]

Beginnings: Peter Cushing’s Purley

It’s fair to say that if Peter Cushing was associated with a place outside of the fictional castles and laboratories he inhabited in his many film roles, the first to come to mind would likely be the actor’s final residence of Whitstable on the Kent coast.

The connection is understandable given the public bench there named Cushing’s View in his honour, as well as the local museum housing a permanent exhibit about him and even the local branch of Wetherspoons bearing his name. Yet Cushing was not a Kent man first and foremost. Instead, his early life unfolded in one of the most southern parts of London, and was arguably pivotal to the life of this most genteel and respected of horror’s leading men.

Cushing was born at home on 26 May, 1913 in Godstone Road in Kenley, where London finally dips and recedes into the greenery of Surrey. He was the son of George and Nellie Cushing, the former a successful quantity surveyor from a respectable family, the latter from a working-class background of merchants. The family moved to Dulwich Village for a time, along with Cushing’s older brother George, as World War One enveloped Europe; Desenfans Road was a quiet, leafy street just beyond Dulwich Park.

The family would soon move south again to Purley. The main house they would eventually live in, however, was not a normal building by any means: 32 St James’ Road was a project undertaken by George Cushing, a building designed in line with the very latest Art Deco fashions emerging at the time. With its white gleaming walls and thin windows, the house must have looked like something from the future surrounded by its more typical wood-beam neighbours. The house was finished in 1926 and Cushing spent the remainder of his childhood and school years there, though all was not as neat and precise in the life of the actor as his father’s building.

Cushing was sent to a respected boarding school in Shoreham-by-Sea, but he was irredeemably homesick and so returned to Purley after just one term. Throughout his time at Purley County Secondary School, where he eventually found himself, Cushing was generally ambivalent about his academic learning, with the exception of the arts which he loved. He even enlisted the help of his more academically inclined brother with homework. Encouraged by the school’s physics teacher who ran the dramatic society and organised the school plays, Cushing soon found himself leading most productions, much to the detriment of his wider work. His father was not pleased.

Hoping he would work a steadier job than acting, Cushing Sr helped his son attain a job in the surveyors’ office at Couldson and Purley Urban District Council. He hoped his son’s creative urges could be satiated by time spent in the drawing department. After all, Cushing had often skipped classes in order to paint and make the sets for the school plays. He spent three years plodding along, his little enthusiasm further constrained by a constant reluctance of the department to engage with any of his, likely impractical, ideas for planning.

In the meantime, in a tellingly determined move, he continued acting in the school plays in spite of no longer being a pupil, still at the encouragement of his physics teacher who saw promise in his talents. His life as a draftsman for the council was simply not to be and Cushing soon ventured further into the acting world.

It was not to be an easy ride by any means and would have been understandable if he had given up and continued in his father’s line of work. He began applying for auditions for plays but was more often than not rejected due to a lack of professional experience. His first audition for a scholarship at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama went badly and it required Cushing’s writing an absurd number of letters to the theatre manager in order to be recognised.

Even then, the eventual meeting that led to him being given his first walk-on part and the scholarship was initially organised simply to ask him to stop pestering them. He soon appeared in rep, touring with the Southampton Repertory Company before finally accepting that Hollywood and films were really his aim. For all of his reservations and attempts to steer Cushing towards work for the council, his father did eventually provide one particularly vital aid: he paid for his son’s one-way ticket to America. Even if his roles were slim and his star would not properly align until well into his forties when he returned to working in England, it must have seemed an astonishing gesture at the time.

In spite of the macabre roles, Cushing has always seemed childlike in his awe of fantasy. Living with his parents, I can imagine him with an array of toys conjuring up worlds and learning lines in the futuristic house his father built. His first fiancé, the actor and eventual wife of Jack Hawkins, Doreen Lawrence, broke off their engagement due to his gentle emotional character and his regular inclusion of his parents on their dates.

Many years after his success, the child still remained. A wonderful Pathé film shot when Cushing lived in 9 Hillsleigh Road, Kensington with his wife Helen, looks at the actor’s continued war-gaming hobby, the older Cushing still building worlds in which to explore. His exploration of the fantastical was always carried out with childlike enthusiasm, whether on a bedroom floor in Purley or – thankfully for horror and film fans alike – in film studios around the world.

The post Beginnings: Peter Cushing’s Purley appeared first on Little White Lies.

source https://lwlies.com/articles/beginnings-peter-cushing-purley-home/

[yahoo-big-league-stew-blog]

Meet the MLB catcher who is also trying to become a pitcher

PEORIA, Ariz. — One day recently in San Diego Padres camp, the fantasy happened right in front of their faces.

Christian Bethancourt, the Padres’ great experiment — heck, baseball’s great experiment this spring — finished a live bullpen session. He threw well. He executed his pitches. He impressed the coaches who have been watching him closely all spring. Then he walked off the mound, grabbed a bat and a helmet, stepped to the plate and hit the second pitch over the fence, an opposite-field homer.

In a perfect world, this is what the Padres are molding Bethancourt to be. He can play catcher. And he can play left field if they need him. He can also throw 96 mph on the mound.

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Instead of making him choose a path, the Padres asked Bethancourt late last season, “How about you just do it all?” And right then the fantasy was born: Christian Bethancourt, two-way player. He’s not going to be the next Babe Ruth, but he could be a heckuva weapon for the Padres.

“It’s definitely a difficult task,” says Padres bullpen coach Doug Bochtler. “But it’s every child’s dream too.”

• • •

The Padres want to make Christian Bethancourt into a two-way player. (AP/Getty Images)

Before we go any further, let’s be clear about what The Christian Bethancourt Experiment is not.

It’s not Rick Ankiel reinventing himself as an outfielder after coming into the league as a pitcher. Nor is it Kenley Jansen (and countless others, frankly) getting converted from a position player into a pitcher in the minor leagues.

It’s not exactly Shohei Otani either. Otani is the 23-year-old Japanese star now being called the Japanese Babe Ruth. He’s a fantastic pitcher and hitter. He played the outfield some in his first two seasons, but really became a star when he was deployed as a DH when he wasn’t pitching. Otani is exceptional at both pitching and hitting while Bethancourt is still trying to prove himself across the board.

The Padres very much want to see if Bethancourt — a backup catcher with a career .223 average — can contribute behind the plate, on the mound, with a bat in his hand and even in the outfield. They want to take the idea of a utility player and add on the most taxing job on the baseball field.

“I have to be ready for any situation at any time,” says Bethancourt, a 25-year-old from Panama who was originally signed by the Braves in 2008 and traded to the Padres in 2015. That deal, coincidentally, involved Casey Kelly, who once played half a minor-league season as a pitcher and the other half as a shortstop.

The Experiment started last season with two relief appearances in mop-up time, a somewhat common occurrence in baseball when a team is getting blown out and it doesn’t want to waste its bullpen. But Bethancourt wasn’t just some ex-high school pitcher out there yucking it up on the mound. He threw gas. The opposition noticed. The Internet noticed. And, most importantly, the Padres’ front office noticed.

So after the second appearance, they came to Bethancourt with a proposal: Spend the winter learning to be a pitcher. Go play in the winter league as a pitcher. Train like a pitcher — and a catcher would too.

“I accepted the challenge,” Bethancourt says.

The last true two-way player in the majors was Brooks Kieschnick, who appeared in 32 games as a relief pitcher for the 2004 Milwaukee Brewers and had a plate appearance in 75 games. He hit .270 and had a 3.44 ERA, neither exceptional nor horrible, but commendable if you’re doing both jobs. Before that the last two-way player is believed to be Hal Jeffcoat, who played from 1948-1959 mostly for the Reds and Cubs and really only had one season, 1954, where he pitched and played the field.

All this is to say what Bethancourt is trying to do isn’t all that common and it’s certainly not easy. Sure, it happens in high school and college, but once baseball players get into professional environments, they’re quickly assessed and specialized. Modern baseball is more about platoon right fielders and left-handed relief specialists than it is about calling in the left fielder to pitch for a batter or two.

“The fun part of it is you stick a guy out in left field for an inning,” says Padres manager Andy Green. “Pitch to a batter, come back in, go back out. He’s got those kind of possibilities. He’s got a long way to go, though. I thought his first outing was very encouraging. He threw the ball very well, the fastball very aggressively, even spun a slider for a strike. All those things were very encouraging. He still has three or four weeks of real work in order to make this a reality.”

• • •

Christian Bethancourt preparing for catching duty. (Getty Images)

Christian Bethancourt never asked for this. He wasn’t one of those position players who deep down thought he could pitch — or wanted to pitch because it would make a great story to tell when his playing days were over.

“You hear a lot of position players,” Bethancourt says, “say I want to pitch one day. I want to face a batter one day. You hear pitchers saying let me have one at bat.”

That wasn’t him. Before last season, the last time he pitched was in Little League. He was a catcher, through and through, which was somewhat helpful because if any other player knows best what it’s like to be a pitcher, it’s a catcher.

“If you’re facing the same guys,” Bethancourt says, “you already have in your mind what you need to throw in what counts and in what situations.”

Twice this spring Bethancourt has pitched for the Padres. The first appearance was Wednesday, in which he set down the Oakland Athletics in order. He threw 11 pitches, seven of them strikes.

He was on the mound again Saturday, pitching an inning against the Diamondbacks. He didn’t allow a hit or even hard contact. He got a fly out from Chris Ianetta, then walked A.J. Pollock, who was thrown out trying to steal and then induced a weak grounder from David Peralta.

It’s a small sample, sure, but the Christian Bethancourt Experiment is heading in the right direction. Saturday’s appearance saw him facing big-league hitters and he still hasn’t given up a hit — both of those things are encouraging. But two spring appearances don’t make a big-league pitcher.

“He’s got a lot of work to do to prove that he’s a Major League-caliber pitcher,” Green said, before that second appearance. “He’s got the makings of that. But he’s got a short window to make that happen. That’s where our focus resides right now — not necessarily on the novelty of what he’d bring if he got it done.”

It’s not a novelty for Bethancourt either. He doesn’t talk much about how cool it would be to be a two-way player. He doesn’t applaud himself as being special. He shows up to camp each day, often having to ask which role he’s playing that day. Sometimes it’s both.

Lately, he’s mostly been pitching, because that’s where the Padres need the longest look at him. So that’s meant working on throwing better breaking balls or just changing the way he throws a baseball, because pitchers don’t throw the same as catchers. But on any given day, he might need to catch or play outfield too.

“Hopefully, I can do my job however they want me to do it,” Bethancourt says.

• • •

Christian Bethancourt as a reliever last year. (AP)

As serious as baseball can be sometimes — with its analytics and tradition and situational smarts — let’s not let this part of the Christian Bethancourt Experiment get lost: It’s cool. Like really cool.

It’s something people would tune in to watch and it’s the type of potential weapon that the Padres would challenge themselves to use in the right moments.

“Anything is possible,” Green said. “You take him out of the game as a pitcher and have [starting catcher Austin Hedges] take his gear off, have Christian put his on. It’d be funny, but I don’t know that it’s practical. I don’t know that it’s the smartest move. But anything’s a possibility, and in certain settings, everything makes some sense.”

That’s one way to use Bethancourt, but there are many others that fly in the face of modern baseball convention. It’s something the Padres can daydream about it.

“You’re talking about the ultimate double-switch guy,” Bochtler says. “How could it play out in a perfect world? You have a situation where it’s the seventh inning, you have a right-hander coming up to the bat, with two outs and the pitcher’s spot is coming up in a close ballgame. Christian Bethancourt comes in out of the bullpen and strikes out the guy out throwing 97 mph then leads off the next inning with a home run. It’s the extra-innings scenario where you’ve used everybody up and you have a guy in left field who can come in and throw strikes at 97 miles per hour. You can always keep that guy in the lineup somewhere.”

It’s quite a dream — it’s like something baseball fans would associate with video games or movies. But in real life, it’s quite an undertaking for one player.

It’s not like spring training, when he knows when he’ll pitch an inning. It’s not like last year, when he was just pitching when games got ugly. He’d need to be ready to help any given day, whether on the plate or behind the mound.

“When they say ‘Play ball’ on Opening Day, I gotta be ready for anything,” Bethancourt says. “Left field, catcher, pitching, pitching back-to-back days, catching back-to-back days.”

That’s a home run away from The Christian Bethancourt Experiment reaching 100 percent.

More on Yahoo Sports: • NFL’s top 20 overall available free agents • Celtics star calls Suns trade a ‘Christmas gift’ • Here’s what NFL teams saw out of top 4 QBs at scouting combine • Warriors’ Green rips New York’s ‘pathetic’ no-noise experiment

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Mike Oz is the editor of Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at mikeozstew@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @MikeOz

[insidecroydon]

Goodbye Route 455... it's been a long, long journey. Too long

There’s more than a touch of an old Morecambe and Wise gag about the extensive changes to 10 bus routes in Croydon and Sutton: ‘TfL has chosen all the right routes, just not the right roads’. By JEREMY CLACKSON, transport correspondent End of the line: the 455 between Wallington and Old Coulsdon, via Purley, will operate for a final time on Mar 1 Significant changes are coming to 10 bus routes…

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Life-saving first aid lessons, Kenley Memorial Hall, Apr 13

Continue reading Life-saving first aid lessons, Kenley Memorial Hall, Apr 13

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W. D. Packard Music Hall 1703 Mahoning Ave. Warren, OH 44483 William Doud Packard was a man with a dream when it came to music. He loved marches, band music, military music, and the musicians who performed the music. He also loved the city of Warren. OH. When he wrote his will in 1920, three years before his death, Packard made sure that a dream of keeping music alive in Warren would come true after he had passed on. W.D. Packard and his brother, James Ward, formed a company in 1891, the New York and Ohio Company, to produce incandescent carbon-arc lamps and transformers. In 1899, along with George Lewis Weiss, they built the first automobile bearing the Packard name, a car which fast became a respected name in the automotive industry and which led to Packard development of a new product, the automotive ignition cable. In 1903, the automobile business was moved to Detroit while the cable and manufacturing business remained in Warren, Ohio where today the Delphi Packard Electric Systems is one of the area’s largest employers. In his will, Packard designated that funds would be set aside in a trust to build a music hall and finance the establishment of a band to play in it for the “edification and entertainment of the people of Warren”. The city of Warren became beneficiary after Katherine Packard, W.D. Packard’s wife, died in 1940. Costs had increased from the 1920’s when the will was written and the $150,000 allocated for the hall was hardly adequate in the 1950’s to build the hall Packard had envisioned. 1.4 million was used from the trust to build the W.D. Packard Music Hall with the remainder of the income from the trust to be used to maintain the band. The first step toward actually building Mr. Packard’s hall came on March 5, 1942, when the Packard Park Board of Trustees, composed of L.C. Brown, W.C. Ward, D.S. McElrath and B.N. MacGregor approved a resolution accepting the conditions and provisions of the Packard will that led to the construction of the hall. Today, the Packard Music Hall is the center of cultural and entertainment programs in the Warren area and averages over 150,000 in attendance each year. It is the site of a wide variety of events including ballet, children’s programming, theater, corporate meetings, high school graduations, dance recitals, dances, and of course, the free monthly Packard Band Concerts. The Hall has also been used annually by organizations such as the Warren Civic Music Association, Trumbull Town Hall Lecture Series, the Barbershoppers, the Giddings Club, the American Association of University Women, the Warren Philharmonic Orchestra and many others. For two decades, from 1958-1978, it was the home of the Kenley Players and gained national recognition during that time. It also served as a temporary home for hundreds of Warren residents who were flooded out of their homes in 1959, when it was used as a disaster center. It has a seating capacity of 2,500 and also includes small meeting rooms, a kitchen, and dressing rooms. The Packard Will provided nothing for maintenance, so annual operating costs are covered by hall rentals and city subsidies. The hall officially opened on October 15, 1955. W.B. Gibson was the building contractor and Arthur Sidells was the architect. When B.N. MacGregor, president of the Packard Park Board of Trustees, accepted the keys to the building he said he was receiving the keys “in a sacred trust for W.D. Packard”. Warren Mayor William C. Burbank called the hall a “fulfillment of a dream”. Concurrent with the opening of the music hall in 1955, Packard’s dream of a concert band was being realized with the organization of the W.D. Packard Concert Band. Mr. Packard, in his will, had specified that his longtime friend Bradford D. Gilliland would be its first leader. Because of W.D. Packard’s generosity, Warren area residents are able to appreciate today a heritage that dates back to the 1800’s when town bands were a part of American life. W.D. Packard took pride in this aspect of American Heritage and his dream lives on many years after his will was written and the first musical notes were sounded in the hall named after him, The W.D. Packard Music Hall, by his band, The W.D. Packard Concert Band.