Is an Academy of Natural Sciences divorce coming? | Mike Newall

Every Sunday, Mike Newall brings you an inside look at a story defining Philly this week and a preview of what’s coming in the week ahead.

The divorce at the Academy of Natural Sciences feels real. Drexel, once lauded as the endangered dino museum’s white night, lost money, then interest. Academy administrators lost their ATM. Philadelphians just plain lost.

This Monday, Drexel leadership and Academy stewards will finally face public heat over their bungling of Philadelphia’s 200-year-old prehistoric palace — the oldest natural science museum in the Western Hemisphere before the portals to its lost worlds were padlocked.

The keepers of its collections are expected to testify at a City Council hearing on the matter Monday. Until now, love for the museum has mainly fallen on deaf ears — at least in the cloistered rooms where Drexel and Academy officials claim to still be talking. Now it falls to Councilmembers Nina Ahmad and Jeffrey Young Jr. to excavate a little candor from the museum bigwigs on a question that should have been aired geological ages ago: How did they allow a Philadelphia treasure to slide so near into extinction?

While it remains to be seen just how searching the council’s inquiry will be, we’ve got the Inquirer’s Peter Dobrin, a reporter steeped in the city’s cultural life, who has been all over the Academy saga from the start, to fill us on in on what he’ll be looking out for at the hearings.

Mike: What are the questions you want answers to?

Peter: I’m looking to learn more about what each side actually wants — if one or both sides are looking for a disaffiliation, then under what terms and conditions, and over what period of time? Both Drexel and the Academy are going to need some time to adjust to a divorce before it’s finalized if divorce is where this is going.

Mike: You’ve reported that there seems to be no savior on the horizon?

Peter: What’s really been missing so far is an indication that someone is doing due diligence to get the kind of information needed to make an intelligent decision.

Is someone commissioning a facilities study to determine the extent and cost of deferred maintenance to the Parkway building and how urgent those needs are? Has a study been commissioned to gauge the fundraising appetite locally, nationally and internationally? Is a business plan being researched that would establish what it would cost to run a first-class natural science museum?

Mike: Why all the secrecy?

Peter: I’d like to know what the apparent rush is. This is a more-than-two-century-old institution of worldwide significance. Its future deserves to be considered carefully and soberly, armed with as much information as possible. Why was it necessary to shut down the museum with just 30 days’ notice, before the general public had a chance to participate in a rescue?

Mike: Can the hearings have an impact at this point?

Peter: The hearing is likely to play a role in keeping the dialogue going. There is a lot of energy focused on the Academy right now, and any solution is going to take a diverse group — concerned citizens; money from government, foundation, corporate and individual angels, and the scientific community.

He got the boos. He got the cheers. And then he heard Philadelphia fans blow the roof off the building. LeBron James’ South Philly debut was nothing short of “electric,” says Inquirer sports columnist David Murphy. With a new Sixers era underway, a question remains: When the World Champion Knicks come to South Broad on Friday, will Xfinity Mobile Arena once again be “MSG South?”

During my decade tending bar in Philly, I’m embarrassed to admit the most creative I ever got with a non-alcoholic drink was wedging a lime into a bottle of Kaliber non-alcoholic beer.

The doctorate-level mixologists at Field Day — Danny Child’s highly anticipated new cocktail bar and restaurant, which opened up in Northern Liberties on Wednesday — take far better care of their nondrinking brethren.

“We really wanted to make sure that there were just as many options and beautiful touches to these non-alcoholic drinks as you would for alcoholic ones,” said bartender Erin Dassler, sliding open Field Day’s lauded drink menu on a recent afternoon, sunlight tossing shadows across the bar’s midcentury pastoral backdrop, as a crowd filled the stools.

Read Jenn Ladd’s gorgeous deep-dive for how Childs — the James Beard Award-winning bartender and leader in the Slow Drinks movement, essentially farm-to-table for cocktails — is sowing the seeds of a beverage revolution far beyond Philly.

Childs, and his wife, and co-owner, Katie, pour the same craftsmanship into their non-boozy concoctions — a treat for rising non-imbibers, like myself, sober a decade now, and enjoyer of the occasional buzzless highball.

I went for the no-groni, which Dassler made with precision (Dassler and Childs recently drove to Jersey to collect birch branches for their delicious Birch beer). Non-alcoholic wine, aromatic pine and juniper water, and just a touch of hibiscus. All local, all fresh — and as perfect as a nonguilt gulp can be.