🧹 The witching season’s busiest family | Morning Newsletter
🫎 And dioramas at risk.
The Morning Newsletter
Start your day with the Philly news you need and the stories you want all in one easy-to-read newsletter
Rise and shine, Philly. After a very chilly morning, expect mostly clear skies and high temps in the 60s.
Out in rural Pennsylvania, handcrafted brooms are flying off the shelves as Halloween approaches.
And, the fate of priceless dioramas at the Academy of Natural Sciences hangs in the balance.
Read on for these Sunday stories and more.
— Paola Pérez (morningnewsletter@inquirer.com)
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Far out in Sullivan County, a fifth-generation family business is hard at work, making thousands of brooms for the witching season.
4,500 of them are headed straight for Salem, Mass., the world’s witchiest city.
Made by the Meckleys, the brooms, which are comprised of hardwoods and corn straw from Mexico, are made to last a lifetime. Their longtime craft started as a side hustle for bartering and later developed into a booming operation.
My colleague Jason Nark, who reports on rural parts of Pennsylvania and the outdoors away from city life, takes us to the tiny town of Lopez to meet the family conjuring Salem’s brooms. Read along here, and watch our video to go inside the Meckleys’ shop.
In the wake of the abrupt closure of the 198-year-old Academy of Natural Sciences, it’s unclear what will become of the 32 dioramas on display.
They feature a variety of taxidermied animals, including a tiger, polar bear, and moose. Most have remained untouched since they were unveiled, providing the public with a window into distant parts of the natural world.
Unlike other parts of the museum’s collection, the dioramas are near-immovable historic artifacts. Preserving them would require significant time, labor, and money, perhaps millions of dollars.
Notable quote: “Once we lose these, they’re gone forever,” one taxidermist told The Inquirer’s Rosa Cartagena.
Continue reading on the risky effort to maintain the Academy’s historical dioramas.
What you should know today
Philadelphia Police Officer Hector Rodriguez III was released from the hospital on Saturday, two weeks after being critically wounded in a shooting that killed his partner in West Philadelphia. On Friday, District Attorney Larry Krasner accused Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel of having “spread misinformation” when discussing an earlier, failed murder case against the alleged gunman.
A 37-year-old man who was shot by Philadelphia police on Friday has died. Officers said the man pointed a weapon at law enforcement.
Democrat Bob Harvie holds a narrow lead on Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick in a Bucks County race that could decide control of the U.S. House, according to a new poll from The Inquirer, the New York Times, and Siena University.
Cheltenham is locked in an 11-year legal battle with the Archdiocese of Philadelphia over property taxes for the 200-acre Holy Sepulchre Cemetery.
A suspended Bucks County attorney was charged with stealing more than $156,000 from two clients, including an elderly man and a dead woman’s estate.
🎤 Here’s Tommy Rowan with a look back at a world-famous experiment involving a household item and a child’s toy.
Ben Franklin was a lot of things. But as productive as he was, he routinely gets attached to scores of breakthroughs that he had no hand in developing.
He did not, for example, discover electricity. Nor was he struck by lightning playing with a kite and a key in an open Philadelphia field.
When it comes to his most famous experiment, this was his most important scientific contribution: He proposed a way to actually answer the question of whether lightning is a form of electricity.
❓Pop quiz
An Inquirer analysis determined that this waterway has been the most flood-prone stream in the region.
A) The Brandywine
B) The Schuylkill
C) The Delaware River
D) None of the above
Think you know? Check your answer.
What we’re ...
🍗 Crunching on: Golden chicken yakitori at dancerobot.
🍸 Shaking up: How Philly’s most ambitious bartender is sowing the seeds of a beverage revolution here and abroad.
😮 Curious about: The secret Philly connection in this season’s hottest documentary.
🏡 Learning from: How a paralegal’s journey back to Philly led her to a new home, in the latest edition of “How I Bought This House.”
🗞️ Considering: Inquirer columnist Daniel Pearson unpacks changes to Philly’s Christmas Village, the failure of a SEPTA funding compromise, and more in this week’s Shackamaxon.
🧩 Unscramble the anagram
Hint: Famed poet.
TAM WITH LAWN
Email us if you know the answer. We’ll select a reader at random to shout out here.
Cheers to Jacob Tiver, who correctly guessed Saturday’s answer: Swedesboro. A local brewery there created an AI brand ambassador, and the internet doesn’t like it. The founder doesn’t plan to back down.
🎶 Today’s track goes like this: “If you’re a star, shine on me / If you’re not, let me be.”
One more musical thing: Politics. Insects. Black Sabbath, and Bob Dylan. These were just a few elements of rising protest singer Jesse Welles’ Friday night show at the Met Philly. The Inquirer’s pop critic has the highlights.
👋🏽 That’s it for now. Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you have a glowing day.
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