11/26/2025
November 2025
When the calendar flips to 2026, it makes 40 years ago that Bainbridge House began its experiment in prayer and presence in this particular place, which old heads call South Philly, newbies call Southwest Center City, and realtors persist in referring to it as Graduate Hospital. These monikers pale when up against the rich history of this historic Black neighborhood in Philadelphia that raised Marian Anderson, world renowned contralto and Kenny Gamble, songwriter and music mogul, and where Julian Abele, the trailblazing architect and designer and Charles Tindley, founder of the Methodist church that bears his name, made their home.
Our lace bark elm in front of the house is the last street tree on the block to let go of its tiny leaves. Most even now are still green with only a hint of yellow. Time passes in fits and starts, imperceptibly and then with a jolt. A child is born, an elder retires, a niece gets married, an election turns the country on a dime.
Stanton School celebrated its 100th anniversary with a rousing, joyous, buoyant, gathering of people whose ages spanned from 2 months to 90 years. There was so much joy it seemed like the entire corner could have lifted off the ground. The gathering, planned by Stanton Community Partners and teacher leaders had something for everyone: simple kids’ games, photographs of Cultural Arts classroom experiences spanning ten years, student performances, a City Council President noting the steadfast role of this school in this neighborhood over the decades, alumni articulating the role of the school in their time.
We all in various ways continue to support the remarkable goings on at Stanton School, where children learn instrumental and vocal music, dance, drumming, drama, visual arts and more. Cultural Arts, a dream realized. Envisioned and shaped, named and nurtured, fed and fertilized, renewed and expanded, its present and future now being intentionally passed to the next generation of teachers, students and community.
We are saddened by the death of Carla Washington just a few weeks ago, our long-time artist in residence at Stanton School, who taught countless Stanton students to dance with a disciplined yet soulful understanding of their history, especially the Black experience in this country.
As for our octet of individual Bainbridges, four of us have joined a non-audition, 55 and older choir with a high expectations director, one of us is still on track to do a half or full marathon in all 50 states, another invites the world into her home on Elfreth’s Alley when she is not standing in front of the Constitution Center with banjo and her hand-made yet durable sign reminding passersby that elected officials should honor the document that bears its name. Another is in her 17th year of volunteering at the Catholic Worker’s free health clinic in Kensington, another is slowly and surely replanting their newish backyard with perennials and vegetables, another devotes her skill and zeal to numerous causes local and beyond.
From No Kings marches to immigrant accompaniment to writing poetry, while many spend time with the grandchildren, a time-honored tradition of bestowing easy, unconditional love on the boisterous children of children, and then there is the caring for spouses in sickness and in health.
Marilynne Robinson has written a sweeping and lyrical commentary on the book of Genesis, where the goings on of the patriarchs and matriarchs and all those in between, sound all too like our own day. Robinson divines and derives that.… “over a very long span of time, during which an absolutely singular providence works itself out through and among human beings who are fallible in various ways and degrees, and who can have no understanding of the part their lives will play in the long course of sacred history…. providence becomes visible often only in retrospect....this history is not primarily meant to offer examples of virtue or heroism or ethical conduct but instead to trace the workings of God’s loyalty to humankind through disgrace and failure and even crime.”
Sounds like a God not simply to believe in but to belong to.
We are fast approaching that time of year when the days grow shorter along with the lessening light. Soon the house will add the colors and fragrance of the season. As always but especially in this “mean” time, we invite you to come dance through the door of our home where there will be a twinkling tree, a table spread, warm cider, a musician on the piano accompanied by horn or two. There is always lightness and joy, good conversations, reunions, or meeting a stranger you didn’t know you needed to know.
December 14th anytime from 1 – 6 pm! We hope to see you then.
Vicki Ellis, Sue Kettell, Terry Mond, Pat Smyth, Mary Ellen Bradley, Mike Connor, Mary Campbell, Geneva Butz
