Wine Enthusiasts Fund Student Opportunities at PAFA

This past Saturday, I covered Bacchanal, a wine festival and auction that raises scholarship money for  Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA) here in Philly.

There's something about PAFA events and auctions. When I covered the lighting of their Claes Oldenburg sculpture, my wife/photographer bid on a decorative shovel used in the groundbreaking of Lenfest Plaza, where the sculpture is.It's hanging in our guest bedroom. And when the music stopped at the end of Bacchanal, and the wine had been enjoyed, and the story for the Weekly Press had been flushed out, I found myself being handed a double magnum sized bottle of merlot (Columbia Vineyard) that I had to lug back to the car because the wife "just had to go home with something from the auction."

Good thing she didn't just have to go home with one of the bottles of wine or trips to Italy that went for tens of thousands of dollars.

Even better thing she didn't just have to go home with a guy who needed someone to take on a newly acquired trip to Italy.

My story for the Weekly Press focuses on an artist, Sasha Diehl, a PAFA student who receives some of that Bacchanal bucks. That scholarship money allows her to create with some of the best art instructors in the U.S.

To read the Weekly Press story, click here.

You can also learn more about Sasha's love of art, and see some of her work, and get an idea of what Bacchanal is all about by watching the videos below.

Global Abilities Helps Disabled in Developing Countries


Last Saturday, I spent some time with AJ Nanayakkara at the Global Abilities fundraiser at World cafe Live in Philly. He and his wife Kelly started Global Abilities to help those with disabilities in developing countries.

AJ Nanayakkara and his wife Kelly Fisher

AJ has been in a wheelchair for 17 years, the result of a spinal cord injury received when practicing karate flips with his martial arts partner. But AJ says he's fortunate to be living in America with his disability because of the resources available to help him and others live happy, productive lives.

Not the case, says AJ, in countries like Sri Lanka, where AJ lived till he was 10 years old. Sri Lanka is the first focus of Global Abilities.

I interviewed AJ for a piece that ran in the Weekly Press Wednesday. You can read it here.

Want to learn more about Global Abilities? Go to GlobalAbilities.org


Sri Lanka is so tiny it would hide in the frayed fold of a map. You'd mistake it for a cluster of dirt on a globe that squeaks when you spin it.

It's a little island off the southern tip of India and between 1983 (when AJ and his famikly left) and 2009 a brutal, bloody civil war left 70,000 dead and thousands of others with disabilities--the same people  who AJ and Kelly are now trying to help. It has a population of 21.3 million.