Kennett Square

At 7 p.m. on a recent Friday, Talula's Table closed its market doors for the night as usual. The lights still glowed through its cafe windows, beckoning cheerfully from beneath a yellow-striped awning at the central crossroads of downtown Kennett Square. And I can only imagine the disappointment of some poor hungry soul, arriving too late to sneak in for one of the day's last lobster pot pies (all sweet crustacean, peas and tarragon-scented bisque beneath its buttery crust), a sugar-dusted pumpkin scone, or one of the house-smoked salamis that hang near the rear, where a glass case brims with farmstead cheeses.

Don't ever ask Barbara S. Bove if she would consider moving her jewelry store from the aged downtown of Kennett Square to a modern shopping mall. "Oh, heavens no," said Bove, laughing at the mere thought, in her somewhat cluttered office in the back of Bove Jewelers Inc. "It's hard to find a salesperson that's a human being at the mall. " "We're all specialty shops around here, and we would never want to be inside such a place," she said. "We cater to people in a personal way, and you can't do that in a mall.

After 14 years of sewers and street repairs, Douglas Marguriet's tenure as borough manager will end this spring. The Borough Council voted Monday not to renew his contract. Few are surprised. Marguriet was not expected to last long after Ken Roberts, council president for many years, lost the November election. While many praised his administrative abilities, the team of four new council members called Marguriet "secretive" and had campaigned on plans to "dump Doug and Kenny.

Kennett Square decided to forgo its parade this year for an afternoon of activities and performances, followed by fireworks. Visitors were able to see gymnasts, a martial-arts demonstration, dancers and live bands.

If you buy a plant at the Kennett Square Beautification Committee's 12th Annual Plant sale Saturday, you can help beautify Kennett Square as well as your own backyard. "Over the years, we have purchased 300 trees for Kennett Square," said Bill Thomas, chairman of the event. Thomas, a borough resident, is a horticulturist for Longwood Gardens. The local beautification committee began in the mid-1960s in response to Lady Bird Johnson's call for residents to help beautify and clean up America by starting with their neighborhoods, he said.

Although six lawsuits in two years are pushing Kennett Square into a $216,000 budget quagmire, borough attorneys last week filed two more suits in Chester County Court. They're hoping, in fact, to relieve the community of some of its hefty legal bills. Kennett Square is trying to force two insurers - Pennsylvania National Mutual Casualty Insurance Co. of Harrisburg and Crum & Forster Managers Corp. of New York - to pay more than $360,000 in damages and legal costs lost in a suit against Police Chief Albert McCarthy and other borough officials.

After intense lobbying by local environmental groups and a lot of independent study, Kennett Square has decided to stop dumping 840,000 gallons of treated waste water into the heavily polluted West Branch of the Red Clay Creek. Instead, the borough council voted Monday night to adopt an $8 million plan to spray the treated waste water in fields and wooded areas, a system popular with environmentalists known as spray irrigation. The council had been skeptical of spray irrigation because of the cost, but during a congenial meeting, it voted unanimously to retire the antiquated sewage-treatment plant and use the new system.

Efforts by Bayard Taylor Memorial Library in Kennett Square to become a member of the Chester County library system apparently are going nowhere. Officials of the Chester County Library Board of Trustees reported last week that representatives of the Kennett Square library were unwilling to meet county standards to become an area member of the county system and therefore be eligible for $20,000 in county funds each year. As a result no agreement between the two libraries could be reached.

Borough Council members decided Monday to beat the voters to the punch and give officials of the deficit-ridden Bayard Taylor Library the money they wanted. Bayard Taylor officials had approached the borough as part of a campaign to put a three-mill dedicated library tax on the May 3 ballot in the eight municipalities that the library serves. Library officials had hoped that the council would spare them from the petition-passing process by putting the measure on the ballot themselves.

Headstone should be outta here On a recent tour of the impressive Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia, my wife and I marveled at the resting places of the famous, and the architectural masterpieces that adorn them. But as the tour was ending, the beauty of the day was suddenly destroyed - by the appearance of a garish display of bright, electric-blue stadium seats and a phallus-shaped headstone in the form of a sportscaster's microphone. Of course, this was the final resting place of the beloved Phillies sportscaster Harry Kalas, who departed this stadium in 2009.

Back in 1994, Bill Mallonee and his Athens, Ga., band, Vigilantes of Love, attempted to introduce themselves to a national audience with their fourth album, and their first with major-label distribution. Its title, Welcome to Struggleville , was apt, even prophetic. For Mallonee is a cult artist who's never found a wide audience despite consistent critical acclaim. In 2006, he was ranked the world's 65th best living songwriter by Paste magazine - ahead of Michael Jackson, Merle Haggard, and Allen Toussaint, among others.

FORMER Daily News sports writer Bernard Fernandez will be inducted into the New Jersey Boxing Hall of Fame on Nov. 14. Fernandez, who retired in 2012, will be joined in the induction class by Mike Tyson and Marvin Hagler, among others. The induction ceremonies will be held at 7 p.m. at the Venetian in Garfield.   Golden Gloves tickets Tickets are available for the Pennsylvania Golden Gloves regional championships, April 20 at the Derby Ink Gardens, 814 Spring Garden St. Tickets are $20 and are available by calling Joe Hand Promotions at 800-557-4263, and at the door.

La Comunidad Hispana, the nonprofit health-care and legal-aid clinic in Kennett Square, wanted to reach out to Hispanics beyond Chester County. The Mexican Consulate in Philadelphia wanted to be known better to the folks served by La Comunidad, those beyond the city. "The consulate wanted to partner with us because we understand the population we serve, the same population they serve," La Comunidad president and CEO Margarita Queralt Mirkil said in an interview. So on Monday, a nurse from La Comunidad will begin the clinic's monthly presence at the consulate office in the Bourse Building on the east side of Independence Mall.

For those who think NCAA rules on amateurism are outdated and hypocritical, Sharrif Floyd could be a folk hero. Floyd found a most interesting way around some of those rules. When the George Washington High graduate went off to play football at Florida, he didn't have anyone in his life who could afford to help him out financially within the rules. At first, that got Floyd in trouble with the NCAA. Then he was adopted, at age 20. NCAA rules were broken that forced Floyd to sit out two games in 2011.

Repertory Films Ambler Theater 108 E. Butler Ave., Ambler; 215-345-7855. www.amblertheater.com . Elf (2003) $4. 12/22. 10:30 am. Bryn Mawr Film Institute 824 W. Lancaster Ave., Bryn Mawr; 610-527-9898. www.brynmawrfilm.org . Going Gaga. $7. 12/26. Colonial Theatre 227 Bridge St., Phoenixville; 610-917-1228. www.thecolonialtheatre.com . MST3K: Santa Claus (1959) $8; $6 seniors and students; $5 children. 12/21. 9:45 pm. A Christmas Story (1983) $5. 12/22.

"REAL HOUSEWIVES of New York City" cast member Ramona Singer signs bottles of her new wine, Ramona Red, at Canal's Bottle Stop (10 W. Route 70) in Marlton from 5 to 7 p.m. Wednesday. Last year, Singer launched her own line of pinot grigio, which can be found in Pennsylvania Wine & Spirits stores, which will also carry Ramona Red, priced around $14.99. Of course, Pennsylvania residents would buy them only at state stores and wouldn't dream of traveling to New Jersey to buy alcohol.

WHILE the outdoor summer concert season starts up in May, many of us aren't in the mood to get out and party till July — when school's out, the workload gets lighter and vacation time rolls around. And this summer, the concert pickings are so good and plentiful, we've been forced to boil down our "best-of" selection to a dozen shows and destinations, thereby allowing us to slide in some multiple night 'n' day entries. Showgoers — start your engines!   Drive a little, groove a lot When the concert setting's right — wide open and leafy green — you can't beat the superior sound and (otherwise)

Short-line rail operator Regional Rail L.L.C., of Kennett Square, announced Monday its acquisition of a waste-transfer station in Conshohocken. The station, formerly known as Conshohocken Rail, was part of Total Waste Logistics L.L.C., of Canfield, Ohio, which went bankrupt in 2009. Now operating as Conshohocken Recycling & Rail Transfer, the station at 1060 Conshohocken Road receives construction and demolition debris by the truckload and, after removing recyclable materials, ships the debris by rail to out-of-state landfills, primarily in Ohio, said vice president and chief commercial officer Alfred Sauer.