Ardmore resident Janet Long saw an opportunity, several years ago, when she realized there was a shortage of outdoor markets along the Main Line. What started simply enough—the idea to coordinate a small vintage sellers market—has grown into a full-time job for Long, and the project, Clover Market, has gained regional and national exposure. "Clover was a little bit of a side project that ended up taking over my life," Long laughed, during an interview at MilkBoy Coffee this week. From start to success Clover Market, an upscale outdoor market for vintage and handmade goods, has hit Ardmore …

  To mangle an old expression, you can take the man out of the small town, but you can’t take the small town out of the man. Harry Althouse, owner of Harry's Treasures and Collectibles, left Lancaster County, where he was born and raised, for Ardmore in 1990, but he has carried the lessons of his rural upbringing with him. “Everybody knew everybody,” Althouse said of Adamstown, “I was just brought up to help your neighbor and try to do the right thing. Help your community. That’s just the way I was brought up. And I’m glad I was.” Althouse, who drove the local fire truck and served in the …

In his pop-sociological bestseller, TheTippingPoint, author Malcolm Gladwell wrote that for any idea to really take off, it requires three distinct types to work on its behalf. “Mavens” are the heady information specialists who are pathological sharers of all they know. “Salesmen” are those people-people with a knack for charm and persuasion. And “connectors” are men and women with social networks sufficiently wide and disparate to bring together people and ideas that would otherwise be like ships in the night. Christine Vilardo is a classic connector. Since taking over as executive director …

Sherry Tillman, from behind the counter of Past*Present*Future, a gift shop in downtown Ardmore that she’s owned for the last decade and a half, reluctantly admits—when pressed—that she really is a sort of culture warrior.  Sort of. But imagine for a moment the expression “culture warrior,” fraught as it is with ideological tonnage, stripped of all the heavy stuff, standing alone as a thing to be understood literally. Culture warrior, as defined literally: a person who fights for culture. That’s what Tillman is. She fights the battle on two fronts, home and abroad. The latter engagement was …

Every town has heroes; quiet, exceptional people who give without expectation of reward, who prefer serving to service, who show up every day. The long tenured teacher, tough but fair, bedrock of her school. The modest patriot who, in her own small way, supports the effor. The veteran coach who always coaxes the best out of each life she touches. Maybe the hero is the advocate who, though unaffected by disease, collects blood for those who are. Or the volunteer, whose greatest contribution was convincing others to join her. Most towns can lay claim to a few of these types. A lucky few have …