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Let's do dinner, across the U.S.
The Philadelphia Inquirer
The Region
Friday, January 10, 2002
Written By Walter F. Naedele,
Inquirer Staff Writer
A family hopes a celebration idea clicks.
Tomorrow is Invite our Neighbor to Dinner Day.
Never heard of it?
A Doylestown Township family has been trying to stir interest in the first-ever event
and hopes that within a few years, on each second Saturday in January, families across
the nation will sit down to dinner with and invited neighbor or two.
This hands-across-the-backyard celebration is the intent of Jeff
Smith, 45, his wife, Barbara, 44, and their son Josh, 17.
Just maybe, they say, the say will, be significant enough to merit its own Hallmark
greeting card.
Through a two-month-old www.dinnerday.com Web site and
recent resolutions by both houses in Pennsylvania legislature, the Smiths have been
have been trying to stir interest in tomorrowÇs event.
Why?
Because they consider themselves followers of New Age philosophies-especially of
the 1960Çs guru Werner Erhard.
And because as a result of such interests, Jeff Smith said in an interview at his
home off Edison-Furlong Road yesterday, "I wanted to do something to make a
difference."
For more than 10 years, the Smith couple has been taking self-improvement courses
from Landmark Foundation, whose web site states that its techniques were "originally
developed by Werner Erhard."
As fountainhead for Erhard Seminar Training, better known as EST, Erhard was a leader
in what became known as human potential movement-teaching folks to get more out of
themselves.
So in the fall of 2001, a Landmark course titled Self-Expression and Leadership called
on Jeff Smith and his fellow students each to develop a project that would have an
impact on that individualÇs community.
Then, driving back home one night along Bristol Road toward Route 611, his brain
sparked.
It was October 2001, not long after the Sept. 11 tragedies.
"One of the things that interested me," he said, sitting in his dinning
room yesterday, "was that the apparent hijackers lived in our communities.
"And I couldnÇt imagine what it was that could instill that (hatred) in them.
"So the idea sort of came: WouldnÇt it be nice if neighbors could get
together and extend a little more of an open hand" to one another.
The Smiths would not seem the sort who needs much spiritual or material improvement.
Barbara Smith, a Drexel University psychology graduate, has been a home-based practitioner,
and recently became a master teacher, of Reiki, a Far Eastern stress-reduction technique
that she said involves "a spiritually guided universal life energy."
They live in a huge house on four acres, with a backyard big enough to accommodate
a soccer field where the team coached by Jeff practices at times.
In 1996, he said, he sold his Buckingham Township robotics firm, Cybernetics Systems
& Automation Inc., but he stayed on to help run until last summer.
Next April, he said, he and a partner will open Delaware Valley Civil Engineering
Council, a non-profit firm to help re-train unemployed engineers.
But the Drexel University engineering graduate did not grow up gazing onto his own
piece of woods, as he does now.
He grew up in the small elbow-to-elbow homes of Willingboro, Burlington County, and
had to interrupt his education to earn enough to continue.
That background helped feed the Invite Your Neighbor idea.
"You can remember-30, 40 years ago=we knew everybody up and down the street,
and if my mom wanted me she would pickup the phone and start dialing the neighbors."
Neighbors knew neighbors.
Today, many don't.
But as a result of newspaper interviews from such places as Alaska, Nebraska and
Oregon stimulated by the web site and Josh's efforts to spread the wordòSmith hopes
for more than a few neighborly dinners across the nation tomorrow.
How many?
"No idea," he said.
Oh, and why early January?
"It's time to start new things. A lot suffer from post holiday blues..."
And, he said "clearly in tune with the mass culture of the moment" it wonÇt
clash with Super Bowl Sunday.
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