Philly Deaf Friends,

Unfortunately,  Philly Deaf will be cancelling the 2014 Christmas Dinner tonight.  It is a difficult decision because the conditions will not be bad most of the day We have waited this long to make the announcement to  see if any of the conditions that have been forecast would change by this morning.  However, the forecast remains unchanged.   I have communicated with several of the workers who have already invested a good amount of meeting and preparation time into this dinner, and they still say that it would be ‘the better part of wisdom’ to cancel the dinner this year because of the possibility of ice on driving and walking surfaces.

The snow will not likely be a probable at all in our area, that is not the biggest concern.  It is the sleet, freezing rain and ice.  This is a problem not only for driving but for walking to and from the cars in the parking lot also.  The difficulty in making this decision is that, often, the weather reports have been wrong, or better than was forecast.  In this case, though, it doesn’t matter much.  Even the possibility of freezing rain and sleet is enough to cancel the event, especially, when all of the snow, sleet, and freezing rain is forecast for the 8 hours that we will be driving to the church, at the church, and leaving the church in the evening.

So, that is the decision.  The 2014 Christmas dinner is cancelled.   There is no other night on the building’s calendar between now and Christmas day that is open for us to move this large of an event to another December date on the calendar.  The turkey and ham will be donated to Valley View or to people in need.

However,  let me suggest an alternative to our celebration...   The Valley View Christmas Open House is also being cancelled for tonight, but, of course, they have flexibility in their facility schedule (that we do not have) and will move the event to next week on December 15th.  Contact Lillian Hoshauer if you have more questions about that event.

The Philly Deaf Office
www.phillydeaf.com