This Thursday is a good night to get your science on in West Philly. Guion “Guy” Bluford, the first African American in space and a West Philly native, will speak at the University of the Sciences’ McNeil Science and Technology Center (43rd and Woodland) at 7 p.m.as part of the Philadelphia Science Festival.

Bluford participated in four space shuttle missions between 1983 and 1992. He graduated from Overbrook High School and received a B.S. in aerospace engineering from Penn State before completing graduate work at the Air Force Institute of Technology.

After the talk star gazers are welcome to grab a blanket and head out to Clark Park where amateur astronomers, telescopes in tow, will be on hand to help you folks navigate the cosmos.

The observatories at Drexel and Penn will also open their doors for this astronomical extravaganza. Drexel’s Joseph R. Lynch Observatory (3141 Chestnut St.) will open at 8 p.m. and Penn’s David Rittenhouse Laboratories Observatory (209 S. 33rd St.) open at 8:30 p.m.

Author Jacqueline Edelberg, who co-wrote the book How to Walk to School about efforts to revitalize a Chicago neighborhood elementary school, will headline an event May 5 designed to bring parents, educators and community members together to talk about neighborhood schools. The program is part of an ongoing effort to help improve neighborhood schools in West Philly. The community group West Philly Coalition for Neighborhood Schools is sponsoring the event.

“How the Community Can Change a School” will run from 5:45 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Lea Elementary School auditorium (47th and Locust). Other panelists will include:

• Stanford Thompson, director of Tune Up Philly
• Sterling Baltimore, director of the Lea Community School at the Netter Center for Community Partnerships at Penn
• Maurice D. Jones, president of the Lea Home and School Association
• Daniel Lazar, the principal of the Grenefield Elementary School

Yesterday’s storm dumped a single-day record of 3.11 inches of rain on the Philadelphia area, breaking the previous record of 2.43 inches set in 1986, according to the Associated Press. Flooding and power outages were reported all over the region.

Perhaps the most visible remains of the storm in West Philly is the temporary pond in the Clark Park bowl. Yesterday’s rain led to the cancellation of youth soccer in the park and the leftover water might cause problems for the soccer league in the immediate future.

The Uhuru Solidarity Movement Earth Day Fest and Flea Market scheduled for today in Clark Park has been postponed to 9 a.m. through 5 p.m. on Sunday (April 17) because of the weather. The “Earth Uprising” fest will feature a number of vendors, music, speakers and yoga in the “B” section of Clark Park – south of Chester Avenue.

Volunteers are needed in West and Southwest Philadelphia to help drive cancer patients to treatment. You need access to a vehicle, a valid driver’s license and current insurance. That’s it. For more information call 1-800-227-2345.

West Philadelphia icon Miriam W. Crawford, who along with her husband Bill were stalwarts of the political left in the city for decades, died on Saturday in a Germantown nursing home. She was 94.

Crawford retired as the director of the Temple University archives in 1986. She is the former coordinator of the Philadelphia chapter Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. She marched against the war in Vietnam and was active in causes up until last year, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Miriam and her husband Bill Crawford, who was the great grandson of an escaped slave, were well known in West Philadelphia for their commitment to leftist causes. Both were committed Marxists and their dining room in the Parkside neighborhood was a gathering spot for social activists. The dining room walls were covered with political memorabilia that spanned generations. The walls were so intriguing that curators removed the political art work when the Crawfords moved and recreated it for a Philadelphia Folklore Project an art exhibition in 2005. Bill died in 2002 at the age of 91.

Bill Crawford ran the New World Book Fair bookstore at 113 S. 40th St. from 1961 to 1974. The store specialized in Marxist and African American books.

Miriam and Bill were married in 1949. They are survived by a daughter, Fanny Jean Crawford, a son, Douglass Barnes Crawford, and three grandchildren.