tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-54241284813061522442024-03-05T08:35:38.152-05:00FROM THE FIELD: THOM NICKELSMy weekly columns and features on a wide variety of topics.Thom Nickelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00933997449868301693noreply@blogger.comBlogger547125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424128481306152244.post-86606175818500736242023-11-24T11:18:00.003-05:002023-11-24T11:18:37.917-05:00Lincoln SteffensInvestigative journalist Lincoln Steffens (1866-1936) isn’t much remembered today, according to Kevin Baker of The New York Times, despite the 2021 reissuing of the author’s classic, The Shame of the Cities, and the Philosophy of Corruption and Reform, by Cambridge Scholars Publishing last year.
The Cambridge Scholars edition of Steffens’s work is edited, annotated and introduced by Professor H.G. Callaway, a Philadelphian who splits his time between the United States and Germany. Callaway’s books on American philosophy and intellectual history have earned him some international renown.
Why Lincoln Steffens?
Callaway states in his Introduction that the volume is an “attempt to better understand the social and political phenomenon of corruption generally.” Municipal corruption, after all, is not limited to Steffens’ time but can be viewed as an all persuasive force existing in every era that seeks to “change the form of government from one that is representative of the people to an oligarchy.” (Steffens’ words)
Steffens was born in San Francisco but grew up in Sacramento, California. As the eldest of four children, he often clashed with the founder and headmaster of the Episcopal Day School that he attended as a boy. As a journalist, he was known as a muckraker who took on corruption and institutional dysfunction. America, he wrote, was the place of a Great Swindle, where corrupt money changers ruin all of its institutions.
Steffens covered the Mexican Revolution as a reporter and was enamored of the Soviet Communist Revolution.
He was well liked, even by people who vehemently opposed his views. Teddy Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan, Lenin, and Mussolini were among his journalistic contacts.
“The tragedy of Lincoln Steffens,” Lawrence W. Reed wrote in FEE, the Foundation for Economic Freedom, is that “He could see the harm of concentrated power but, the typical ‘progressive’ that he was, he naively believed that more of it was the antidote. This is a recurring blind spot shared by intellectuals of the Left. Even if big government is the problem, the solution to them is almost always an even bigger government. It’s like drinking a gallon of Clorox to wash down the quart of Clorox you just swallowed.”
Steffens advised fellow journalists to “Sit around the bars and drink, and pose, and pretend, all you want to, but in reality, deep down underneath, care like hell.”
One of his most famous sayings, “I have seen the future, and it works,” was a catch-all phrase he used multiple times for various issues.
H. G. Callaway’s Introduction is a smoother read than Steffens’ work itself, which tends to an antidotal and a patchwork journalistic style that often makes for an awkward reading experience.
The Shame of the Cities was compiled from a series of articles Steffens wrote for McClure’s magazine. The cities Steffens covers are St. Louis, Minneapolis, Chicago, New York, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.
Although most of the corrupt municipalities he writes about are Republican, Steffens lets his readers know that corruption affects both political parties.
In writing about St. Louis, for instance, Steffens comments, “There was little difference between the two parties in the city; but the rascals that were in had been getting the greater share of the spoils, and the ‘outs’ wanted more than was given to them.”
Steffens calls Philadelphia the most hopeless city in the nation. “But it was not till I got to Philadelphia that the possibilities of popular corruption were worked out to the limit of humiliating confession,” he writes.
He equates Philadelphia with general civic corruption and an all powerful city machine that controls the mind of the average voter. Sadly, this was true when Philadelphia was Republican, and it’s certainly true today when the city is unlikely to ever elect a Republican mayor barring a miracle of biblical proportions.
“I cut twenty thousand words out of the Philadelphia article and yet I had not written half my facts,” Steffens states, adding, “I know a man who is making a history of the corrupt construction of the Philadelphia City Hall, in three volumes.”
In a follow up sentence he then fairly concludes that no writer can put all the incidents of corruption of an American city into one book.
In concluding his two investigative pieces on Pittsburgh and Philadelphia for McClure’s, Steffens writes that “Pittsburgh may pull itself out of its disgrace,” but that other Pennsylvania city, Philadelphia, “is contented and seems hopeless.”
Steffens keeps harping on the corruption in Philadelphia when he writes about other cities.
In his October 1902 article entitled “Tweed Days in St. Louis,” Steffens concludes that “[St. Louis] isn’t our worst governed city; Philadelphia is that.”
While Pittsburgh could not be said to be Pennsylvania’s most beautiful city in 1912 (when industry darkened its skies), the argument can be made that it is certainly the state’s most beautiful city in 2021.
With its mountains, three rivers and multi-colored bridges forming a kind of OZ canopy around The Golden Triangle, Pittsburgh’s dazzling skyline rarely fails to impress.
In Steffens’ chapter on Pittsburgh, he cites the corruption surrounding the building of the city’s many beautiful bridges yet avoids going into specifics. Steffens seems to have a soft spot for Pennsylvania’s western city although that does not prevent him from lashing out at it severely.
“Pittsburgh has been described physically as ‘Hell with the lid off,’ politically it is hell with the lid on.’ I am not going to lift the lid,” he writes.
Steffens traces Pittsburgh’s corruption to the railroads while reminding the reader that the corruption rings in both Pittsburgh and Philadelphia form a direct link up to the corruption rings in Harrisburg.
The corrupt party bosses and politicians that Steffens mentions in The Shame of the Cities are far too numerous to mention, but in every case he traces general municipal corruption back to big business and “the businessman.”
Ironically, Steffens ends his article on Pittsburgh by saying that the city itself is “a spectacle for American self-respect, and its sturdiness a promise for poor old Pennsylvania.”
The writer, surprisingly, had an occasional soft spot for Philadelphia, such as when he writes,
“Philadelphia has long enjoyed great and widely distributed prosperity; it is a city of homes; there is a dwelling house for every five persons, men, women, and children, of the population; and the people give one a sense of more leisure and repose than any community I ever dwelt in.”
Philadelphia, he adds, is surer that it has a ‘real aristocracy’ than any other place in the world, but its aristocrats, with few exceptions, are in the ring, with it, or of no political use.”
Steffens, on a roll, tells the reader that Philadelphians do not vote but are “disenfranchised.”
“The honest citizens of Philadelphia have no more rights at the polls than the Negroes down South. Nor do they fight very hard for this basic privilege. “
Sounding weirdly contemporary, Steffens goes on record as saying that dead people vote in Philadelphia.
“But many Philadelphians do not try to vote,” he adds. “They leave everything to the machine, and the machine casts their ballots for them.”
This is why Philadelphia is unlikely to have a Republican mayor in the near or distant future.
Thom Nickels is a Philadelphia-based journalist/columnist and the 2005 recipient of the AIA Lewis Mumford Award for Architectural Journalism. He writes for City Journal, New York, and Frontpage Magazine. Thom Nickels is the author of fifteen books, including “Literary Philadelphia” and ”From Mother Divine to the Corner Swami: Religious Cults in Philadelphia.” His latest, “Death in Philadelphia: The Murder of Kimberly Ernest” was released in May 2023.Thom Nickelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00933997449868301693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424128481306152244.post-18397556142631038142023-11-24T11:16:00.002-05:002023-11-24T11:16:21.374-05:00Lincoln SteffensInvestigative journalist Lincoln Steffens (1866-1936) isn’t much remembered today, according to Kevin Baker of The New York Times, despite the 2021 reissuing of the author’s classic, The Shame of the Cities, and the Philosophy of Corruption and Reform, by Cambridge Scholars Publishing last year.
The Cambridge Scholars edition of Steffens’s work is edited, annotated and introduced by Professor H.G. Callaway, a Philadelphian who splits his time between the United States and Germany. Callaway’s books on American philosophy and intellectual history have earned him some international renown.
Why Lincoln Steffens?
Callaway states in his Introduction that the volume is an “attempt to better understand the social and political phenomenon of corruption generally.” Municipal corruption, after all, is not limited to Steffens’ time but can be viewed as an all persuasive force existing in every era that seeks to “change the form of government from one that is representative of the people to an oligarchy.” (Steffens’ words)
Steffens was born in San Francisco but grew up in Sacramento, California. As the eldest of four children, he often clashed with the founder and headmaster of the Episcopal Day School that he attended as a boy. As a journalist, he was known as a muckraker who took on corruption and institutional dysfunction. America, he wrote, was the place of a Great Swindle, where corrupt money changers ruin all of its institutions.
Steffens covered the Mexican Revolution as a reporter and was enamored of the Soviet Communist Revolution.
He was well liked, even by people who vehemently opposed his views. Teddy Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan, Lenin, and Mussolini were among his journalistic contacts.
“The tragedy of Lincoln Steffens,” Lawrence W. Reed wrote in FEE, the Foundation for Economic Freedom, is that “He could see the harm of concentrated power but, the typical ‘progressive’ that he was, he naively believed that more of it was the antidote. This is a recurring blind spot shared by intellectuals of the Left. Even if big government is the problem, the solution to them is almost always an even bigger government. It’s like drinking a gallon of Clorox to wash down the quart of Clorox you just swallowed.”
Steffens advised fellow journalists to “Sit around the bars and drink, and pose, and pretend, all you want to, but in reality, deep down underneath, care like hell.”
One of his most famous sayings, “I have seen the future, and it works,” was a catch-all phrase he used multiple times for various issues.
H. G. Callaway’s Introduction is a smoother read than Steffens’ work itself, which tends to an antidotal and a patchwork journalistic style that often makes for an awkward reading experience.
The Shame of the Cities was compiled from a series of articles Steffens wrote for McClure’s magazine. The cities Steffens covers are St. Louis, Minneapolis, Chicago, New York, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.
Although most of the corrupt municipalities he writes about are Republican, Steffens lets his readers know that corruption affects both political parties.
In writing about St. Louis, for instance, Steffens comments, “There was little difference between the two parties in the city; but the rascals that were in had been getting the greater share of the spoils, and the ‘outs’ wanted more than was given to them.”
Steffens calls Philadelphia the most hopeless city in the nation. “But it was not till I got to Philadelphia that the possibilities of popular corruption were worked out to the limit of humiliating confession,” he writes.
He equates Philadelphia with general civic corruption and an all powerful city machine that controls the mind of the average voter. Sadly, this was true when Philadelphia was Republican, and it’s certainly true today when the city is unlikely to ever elect a Republican mayor barring a miracle of biblical proportions.
“I cut twenty thousand words out of the Philadelphia article and yet I had not written half my facts,” Steffens states, adding, “I know a man who is making a history of the corrupt construction of the Philadelphia City Hall, in three volumes.”
In a follow up sentence he then fairly concludes that no writer can put all the incidents of corruption of an American city into one book.
In concluding his two investigative pieces on Pittsburgh and Philadelphia for McClure’s, Steffens writes that “Pittsburgh may pull itself out of its disgrace,” but that other Pennsylvania city, Philadelphia, “is contented and seems hopeless.”
Steffens keeps harping on the corruption in Philadelphia when he writes about other cities.
In his October 1902 article entitled “Tweed Days in St. Louis,” Steffens concludes that “[St. Louis] isn’t our worst governed city; Philadelphia is that.”
While Pittsburgh could not be said to be Pennsylvania’s most beautiful city in 1912 (when industry darkened its skies), the argument can be made that it is certainly the state’s most beautiful city in 2021.
With its mountains, three rivers and multi-colored bridges forming a kind of OZ canopy around The Golden Triangle, Pittsburgh’s dazzling skyline rarely fails to impress.
In Steffens’ chapter on Pittsburgh, he cites the corruption surrounding the building of the city’s many beautiful bridges yet avoids going into specifics. Steffens seems to have a soft spot for Pennsylvania’s western city although that does not prevent him from lashing out at it severely.
“Pittsburgh has been described physically as ‘Hell with the lid off,’ politically it is hell with the lid on.’ I am not going to lift the lid,” he writes.
Steffens traces Pittsburgh’s corruption to the railroads while reminding the reader that the corruption rings in both Pittsburgh and Philadelphia form a direct link up to the corruption rings in Harrisburg.
The corrupt party bosses and politicians that Steffens mentions in The Shame of the Cities are far too numerous to mention, but in every case he traces general municipal corruption back to big business and “the businessman.”
Ironically, Steffens ends his article on Pittsburgh by saying that the city itself is “a spectacle for American self-respect, and its sturdiness a promise for poor old Pennsylvania.”
The writer, surprisingly, had an occasional soft spot for Philadelphia, such as when he writes,
“Philadelphia has long enjoyed great and widely distributed prosperity; it is a city of homes; there is a dwelling house for every five persons, men, women, and children, of the population; and the people give one a sense of more leisure and repose than any community I ever dwelt in.”
Philadelphia, he adds, is surer that it has a ‘real aristocracy’ than any other place in the world, but its aristocrats, with few exceptions, are in the ring, with it, or of no political use.”
Steffens, on a roll, tells the reader that Philadelphians do not vote but are “disenfranchised.”
“The honest citizens of Philadelphia have no more rights at the polls than the Negroes down South. Nor do they fight very hard for this basic privilege. “
Sounding weirdly contemporary, Steffens goes on record as saying that dead people vote in Philadelphia.
“But many Philadelphians do not try to vote,” he adds. “They leave everything to the machine, and the machine casts their ballots for them.”
This is why Philadelphia is unlikely to have a Republican mayor in the near or distant future.
Thom Nickels is a Philadelphia-based journalist/columnist and the 2005 recipient of the AIA Lewis Mumford Award for Architectural Journalism. He writes for City Journal, New York, and Frontpage Magazine. Thom Nickels is the author of fifteen books, including “Literary Philadelphia” and ”From Mother Divine to the Corner Swami: Religious Cults in Philadelphia.” His latest, “Death in Philadelphia: The Murder of Kimberly Ernest” was released in May 2023.Thom Nickelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00933997449868301693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424128481306152244.post-78106495813733056152023-02-07T10:36:00.000-05:002023-02-07T10:36:12.604-05:00Thom Nickelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00933997449868301693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424128481306152244.post-35916399437074671632022-04-08T20:38:00.002-04:002022-04-08T20:39:03.999-04:00From City Journal, New York: Philadelphia's Woke Monoculture<b>Philadelphia’s Barnes Foundation recently held a press event for “Water, Wind, Breath,</b>” its new exhibition of Southwest Native art, pottery, jewelry, and culture. At the Barnes, such events are carefully orchestrated, with a distinct ambience: good-looking, well-dressed employees, all meticulously mannered, especially the women, who have come to represent the best in museum chic. At the Barnes opening, everything stood ready: microphone, guest speakers, a silver and chrome buffet table off to the side with coffee, tea, and yogurt parfaits. Thom Collins, executive director and president of the foundation, explained to attendees how hard the Barnes was working to achieve inclusion, equity, and diversity. It was a virtual copy-and-paste of everything I had heard weeks earlier at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Museum of the American Revolution—a mandatory mini-lecture that one now hears at exhibition openings in every museum in the city.
A<b> paraphrase of this bit of instruction might read:</b> Lest you have any doubts, equity and diversity are our main goals here. It apparently hasn’t occurred to any city museum official that the constant repetition of this mantra comes close to treating press-review audiences like learning-disabled children in need of constant reminding of a museum’s fealty to the new order.
<b>At Barnes, I took some consolation that Collins skipped</b> over the standard “land acknowledgment” boilerplate, which, in case you don’t know, is a three- to four-minute declaration that the ground under a given museum, theater, or venue was once owned by a Native tribe before it was stolen by colonizers or settlers. Land-acknowledgement tributes have become the progressive Left’s version of grace before meals and can be heard at nearly every small theater in the city before a performance of a play.
Theaters and museums nationwide have easy access to land-acknowledgment templates. A Google search reveals instructions on how to make your land-acknowledgment statement meaningful. One piece of advice is not to ask an indigenous person to deliver it because “indigenous people already bear enough of the burden of colonization.” The best call-to-action “is to ask everyone who hears the land acknowledgment to take out their phone or checkbook and donate at least $1 to a Native-led organization.”
<b>Both the subjects of plays and the topics of museum and art lectures</b> in Philadelphia have veered toward “woke” themes, especially at small venues like Theatre Horizon and the Theater Company of Philadelphia, where plays about slavery predominate. At Theatre Horizon, for instance, James Ijames, whose work tends to focus on race, women, and sexual orientation, will premiere a new play that attempts to reimagine Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson as, respectively, a student and a dean at a Southern university.
Slavery and subjects related to race, gender, and other woke topics have been the standard theme for productions at city theaters for almost a decade now. The overemphasis has even hit the grand dame of (former) WASP institutions, the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, where 2022’s list of events and programs includes an imbalance of feminist programs and race-related topics, such as lectures on how women lost the vote, inequality in education, African-Americans in Civil War-era Virginia, and writings from the nineteenth-century antislavery movement.
<b>When plays about slavery and race came into their own in</b> the city about a decade ago, they were welcomed. Unfortunately, Philadelphia’s arts and cultural scene today is locked into an endless repetition of these themes. It’s as if each museum and theater were in competition for a woke merit badge.
<b>The American Catholic Historical Society, which bills itself as the oldest Catholic </b>historical society in the United States, has taken a decidedly leftward turn as well. On the heels of Philadelphia’s 2020 George Floyd riots, the society booked a program called “The Birth of a Movement: Black Lives Matter and the Catholic Church.” The event’s description included a reference to “a long-overdue reckoning on systemic racism, and the presidential election.” The selection of Black Lives Matter as the centerpiece for a major lecture by a heretofore largely conservative Catholic organization was an odd one, especially since BLM was founded by two Marxists and at one point had as one of its goals the elimination of “hetero-normative relationships” (now scrubbed from BLM’s website). Today you will find no conservative speakers at ACHS. When ACHS does veer off into nonpolitical waters, the subjects tend to be non-threatening ones like the founding of a particular religious order or historical topics concerning the archdiocese.
<b>
A</b>s the city’s arts and cultural communities emerge from the pandemic, the influence of Zoom presentations is diminishing, though some institutions (like the ACHS) are still offering both virtual and live presentations. Most city theaters plan a complete reopening this spring, though classic old venues like the Walnut Street Theatre, founded in 1808 and known as America’s oldest theater, and the Forrest Theatre, named after famous nineteenth-century tragic actor Edwin Forrest, have been hosting live performances for the several months. The Walnut remains decidedly non-controversial and non-political (its last production was about Sherlock Holmes), but the same can’t be said for the Forrest.
<b>Its recent production of Daniel Fish’s rehashed and updated Oklahoma!</b>, the 1943 Rodgers and Hammerstein classic, was by all accounts a disaster. While established reviewers like Toby Zinman and assorted “gender-queer” reviewers for small weeklies praised the show’s edgy woke qualities, most ticketholders had little praise for the rehabbed mess they dubbed “Woke-Lahoma.” Almost all the reviews from audience members were negative, while professional reviewers, perhaps attempting to safeguard their progressive credentials, praised it. This ticketholder “rebellion” was heartening. Numerous audience members walked out during the intermission.
<b>It’s too early to determine whether the tide is turning,</b> though the Wilma Theater, long noted for its left-wing political curveballs, has taken to asking audiences what they want to see in future productions. What a novel approach! Perhaps more Philadelphia theaters and art galleries will follow suit.
Thom Nickels is a Philadelphia-based author and journalist.Thom Nickelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00933997449868301693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424128481306152244.post-50449538840969169582022-04-08T20:11:00.004-04:002022-04-08T20:14:36.680-04:00Fiorella and Padre PioThe Local Lens: Farewell, Fiorella
BY THOM NICKELS | FEBRUARY 9, 2017
<b>For most, the death of a loved one or family member is a traumatic experience.</b> That’s because most of us assume that our lives will go on for a long time. We don’t count on death happening today or even the day after tomorrow, but sometime in the distant future.
Death is never a pleasant topic. There are no “nice” deaths, either. One can die instantly of a heart attack, stroke or automobile accident, or one can die slowly over a period of months or years. In the case of the latter, at least there’s a chance for the one who is about to die to say goodbye. In the case of the former, there are no such options. In the Orthodox Church there are prayers asking God to save us from an instant death. It is always better to be prepared for this important transition from life to afterlife.
My sister-in-law, Fiorella, recently passed away. We were not extremely close, but we still had a closeness made palpable by decades of family dinners and reunions. When I say we were not extremely close I don’t mean to imply a distance caused by alienation. Like most people, we were caught up in our own lives, which led us to assume that there would be plenty of time to see each other again.
Fiorella came into my brother’s life at a point when he really needed change and a life partner. One day my mother called me up and said, “You’ll be meeting Fiorella this Sunday. I think your brother has met his match.”
<b>Fiorella had long straight hair, a winning smile,</b> a keen intelligence and an acute sense of humor. Her Italian roots could be traced to the area by the Adriatic Sea. She was born in Italy, but migrated to the United States as a toddler with her parents. She married my brother in Saint Patrick’s Church in Malvern, an old gothic structure with enormous stained-glass windows. I attended the wedding. It was the 1970s and all the men in the wedding party had long hair and mustaches. The reception was a rollicking party along the lines of “Saturday Night Fever.”
<b>Fiorella’s mother was a gifted seer who provided</b> her daughter with advice and counseling. Her father had a talent for winemaking; his wine was known for its smooth medicinal properties and it rarely, if ever, caused a morning hangover. We all asked one another, “How does he make this stuff?’
My brother often spoke of his mother-in-law’s intuitive talents. Like the mystic and saint Padre Pio, it was claimed that Fiorella’s mother could be in two places at once — an ability called bi-location. My brother told me that his father-in-law would often see his wife in the garden and then half a second later at the kitchen stove. It was just one of life’s unexplained mysteries. Still, Fiorella’s mom’s excellent “intuitions” were sometimes not what her daughter or my brother wanted to hear.
I remember the time when she warned them to travel by plane rather than take the train when planning a cross-country trip. The advice seemed backwards because conventional wisdom suggests that flying would be more dangerous than traveling by Amtrak. Fiorella was afraid of flying and she tried to avoid it whenever possible, so it took all her strength to muster up the courage to fly with my brother when they embarked on their honeymoon to Acapulco.
But Fiorella’s mother was persistent: “Do not take the train! Take the plane!”
<b>Fiorella’s fear of flying was just too great</b>, so she and my brother decided to take the train, despite the warning. Once on board the train’s sleeping compartment, there was a crash and a sort of explosion that sent the two of them flying off their bunks. Smoke entered their compartment and a lot of panic ensued. The train had derailed or had crashed into something, I’m not sure which, but those uncertain moments were very scary for them. Fortunately they escaped without injury.
<b>Fiorella and my brother settled in a house in a development in Exton</b>, PA, where they raised three children. The years advanced and as often happens with families there were times when we Nickels siblings would drift apart only to come together during the holidays or at a 4th of July picnic. On one 4th of July, Fiorella and my brother hosted a massive reunion for my mother’s side of the family. The Muldoon-Kelly reunion covered the waterfront in terms of disparate personalities and incomes. Fiorella and my brother had also managed to obtain old photos of distant relatives in Tyrone County, Ireland. The photos depicted men with long black beards covering their chest and women carrying parasols.
Fiorella contracted breast cancer a few years ago. She had a single mastectomy and routine chemo and radiation treatments. After that she and my brother went on an extreme health regime. Life was fine for some time, but then two or three days after Christmas it was discovered that the cancer had returned, only now it was in her liver.
I<b>n no time at all it seemed the cancer got worse and spread </b>to other parts of Fiorella’s body, and she was admitted to Bryn Mawr Hospital. When the truth of her incurable cancer became an indisputable fact, her youngest daughter, Amanda, came up with a plan.
Scheduled to be married to her fiancé, Mark, in September 2017, the couple organized a wedding in the hospital chapel before their big September church wedding. All of my brother’s children pitched in to create what became a miniature but full extravaganza in just 24 hours. That included getting the wedding rings, hiring musicians, a priest, ordering food and champagne and negotiating with a tailor to alter Fiorella’s old wedding gown for Amanda to wear.
Fiorella was informed of the impromptu chapel wedding and was given an extra treatment of radiation so she could attend. The morning of the wedding she woke up and said, “I feel great!”
<b>The small ceremony turned the hospital upside down when nurses,</b> physicians and even the hospital’s president and CEO crowded into the small chapel.
<b>
</b>My last visit with Fiorella was on Tuesday, January 31st when I entered her hospital room around 5:20PM. She was alone and she looked to be sleeping. The room was empty except for the sounds of a nurse running water in the bathroom. When the nurse asked me who I was, I told her that I was a brother-in-law. In the few seconds that it took me to say this I thought I saw a smile cross Fiorella’s face. Was I imagining this? My brother had told me earlier that his wife was comatose, but that she could hear what was being said. The nurse said I could spend as much time with her as I wanted, so I sat with Fiorella until the chaplain walked in and told me that Fiorella had actually died hours before, at 3:20PM.
<b>
</b>Hearing this was disconcerting because all along I had thought that she was asleep. I spent 30 minutes sitting with Fiorella, meditating, thinking of times past.
Then I thought of the words of St. John Chrysostom who wrote that although death is terrible and frightening — yes, even its name is devastating — for those who know the higher philosophy there should be no shuddering.
That’s because death is merely a passing over when we leave this corruptible life and go on to another, which is unending and incomparably better. •
Thom Nickelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00933997449868301693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424128481306152244.post-9504693142870137332022-01-27T15:16:00.005-05:002022-01-27T15:16:39.535-05:00STEVE BISCIOTTI<b>There are people who live for football and the Super Bowl. </b>They arrange house parties; they make sure there’s plenty of food, cases of beer or bottles of wine on hand for the ‘life-changing’ extravaganza. For these people—they constitute multitudes-- Super Bowl Sunday is a major national holiday.
I’ve never been one of these people. To me, football is boring and watching football is tantamount to watching leaves fall in autumn. Playing football is even worse given the number of physical injuries many of its athletes sustain and that follow them throughout life: bad backs, crushed knees, brain injuries, dislocated shoulders, hip replacements.
In years past, I’ve tended to criticize how people can put so much energy and passion into something that’s just a game. But one year it was slightly different for me and that was when I found myself rooting for the Baltimore Ravensover the San Francisco 49ers during Super Bowl 2013.
<b>The reason for my change of heart was simple</b>: Steve Bisciotti, the majority owner of the Ravens at that time (he is now the sole owner), is a second cousin of mine, or more specifically, the son of my godmother, Patricia Bisciotti (nee Muldoon), who hails from my mother’s side of the family, the Irish Muldoon-Kelly clan from Tyrone County, Northern Ireland.
<b>
There was always random talk about Steve Bisciotti and the Ravens</b> in family circles. That talk accelerated in the year 2000 when Bisciotti purchased 49% of the Ravens. It catapulted in 2004 when he purchased the remaining 51% and became the majority owner. While these developments struck me as interesting, I couldn’t say that I was especially excited about it. Since the Irish side of my family is so large, I had never met Steve Bisciotti until 2012. That was at a family funeral Mass for Patricia Bisciotti’s sister, Constance Davis, at St. Anastasia’s church in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania. It was in that church that I was finally able to put a face to the name.
<b>Interestingly enough, this was about the time when Ravens linebacker Brandon Ayanbadejo</b> was being castigated by a conservative Maryland legislator, Emmett Burns, Jr. (D-Baltimore Co.) for his open support of same sex marriage. (How mild this issue seems today when compared to the taking-a-knee-madness that plagued many teams, especially the Ravens, during playing of playing of the National Anthem.) Ayanbadejo, who is heterosexual, was not shy about his support of the marriage issue every chance he got. This fact bothered Burns, who wrote a letter to Steve Bisciotti and (then) Ravens President Dick Cass asking that Ayanbedejo be silenced. The Democrat legislator, according to Baltimore’s Metro Weekly, wanted the Ravens to “inhibit” Ayanbadejo and “take the necessary actions,” to have the linebacker “cease and desist” his public support.
According to Ayanbedejo, Cass and Bisciotti had a talk about Burns’ letter and then Cass approached him with some words of encouragement, telling him first of all that we [the Ravens] support the right to freedom of speech under the First Amendment.” Ayanbadejo then went on to say that Cass told him, “We’re in support of you and it’s good that you’re able to voice your opinion and say how you feel. We’re not an organization that discriminates.”
<b>When I read about this controversy,</b> I knew that second cousin Steve Bisciotti had inherited his father’s benevolent generosity of spirit. I immediately wrote a column about it for the Huff Post, praising my second cousin to the skies, even though I had never met him. (As it turned out, my godmother had read the piece and expressed her appreciation.)
Although I had never met Steve Bisciotti, I did know his father.
<b>As a college student in Maryland,</b> I visited Steve Bisciotti’s father, Bernie Bisciotti (Uncle Bernie) in a Baltimore hospital with my own father, Thomas C. when Bernie was fighting terminal leukemia. Our visit lasted over an hour, but this was enough time to see that Bernie Bisciotti was an empathetic gentle giant of a man. As a nervous 19 year old, on the verge of doing alternate service as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, I was used to untoward looks and disapproving comments from unexpected quarters, especially from disgruntled uncles (the aunts were far more gracious) who saw me as nothing more than a draft dodger. But this was not the case with Uncle Bernie. In fact, the very opposite of this was true; Uncle Bernie wasn’t one to discriminate. The fact that he seemed so calm and peaceful when he knew he was going to die also impressed me as something very rare. The man, so close to death, seemed happier than ever.
<b>Finding Steve Bisciotti standing by himself</b> after the funeral Mass in the church drinking his trademark bottled water seemed to me to be the perfect opportunity to tell him about my meeting with his father so many years ago. I went over and introduced myself and reminded him that his mother was my godmother, and then recounted my hospital visit with his father.
He smiled and listened politely; at the mention of his father, Bernie, he showed an even greater interest. I may have mentioned my Huff Post piece about the Ravens but by then our connection seemed to be fading. Since I had come late to the funeral, perhaps the multitudes of friends and cousins in the church had already bent his ear into a state of total exhaustion. In any event, I returned to my pew feeling a sense of disappointment. It was as if I was not a family member but a casual friend of a family member.
<b>I thought of H.L. Mencken’s comment.</b> “Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.”
The following year, 2013, he would see his team, the Ravens, win the Super Bowl. At home in front of the television set I saw my godmother at the conclusion of the game walk out into the middle of the field in a rain of confetti and bombast. There she was, the woman whose smiling face that can still be seen in old family 8mm films stepping out of a car and entering my family’s house on Bond Avenue in Drexel Hill, a coonskin Davy Crockett hat on my head. There she was in the national limelight.
“That’s my Aunt Pat,” I told the people watching the game with me. “My godmother has confetti in her eyes!” Steve Biscotti was right beside her in center field, hugging and smiling.
After the disappointing experience at the funeral, I wondered if I was expecting too much from a man I’d never really known except through family talk. Did my expectations come from having seen his father so close to death, a scene that Steve Bisciotti didn’t see because he was a little boy at the time? Writing and publishing the Huff Post piece also caused me to expect more.
<b>In the end, I decided it was a second cousin thing.</b> Second cousins rarely rate; they are bottom of the totem pole people. Historically, they might be compared to third and fourth class Titanic passengers. The proof of this came after the funeral when it was it was stated through word of mouth that only first cousins were invited to the funeral luncheon. Second cousins and others had to fend for themselves (check out those nearby restaurants, etc.) I’ve encountered this once or twice before on my mother’s side of the family. The Irish seem especially prone to weird bouts of exclusivity. Certainly, inviting second cousins to the funeral luncheon was a very affordable thing in this case, given the success story mentioned above. Throughout my life I’ve been to funerals both high and low. Even at the low ones or funerals for very poor people, there were always a few sandwiches afterwards and a cup of coffee
<b>Listen up all Ye Wealthy: It’s about the camaraderie as much as it is about the food! </b>
After the funeral, my interest in football went up a notch but it didn’t last long. It’s still a beastly sport although the smell of autumn and the sound of cow bells when a football game is being played can be a wonderful thing. And football parties are great as an excuse to have a party. They’re fun, especially when nobody is watching the game but engaged in conversations with their backs to the TV.
<b>One more thing:</b> Sometime after the funeral I went home and Googled Steve Biscotti’s name, having heard something about the beauty of his huge estate on Maryland’s Severn River. When I spotted a picture of the residence, I thought I’d gotten one of the Royal Family’s palaces in England by mistake. It was breathtaking, as they say.Thom Nickelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00933997449868301693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424128481306152244.post-5651365146194628632022-01-27T15:07:00.001-05:002022-01-27T15:07:02.856-05:00LIVE NATION IN PHILADELPHIA <b>On December 6, 1969, Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones looked out over the massive crowd at California’s Altamont Speedway and saw the concert security staff, the Hell’s Angels, beating up an audience member.</b> The Angels, who were paid in beer rather than cash to act as security that day, had apprehended a man named Meredith Hunter, 27, who attempted to approach the stage. When Hunter attempted to approach the stage a second time, this time with a revolver in view, he was beaten by the Angels and then stabbed to death by a Hell’s Angel named Alan Passaro. The melee, which was captured on film (and later incorporated in the film, ‘Gimme Shelter,’ caused a nervous Jagger to announce, “People, people, let’s be cool!”
The murder of Hunter would come to be known as Rock’n Roll’s Darkest Day, officially marking the end of the 1960’s peace and love era which had its peak expression only months before at Woodstock.
<b>The 1969 tragedy at Altamont has arguably been superseded in darkness by the troubling</b> developments at Live Nation Entertainment – which bills itself as “the world’s leading live entertainment company.” The company’s recent production of the Astroworld Festival in Houston on November 2 saw 13 people killed and 300 injured when a crowd surge during the concert caused concertgoers to trample one another. Live Nation has a history of safety violations over the past decade. The massive concert enterprise also seems to thrive best in large Democrat-controlled cities where the urban landscape cultivates its own style of rough and tumble audiences and artists (Christian conservative rappers like Bryson Gray need not apply), especially artists who not so long ago specialized in ‘F—k Trump’ lyrics.)
Consider Live Nation’s track record in Philadelphia.
<b>Philadelphia’s annual 2-day Labor Day concert on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, sponsored by Live Nation, </b>has been drawing thousands of people since its inception 8 seasons ago. Called "Made in America" (MIA), when the festival began it was briefly criticized for being “too white” and not diverse enough. Since that first concert, organizers have gone to extreme lengths to balance the equation. Rap and hip hop became an essential part—the majority part-- of the Parkway concerts but it was (and is) the rap and hip hop of the woke variety that is promoted by CNN. Live Nation’s contention that the MIA festival also includes pop and electronic music has always been an exaggeration. While this latter category of music is given a cursory acknowledgment on stage, the bulk of MIA concerts on the Parkway (curated by Jay-Z) feature such artists as Meek Mill, Jay-Z, Justin Bieber, Lil Baby and a host of other rappers.
<b>Proceeds for Philadelphia’s 2021 MIA festival went to the ACLU with other proceeds going to The Reform Alliance </b>-- a left progressive organization intent on eliminating “oppressive” probation, parole and bail issues. While some of the Alliance’s concerns might need looking into, the bulk of the organization’s focus is aligned with the progressive policies of Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner. Philadelphia has one of the highest rates of gun violence in the nation.
<b>The goal of The Reform Alliance is the replacement of America’s justice system “with a restorative system that is fair, </b>accountable and invested in rehabilitation, support and wellbeing.” All of this sounds quite benign on the surface but it is also suggestive that these grand “restorative systems” will end up in the hands of radical left. As of this writing, The Reform Alliance has certainly failed in one of its main goals: to “make communities safer and stronger.” Keep in mind that MIA organizers boasted that they were able to collect thousands of signatures in support of the Alliance during the 2021 festival. Supporting The Reform Alliance, of course, means supporting Larry Krasner.
There was a time when the ACLU did some good things for the American citizenry, but that "do good" era is certainly over. The ACLU in 2021 mirrors Marxist/Communist models with a social agenda reflecting the beliefs and convictions of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and the Southern Poverty Law Center, and champions positions and causes that are clearly antithetical to what has been called the American Way. One aim of the ACLU in 2021 seems to be the total remake of American society -- as explained quite powerfully in Mark Levin’s book, American Marxism.
<b>Live Nation’s MIA concerts transform Philadelphia’s</b> Benjamin Franklin Parkway into a street version of Astroworld with overflow crowds that often spill out into the surrounding neighborhoods. At one MIA concert several years ago, neighbors in the Art Museum area complained of drunk and drugged-out MIA attendees urinating or vomiting on their cars and property. Mayor Jim Kenney, who loves these outdoor city extravaganzas because they bring a lot of money into the city, has always turned a deaf ear to the residents of high-rise condos along the Parkway who have complained about the mayhem and noise created by MIA.
Many Parkway residents leave the city every Labor Day weekend as Live Nation invades Philadelphia. The city bends over backwards to accommodate MIA, rearranging or canceling bus routes, restricting parking and blocking off major and minor streets.
It’s really a case of Live Nation and MIA holding the city hostage for two days.
<b>The tragedy at Astroworld, highlights the lethal mix of dark woke rap with Live Nation’s insatiable hunger for bigger</b> and better concerts. It was Astroworld’s star performer, Travis Scott, after all, who announced at one of his concerts in 2015 for fans to jump the security barricades and follow their passion.
“There’s not enough security to stop them all from hopping the fence,” he told the crowd. For that stunt, Scott, aka Jacques Bermon Webster, was sentenced to 1 year of court supervision after pleading guilty to reckless conduct charges. The rapper also made headlines that same year for kicking a cameraman off his stage.
At the ill-fated 2021 Houston concert, Politifact reported that Travis Scott preformed for 37 minutes “as a mass causality unfolded.” In 1969, Mick Jagger, claiming he never knew the fatal stabbing of Meredith Hunter was taking place, kept on singing “Under My Thumb.” Scott’s Astroworld concert, or a trip to its theatrical stage name, Utopia Mountain, cost fans $350 a ticket (resellers got $993.00 per ticket). At this year’s Astroworld event, fans rushed the security barricades, knocking them over in a mad rush. Some saw this as evidence that Scott’s concert was "Satanic," although this charge was later lampooned in the press as absurd.
<b>Travis Scott has offered his condolences to the loved ones of the people who died. </b>“I’m absolutely devastated by what took place last night,” he’s on record as saying. “My prayers go out to the families and all those impacted by what happened at Astroworld Festival.” Scott then offered to cover the victims’ funeral expenses. Live Nation stated that it was "heartbroken for those lost and impacted at Astroworld.”
<b>Meanwhile, Philadelphia has its eyes set on the 2022 MIA Parkway concert when residents of the Parkway</b> and the Museum area will either leave town or weather the two-day musical lockdown when the city is held hostage once again. You can be sure that the ACLU and The Reform Alliance will be there with their petitions and sign-in sheets, bringing in the masses -- while from behind the microphone audiences will hear the latest woke rap sounds of "F—k Trump" or whoever else happens to be on the Left’s current enemies list.
One thing is certain: Philadelphia’s MIA crowds will never shout “F--k Krasner.”Thom Nickelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00933997449868301693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424128481306152244.post-9818083444165305262022-01-27T15:01:00.002-05:002022-01-27T15:01:28.819-05:00
<b>I'm in Rocky Mount, Virginia in a spacious historic suite in an antebellum mansion built in 1850</b> by a man named John Hale. </b>The Greek Revival building was once the manor house of the wealthiest plantation in Franklin County. Hale’s vast estate included 250 slaves and compromised most of the town on Rocky Mount. Hale’s son, Major Samuel Hale, left home to join the Confederate army a mere three weeks after his marriage. His life was cut short when he was killed on May 12, 1864 while engaged in a counter-attack to restore the Confederate front.
<b>The estate today is known as The Early Inn at the Grove, voted Virginia’s best Bed and Breakfast five years in a row. </b>With six sumptuous guest suites and situated on ten acres of land, the Inn is the crown jewel of the Blue Ridge Mountain area.
My first morning at the Inn includes a home cooked breakfast by twenty year old Autumn, the Inn’s housekeeper who also cooks breakfast for guests. The extremely conversational and friendly Autumn is a prime example of southern hospitality. Later, she introduces me to Nate, the tall black groundskeeper, while showing me around the grounds. During the tour I spot a small white wooden house and ask if this was one of the old slave houses. Both Nate and Autumn say that it was then Nate asks if I want to see the old smokehouse. The look inside the old smokehouse is like an old barn. A short winding staircase ascends several feet above my head and as I look up, I see a cobweb or two. Nate tells me how slaughtered animals used to hang here by the rafters, salted and smoked, long before the days of refrigeration. I’m familiar with the mystique of old barns, having grown up in rural Chester County.
<b>Autumn points to an old oak tree, well over a century old,</b> that came down during a bad storm. Instead of removing the majestic bark from the property the Inn decided to carve out the center of the bark to create a kind of planter. In the spring the mighty remains sport dozens of colored wildflowers. “It’s beautiful. It’s just something you have to see,” Autumn says. Unfortunately, it is winter but I can still see remnants of flowers and it’s not a bad look at all.
Since 1850, the mansion has had only had three owners, a testament to the love and devotion each family has felt for the house. I was assigned the Magnolia Suite with its massive bathroom and couples’ shower (though I traveled alone). Each suite has its own unique design and furnishings.
<b>
Rocky Mount is a compact and walkable town. </b>The place has virtually no crime, no homeless problem. Police siren sounds do not exist, or if they do, they are as rare as a blue moon. In the evenings, I had the mansion to myself because there didn’t happen to be any other guests. I checked out the ample library, the dining room (the go-to spot for catered events) with a working fireplace, and a living room where I encountered the southern aristocratic gaze of Elizabeth Taylor Greer, framed high on a wall in the style of a fresco or mosaic.
Being the only occupant in such a large place causes one to have unusual reflections. I kept thinking of Elizabeth Taylor Greer and her husband Thomas Keister Greer hosting parties together in the mansion. I also thought of one event in the mansion at the conclusion of the Civil War when a slave girl ran out to the Union Army advancing on the property and presented the soldiers them with a plate of hot biscuits. A newspaper account of the incident, framed for Early Inn guests to read, has the slave girl cowering in fear under the folds of her mistress’ dress after she presents her gift.
There are, of course, stories of how the mansion is sometimes haunted, but isn’t every old house that survives the centuries? The haunted house thing has indeed become a tired old cliché. In this case, I was told of a wandering (lost) but happy Confederate soldier who is said to walk back and forth in the front yard by the fallen oak tree with its attendant wildflowers.
To be sure, I experienced no creaky sounds or the opening and closing of shutters but had two very tranquil nights, one of them in the library reading up on Thomas Keister Greer, who had male relatives in the Revolutionary and Civil War, the War of 1812 and WWI. Keister himself fought in the landing at Okinawa in WWII and wrote about his experiences which were later quoted by his wife in her biography of her husband. “His precious Virginia was on the losing side in the Civil War but he was on the winning side in WWII,” she wrote. Elizabeth goes on to say that her husband’s “love and loyalty for heritage, history, knowledge, family, Virginia and his country served this Virginia gentleman well.”
Keister’s love for heritage and tradition caused him to leave one branch of the Episcopal Church, which he thought was becoming too liberal, for a more conservative parish.
Exploring Rocky Mount is best done on foot. There are innumerable antiques and old record shops, such as Antiques and Collectibles of The Crooked Road, Renick Antiques and Collectibles and the Rocky Mount Farmers Market. The Harvester Performance Center attracts major musical talent and it’s just a few blocks from The Early Inn. There’s also a marijuana head shop (I don’t smoke), a large Artisan shop with new and old items as well as a space for photographer Dwight A. Hayes, who sells framed works from his international travels. Artfully framed color and B&W photographs from Hayes’ trips to Greece, the Holy Land, Ireland and the Middle Eastern desert sell for shockingly reasonable prices (they’d cost six times as much in Philadelphia). I chatted with Hayes about his work and wound up hearing some of his life’s story: how he started out as a Jehovah’s Witness but later became a Baptist preacher. I purchased a framed print of his as a Christmas gift for a grandniece—a full rainbow over the Sea of Galilee—after which the two of us talked religion for almost an hour. Hayes signed the photograph and told me that one of his son’s was a preacher too.
“You don’t call yourself a minister or a Reverend?” I asked.
<b>“Oh no, I’m a preacher. When I go to the Holy Land I love hanging out with the Catholics.</b> I love Catholics,” he said. Hayes also said that he was fascinated with the Orthodox.
I said my good-byes to Hayes and headed over to an antique record store where I found a miniature buffalo, not a taxidermy specimen obviously, but a knick knack covered in what looked like real animal hair with tiny enamel horns. The little buffalo was made in a “charge” position. The price was $25.00 but I asked if I could take it for $20.00. The proprietor, a lean man in his fifties covered in tattoos, readily agreed and took the buffalo to the counter so I wouldn’t have to carry it around with me. In the meantime, his mother appeared on the scene, perhaps the real proprietor of the store, and wanted to know where the buffalo came from. I was called over to the counter.
“You have good taste,” his mother said. “If there’s another buffalo maybe you can get two for 25.00.”
It so happens there was another buffalo there but that buffalo looked beaten up with missing patches of hair and what seemed to be a twisted leg. “I’ll take just the one,” I said. By now her son was at the other end of the store and out of hearing range. “My son was in the Navy,” his mother told me. “He started to come home with tattoos (raises eyes), and now he’s covered. Oh, well, what can you do?”
<b>I headed over to Rocky Mount Burger Company, touted as the burger place in all of the Blue Ridge Mountains, </b>skipping an opportunity to go to Buddy’s BBQ or the Homestead Creamery, which would have meant using the rental car, a Toyota with racing stripes and a great engine. I don’t do burgers often but I delighted in this specialty while sipping a Kendall Jackson chardonnay (all their red wine was from a box). The music was Rolling Stones, Kinks, The Who. I would return to the burger place in the evening because I didn’t want to use the rental car at night. When I did, I had a long ‘life conversation’ with my server, a young mother with two children at home (and a husband, no less) about how rapidly society was falling apart.
<b>That evening in the Early Inn, I wandered around the mansion after the staff had departed,</b> paid my respects to the portrait of Elizabeth Taylor Greer, and went into the B&B’s kitchen to help myself to yogurt, coffee and various snacks made available for guests. The winter sun was beginning to set so I walked to the central Greek Revival door, unchanged since the mistress of the house and the little slave girl opened it to greet the victorious Union Army. I rubbed my hand into the wood thinking of all the people who’d left their fingerprints there, then opened it and stepped outside. I did not see the ghost of the Confederate solider, although I did spot a still standing Confederate monument to the Civil War dead on my first day in Virginia. It was a tall, graceful looking statue surrounded by a wrought iron fence. Soon I would see another statue just like it in Floyd, Virginia, known as the state’s liberal hippie-populated community where the famous Floyd Country store (and its Friday night bluegrass concerts) is located. I was looking forward to going to Floyd in a day or two, the second lag of my trip. Autumn said that Floyd to her was like a piece of Heaven.
What to do before dinner? I thought about heading over to the Twin Creels Distillery, not far from the Inn, to sign up for a Moonshine tasting. Thomas Keister Greer wrote a masterful book on the area’s Moonshine wars during the Prohibition era. (The Great Moonshine Conspiracy Trial of 1935). That’s when politicians and police were paid off so that the great southern tradition could continue unabated: free flowing Moonshine as an alternative to (legal) soft drinks and weak tea. The South certainly didn’t take Prohibition sitting down.
<b>I visited my first distillery, the Franklin County Distilleries,</b> on my way into Rocky Mount from Salem. I was shown around the place by Taylor Spellman, Director of Public Relations for Virginia’s Blue Ridge, and Kathryn Lucas, Spellman’s assistant. As we drove into the distillery parking lot, we noticed a man in a Santa Claus suit directing traffic into the place. The distillery had the look of a rustic barn with lots of wood framing and high ceilings. Scattered around the place were barrels of this and that. We sat at a small bar and were greeted by the bartender, a tall gentleman who looked like the very heart and soul of the non-urban South. Friendly and open like so many Virginians I would meet, he recommended a spicy Bloody Mary, which put me in the mood to talk to that Santa Claus out on the road.
No sooner did I think Santa Claus, then there he was. Turns out he was the brother of the owner and he wanted a picture of the three of us. This was after a gentleman sitting in the back of the distillery with a friend came up to me and asked if anybody ever said that I looked like Andy Warhol.
“Yes,” I answered, “From time to time, the last time was when somebody called out to me from a truck: ‘Andy Warhol!”” The men were former Northerners (Long Island), retirees, and said they loved life in Rocky Mount, just as Autumn said she loved life in Floyd.
I returned to the Rocky Mount Burger Company later that night until closing (9 pm), then headed back to the mansion, walking through the vast front yard where the Union cavalry marched and where Johnny Red still paces nervously among the trees.Thom Nickelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00933997449868301693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424128481306152244.post-64859618806521487372022-01-27T14:51:00.004-05:002022-01-27T14:51:36.073-05:00Thom Nickels
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<b>From Rocky Mount, I headed into Floyd County, Virginia to Apple Ridge Farm, a former dairy farm with 250 apple trees. The farm was purchased by John R.F. Lewis and incorporated as a non-profit in 1978 as an education and retreat center for inner city youths. </b>Lewis, a black educator, has transformed the farm into a national treasure that has helped 70,000 children over the last 40 years. The rustic design of the buildings, many of them wooden, has the look of an old Scout camp. There’s the massive Spangler Pavilion, usually rented out for weddings, a “real” swimming pool (the deep end is ten feet), and a high tech classroom for the kids that is powered by solar panels and a wind turbine.
Located deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains, one first notices the turkey vultures circling in the sky. These graceful birds glide high and low in search of fresh carcasses below. The surrounding forests are inhabited by small bears (not dangerous, I was told), an occasional (but very rare) black mountain lion, foxes, and plenty of deer. It was hunting season when I arrived at the Farm, so when I was shown my Apple Ridge Caboose B & B Car, I was informed that if I wanted to hike in the woods I should wear orange if I didn’t follow the proscribed trails surrounding the three Caboose “apartments,” (all former Norfolk-Richmond caboose cars). Hiking outside the marked margins meant that you risked encountering hunters and bears.
<b>I was assigned Caboose #3, a red caboose recently refurbished to </b>accommodate overnight guests. “Cute” doesn’t begin to describe this cozy space with a miniature refrigerator, microwave, coffee bar, Futon sofa, a doll house sized dining room table and a large bathroom with an easy- to- work shower. The Caboose apartments are situated on a section of railroad track and are located up a hill that is slightly apart from the rest of the Farm. There are no TV’s in the Cabooses so I was glad I brought along books. The mini-refrigerator was adequately stocked with muffins, yogurt, juice, a diet Coke, bagels and a number of complimentary quiche dishes provided by Igne, Apple Farm’s Director, who gave me a tour of the encampment when I first arrived.
The staff of Apple Farm introduced me to the dog Copper, possibly the friendliest dog in the Northern Hemisphere. This handsome copper colored Lab obviously comes from good stock.
“Don’t be surprised if you wake up in the morning and find Copper sleeping outside your Caboose. Don’t worry, he won’t go inside. He respects boundaries,” I was told. I’m not one of those people who do somersaults every time they meet a nice dog (no face licking, please), but it didn’t take me long to like Copper, who would run up to me from out of nowhere, tail wagging, intelligent eyes alert, as if we were old friends. Copper followed me on my first day at the Farm, obediently stopping and waiting while I checked a text or made a quick call.
<b>Hang around a good dog long enough and you’re soon talking to them as if they were human.</b> I told Copper that I wasn’t going to be hanging at the Farm that day but that I’d be heading into the town of Floyd in the rental car. There were several things I had to check out in Floyd, such as the Floyd Country Store, a store called The Republic of Floyd and a couple restaurants. Of course, the best way to get to know a new place is by walking around and mixing with the general population.
In last week’s Free Press piece on Rocky Mount, I recounted how a young woman named Autumn from The Early Inn told me how she thought that Floyd was ‘heaven on earth.’ I’m always curious to see what other people mean when they compare a city or town to ‘heaven.’ Floyd is ten miles away from the Farm; to get there you have to drive on winding rural roads that take you into the heart of the Blue Ridge countryside. I was afraid of getting lost the way I got lost years ago in a rental car in the mountains of Austria when I nearly took a wrong turn and wound up in Czechoslovakia. I didn’t get lost, as it turns out, but made my way into Floyd, amazed to find it similar looking to any small town near Lancaster, Pennsylvania. No matter where you travel in the United States these days, all the small, remote towns seem to have the same generic look.
Driving into the center of Floyd, the town’s uniqueness come to light; in some ways it reminded me of parts of Denver, Colorado in the 1970s. Parking is easy in Floyd and the drivers are polite as they seem to be in the entire Blue Mountain region: no honking, no road rage, no muffler noise pollution, and certainly no ATVs or dirt bikes.
In the 1970s and 80s, Floyd attracted back-to-the-land types, hippies and Whole Earth Catalog devotees interested in organic farming, herbal remedies, hand crafted jewelry, pottery, and good coffee. Politically, the residents are fiercely independent and not party-line establishment people. The town voted overwhelmingly for Bernie Sanders over Joe Biden in the Virginia Democratic primary. In 2016, 66% of Blue Ridge Mountain voters voted for Donald Trump. Previously, Republicans in the area were Ron Paul supporters. Ninety six percent of Floyd residents are white; 2 percent black.
In 1861, the town of Floyd was divided on the issue of secession with some residents opting to remain loyal to the United States, but after the secession vote on May 23, 1861, the vast majority of Floyd residents embraced the new Confederate government —as John F. Kennedy would say—“with vigor.”
The Floyd Country Store is well known for its Friday Night Jamboree where you can listen (and sometimes dance) to Gospel, old-time bluegrass bands and traditional Appalachian music. During the warmer months a number of bands play on the streets outside the Floyd store. The multi-purpose store is also a restaurant, a café, a country music store and a music school. American roots music—fiddle and banjo dance tunes-- can also be found on the so called Crooked Road (Franklin County) with multiple music events featured nightly at many different venues.
<b>Walking around Floyd, one is made aware that the town’s counter cultural legacy </b>has been commercialized to some degree. (Much to my surprise and delight, I spotted a small Confederate War memorial that the Cancel Culture people hadn’t managed to destroy. ) To experience Old Time Floyd or the authentic old town before the town got popular, you have to visit in the mornings when the old timers or long term inhabitants are out on the streets in force playing banjos or engaged in flat dancing.
This is what I learned after conversing with two construction workers at the Apple Farm. Both men were working on a small community house for the B & B Cabooses when I stopped by and introduced myself. I had just parked the car near my #3 red Caboose when I heard hammering and sawing inside the unfinished house. One of the men introduced himself and told me right away that he and his co-worker were Jehovah’s Witnesses and native Virginians. I mentioned that I had just been to Floyd and they asked me what I thought of it. I said I liked it and that it reminded me of Boulder, Colorado, another former hippie town that, once it was “discovered,” became an expensive and elite town.
“People outside the state are attracted to Floyd because it is so beautiful, but once they get here they start complaining that the town doesn’t have the amenities that their home town had, and then they try to reshape Floyd into their old hometown,” the contractor said. “To see the real Floyd, you have to go in the morning. The summer and autumn around here are great. Floydfest, the big music festival in July, attracts thousands of people from all over the world. Floydfest is what drew me to the Floyd area in the first place….”
My conversation with the contractor occurred on my last night at Apple Farm. In the meantime, I had to deal with a dire weather report that had 50 mph-plus winds due to sweep into the Farm area. It so happened that the deadly tornados that had so devastated Kentucky had occurred the day before.
Before the high winds and rains moved into the area, I asked the men if my Caboose would remain stable should the worst happen.
“You’re in a fortress,” the contractor said.
That proved to be true.Thom Nickelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00933997449868301693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424128481306152244.post-23263838155856749612021-10-06T09:54:00.000-04:002021-10-06T09:54:00.269-04:00Rendezvous in Bangkok … Who Killed Thomas Merton
Rendezvous in Bangkok … Who Killed Thomas Merton
By Richard Lord Contributing writer Sep 29, 2021
The unveiling of a painting of Thomas Merton by artist Ruane Manning.
Thom Nickels and Sabina Clarke.
In the middle of the last century, Thomas Merton was a kind of cultural superstar, minor league division. For those of a religious bent, however, there was nothing minor league about him: Merton was major league all the way.
A convert to Roman Catholicism at the age of 23, Merton soon took the full plunge into his new faith and took vows as a Trappist monk. Trappist monks usually don’t become cultural superstars, but this monk also happened to be a first-rate writer. A gifted poet as well as a writer of inspirational works, his popularity started to spread among people from different faith backgrounds looking for spiritual nourishment in an unsettled time. His acclaimed autobiography, The Seven-Story Mountain, became a best-seller and a standard text at both Catholic and secular colleges all across the country. In all, he spun out over 50 books within 27 years.
Image: Rendezvous in Bangkok … Who Killed Thomas Merton 3
Steve Gulick plays the Franciscan Provincial Trappist monk.
In his writings, Merton was also a strong voice for racial and economic justice, as well as a severe critic of America’s war in Vietnam. These pronounced political stances landed Merton in trouble with many in the Catholic hierarchy who felt that priests and monks should not get too involved (at least publicly) in controversial political issues. Even so, Merton never wavered in expressing his deeply felt views on the burning issues of the day.
His personal life also became a serious problem when he fell in love with a young nurse while recovering from back surgery. The nurse, Margie Smith, was not yet out of her teens while Merton had already ploughed into his early fifties. The two carried on a furtive relationship for a couple of years, and Merton seriously contemplated renouncing his vows and turning the relationship into a full and open involvement with marriage looming at the end.
While attending a monastic conference just outside of Bangkok, Merton met his end, just 53. The official reports claimed that he died of an accidental electrocution after stepping out of the shower and coming into contact with either a defective electric fan or a defective electrical cord juicing the fan. However, like the death of blues legend Robert Johnson (which I wrote about in the last issue) there are several loose ends concerning Merton’s demise, and some of those loose ends are strangely twisted.
Such a fascinating life and bizarre death invite artistic treatment, and that’s just what local writers Sabina Clarke and Thom Nickels have devoted themselves to. Clarke and Nickels have taken some key elements of Merton’s life and how it ended and given them dramatic treatment.
Their play, Rendezvous in Bangkok … Who Killed Thomas Merton, had its first public staged reading this past Sunday. Clarke and Nickels’ focus in the play is on Merton’s strange death and what might have led up to it. The writers take a thorny conspiratorial trail and build their case from what they can find scattered along the trail.
In this telling of the tale, Merton was actually murdered because his social and political activism had become too troublesome for some people in power. The question of who ordered the murder remains murky in this account, though a number of unusual suspects are given a glance: President Lyndon Johnson, J. Edgar Hoover, the pope, or maybe just a powerful bishop or Trappist abbot uneasy with a monk who was too fond of flirting with heresies of various stripes.
As co-author Thom Nickels says, right now the piece is “a big fat trial balloon”. In other words, it’s still a work in progress. The progress so far has turned out a promising piece of drama that is largely engaging in its late draft stage. A number of the scenes work very nicely and maintain our interest in the story of this tragic figure. The playwrighting pair succeed in capturing the tortured person who was persistently riven between his deep commitment to the monastic life and the temptations of the world, the flesh and the tipple. These painful internal struggles come through most clearly in those scenes where Merton spills out the confession of how he has been torn between his love for God and the monastic life which sustains that love and his love for the young nurse that pulls at him to return to the sensual world outside the monastery gates.
As I say, at this stage, the script is certainly promising, but there’s still work to be done. Some of the dialogue could be sharpened. This holds especially true for two important minor characters. First case in point: the psychoanalyst who treats Merton should employ more of the jargon and waffle that was once an occupational hazard for that profession. In the 1950s and 60s, when Freudian and Jungian approaches were still highly popular, this kind of psychobabble was rampant among psychoanalysts. Right now, the doctor sounds more like a friend offering commonplace advice.
Second case in point: the shadowy figure who makes a sinister phone call shortly after Merton’s death would be more believable if he used the coded language that people engaged in professional killings usually rely on. Not only would the shadowy figure be more credible in his first appearance, but this change would give the character’s short confession at the end, rendered in straightforward language, that much more of an impact. Right now, the confession comes off as mere repetition.
Playwrights Clarke and Nickels can also give some attention to tightening the structure slightly in the next rewrite. Part of that task might be to expand the play a bit. At the end of Sunday’s reading, I wanted more, I felt there was a bit more of the story to be told here.
In fact, one key player in the Merton story was entirely missing here – Margie Smith, the nurse whom Merton fell deeply in love with towards the end of his life. One friendly suggestion I would offer Clarke and Nickels is to replace the generic, nondescript narrator they now have with Margie herself. This woman who played such an important role in Merton’s last years could assume a role similar to that of the Common Man in the original stage version of A Man For All Seasons. Like the Common Man, Margie could be both narrator and framing device for the play, giving it an intense edge it doesn’t yet have. I’m sure I was not the only person in the audience who wished to see Margie herself make an appearance.
As to the actual reading we were treated to, though it was still in what could be called a late rehearsal stage, there were some performances that clearly stood out. In the role of the young Thomas Merton, Robert Daponte demonstrated an assurance that seemed like he was ready to go on for the full-throttle performance right now. Kirsten Quinn looks nothing like Joan Baez, but her performance was also first-rate, one of the highlights of the reading. And, quite fittingly, Bill Rahill delivered a strong, convincing presentation of Thomas Merton in his last years and post-mortem.
There are a number of directions Who Killed Thomas Merton can take before its next iteration. There was enough to appreciate in this staged reading that we can only look forward with anticipation to the final product.Thom Nickelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00933997449868301693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424128481306152244.post-29812973680255400702021-09-01T20:28:00.001-04:002021-09-01T20:40:03.698-04:00ZOOMED OUT I am Zoomed out. I have Zoom fatigue.
Since March of 2020 Zoom has been the emperor of public speaking venues throughout the city. In the beginning, doing the Zoom thing was a novelty. It was fun installing a small camera on my home computer and aligning it so that it picked up the best light and showed off an interesting background--the manicured tableau-- to a curious Zoom audience. Do I really want people to see this picture on the wall or should I change it?
Some people who have fallen in love with Zoom want public speaking events like lectures and panel discussions to always have a Zoom option. They praise Zoom because they say a speaker can wear anything from the waist down—underwear, jock strap or even go nude—because Zoom viewers can’t see “down there.” These kinds of freedoms are priceless, they insist. The only dress code “requirement” in the Zoom world is from the waist up. That may work for some but it doesn’t work for me. For me, clothes-- the right clothes-- provide a psychological framework. If you dress as if you were really going to speak before an audience in real time, this can help to put you in the right frame of mind when the Zoom camera clicks on.
I’ve given about 12 Zoom talks since the start of the pandemic. Different city arts and cultural institutions have different Zoom styles. The Abnethan of Phila, for instance, asks that as the Zoom speaker that you log on in advance of the program so all the sound and other technical aspects can be ironed out. During that time the host will go over your bio, discuss when the images (if any) will be displayed and when the Q and A with the audience will begin.
The Athenaeum of Philadelphia has an after session where the Zoom program is reviewed and feedback exchanged between the host and presenter. As a speaker I have found this to be extremely helpful.
Tina Brock, founder of the Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium and host of the popular weekly Zoom show, Into the Absurd: A Virtually Existential Dinner Conversation, also incorporates after show feedback. Brock, in fact, has mastered the art of feedback. She is also one of the finest interviewers in the city. Her knack for making guests relax and open up, as well as her sense of humor, is what makes the weekly Existential Dinners so interesting.
One of the aggravating aspects of Zoom is when you are the featured speaker and see multiple images of the Zoom audience, a gallery of faces facing you on your computer screen like endless overlays of Warhol’s soup cans. This nerve wrecking iconography is not helpful for most speakers because what happens inside those Zoom windows can be distracting: yawning, looks of boredom, raised eyes. What’s a speaker to do in a case like this? The standard Zoom ‘philosophy’ says not to take it personally but to remember that the audience is Zooming from their homes where there could be a zillion things going on: the postman ringing twice, an obnoxious barking dog, a person getting shot outside their house, a cankerous screaming child.
Experience tells me that it is better for the main speaker not to see the audience faces at all except during the Q and A. But even this is far from perfect.
I gave a talk at the Franklin Inn recently on my book on religious cults. Before the lecture, I worked with the host of the event to arrange an assortment of images to go with the presentation. The image-arranging took some time, however the host let me go through the entire lecture without speaking up and asking me if I wanted to launch the slide show. Most public speaking event hosts realize that a speaker may get “lost” in his/her talk so they stand ready to save the day by interjecting the slide show before it is too late. This did not happen in this case. I was waiting for the host to suggest launching the slide show while the host was waiting for me to suggest launching the slide show.
At the show’s end, I received a harsh email from a Franklin Inn official accusing me of “wasting the host’s time” and of “using him” because I didn’t remember to say, “Launch the slide show.” Yet why didn’t the host jump in and offer a simple reminder? At the talk’s end he certainly could have mentioned the slide show and have suggested running through the images. Zoom miscommunication is its own pandemic.
Zoom talks are terrifying because they do not give the speaker a real sense of the audience. A real time public speaker is able to read faces in an audience and gage, possibly, how the talk should proceed.
There are downsides to Zoom presentations where the audience is invisible to the speaker. When the Zoom speaker sees nothing onscreen except his own face there’s the feeling of speaking into a vacuum. Did the audience leave? Is anybody there? Is anybody listening? During several talks I have been tempted to ask, “Hello, have you all gone to the moon?”
A program called Mornings Out at the William Way Community Center has an excellent Zoom system where the host gracefully “interrupts” a lecture with pertinent questions or comments. I don’t mind interruptions like this at all. In the Zoom world, straight lectures are less desirable than conversational lectures or interviews, a la Tina Brock, where there is some back and forth. Talking for 45 minutes straight without any indication that there’s an audience or anyone out there listening to you is a very creepy sensation.
Another horrible thing about Zoom: One is often sitting down when delivering a Zoom talk. Sitting down is very bad for public speaking. Sitting down cuts off valuable brain waves; it puts the body into a semi slumber whereas standing up keeps the mental nerves on edge; the stand up position helps to keep the brain focused. So yes, I hate Zoom for its ‘sitting on your ass’ methodology, especially when trying to communicate ideas or telling a story to an audience that is also on its ass.
Everything about Zoom is horrid.
At my recent talk at the Library Company of Philadelphia, a Zoom Fireside chat session, I was not told how many people were in “attendance,” or how many people had signed up to hear the talk. Sometimes it is better not to know. The host, a gracious man, said that since I am well known it could be more than 20 or 30 which is the usual number of Zoom attendees for the Fireside chats. But being well known and often controversial doesn’t guarantee you an audience, especially in this Cancel Culture era where people with certain opinions are relegated to Siberia because they don’t fit the PC status quo. I’ve encountered this from time to time and have learned to take it on the chin.
I recall a book reading I had at Philly AIDS Thrift—I was lecturing on my book, Learn To Do a Bad Thing Well, about Philadelphia homeless, that garnered only one attendee. This fiasco came after I had written a published a slew of gay books, including Gay and Lesbian Philadelphia and my novellas, Walking Water. The gracious host was embarrassed for me although earlier in the day the store had received telephone calls from a person or persons threatening to demonstrate outside the bookstore because of certain pieces I had written in conservative media.
When you write and publish you learn to take the good and the bad. As I told my host at Philly AIDS Thrift at the time, when I lectured on my book Literary Philadelphia at the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, I sold out the place and some people had to be turned away. At the conclusion of my talk, an old time Athenaeum member—a gentleman in a Brooks Brothers suit with white hair—stood up and said that my lecture was by far the finest he had ever hear at the Athenaeum.
When I lectured at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania on my book Philadelphia Mansions, the house was packed to the gills, yet I noticed a few guys in the front row who had obviously come to snicker and make faces. My sense was that they had read my pieces in conservative magazines.
All things considered, I would rather brave the unpredictability of a live audience than deal with Zoom’s virtual ghosts and goblins.
Thom Nickels
Contributing Editor
Thom Nickelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00933997449868301693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424128481306152244.post-52238414948428622932021-09-01T20:11:00.018-04:002021-09-01T20:14:50.112-04:00ZOOMED OUT
Aug 28, 2021 0
<b>I am Zoomed out. I have Zoom fatigue.</b>
Since March of 2020 Zoom has been the emperor of public speaking venues throughout the city. In the beginning, doing the Zoom thing was a novelty. It was fun installing a small camera on my home computer and aligning it so that it picked up the best light and showed off an interesting background--the manicured tableau-- to a curious Zoom audience. Do I really want people to see this picture on the wall or should I change it?
Some people who have fallen in love with Zoom want public speaking events like lectures and panel discussions to always have a Zoom option. They praise Zoom because they say a speaker can wear anything from the waist down—underwear, jock strap or even go nude—because Zoom viewers can’t see “down there.” These kinds of freedoms are priceless, they insist. The only dress code “requirement” in the Zoom world is from the waist up. That may work for some but it doesn’t work for me. For me, clothes-- the right clothes-- provide a psychological framework. If you dress as if you were really going to speak before an audience in real time, this can help to put you in the right frame of mind when the Zoom camera clicks on.
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I’ve given about 12 Zoom talks since the start of the pandemic. Different city arts and cultural institutions have different Zoom styles. The Athenaeum of Philadelphia, for instance, asks that as the Zoom speaker that you log on in advance of the program so all the sound and other technical aspects can be ironed out. During that time the host will go over your bio, discuss when the images (if any) will be displayed and when the Q and A with the audience will begin.
The Athenaeum of Philadelphia has an after session where the Zoom program is reviewed and feedback exchanged between the host and presenter. As a speaker, I have found this to be extremely helpful.
Tina Brock, founder of the Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium and host of the popular weekly Zoom show, Into the Absurd: A Virtually Existential Dinner Conversation, also incorporates after show feedback. Brock, in fact, has mastered the art of feedback. She is also one of the finest interviewers in the city. Her knack for making guests relax and open up, as well as her sense of humor, is what makes the weekly Existential Dinners so interesting.
One of the aggravating aspects of Zoom is when you are the featured speaker and see multiple images of the Zoom audience, a gallery of faces facing you on your computer screen like endless overlays of Warhol’s soup cans. This nerve-wracking iconography is not helpful for most speakers because what happens inside those Zoom windows can be distracting: yawning, looks of boredom, raised eyes. What’s a speaker to do in a case like this? The standard Zoom ‘philosophy’ says not to take it personally but to remember that the audience is Zooming from their homes where there could be a zillion things going on: the postman ringing twice, an obnoxious barking dog, a person getting shot outside their house, a cantankerous screaming child.
Experience tells me that it is better for the main speaker not to see the audience faces at all except during the Q and A. But even this is far from perfect.
I gave a talk at the Franklin Inn recently on my book on religious cults. Before the lecture, I worked with the host of the event to arrange an assortment of images to go with the presentation. The image-arranging took some time, however the host let me go through the entire lecture without speaking up and asking me if I wanted to launch the slide show. Most public speaking event hosts realize that a speaker may get “lost” in his/her talk so they stand ready to save the day by interjecting the slide show before it is too late. This did not happen in this case. I was waiting for the host to suggest launching the slide show while the host was waiting for me to suggest launching the slide show.
At the show’s end, I received a harsh email from a Franklin Inn official accusing me of “wasting the host’s time” and of “using him” because I didn’t remember to say, “Launch the slide show.” Yet why didn’t the host jump in and offer a simple reminder? At the talk’s end he certainly could have mentioned the slide show and have suggested running through the images. Zoom miscommunication is its own pandemic.
Zoom talks are terrifying because they do not give the speaker a real sense of the audience. A real time public speaker is able to read faces in an audience and gage, possibly, how the talk should proceed.
There are downsides to Zoom presentations where the audience is invisible to the speaker. When the Zoom speaker sees nothing onscreen except his own face there’s the feeling of speaking into a vacuum. Did the audience leave? Is anybody there? Is anybody listening? During several talks I have been tempted to ask, “Hello, have you all gone to the moon?”
A program called Mornings Out at the William Way Community Center has an excellent Zoom system where the host gracefully “interrupts” a lecture with pertinent questions or comments. I don’t mind interruptions like this at all. In the Zoom world, straight lectures are less desirable than conversational lectures or interviews, a la Tina Brock, where there is some back and forth. Talking for 45 minutes straight without any indication that there’s an audience or anyone out there listening to you is a very creepy sensation.
Another horrible thing about Zoom: One is often sitting down when delivering a Zoom talk. Sitting down is very bad for public speaking. Sitting down cuts off valuable brain waves; it puts the body into a semi slumber whereas standing up keeps the mental nerves on edge; the stand-up position helps to keep the brain focused. So yes, I hate Zoom for its ‘sitting on your ass’ methodology, especially when trying to communicate ideas or telling a story to an audience that is also on its ass.
Everything about Zoom is horrid.
At my recent talk at the Library Company of Philadelphia, a Zoom Fireside chat session, I was not told how many people were in “attendance,” or how many people had signed up to hear the talk. Sometimes it is better not to know. The host, a gracious man, said that since I am well known it could be more than 20 or 30 which is the usual number of Zoom attendees for the Fireside chats. But being well known and often controversial doesn’t guarantee you an audience, especially in this Cancel Culture era where people with certain opinions are relegated to Siberia because they don’t fit the PC status quo. I’ve encountered this from time to time and have learned to take it on the chin.
I recall a book reading I had at Philly AIDS Thrift—I was lecturing on my book, Learn To Do a Bad Thing Well, about Philadelphia’s homeless, that garnered only one attendee. This fiasco came after I had written and published a slew of gay books, including Gay and Lesbian Philadelphia and my novellas, Walking Water. The gracious host was embarrassed for me although earlier in the day the store had received telephone calls from a person or persons threatening to demonstrate outside the bookstore because of certain pieces I had written in conservative media.
When you write and publish you learn to take the good and the bad. As I told my host at Philly AIDS Thrift at the time, when I lectured on my book Literary Philadelphia at the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, I sold out the place and some people had to be turned away. At the conclusion of my talk, an old time Athenaeum member—a gentleman in a Brooks Brothers suit with white hair—stood up and said that my lecture was by far the finest he had ever heard at the Athenaeum.
When I lectured at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania on my book Philadelphia Mansions, the house was packed to the gills, yet I noticed a few guys in the front row who had obviously come to snicker and make faces. My sense was that they had read my pieces in conservative magazines.
All things considered, I would rather brave the unpredictability of a live audience than deal with Zoom’s virtual ghosts and goblins.
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Thom Nickelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00933997449868301693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424128481306152244.post-35950362789164844802021-07-27T11:21:00.004-04:002021-07-27T11:25:41.866-04:00World Premier: Who Killed Thomas Merton?<div style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; transition-property: none !important;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; transition-property: none !important;"><div class="ecm0bbzt hv4rvrfc ihqw7lf3 dati1w0a" data-ad-comet-preview="message" data-ad-preview="message" id="jsc_c_1y" style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; padding: 4px 16px 16px; transition-property: none !important;"><div class="j83agx80 cbu4d94t ew0dbk1b irj2b8pg" style="animation-name: none !important; display: flex; flex-direction: column; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: -5px; margin-top: -5px; transition-property: none !important;"><div class="qzhwtbm6 knvmm38d" style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-top: 5px; transition-property: none !important;"><span class="d2edcug0 hpfvmrgz qv66sw1b c1et5uql lr9zc1uh a8c37x1j keod5gw0 nxhoafnm aigsh9s9 d3f4x2em fe6kdd0r mau55g9w c8b282yb iv3no6db jq4qci2q a3bd9o3v knj5qynh oo9gr5id hzawbc8m" dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--primary-text); display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3333; max-width: 100%; min-width: 0px; text-align: left; transition-property: none !important; word-break: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; margin: 0px; transition-property: none !important; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; text-align: start; transition-property: none !important;">World Premiere of…</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; text-align: start; transition-property: none !important;"> Rendezvous in Bangkok…Who Killed Thomas Merton</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; text-align: start; transition-property: none !important;"> Sabina Clarke Thom Nickels </div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; text-align: start; transition-property: none !important;"> Commodore John Barry Club… ‘The Irish Center’</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; text-align: start; transition-property: none !important;"> 6815 Emlen Street, Phila, PA 19119</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; text-align: start; transition-property: none !important;"> (215) 843-8051 </div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; text-align: start; transition-property: none !important;"> Date: Sunday, September 26th, 2021</div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; text-align: start; transition-property: none !important;"> Time: 3 PM </div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; text-align: start; transition-property: none !important;"> Tickets: $20 (doors open at 2 PM) </div><div dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; text-align: start; transition-property: none !important;"> * Wine and cheese reception to follow</div></div></span></div></div></div></div><div class="l9j0dhe7" id="jsc_c_1z" style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; position: relative; transition-property: none !important;"><div class="l9j0dhe7" style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; position: relative; transition-property: none !important;"><div style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; transition-property: none !important;"><a class="oajrlxb2 gs1a9yip g5ia77u1 mtkw9kbi tlpljxtp qensuy8j ppp5ayq2 goun2846 ccm00jje s44p3ltw mk2mc5f4 rt8b4zig n8ej3o3l agehan2d sk4xxmp2 rq0escxv nhd2j8a9 a8c37x1j mg4g778l btwxx1t3 pfnyh3mw p7hjln8o kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x tgvbjcpo hpfvmrgz jb3vyjys rz4wbd8a qt6c0cv9 a8nywdso l9j0dhe7 i1ao9s8h esuyzwwr f1sip0of du4w35lb lzcic4wl abiwlrkh p8dawk7l tm8avpzi" href="https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10227260156108501&set=a.1479038654750&__cft__[0]=AZU5_Nru6CKpgrqC8Wu_7ZZ4y20Mq-bR8pMnrG0BPpOZQMZMcE6enzyrUyC1PmsCMnwL5uW-0xQRz5d-NSgO8tpnt_L1zho-XAfVYrjd7hKsJkA1DjfXg7XcWPT8AOD6-sk&__tn__=EH-R" role="link" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; 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width: calc((100vh + -325px) * 1.16505);"><div class="do00u71z ni8dbmo4 stjgntxs l9j0dhe7" style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; height: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 429.156px; position: relative; transition-property: none !important;"><div class="pmk7jnqg kr520xx4" style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; height: 429.156px; left: 0px; position: absolute; top: 0px; transition-property: none !important; width: 500px;"><img alt="May be a black-and-white image of 1 person" class="i09qtzwb n7fi1qx3 datstx6m pmk7jnqg j9ispegn kr520xx4 k4urcfbm bixrwtb6" height="515" src="https://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.6435-9/s600x600/221690083_10227260156188503_2372539047950969291_n.jpg?_nc_cat=109&ccb=1-3&_nc_sid=730e14&_nc_ohc=fYgD96AxZKYAX_OPS3M&tn=7kJXynpp7NcpWn-X&_nc_ht=scontent-lga3-1.xx&oh=0c8689b7f87de508c7964845b002f283&oe=61266F62" style="animation-name: none !important; border: 0px; bottom: 0px; height: 429.156px; left: 0px; object-fit: cover; position: absolute; right: 0px; top: 0px; transition-property: none !important; width: 500px;" width="600" /></div></div></div></div></a></div></div></div></div><div style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; transition-property: none !important;"><div class="stjgntxs ni8dbmo4 l82x9zwi uo3d90p7 h905i5nu monazrh9" data-visualcompletion="ignore-dynamic" style="animation-name: none !important; border-radius: 0px 0px 8px 8px; font-family: inherit; overflow: hidden; transition-property: none !important;"><div style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; transition-property: none !important;"><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; animation-name: none !important; background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 16.08px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; transition-property: none !important; white-space: normal; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px;"><div style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; transition-property: none !important;"><div class="l9j0dhe7" style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; position: relative; transition-property: none !important;"><div class="bp9cbjyn m9osqain j83agx80 jq4qci2q bkfpd7mw a3bd9o3v kvgmc6g5 wkznzc2l oygrvhab dhix69tm jktsbyx5 rz4wbd8a osnr6wyh a8nywdso s1tcr66n" style="align-items: center; animation-name: none !important; border-bottom: 1px solid var(--divider); color: var(--secondary-text); display: flex; font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; justify-content: flex-end; line-height: 1.3333; margin: 0px 16px; padding: 10px 0px; transition-property: none !important;"><div class="bp9cbjyn j83agx80 buofh1pr ni8dbmo4 stjgntxs" style="align-items: center; animation-name: none !important; display: flex; flex-grow: 1; font-family: inherit; overflow: hidden; transition-property: none !important;"><span class="du4w35lb" role="toolbar" style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; transition-property: none !important; z-index: 0;"><span class="bp9cbjyn j83agx80 b3onmgus" id="jsc_c_21" style="align-items: center; animation-name: none !important; display: flex; font-family: inherit; padding-left: 4px; transition-property: none !important;"><span class="np69z8it et4y5ytx j7g94pet b74d5cxt qw6c0r16 kb8x4rkr ed597pkb omcyoz59 goun2846 ccm00jje s44p3ltw mk2mc5f4 qxh1up0x qtyiw8t4 tpcyxxvw k0bpgpbk hm271qws rl04r1d5 l9j0dhe7 ov9facns kavbgo14" style="animation-name: none !important; border-radius: 11px; border: 2px solid var(--card-background); font-family: inherit; height: 18px; margin-left: -4px; position: relative; transition-property: none !important; width: 18px; z-index: 2;"><span class="t0qjyqq4 jos75b7i j6sty90h kv0toi1t q9uorilb hm271qws ov9facns" style="animation-name: none !important; border-radius: 9px; display: inline-block; font-family: inherit; height: 18px; transition-property: none !important; width: 18px;"><span class="tojvnm2t a6sixzi8 abs2jz4q a8s20v7p t1p8iaqh k5wvi7nf q3lfd5jv pk4s997a bipmatt0 cebpdrjk qowsmv63 owwhemhu dp1hu0rb dhp61c6y iyyx5f41" style="align-content: inherit; align-items: inherit; align-self: inherit; animation-name: none !important; display: inherit; flex-direction: inherit; flex: inherit; font-family: inherit; height: inherit; justify-content: inherit; max-height: inherit; max-width: inherit; min-height: inherit; min-width: inherit; transition-property: none !important; width: inherit;"><div class="oajrlxb2 gs1a9yip g5ia77u1 mtkw9kbi tlpljxtp qensuy8j ppp5ayq2 goun2846 ccm00jje s44p3ltw mk2mc5f4 rt8b4zig n8ej3o3l agehan2d sk4xxmp2 rq0escxv nhd2j8a9 pq6dq46d mg4g778l btwxx1t3 pfnyh3mw p7hjln8o kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x tgvbjcpo hpfvmrgz jb3vyjys rz4wbd8a qt6c0cv9 a8nywdso l9j0dhe7 i1ao9s8h esuyzwwr f1sip0of du4w35lb lzcic4wl abiwlrkh p8dawk7l" role="button" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-select: none; align-items: stretch; animation-name: none !important; background-color: transparent; border: 0px solid var(--always-dark-overlay); box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; display: inline-flex; flex-basis: auto; flex-direction: row; flex-shrink: 0; font-family: inherit; list-style: none; margin: 0px; min-height: 0px; min-width: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: inherit; text-decoration: none; touch-action: manipulation; transition-property: none !important; z-index: 0;" tabindex="0"><img class="j1lvzwm4" height="18" role="presentation" src="data:image/svg+xml,%3csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' xmlns:xlink='http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink' viewBox='0 0 16 16'%3e%3cdefs%3e%3clinearGradient id='a' x1='50%25' x2='50%25' y1='0%25' y2='100%25'%3e%3cstop offset='0%25' stop-color='%2318AFFF'/%3e%3cstop offset='100%25' stop-color='%230062DF'/%3e%3c/linearGradient%3e%3cfilter id='c' width='118.8%25' height='118.8%25' x='-9.4%25' y='-9.4%25' filterUnits='objectBoundingBox'%3e%3cfeGaussianBlur in='SourceAlpha' result='shadowBlurInner1' stdDeviation='1'/%3e%3cfeOffset dy='-1' in='shadowBlurInner1' result='shadowOffsetInner1'/%3e%3cfeComposite in='shadowOffsetInner1' in2='SourceAlpha' k2='-1' k3='1' operator='arithmetic' result='shadowInnerInner1'/%3e%3cfeColorMatrix in='shadowInnerInner1' values='0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.299356041 0 0 0 0 0.681187726 0 0 0 0.3495684 0'/%3e%3c/filter%3e%3cpath id='b' d='M8 0a8 8 0 00-8 8 8 8 0 1016 0 8 8 0 00-8-8z'/%3e%3c/defs%3e%3cg fill='none'%3e%3cuse fill='url(%23a)' xlink:href='%23b'/%3e%3cuse fill='black' filter='url(%23c)' xlink:href='%23b'/%3e%3cpath fill='white' d='M12.162 7.338c.176.123.338.245.338.674 0 .43-.229.604-.474.725a.73.73 0 01.089.546c-.077.344-.392.611-.672.69.121.194.159.385.015.62-.185.295-.346.407-1.058.407H7.5c-.988 0-1.5-.546-1.5-1V7.665c0-1.23 1.467-2.275 1.467-3.13L7.361 3.47c-.005-.065.008-.224.058-.27.08-.079.301-.2.635-.2.218 0 .363.041.534.123.581.277.732.978.732 1.542 0 .271-.414 1.083-.47 1.364 0 0 .867-.192 1.879-.199 1.061-.006 1.749.19 1.749.842 0 .261-.219.523-.316.666zM3.6 7h.8a.6.6 0 01.6.6v3.8a.6.6 0 01-.6.6h-.8a.6.6 0 01-.6-.6V7.6a.6.6 0 01.6-.6z'/%3e%3c/g%3e%3c/svg%3e" style="animation-name: none !important; border: 0px; transition-property: none !important; vertical-align: top;" width="18" /></div></span></span></span></span></span><div class="" style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; transition-property: none !important;"><span class="tojvnm2t a6sixzi8 abs2jz4q a8s20v7p t1p8iaqh k5wvi7nf q3lfd5jv pk4s997a bipmatt0 cebpdrjk qowsmv63 owwhemhu dp1hu0rb dhp61c6y iyyx5f41" style="align-content: inherit; align-items: inherit; align-self: inherit; animation-name: none !important; display: inherit; flex-direction: inherit; flex: inherit; font-family: inherit; height: inherit; justify-content: inherit; max-height: inherit; max-width: inherit; min-height: inherit; min-width: inherit; transition-property: none !important; width: inherit;"><div class="oajrlxb2 g5ia77u1 qu0x051f esr5mh6w e9989ue4 r7d6kgcz rq0escxv nhd2j8a9 a8c37x1j p7hjln8o kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x jb3vyjys rz4wbd8a qt6c0cv9 a8nywdso i1ao9s8h esuyzwwr f1sip0of lzcic4wl l9j0dhe7 abiwlrkh p8dawk7l gmql0nx0 ce9h75a5 ni8dbmo4 stjgntxs" role="button" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-select: none; animation-name: none !important; background-color: transparent; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; cursor: pointer; display: block; font-family: inherit; list-style: none; margin: 0px; max-height: 1.3333em; outline: none; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: inherit; text-decoration: none; touch-action: manipulation; transition-property: none !important;" tabindex="0"><span class="bzsjyuwj ni8dbmo4 stjgntxs ltmttdrg gjzvkazv" style="animation-name: none !important; float: left; font-family: inherit; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; transition-property: none !important; width: 100px;"><span style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; transition-property: none !important;"><span class="gpro0wi8 pcp91wgn" style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; padding-left: 6px; transition-property: none !important;">3</span></span></span><span class="gpro0wi8 cwj9ozl2 bzsjyuwj ja2t1vim" style="animation-name: none !important; background-color: var(--card-background); float: left; font-family: inherit; margin-left: -100px; transition-property: none !important;"><span style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; transition-property: none !important;"><span class="pcp91wgn" style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; padding-left: 6px; transition-property: none !important;">Marita Krivda, Michael Doane<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>and<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>1 other</span></span></span></div></span></div></div><div class="bp9cbjyn j83agx80 pfnyh3mw p1ueia1e" style="align-items: center; animation-name: none !important; display: flex; flex-shrink: 0; font-family: inherit; height: 22px; transition-property: none !important;"><div class="gtad4xkn" style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; margin-left: 7px; transition-property: none !important;"><div class="oajrlxb2 gs1a9yip g5ia77u1 mtkw9kbi tlpljxtp qensuy8j ppp5ayq2 goun2846 ccm00jje s44p3ltw mk2mc5f4 rt8b4zig n8ej3o3l agehan2d sk4xxmp2 rq0escxv nhd2j8a9 pq6dq46d mg4g778l btwxx1t3 pfnyh3mw p7hjln8o kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x tgvbjcpo hpfvmrgz jb3vyjys rz4wbd8a qt6c0cv9 a8nywdso l9j0dhe7 i1ao9s8h esuyzwwr f1sip0of du4w35lb lzcic4wl abiwlrkh gpro0wi8 dwo3fsh8 ow4ym5g4 auili1gw gmql0nx0" id="jsc_c_20" role="button" style="-webkit-appearance: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-select: none; align-items: stretch; animation-name: none !important; background-color: transparent; border: 0px solid var(--always-dark-overlay); box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; cursor: pointer; display: inline-flex; flex-basis: auto; flex-direction: row; flex-shrink: 0; font-family: inherit; list-style: none; margin: 0px; min-height: 0px; min-width: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: inherit; text-decoration: none; touch-action: manipulation; transition-property: none !important; z-index: 0;" tabindex="0"><span class="d2edcug0 hpfvmrgz qv66sw1b c1et5uql lr9zc1uh a8c37x1j keod5gw0 nxhoafnm aigsh9s9 d3f4x2em fe6kdd0r mau55g9w c8b282yb iv3no6db jq4qci2q a3bd9o3v knj5qynh m9osqain" dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--secondary-text); display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.3333; max-width: 100%; min-width: 0px; transition-property: none !important; word-break: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;">1 Comment</span></div></div></div></div></div><div class="tvfksri0 ozuftl9m" style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; margin-left: 12px; margin-right: 12px; transition-property: none !important;"><div class="rq0escxv l9j0dhe7 du4w35lb j83agx80 pfnyh3mw i1fnvgqd gs1a9yip owycx6da btwxx1t3 ph5uu5jm b3onmgus e5nlhep0 ecm0bbzt nkwizq5d roh60bw9 mysgfdmx hddg9phg" style="align-items: stretch; animation-name: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-flow: row nowrap; flex-shrink: 0; font-family: inherit; justify-content: space-between; margin: -6px -2px; padding: 4px; position: relative; transition-property: none !important; z-index: 0;"><div class="rq0escxv l9j0dhe7 du4w35lb j83agx80 cbu4d94t g5gj957u d2edcug0 hpfvmrgz rj1gh0hx buofh1pr n8tt0mok hyh9befq iuny7tx3 ipjc6fyt" style="animation-name: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex: 1 1 0px; font-family: inherit; max-width: 100%; min-width: 0px; padding: 6px 2px; position: relative; transition-property: none !important; z-index: 0;"><div class="oajrlxb2 gs1a9yip g5ia77u1 mtkw9kbi tlpljxtp qensuy8j ppp5ayq2 goun2846 ccm00jje s44p3ltw mk2mc5f4 rt8b4zig n8ej3o3l agehan2d sk4xxmp2 rq0escxv nhd2j8a9 pq6dq46d mg4g778l btwxx1t3 pfnyh3mw p7hjln8o kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x tgvbjcpo hpfvmrgz jb3vyjys rz4wbd8a qt6c0cv9 a8nywdso l9j0dhe7 i1ao9s8h esuyzwwr f1sip0of du4w35lb lzcic4wl abiwlrkh p8dawk7l" role="button" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-select: none; align-items: stretch; animation-name: none !important; background-color: transparent; border: 0px solid var(--always-dark-overlay); box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; display: inline-flex; flex-basis: auto; flex-direction: row; flex-shrink: 0; font-family: inherit; list-style: none; margin: 0px; min-height: 0px; min-width: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: inherit; text-decoration: none; touch-action: manipulation; transition-property: none !important; z-index: 0;" tabindex="0"><div class="rq0escxv l9j0dhe7 du4w35lb j83agx80 g5gj957u rj1gh0hx buofh1pr hpfvmrgz taijpn5t bp9cbjyn owycx6da btwxx1t3 d1544ag0 tw6a2znq jb3vyjys dlv3wnog rl04r1d5 mysgfdmx hddg9phg qu8okrzs g0qnabr5" style="align-items: center; animation-name: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-flow: row nowrap; flex: 1 1 0px; font-family: inherit; height: 44px; justify-content: center; margin: -6px -4px; min-width: 0px; padding-left: 12px; padding-right: 12px; padding-top: 0px; position: relative; transition-property: none !important; white-space: nowrap; z-index: 0;"><div class="rq0escxv l9j0dhe7 du4w35lb j83agx80 cbu4d94t pfnyh3mw d2edcug0 hpfvmrgz ph5uu5jm b3onmgus iuny7tx3 ipjc6fyt" style="animation-name: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-shrink: 0; font-family: inherit; max-width: 100%; min-width: 0px; padding: 6px 4px; position: relative; transition-property: none !important; z-index: 0;"><span class=" pq6dq46d" style="animation-name: none !important; display: inline-flex; font-family: inherit; transition-property: none !important;"></span></div><div class="rq0escxv l9j0dhe7 du4w35lb j83agx80 cbu4d94t pfnyh3mw d2edcug0 hpfvmrgz ph5uu5jm b3onmgus iuny7tx3 ipjc6fyt" style="animation-name: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-shrink: 0; font-family: inherit; max-width: 100%; min-width: 0px; padding: 6px 4px; position: relative; transition-property: none !important; z-index: 0;"><span class="d2edcug0 hpfvmrgz qv66sw1b c1et5uql lr9zc1uh a8c37x1j keod5gw0 nxhoafnm aigsh9s9 d3f4x2em fe6kdd0r mau55g9w c8b282yb iv3no6db jq4qci2q a3bd9o3v lrazzd5p m9osqain" dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--secondary-text); display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; font-weight: 600; line-height: 1.3333; max-width: 100%; min-width: 0px; transition-property: none !important; word-break: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="animation-name: none !important; font-family: inherit; transition-property: none !important;">Like</span></span></div></div></div></div><div class="rq0escxv l9j0dhe7 du4w35lb j83agx80 cbu4d94t g5gj957u d2edcug0 hpfvmrgz rj1gh0hx buofh1pr n8tt0mok hyh9befq iuny7tx3 ipjc6fyt" style="animation-name: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex: 1 1 0px; font-family: inherit; max-width: 100%; min-width: 0px; padding: 6px 2px; position: relative; transition-property: none !important; z-index: 0;"><div class="oajrlxb2 gs1a9yip g5ia77u1 mtkw9kbi tlpljxtp qensuy8j ppp5ayq2 goun2846 ccm00jje s44p3ltw mk2mc5f4 rt8b4zig n8ej3o3l agehan2d sk4xxmp2 rq0escxv nhd2j8a9 pq6dq46d mg4g778l btwxx1t3 pfnyh3mw p7hjln8o kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x tgvbjcpo hpfvmrgz jb3vyjys rz4wbd8a qt6c0cv9 a8nywdso l9j0dhe7 i1ao9s8h esuyzwwr f1sip0of du4w35lb lzcic4wl abiwlrkh p8dawk7l" role="button" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-select: none; align-items: stretch; animation-name: none !important; background-color: transparent; border: 0px solid var(--always-dark-overlay); box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; display: inline-flex; flex-basis: auto; flex-direction: row; flex-shrink: 0; font-family: inherit; list-style: none; margin: 0px; min-height: 0px; min-width: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: inherit; text-decoration: none; touch-action: manipulation; transition-property: none !important; z-index: 0;" tabindex="0"><div class="rq0escxv l9j0dhe7 du4w35lb j83agx80 g5gj957u rj1gh0hx buofh1pr hpfvmrgz taijpn5t bp9cbjyn owycx6da btwxx1t3 d1544ag0 tw6a2znq jb3vyjys dlv3wnog rl04r1d5 mysgfdmx hddg9phg qu8okrzs g0qnabr5" style="align-items: center; animation-name: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-flow: row nowrap; flex: 1 1 0px; font-family: inherit; height: 44px; justify-content: center; margin: -6px -4px; min-width: 0px; padding-left: 12px; padding-right: 12px; padding-top: 0px; position: relative; transition-property: none !important; white-space: nowrap; z-index: 0;"><div class="rq0escxv l9j0dhe7 du4w35lb j83agx80 cbu4d94t pfnyh3mw d2edcug0 hpfvmrgz ph5uu5jm b3onmgus iuny7tx3 ipjc6fyt" style="animation-name: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-shrink: 0; font-family: inherit; max-width: 100%; min-width: 0px; padding: 6px 4px; position: relative; transition-property: none !important; z-index: 0;"><span class="d2edcug0 hpfvmrgz qv66sw1b c1et5uql lr9zc1uh a8c37x1j keod5gw0 nxhoafnm aigsh9s9 d3f4x2em fe6kdd0r mau55g9w c8b282yb iv3no6db jq4qci2q a3bd9o3v lrazzd5p m9osqain" dir="auto" style="animation-name: none !important; color: var(--secondary-text); display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.9375rem; font-weight: 600; line-height: 1.3333; max-width: 100%; min-width: 0px; transition-property: none !important; word-break: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;">Comment</span></div></div></div></div><div class="rq0escxv l9j0dhe7 du4w35lb j83agx80 cbu4d94t g5gj957u d2edcug0 hpfvmrgz rj1gh0hx buofh1pr n8tt0mok hyh9befq iuny7tx3 ipjc6fyt" style="animation-name: none !important; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex: 1 1 0px; font-family: inherit; max-width: 100%; min-width: 0px; padding: 6px 2px; position: relative; transition-property: none !important; z-index: 0;"><div class="oajrlxb2 gs1a9yip g5ia77u1 mtkw9kbi tlpljxtp qensuy8j ppp5ayq2 goun2846 ccm00jje s44p3ltw mk2mc5f4 rt8b4zig n8ej3o3l agehan2d sk4xxmp2 rq0escxv nhd2j8a9 pq6dq46d mg4g778l btwxx1t3 pfnyh3mw p7hjln8o kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x tgvbjcpo hpfvmrgz jb3vyjys rz4wbd8a qt6c0cv9 a8nywdso l9j0dhe7 i1ao9s8h esuyzwwr f1sip0of du4w35lb lzcic4wl abiwlrkh p8dawk7l" role="button" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; -webkit-user-select: none; align-items: stretch; animation-name: none !important; background-color: transparent; border: 0px solid var(--always-dark-overlay); box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; display: inline-flex; flex-basis: auto; flex-direction: row; flex-shrink: 0; font-family: inherit; list-style: none; margin: 0px; min-height: 0px; 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line-height: 16.08px; margin-bottom: 4px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; transition-property: none !important; white-space: normal; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px;"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /></div></div></div></div><p> </p>Thom Nickelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00933997449868301693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424128481306152244.post-8948844340188422952021-07-27T11:11:00.003-04:002021-07-27T11:11:43.142-04:00Go home, New Yorkers!<div class="asset-masthead " style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; margin: 20px 0px 40px; orphans: auto; position: relative; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px;"><header class="asset-header" style="box-sizing: border-box; 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margin: 0px 0px 24px;">The other night as I was making my way to a friend’s house on Belgrade Street, I passed one of my favorite little houses. This tiny house used to sit by next to a large overgrown woody area. I’ve always called this house, “The little House That Could.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><div class="tncms-region-ads" id="tncms-region-ads-fixed-big-ad-top-asset" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="tnt-ads tnt-image-ad-wrapper" id="blox-ad-position-fixed-big-ad-top-asset1" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; margin: 0px auto 40px; max-width: 300px; min-height: 1px;"><a href="https://phillypressreview.com/tncms/tracking/bannerad/clicks/?rd=www.phillypressreview.com&i=ros/fixed-big-ad-top-asset1/25504640-8460-11eb-a60f-8ba6fa530abf&r=https://www.friendscentral.org/admission/admission-events" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #231f20; display: block; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><img alt="advertisement" src="https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/phillypressreview.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/bannerad/2/55/25504640-8460-11eb-a60f-8ba6fa530abf/60940f1a196e2.image.jpg" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; vertical-align: middle; width: 300px;" title="300x280 image ad" /></a></div></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">It’s not a beautiful house by any means, but the way it is situated next to a small patch of urban wildlife near the Belgrade Street overpass has always given it a unique “house in the mountains” look. For years I’d see the owners of this house working outside on their trucks and cars. At Christmastime there was always a simple string of lights placed on the home’s humble looking door. The truly odd thing about the property was that the overgrown yard wasn’t fenced in. For years anyone could walk in and out of the wooded area which had the look and feel of a little house in the Pocono Mountains. </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Then developers invaded the area, bought up the small woodsy area and built two unsightly out of scale 4 story cookie cutter houses with large picture windows and exterior steel prefabricated stairs with inboard rails. The new houses dwarfed the little old house but one could easily see that the old house was built of solid materials while the new houses looked to be built with cheap materials from Home Depot, especially the cheesy clapboard interior doors that one could easily punch a hole in with their fist. Despite the exorbitant price, the new houses were built with little or no insulation and without a garage. </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Classic Riverward houses are a dying breed. For the most part they are small, imperfect structures (no insulation, antiquated plumbing) that have no place in today’s<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">all style and no substance</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>world. Despite their out- datedness, they have a charm that cannot be replaced by the boxy, industrial warehouse new house design that has now become the signature look all over the city.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">The little Pocono house used to have a twin house on the street where I live. I often referred to the twin house on my street as the Sea Shore House, which was set back from the sidewalk and had the look of a shore house because of its partial wooden construction and second story deck that faced the street. In some ways the house evoked the look of an odd-looking tugboat. Years before I moved to the Riverwards, the house had a pond with goldfish in the front yard. The original owner was said to have built a huge wooden boat that he kept in the backyard. Strangely enough, the boat resembled a small Biblical ark. Things don’t get much stranger than this. </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">I never met the original owner of the Seashore House because by the time of my arrival the house had become a rental property. The fate of most rental properties is well known. Renters don’t set down roots in neighborhoods, and they come and go like door-to-door salesman in the 1960s. </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Unfortunately, all the Seashore House renters weren’t exactly nice people either. One couple that rented the place had a lot of deck parties. They’d sit on the deck that faced the street and make comments about the people passing on the sidewalk below. The neighbors tolerated these upstarts because they knew that, as renters, that their days on the street were numbered.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">One day the seashore house was demolished and a few months after that an army of trucks and a construction crew arrived to build an out of scale 5 story monolith Northern Liberties style house that towered over all the other houses on my street. The huge new house was like King Kong pounding his chest in victory while laughing at all the other residents of the neighborhood in their tiny little Lionel Train homes. The new house at least had real exterior steps rather than those abominable steel prefabricated stairs, but that was the only plus.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">The new monolith house imposed itself on the street like an occupying army. For months after it was built my life felt dwarfed. My little house was just under its huge shadow, a small garage or water closet by comparison. The new house also blocked the view outside my bedroom window. I used to be able to see treetops but now I saw big picture windows and grey slate. Sometimes I’d sit on my stoop and stare at the monolith house’s observatory deck that was so high in the sky it resembled an astronomy lab. Our street was now a little medieval village surrounded by a large castle. </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">How did this happen to our fine little street?</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Friends would visit and say, “Oh wow, your street has had an upgrade. How tall is that house? A bit out of scale, wouldn’t you say?”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">The new house became a magnet for other King Kong houses. Very soon I noticed a lot of cars with out of state license plates, most of them from New York.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">New York—it figures.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">New York developers had discovered our hidden away neighborhood and now real estate agents, many of them young women dressed to the nines in tight dresses showing plenty of cleavage, swaggered from expensive cars in a rush to show these new cheap homes to potential buyers.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> <em style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </em></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Armies of slick looking men in suits began crawling all over the neighborhood. Most of them were eyeing the two vacant properties further up the street. These men would arrive early in the morning and walk up and down the street with a ‘take no prisoners’ look. They accompanied surveyors who scoped and measured the land. Eventually plans were drawn up for two monolith 300k+ houses towering 6 or 7 stories on the same side of the street as my house.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><div class="tncms-region-ads" id="tncms-region-ads-fixed-big-ad-middle-asset" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="tnt-ads tnt-image-ad-wrapper" id="blox-ad-position-fixed-big-ad-middle-asset1" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; margin: 0px auto 40px; max-width: 300px; min-height: 1px;"><a href="https://phillypressreview.com/tncms/tracking/bannerad/clicks/?rd=www.phillypressreview.com&i=ros/fixed-big-ad-middle-asset1/132248ac-7915-11eb-9934-1786cbf5c68e&r=https://parentinfantcenter.org/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #231f20; display: block; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><img alt="advertisement" src="https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/phillypressreview.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/bannerad/1/32/132248ac-7915-11eb-9934-1786cbf5c68e/603a6ce2b0c48.image.jpg" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; vertical-align: middle; width: 300px;" title="300x206 image ad" /></a></div></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Things were on a roll. For months the sound of construction filled the air. The blunt, relentless crash of industrial hammers on steel made the ground and the walls of my house shake. Outside on the street, Brooklyn accents mingled with the clang of equipment and machinery. Suddenly it was a whole new world. </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Some neighbors could be heard muttering under their breath: “Go back to New York! We don’t want you here!”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">When the monolith houses were finally built, more female real estate agents returned in stilettos and killer skirts, their long blond hair complimenting their new silver cars. For months all I heard was the sound of high heels on asphalt as the agents showed the new homes to prospective suckers. The suckers were New Yorkers escaping a doomed city, most in their twenties and thirties, or Californians (escaping a doomed state), arriving in groups of five or six. Many also had dogs, which meant a lot of dog poop. </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Construction started on a house on the far end of my street. This house had been boarded up for decades. The rehabbed design for this structure was the same utilitarian warehouse design that all new houses currently have. This means lots of wires, cable gizmos and PECO meters on the front of the house, a terrible look that calls to mind housing projects in China. The building materials used were generally cheap (Home Depot again) and of course those steel prefabricated exterior stairs. </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">My little street was changing faster than climate change.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">In conjunction with all this, the oldest indigenous family on the block moved off the street, meaning that all the original people that were on the block 15 years ago when I moved here from Center City were now lost to the ages. Where did the time go? </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">It’s easy to wax nostalgic, especially since I numbered myself as one of the first “gentrifyers” from Center City. I thought about the old neighborhood that I knew then, especially the look of the broken walls of the old paint factory at Thompson and Huntingdon.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">I recalled the Port Richmond Shopping Center when it was a real shopping center with a first-class Chinese restaurant, a user friendly Dunkin Donuts, a restaurant other than Applebee’s, a Hallmark Card variety store that sold gourmet chocolate, and one of the best thrift stores in the city.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Today the shopping center has more<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">for rent</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>spaces than active businesses. One can hardly even call it a shopping center. Who needs so many dollar stores? Or nail salons? I blame the New York outfit that owns the shopping center and that charges so much rent. They would rather have empty stores sit for years rather than lower the rent.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Everywhere I walk in my neighborhood now I see 400K townhouses that look like more and more like housing projects in China. </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">All of these homes when sold will bring in more people, more congestion, more traffic, and more parking problems. Henry Miller in the 1950s called America<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">the air-conditioned nightmare</em>, but what will we call this area of the Riverwards when it becomes so congested that people will be living on top of one another? </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">I’m wondering what these new neighbors will be like. Will they be disaffected New Yorkers? Or will they be students who are here today and gone tomorrow?</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Everyone knows that students are not authentic Philadelphians but transients who view the city as an amusement park for their weekend pleasure. </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">This brings me back to my first days in the neighborhood when I’d ponder the obscurity of the area. This was when you couldn’t find a taxi to save your life, when nobody lived here except old families with ancient roots. In those days I prayed for rapid fire gentrification and sadly, I got my wish.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">And now I hate it.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Now I’m stuck in an area that will soon be as crowded as the city of Shenzhen, China, the fifth most crowded city in the world, trailing India's Mumbai and Calcutta.</p></div><div class="share-container content-below" data-subscription-required-remove="" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px;"><ul class="social-share-links hidden-print list-inline icon" style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding-left: 0px; text-align: initial;"><li class="social-share-link fb" style="border: 0px; 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Wiggins, Philadelphia Memorial Park<div class="asset-masthead " style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; margin: 20px 0px 40px; orphans: auto; position: relative; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px;"><header class="asset-header" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block;"><h1 class="headline" itemprop="headline" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: 42px; font-weight: 400; line-height: 1.1; margin: 0px 100px 0px 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-family: 'Roboto Condensed', sans-serif; font-weight: 600;">City Safari: What was it about Mary Wiggins?</span></h1><div class="meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-right: 100px; 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This cemetery (in Malvern, Pennsylvania) does contain a small patch of graves with tombstones. This is the old Eastern European section where you can see photos of the deceased next to their names. There are images of women in kerchiefs; young babies with bulbous cheeks; boys in long bow ties with dark hollow eyes, all of them buried long before I was born and now dust or bones, these images live forever.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">I visit this cemetery whenever I can, but as a boy, I went all the time, in the summer, fall and even the winter when the ground was coated with a layer of snow.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">I’d visit my favorite grave, Mary Wiggins’, positioned at the base of a fine-looking tree and on the top of a hill. Mary Wiggins, the ninety-year old woman who taught us Nickels children how to make snow ice cream. Mary Wiggins, who washed mother’s dishes and ironed our clothes for a small salary while looking after me when I was sick. Mary Wiggins became part of our family. Though “only” a neighbor, in some ways she was better than a grandmother. To this day, I ask myself: What was it about Mary Wiggins?</p><div class="tncms-region-ads" id="tncms-region-ads-fixed-big-ad-top-asset" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="tnt-ads tnt-image-ad-wrapper" id="blox-ad-position-fixed-big-ad-top-asset1" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; margin: 0px auto 40px; max-width: 300px; min-height: 1px;"><a href="https://phillypressreview.com/tncms/tracking/bannerad/clicks/?rd=www.phillypressreview.com&i=ros/fixed-big-ad-top-asset1/132248ac-7915-11eb-9934-1786cbf5c68e&r=https://parentinfantcenter.org/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #231f20; display: block; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><img alt="advertisement" src="https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/phillypressreview.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/bannerad/1/32/132248ac-7915-11eb-9934-1786cbf5c68e/603a6ce2b0c48.image.jpg" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; vertical-align: middle; width: 300px;" title="300x206 image ad" /></a></div></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">When mother told us Mary was coming to the house, we knew it was going to be a good day.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">One day I showed Mary Wiggins a letter I received in the mail. The letter was written on thick incense-smelling parchment. The sender was none other than Pope Pius XII, writing in response to my letter to him: a schoolboy writing to the pope because he had a question. Not long after this, Mary Wiggins became Catholic and then very soon after that, she died.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">I couldn’t help but think that she became a Catholic because of the letter from the pope.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Mary died in winter when snow was on the ground, when the cemetery without tombstones was coated in white.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Years later I brought a small votive candle to Mary’s grave. While placing the candle in the earth I spotted a hawk making circles in the sky as fall breezes bent the tree tops. </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">An old railroad track borders the cemetery. In the old days freight trains with brown boxcars and little windowed cabooses traveled on this track. Next to this was<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Dead Track</em>.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Dead Track</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>led into a forest before going over a bridge and then alongside a vast quarry where one time I found what everyone said was a dinosaur fossil.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Dead Track</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>and the surrounding fields and forests smelled of corn, wet hay, cow pods and smoky embers from faraway fireplaces. </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">When I’d visit Mary’s grave, I’d sometimes think: Is she skull and bones? Can she see me now in spirit form?</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">When I would visit her grave as a boy, I would often say a prayer asking Mary Wiggins to appear to me if she could. I would ask God to give her permission to appear.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Please, make an exception to the rule…. Just this once let me see someone come back from the dead. Give me a sign.</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Our family is all about signs. When did we not sit around after Christmas dinner and make pacts with one another? “When I am dead I will try to give you a sign,” a tap on the knee, a knocked over vase, a window opening by itself, levitating spoons. Everyone promises to give signs on the other side and they swear that the signs will be clear and not confusing. </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Before my mother died, she said to tap our knee three times if we wanted her to come to us.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">But signs from the dead must be clear and not ambiguous, like the time my great Uncle John, dead about a year, appeared on a chair dressed in white to my great grandmother. “There he was, sitting in that chair looking straight at me, dressed all in white! He was there!” my great grandmother insisted.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">I wondered if Mary Wiggins would come through to me. Hadn’t she nursed me through the worst bout of double pneumonia as a ten year old, refilling the Vicks Vapo Rub steam machine, spooning out cough medicines, soups, rubbing my chest with Vicks, and telling me stories?</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Appear Mary Wiggins, appear!</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><div class="tncms-region-ads" id="tncms-region-ads-fixed-big-ad-middle-asset" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="tnt-ads tnt-image-ad-wrapper" id="blox-ad-position-fixed-big-ad-middle-asset1" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; margin: 0px auto 40px; max-width: 300px; min-height: 1px;"><a href="https://phillypressreview.com/tncms/tracking/bannerad/clicks/?rd=www.phillypressreview.com&i=ros/fixed-big-ad-middle-asset1/25504640-8460-11eb-a60f-8ba6fa530abf&r=https://www.friendscentral.org/admission/admission-events" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #231f20; display: block; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><img alt="advertisement" src="https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/phillypressreview.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/bannerad/2/55/25504640-8460-11eb-a60f-8ba6fa530abf/60940f1a196e2.image.jpg" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; vertical-align: middle; width: 300px;" title="300x280 image ad" /></a></div></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">But nothing happened, so the only thing to do was to leave the tree and walk around the cemetery, this city of the dead, and wait to see if something happened in its own time. </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Then, one day when leaving Mary’s grave, I felt a tingling sensation rise up from my feet to the upper portion of my body so that the lower part of me felt like it was no longer there. I had never experienced anything like this before. </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Something did happen, but what? I certainly never saw Mary Wiggins. All I saw were a nearby farmer’s hay stacks in the setting sun.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">On my way home, I moved around the perimeter of the cemetery near the far end of the railroad tracks where there were a few random graves. Unkempt, isolated, forgotten graves but why were they so close to the boxcars?</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">I felt a compulsion to follow<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Dead Track</em>, the track that leads to the quarry. </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Dead Track</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>meanders through trees and fields before passing a rustic terrain that looks like the Old West. My father once told me that this is where Hollywood once came to film spaghetti westerns.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">An invisible hand seemed to be pushing me along<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Dead Track</em>; I walked quickly, as if on a mission.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">I followed the track under the canopy of trees, counting railroad beams, walking tightrope fashion on top of one rail, sometimes losing my balance but then repositioning myself, skipping from one beam to the next. Then I resumed regular walking wondering why I seemed to be in a hurry.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">When Mary Wiggins visited me in Chester County, hospital she had to talk to me through a tiny slit in the isolation ward window. I was in my hospital Johnny reading<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Black Beauty</em>and<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Hardy Boys</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>but also listening to radio soap operas. The nurses hated it when I listened to soap operas. “Why are you listening to that?” they said, giving me crooked, suspicious glances.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Mary Wiggins and my mother would pass boxes of chocolates to me through the slit in the hospital room window.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">You’re coming home soon, son; Sister Constance from Saint Patrick’s school delivered 100 get well letters from your classmates. Dad sends his love.</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>But the worried look on their faces worried me. There had been talk of putting me into an iron lung but then the doctors settled on a non surgical procedure. I wasn’t sure how an iron lung worked. I was told that they slid you into this big oil burner container but only up to your neck and that you had to lie like that until they took you out. The iron lung did your breathing for you. Some people never got out of the iron lung but were swallowed up inside.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">I was afraid of being swallowed up.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Walking along<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Dead Track</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I came to the creek with its crayfish and minnows after passing the spaghetti western fields where warring cowboys and Apaches once pretended to fight. If I were able to fly like a bird I would have flown up over the trees until I came to the cliffs of the quarry.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Ahead of me in the clearing, standing before the grey quarry cliffs I was able to make out what looked like the shadow of an old lady. It was really a shadow cast by the sun among the rocks but in the shadow world it resembled an old lady. 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City Safari: Architectural wreck-o-vation hits many Catholic churches
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<time class="tnt-date asset-date text-muted" datetime="2021-06-12T08:28:00-04:00">Jun 12, 2021</time></li><li class="hidden-print"><a class="cm" href="https://www.phillypressreview.com/opinion/columnists/city-safari-architectural-wreck-o-vation-hits-many-catholic-churches/article_bffed6c4-cb79-11eb-bafc-e37162eef7b6.html#comments" title="0 comments"><svg class="tnt-svg tnt-comments tnt-w-18" data-fa-i2svg="" data-icon="comments" data-prefix="fas" viewbox="0 0 576 512" xmlns="https://www.w3.org/2000/svg"></svg></a><span></span><a class="tnt-share-link fb" data-new-window-height="300" data-new-window-width="500" data-tncms-track-event="{"app":"editorial","metric":"social_share","uuid":"bffed6c4-cb79-11eb-bafc-e37162eef7b6"}" data-toggle="new-window" data-track="{"network":"Facebook","socialAction":"post","url":"/opinion/columnists/city-safari-architectural-wreck-o-vation-hits-many-catholic-churches/article_bffed6c4-cb79-11eb-bafc-e37162eef7b6.html"}" href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.phillypressreview.com%2Fopinion%2Fcolumnists%2Fcity-safari-architectural-wreck-o-vation-hits-many-catholic-churches%2Farticle_bffed6c4-cb79-11eb-bafc-e37162eef7b6.html%3Futm_medium%3Dsocial%26utm_source%3Dfacebook%26utm_campaign%3Duser-share" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank" title="Share on Facebook"><span class="tnt-stack" data-original-title="Share" data-placement="left" data-toggle="tooltip" title=""> </span></a><a class="tnt-share-link tw" data-new-window-height="300" data-new-window-width="500" data-tncms-track-event="{"app":"editorial","metric":"social_share","uuid":"bffed6c4-cb79-11eb-bafc-e37162eef7b6"}" data-toggle="new-window" data-track="{"network":"Twitter","socialAction":"tweet","url":"/opinion/columnists/city-safari-architectural-wreck-o-vation-hits-many-catholic-churches/article_bffed6c4-cb79-11eb-bafc-e37162eef7b6.html"}" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?&text=City%20Safari%3A%20Architectural%20wreck-o-vation%20hits%20many%20Catholic%20churches&via=UCReview1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.phillypressreview.com%2Fopinion%2Fcolumnists%2Fcity-safari-architectural-wreck-o-vation-hits-many-catholic-churches%2Farticle_bffed6c4-cb79-11eb-bafc-e37162eef7b6.html%3Futm_medium%3Dsocial%26utm_source%3Dtwitter%26utm_campaign%3Duser-share" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank" title="Tweet"><span class="tnt-stack" data-original-title="Tweet" data-placement="left" data-toggle="tooltip" title=""> </span></a><a class="tnt-share-link em email-share-link" data-tncms-track-event="{"app":"editorial","metric":"email","uuid":"bffed6c4-cb79-11eb-bafc-e37162eef7b6"}" data-track="{"category":"tnt-email","action":"share","label":"editorial-article","value":""}" href="mailto:?subject=%5BUniversity%20City%20Review%2C%20Inc.%5D%20City%20Safari%3A%20Architectural%20wreck-o-vation%20hits%20many%20Catholic%20churches&body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.phillypressreview.com%2Fopinion%2Fcolumnists%2Fcity-safari-architectural-wreck-o-vation-hits-many-catholic-churches%2Farticle_bffed6c4-cb79-11eb-bafc-e37162eef7b6.html%3Futm_medium%3Dsocial%26utm_source%3Demail%26utm_campaign%3Duser-share" rel="nofollow" title="Email"><span class="tnt-stack" data-original-title="Email" data-placement="left" data-toggle="tooltip" title=""> </span>
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<a class="tnt-user-profile-link tnt-user-name" href="https://www.phillypressreview.com/users/profile/Thom%20Nickels" rel="author">Thom Nickels</a>
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<p>Here it is. A "renovated" Catholic cathedral in Austria.</p>
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<p>When my architect father designed
Saints Philip and James Catholic church in Exton, Pennsylvania, it was
understood that he would adhere to the three laws of church
architecture—verticality, permanence and iconography. This was before
the Second Vatican Council, when Catholic churches had not yet
discovered churches-in-the-round, bubbling hot tub Baptismals, or
suspended-from-the-ceiling UFO-style crucifixes. The church that my
father designed could easily be identified as a Catholic church.</p><p>The
Second Vatican Council of 1962 produced a storm that not only affected
how Catholics worship, but the buildings they worship in. That windstorm
produced a fair amount of architectural self-destruction. Catholic
churches were suddenly getting rid of their high altars and replacing
them with circular altar tables. Majestic crucifixes were replaced by
plus signs; statues and icons by burlap banners with colorful (but
primitive) drawings that looked as though they had been constructed by
children.</p><p>Michael Rose, author of <i>Ugly as Sin: Why They Changed Our Churches from Sacred Places to Meeting Spaces—and How We Can Change Them Back Again</i>,”
writes that the catalyst for the change was a duplicitous 1978 draft
statement by the U.S. Bishops’ Committee on Liturgy, entitled ‘<i>Environment and Art in Catholic Worship’</i></p>
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<p>Rose
asserts that this document was “cunningly published in the name of the
National Conference of Catholic Bishops, implying approval from Rome.
But the Vatican II document, <i>Sacrosanctum Concilum,</i> which was
cited in the draft statement as the reason for the ‘wreck-o-ovation,’
did not call for the wholesale slaughter of traditional Catholic Church
architecture.</p><p>What Vatican II actually said was: “The practice of
placing sacred images in churches so that they can be venerated by the
faithful is to be maintained.” </p><p>The problem was that many
rebel US Catholic bishops apparently wanted to reshape Catholic churches
into more people-oriented worship spaces.</p><p>In 1952, a booklet
entitled ‘Speaking of Liturgical Architecture’ was published by the
Liturgy Program in 1952 at the University of Notre Dame. Its author, a
Father H.A. Reinhold, was a respected liturgist of his day. The booklet
was a compilation of Reinhold’s lectures in 1947 delivered at the
University of Notre Dame.’</p><p> </p><p>Reinhold campaigned
for a fan-shaped congregation or a church in the round. Reinhold didn’t
get very far at the time, but his ideas lay dormant until the so called
“spirit of Vatican II” was heard everywhere in the Catholic world.
“Spirit of Vatican II’ was used to justify everything in the modern
Church from a more charitable attitude towards non-Catholics to the use
of Raisin Oatmeal cookies at Communion time. The phrase also encouraged
bishops and liturgists to start at ground zero-- architecturally
speaking-- forgoing organic change for the rough and tumble world of
“let’s just bomb all of Tradition and start over again from scratch.”</p><p>This
meant plain wooden altar tables rather than marble high altars with
images of saints and angels; carpeted rooms; plain glass stained
windows, potted plants in place of traditional Catholic artwork; small
and nondescript Stations of the Cross; churches in the round resembling
MTV soundstages; the elimination of altar rails and sanctuary lamps.
Crucifixes were replaced by geometric plus signs; the traditional
baptismal transformed into a hot tub (no splashy weekend nudity, thank
you). Older churches, including many cathedrals, were stripped bare as
high altars were removed and dismantled, and historic frescoes and icons
whitewashed.</p><p>Hundreds, maybe thousands of churches worldwide were destroyed by the iconoclasts.</p><p> </p><p>In Philadelphia, a number of churches fell victim to the new design.</p><p>Philadelphia’s
Holy Name parish in the Fishtown neighborhood, founded in 1905, had an
architectural wreck-o-vation in the free-wheeling 70s. The project was
the brainchild of a Dominican pastor. This was the era of Jazz Masses at
the Norbertine Daylesford Abbey in Paoli and guitar Masses in nearly
every Catholic parish in the United States.</p><p> </p><p>The
pastor, who fancied himself as a kind of Le Corbusier, cut off the high
altar and installed a Home Depot style butcher block in the center of
the church. Then he hung a 747-sized crucifix from the ceiling. He and
his Dominican cohorts then ripped out the marble altar rail and covered
the sanctuary in Holiday Inn-style carpet that tends to buckle (and get
moldy) over a period of time. When the new pastor arrived in 1998, he
looked at the church and commented, “This is a mess!”</p><p>The radical Dominicans, unlike the iconoclasts in the <sup> </sup>6<sup>th</sup>
and 7th centuries, managed to show some restraint. They left the side
altars intact and also spared the statues and even allowed a bejeweled
Infant of Prague image to remain in its quiet side altar niche.</p><p>Holy
Name’s new pastor got rid of the butcher block and replaced it with a
real high altar from a church that had closed in the city in 1999. He
also painted the church and added ceramic tile to the sanctuary. What he
could not replace was the altar rail. </p><p>The Second Vatican
Council did not issue any edicts calling for the removal of church altar
rails. What happened is that in many American churches this was done by
design consensus when communion-in-hand became a popular form of
receiving the sacrament. The altar rail, traditionally, is the western
version of the Eastern iconostasis (a screen of icons that frames the
altar in Eastern Catholic and Orthodox Churches). In many modern
Catholic churches today there’s no delineation of the sanctuary; an
altar rail used to signify that one was entering a place of special
reverence. Now the spaces flow invisibly into each other. </p><p> </p><div class="inline-asset inline-image layout-horizontal subscriber-hide tnt-inline-asset tnt-inline-relcontent tnt-inline-image tnt-inline-relation-child tnt-inline-presentation-default tnt-inline-alignment-default tnt-inline-width-default"><figure class="photo layout-horizontal hover-expand letterbox-style-default"><span class="expand hidden-print" data-instance="#gallery-items-bffed6c4-cb79-11eb-bafc-e37162eef7b6-photo-modal" data-photo-target=".photo-42c93496-cb7a-11eb-9711-dbe38c3a7609" data-target="#photo-carousel-bffed6c4-cb79-11eb-bafc-e37162eef7b6" data-toggle="modal">
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<p>In
Philadelphia’s Tacony section, the once beautiful church of Saint Leo
the Great, recently destroyed by a fire on May 9, 2021, underwent a
wreck-ovation in the 1960s. Designed by Philadelphia architect Frank R.
Watson and built in 1884, St. Leo Church was enrolled in the
Philadelphia Historical Commission’s Register of Historic Places in May
2019.</p><p>Years before the 2021 fire, the pastor of Saint Leo’s told
me that the reformers got to the church immediately after the close of
Vatican II. They took out the big marble altar along with the doomed
pulpit. Unlike the rabid Dominicans who only half-wrecked Holy Name, the
St. Leo reformers dumped all the church statues in the church school.
The church’s large sanctuary lamp that looked as though it might have
once hung in a European cathedral was replaced with a small,
non-descript Martha Stewart/Target-inspired patio lamp. The exquisite
altar rail was also ripped out.</p><p>When the new pastor, one Father
Sweeney, came to St. Leo’s in 2009, he couldn’t get over the
incongruity: old Gothic church on the outside, a gutted butcher’s
specimen on the inside. He knew he had to do something, but what?</p><p>In
my interview with Fr. Sweeney at that time, he told me that he threw
out the modernist altar table and replaced it with a traditional marble
high altar blessed by St. John Neumann. Father Sweeney’s
return-to-tradition makeover continued with a vengeance. </p><p> “The church went from being a [Lion’s Club] meeting hall to a cathedral in a couple of months,” Fr. Sweeny told me. </p><p>Saint
Leo the Great, often referred to throughout the years as the “heart of
Tacony” was officially closed in 2018 following a parish merger with the
Northeast’s Our Lady of Consolation parish. Authorities on May 13, 2021
ruled that the May 9 fire was the result of arson.</p><p>Modernist
Catholic churches are now the norm the world over. In my various travels
around the globe I’ve seen my fair share of revamped Catholic sacred
spaces and once grand cathedrals stripped bare. </p><p>When I traveled
to Eisenstadt, Austria, and visited the so called Haydn Church of the
chapel of Mercy Mountain church, a church decorated and embellished by
Prince Nicholas III, I was shown a new addition, not far from the Haydn
crypt. My tour guide, visibly embarrassed, pointed out the
Reconciliation Room, a substitution for the centuries old confessionals.
The white plastic and smoky glass construction framed with a few potted
plants could easily have doubled as a men’s room. Only the absence of
flushing sounds and urinals set it apart as a space for contemplation.</p><p>What
is troubling is the fact that there is no focal point in the modern
worship space. The altar is too low to be visible in most cases, and the
priest’s chair, at the level of the congregation, is inconspicuous to
all but those sitting or standing in the first two rows. In many modern
churches there’s no sanctuary distinct from the nave.</p><p>The chief
architect of modern church design, Father Richard Vosko, a member of the
Diocese of Albany Architecture and Building Commission, has
designed/redesigned or gutted over 120 Catholic churches. Father Vosko’s
brainchild is Cardinal Mahoney’s Los Angeles cathedral, Our Lady of the
Angels, also known as the Yellow Armadillo or the “Taj Mahoney.”
Cardinal Mahony resigned as Archbishop of Los Angeles on March 1, 2011
and was succeeded by Archbishop <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Horacio_G%C3%B3mez">José Horacio Gómez</a> in February 2011.</p><p> </p><p>“This
cathedral,” Vosko stated to the press, “is of its own time, of its own
liturgy, of its own people.” Vosko added that he was not interested in
establishing a sacred place like the European cathedrals of past
centuries. </p><p>Los Angeles’ multi-million dollar conference hall
cathedral is usually used as an example when parish committees and
pastors inquire about Fr. Vosko’s services. Vosko’s “cookie-cutter”
churches all have the same look: they are functionalist with harsh lines
and dominated by colder materials such as metal, concrete and glass.
They are noted for their off-centered or less-than-prominent altars and,
of course, there’s a lack of a clearly defined sanctuary or nave.
There’s also a distinct lack of color and sacred imagery.</p><p>Vosko
likes tabernacles placed in obscure side chapels, away from the main
altar. He opts for hot tub baptismal Jacuzzi, the removal of pews in
favor of mobile chairs. His message is that everything should be
“throw-a-way,” a church should be able to be cleared of all objects and
double as a basketball court if need be. </p><p>The revolutionary Vosko, who says he gets his design ideas from Edward A. Sovik, author of the Lutheran tome, <i>Architecture for Worship</i>—a
book in which Sovik says that it is his intention to “finish where the
reformation Protestants left off 400 years ago”—continues to have some
success in building Catholic churches that look like upscale libraries
or nursing homes. </p><p> </p><p>In 1831, Victor Hugo lamented the destruction of Notre Dame in Paris in his book <i>The Hunchback of Notre Dame.</i>
Hugo was not talking about the decapitated statues or injuries to the
old queen of French cathedrals caused by the French Revolution, but to
the grave damage that Notre Dame suffered at the hands of school-trained
architects.</p><p> </p><p>Hugo criticized the removal of colored glass
stained windows, the interior which had been whitewashed, as well as
the removal of the tower over the central part of the cathedral.
Fashion, Hugo claimed, had done more mischief than revolutions: “It has
cut to the quick—it has attacked the very bone and framework of the
art,” he said.</p><p>Hugo called these school trained architects, slaves to bad taste and said they were guilty of willful destruction.</p><p> </p>Thom Nickelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00933997449868301693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424128481306152244.post-14126149594103120952021-06-19T23:26:00.003-04:002021-06-19T23:26:53.963-04:00DA Larry Krasner<div class="asset-masthead " style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; margin: 20px 0px 40px; orphans: auto; position: relative; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px;"><header class="asset-header" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block;"><h1 class="headline" itemprop="headline" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; 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line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">In the late 1970s and 1980s I wrote many columns against police brutality for several city publications. Police culture in Philadelphia was at its worst in the 1970s when I had my first unpleasant experience with the PPD.</span></p><div class="tncms-region-ads" id="tncms-region-ads-fixed-big-ad-top-asset" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="tnt-ads tnt-image-ad-wrapper" id="blox-ad-position-fixed-big-ad-top-asset1" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; margin: 0px auto 40px; max-width: 300px; min-height: 1px;"><a href="https://phillypressreview.com/tncms/tracking/bannerad/clicks/?rd=www.phillypressreview.com&i=ros/fixed-big-ad-top-asset1/25504640-8460-11eb-a60f-8ba6fa530abf&r=https://www.friendscentral.org/admission/admission-events" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #231f20; display: block; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><img alt="advertisement" src="https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/phillypressreview.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/bannerad/2/55/25504640-8460-11eb-a60f-8ba6fa530abf/60940f1a196e2.image.jpg" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; vertical-align: middle; width: 300px;" title="300x280 image ad" /></a></div></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">On two separate occasions while walking through Center City late at night I was apprehended by the police.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The first abduction occurred when police were looking for a red-haired male suspect. This became apparent as soon as I was inside the police van and noticed that the ten guys crammed in like sardines were all twenty-something redheads. </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">When we reached the Roundhouse, I was shocked to learn that we were going to be put in a lineup so that a woman victim of a crime (committed by a redhead) would be given a chance to identify her attacker. I’d seen police lineups on TV in various movies, but to actually be in a lineup is something else entirely. We were arranged across a stage and placed in front of identifying numbers, bright lights spotlighting our faces.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">At that moment I was suddenly seized with the thought: what if the emotionally-wrought crime victim picked me out for some reason? </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">There was no drum roll when the victim began reviewing the lineup. Happily, none of us was signaled out. When the process was over, we were told that we could<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">go.</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>We were released without an apology for having been inconvenienced. We also had to find our own way home. The rudeness of the process was monumental.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Another time, police ordered me inside a van to join a group of men they had scooped off the streets at random while driving through Center City. The men had been walking downtown after a night out at the bars. While there was no police lineup this time, our group spent the night in jail, and in the morning put before a judge and a galley of heckling spectators who were there for entertainment purposes. The judge mumbled something then dismissed us with a smirk.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Philadelphia<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">needed</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>a Larry Krasner in the 1970s. In fact, if there had been a Krasner DA at that time, I would not have had to write letters about my police van experience to the ACLU. As it happened, I sent copies of those letters to<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Inquirer</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(where they were published and generated some action, like a face-to-face with the police captain then in charge of the Center City District in question). Individual ad hoc appeal processes like this, however, were still a crapshoot.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">I did not soon forget my experiences at the hands of bad police officers, so I welcomed every opportunity to attack the politician that most represented the police: Frank Rizzo.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">I attacked Rizzo in print in<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Drummer</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>newspaper and in columns in the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Welcomat.</em> Years later, in the 1980s, I interviewed Rizzo when he was a radio talk show host. I was pleasantly surprised when the former mayor greeted me like an old friend, invited me to lunch, and repeatedly clutched my shoulder in a brotherly way while telling me to write about him “anyway I wanted to.”</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> “Call the shots as you see them,” he said.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Over time, I began to notice positive changes in the city when it came to the police. The process didn’t happen overnight but the change was so apparent in the late 1990s going into the 2000s, so that one rarely thought of the police as “the enemy” at all.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">In 1993, then Mayor Wilson Goode issued an executive order regarding the formation of a Police Advisory Commission, which has grown over the years to achieve a budget of $668,700 in 2020.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span></p><div class="tncms-region-ads" id="tncms-region-ads-fixed-big-ad-middle-asset" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="tnt-ads tnt-image-ad-wrapper" id="blox-ad-position-fixed-big-ad-middle-asset1" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; margin: 0px auto 40px; max-width: 300px; min-height: 1px;"><a href="https://phillypressreview.com/tncms/tracking/bannerad/clicks/?rd=www.phillypressreview.com&i=ros/fixed-big-ad-middle-asset1/e161bb54-7914-11eb-91d0-2b1ee8ff4a1d&r=http://allcitystorage.com" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #231f20; display: block; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><img alt="advertisement" src="https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/phillypressreview.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/bannerad/e/16/e161bb54-7914-11eb-91d0-2b1ee8ff4a1d/603a6c8f3de3c.image.jpg" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; vertical-align: middle; width: 300px;" title="300x308 image ad" /></a></div></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">But while the police were now doing their job in a much more humane manner, criminals were slowly becoming bolder in their exploits.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">DA Larry Krasner appeared on the scene just as crime was spiking in the City of Brotherly Love. </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Born in 1961 in St. Louis, Krasner is the son of a writer father and a minister mother. He spent his childhood years in both Philadelphia and St. Louis before getting degrees at the University of Chicago and Stanford Law School. As a young law student, Krasner was already working for homeless people, the urban poor, and for “indigenous” rights. Those impulses were still strong in him when he returned to Philadelphia in 1987 to work as a public defender and civil rights attorney. In 1993, he opened his own law practice.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Krasner’s decision to run for district attorney in 2017 was greeted on all sides with derision. A 2018<span class="apple-converted-space" style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">New Yorker</span></em><span class="apple-converted-space" style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span>article quoted Philadelphia FOP president John McNesby calling the idea of a Krasner candidacy “hilarious.” Krasner’s own law firm was said to have broken out in laughter at the announcement of his candidacy.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> If Krasner had a hard road at first, he soon found celebrity status thanks to a PBS eight-part documentary series,<span class="apple-converted-space" style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Philly DA</span></em>. He has also become one of the faces of the national “<span style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.city-journal.org/taking-on-progressive-prosecutors" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #231f20; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">progressive prosecutor</span></a>”</span><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>movement.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Yet Krasner was soon presiding over a crime wave that rendered him unpopular in many areas of the city. Since he took office, shootings and homicides soared. As of April 15, 2021, 145 homicides and 442 non-fatal shootings have been registered in the city, including 55 children shot. So far this year, homicides have increased 32 percent from this point in 2020, itself a year when the city experienced its second-highest homicide rate in 60 years. Many of the perpetrators have been found to be repeat offenders or men released on reduced bail due to decisions from the district attorney’s office. The unbelievable was happening. While Krasner was making some needed reforms, he was tipping the scales to the far left just as Frank Rizzo had gone to the far right when it came to the criminal justice issues.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Sentiment against Krasner began to build, especially in city neighborhoods such as Fishtown, Port Richmond, Bridesburg, and South Philadelphia, all traditionally Democratic areas.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Before the May 18<sup style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 12px; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">th</sup><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>primary, a recent story in<span class="apple-converted-space" style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Billy Penn</span></em><span class="apple-converted-space" style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span>reported that a coalition of Democratic elected officials gathered at the statue of civil rights hero Octavius Catto in front of City Hall to deliver their endorsement of Krasner. “The next morning,” the story continued, “officials with the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/philly-police-union-wields-ice-cream-in-campaign-stunt-against-da/2798526/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #231f20; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">parked a Mister Softee truck</span></a><span class="apple-converted-space" style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span>across the street from the DA’s office and gave out free soft-serve” to mock Krasner’s position on crime. “Soft on crime. Soft on sentencing,” tweeted FOP president John McNesby. “Come enjoy a mister softee cone on the cops.”</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Despite the vehement anti-Krasner sentiment throughout the city, the DA sailed to an easy victory in the May primary.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Carlos Vega, Krasner’s challenger, received 35 percent of the vote, a small piece of mince pie considering the intensity of the campaign to unseat Krasner. Vega put up a good fight but in the end the Philadelphia Democratic Machine and campaign money from George Soros and wealthy left-wing philanthropists proved far too powerful. </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Krasner will now meet Republican challenger attorney Chuck Peruto in the fall. But no Republican ever gets elected in the City of Philadelphia. As the journalist Lincoln Steffens wrote in “<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Shame of the Cities,”</em></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">All our municipal governments are more or less bad, and all our people are optimists. Philadelphia is simply the most corrupt and the most contented.</span></em></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span></em></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Krasner’s primary win all but guarantees his re-election in November. Philadelphia can expect four more years of the DA’s social justice reform agenda.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">We can also expect many more shootings and deaths.</span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><p> </p>Thom Nickelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00933997449868301693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424128481306152244.post-44154722595972349132021-06-08T20:08:00.002-04:002021-06-08T20:08:35.246-04:00Father's Day: Thomas C. Nickels, architect<p><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When my father was on the verge of death in
April of 1986 I was called home from work to be with the family at his bedside.
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By the time I arrived home my father, Thomas
C. Nickels, an architect, had died to this world. He lay on his sickbed in the
family den, a room that he had designed and built onto the house that he and my
mother bought in the 1950s when they still had a young family. The den had a
marvelous cathedral ceiling, bookshelves and an antique roll top desk where my
mother would often type my father’s letters to his various architectural
clients.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dad had died about 30 minutes before my
arrival, so the family was in the living room. Conversation was solemn and
stilted. My mother embraced me, her eyes red from crying, and told me that I
could go into the den to say a final good-bye. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dad looked to be asleep. He had been very
sick for a year and some months with throat cancer. I felt his forehead. It was
still warm. I sat down and said a prayer even though I wasn’t much of a
believer then. I stood up and studied him, felt his forehead again, and walked
out.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjojztywAdM-q0-4SQyr-Zr8Ag7TpySC7lbladeduh6d3T7sugPehB5n53fkhanPbAXqV0tOQb8-GZNPyZFCFkcPCeduWv2lNha8u9jcDqGue0q7fgLugWv9oHqgXON6MsYw31m6KD3zBMK/s640/image9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjojztywAdM-q0-4SQyr-Zr8Ag7TpySC7lbladeduh6d3T7sugPehB5n53fkhanPbAXqV0tOQb8-GZNPyZFCFkcPCeduWv2lNha8u9jcDqGue0q7fgLugWv9oHqgXON6MsYw31m6KD3zBMK/w300-h400/image9.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><br /> <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mom, who was upstairs with my sisters, told
me that she had been with my father until the end. She told me how he had sat
straight up in bed immediately before his death and looked wide eyed into space
as if seeing something big.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The undertaker, I was told, would be at the
house at any moment. Mom was staying upstairs because she did not want to be
downstairs when they took dad to the funeral home. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The last thing you want to see when you love
someone is to watch as the undertaker zips them up in a body bag. I opted to
watch the undertakers but the visual haunted me for years.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My father died in the split level home that
he bought for his family when Frazer was an ‘in the sticks’ country town. There
was a farm down the street and a cow pasture outside the kitchen window where
the cows would sometimes wander up to the kitchen window as mom did the dishes.
Sometimes the farmer would place horses in the pasture; other years he would
plant acres of corn. As children we played in the corn and pretended that we
were Scarecrows. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
many ways growing up in Frazer was like growing up inside an Andrew Wyeth
painting. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dad
was the product of a strict German upbringing. He became an architect like his
own father and even went to the same school, Drexel, to get his degree. He was
a student architect when I was born. I recall his model houses displayed in the
basement of our first row house in </span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Drexel Hill</span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was not the kind of loving father that
you often see today; loving in the sense of being openly affectionate. Fathers
did not show their affection for their sons in that era. Today one sees fathers
cuddling sons on trains, sometimes hugging and kissing them openly and freely,
but in the 1950s that sort of behavior was reserved for mothers and their
children. There was an unwritten ‘manly code’ that seemed to hold sway over
fathers and sons then. One was “permitted” to kiss girls but not boys although
my grandfather retained the old European habit of kissing every male and female
relative on the lips. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As
a small boy I had the odd habit of going through my parents’ bureau drawers
when they out to see what secrets I could find. While rummaging through dad’s
bureau drawers I found a stripped uniform that prisoners used to wear. Had dad
been in prison? Quite often I would go back to his bureau to get another look
at the uniform. Since dad had the uniform buried in the bottom drawer under a
pile of sweaters it seemed as if he was hiding it. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What crime had dad committed? I assumed that
mom knew what it was but she was keeping it under wraps.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then one day during a family summer patio BBQ
I saw dad wearing the uniform, which was actually a chef’s outfit with a complimentary
stripped chef’s hat. He was laughing it up and flipping burgers on the grille. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I breathed a sigh of relief although it
certainly didn’t put an end to my bureau drawer snooping. (Years later, I’d
discover D.H. Lawrence’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lady
Chatterley’s</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lover</i> in my mother’s
bureau drawer, hidden, appropriately enough, under a stack of silk stockings.) </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dad’s being an architect taught me to appreciate
blueprints and his drawing board in his at-home office.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His being an architect meant that he had
every manner of slide ruler, pen and colored pencil as well as wooden boxes
filled with all manner of architectural <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">extras.</i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
arts and crafts smell of his office put me in another world, and his art books
(which included lots of nude Greek statues) sent bolts of electricity through
my adolescent male veins.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dad’s
office was a place of reflection and study, a time out room from the world, a
sort of scared space where he’d show me the design of houses or a neo colonial
shopping center he was working on for a </span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Main Line</span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> conglomerate. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We bonded when it came to architecture. He’d
take me out and show me the houses that he had designed that were now in the
process of being built. Sometimes we’d go to grandfather’s house and look at
grandfather’s drawing board, and I’d wind up comparing their architectural
offices while trying to decide which one was better.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Thom
Nickels</b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">Thom Nickels</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<br /><p></p>Thom Nickelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00933997449868301693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424128481306152244.post-53620261942943407302021-06-08T19:55:00.002-04:002021-06-08T19:55:23.129-04:00<p> </p><div class="asset-masthead " style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; margin: 20px 0px 40px; orphans: auto; position: relative; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px;"><header class="asset-header" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block;"><h1 class="headline" itemprop="headline" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: 42px; font-weight: 400; line-height: 1.1; margin: 0px 100px 0px 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-family: 'Roboto Condensed', sans-serif; font-weight: 600;">City Safari: Remembering Anne d’Harnoncourt</span></h1><div class="meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-right: 100px; margin-top: 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><ul class="list-inline" style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: -5px; margin-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px;"><li class="hidden-print" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;"><time class="tnt-date asset-date text-muted" datetime="2021-05-27T19:42:00-04:00" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #777777;">May 27, 2021</time></li><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><li class="hidden-print" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;"><a class="cm" href="https://www.phillypressreview.com/opinion/columnists/city-safari-remembering-anne-d-harnoncourt/article_43c6437a-bf45-11eb-9a62-4b594780eed5.html#comments" style="background-color: transparent; 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box-sizing: border-box; clip: rect(0px 0px 0px 0px); height: 1px; margin: -1px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; position: absolute; width: 1px;">Save</span></a></li></ul><form action="https://www.phillypressreview.com/users/admin/list/" class="save-list-43c6437a-bf45-11eb-9a62-4b594780eed5-form save-asset-to-list" data-uuid="43c6437a-bf45-11eb-9a62-4b594780eed5" method="post" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></form></div><div class="asset-body has-fixed-share" data-subscription-required-class="asset-body" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 100px; overflow: hidden;"><div class="asset-content subscriber-premium" itemprop="articleBody" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">When Philadelphia Museum of Art Director Anne d’Harnoncourt died suddenly of a stroke on June 1, 2008, the art world stood still.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Philippe de Montebello, director of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, told<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The New York Times</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>that he was in total shock and disbelief. ”She was a friend of mine for more than 40 years. She went to school with my wife. She was a guiding light in all the museum world and I can’t tell you how much I’ll miss her.”</p><div class="tncms-region-ads" id="tncms-region-ads-fixed-big-ad-top-asset" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="tnt-ads tnt-image-ad-wrapper" id="blox-ad-position-fixed-big-ad-top-asset1" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; margin: 0px auto 40px; max-width: 300px; min-height: 1px;"><a href="https://phillypressreview.com/tncms/tracking/bannerad/clicks/?rd=www.phillypressreview.com&i=ros/fixed-big-ad-top-asset1/25504640-8460-11eb-a60f-8ba6fa530abf&r=https://www.friendscentral.org/admission/admission-events" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #231f20; display: block; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><img alt="advertisement" src="https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/phillypressreview.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/bannerad/2/55/25504640-8460-11eb-a60f-8ba6fa530abf/60940f1a196e2.image.jpg" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; vertical-align: middle; width: 300px;" title="300x280 image ad" /></a></div></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Times</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>went on to describe Ms. d’Harnoncourt as “a natural museum director in perhaps the best, most basic way…She had the kind of star quality that lights up rooms, but also the confidence to let her curators shine.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Times</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>also mentioned her “uncanny ability to communicate with anyone as an equal.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The New Yorker</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>quoted Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Karen Hiller: “Like George Plimpton, William F. Buckley or Julia Child (whose height and vocal timbre she shared), Ms. d’Harnoncourt had one of those throw-back, lockjaw, plummy, patrician voices of an earlier era, as musical and entertaining as a Gilbert and Sullivan performer.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The New York Sun</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>highlighted d’Harnoncourt’s close relationships to contemporary artists. “She was very good friends with Jasper [Johns], [Cy] Twombly, and Ellsworth [Kelly], and she got them to loan her things and do things with her that were exceptional. Most directors don't have that intimate connection with artists, and she was very beloved by them.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">In an odd twist, Philadelphia radio station WRTI reported that d’Harnoncourt died on Monday, June 2, 2008. It is the only June 2 date listed anywhere. It’s odd that the erroneous date has not been corrected in 13 years.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">I began attending PMA press events in the 1990s. When d’Harnoncourt became the museum’s chief CEO in 1996, I wouldn’t think of missing these events. At the opening of every blockbuster PMA exhibition the museum would host a sit-down luncheon for the press. This was truly a golden era of generosity and plenty. The luncheons were so grand one had a sense that such splendor could not possibly last. As it turned out, it did not. </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">At many of PMA’s press exhibitions, d’Harnoncourt and I would often say a quick hello. One of our longest museum conversations was during the 2005 Salvador Dali exhibition. During the press walk through the exhibition d’Harnoncourt caught up with me and we spoke for some time under Dali’s monumental crucifixion painting. I recall telling her then what a magnificent exhibit it was<strong style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bold;">.</strong></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bold;"> </strong></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">In 2005 I was not yet aware of the existence of a Dali painting called<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Vision of Hell</em>, which Dali painted in 1959 when commissionedby John Haffert, cofounder and director of The World Apostolate of Fatima to paint a picture of the first part of the Fátima Secret, the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Vision of Hell,</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>as seen in 1917 by the child seers of Fatima.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">The painting was essentially a work for hire but over time it turned into much more than that. Dali, the son of an atheist father and a Catholic mother, struggled throughout his life with questions of belief. To prepare himself to work on the painting he met with Fatima scholars and had a private meeting with Sister Lucia, the only surviving seer of 1917. As a result of that meeting, Dali rekindled the Catholic faith of his childhood.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">The existence of the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Vision of Hell</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>painting was kept secret for many years. I do not know whether Anne d’Harnoncourt knew of its existence.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">In 2007, the museum staged a retrospective exhibition on the work of Thomas Chimes, one of the most important artists to have emerged on the Philadelphia art scene in the past half century. The exhibition included 100 paintings and works on paper.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">I was shocked when I received an invitation to accompany Anne and another PMA staffer, artist Thomas Chimes and an Inquirer art critic at a special dinner at the Water Works Restaurant (2006-2015) at the old Fairmount Water Works on the Schuylkill River. The opportunity to sit down with d’Harnoncourt and Chimes with only one other journalist present for a 3-hour multiple course dinner, was extraordinary.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvhZh8yDD-kgK545m-6DbeqRnlX5_GFiWw4MmZtslN5GN0LHVnEv64wFWOayh0g1z4y9L5E_wtym03h_PQeD2k4apyAfKVIdBSzGasd3wJJls5-zAqqdVsbAPBk4Y5Vy99ap7IivIEEUi_/s255/d%2527Harnon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="255" data-original-width="200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvhZh8yDD-kgK545m-6DbeqRnlX5_GFiWw4MmZtslN5GN0LHVnEv64wFWOayh0g1z4y9L5E_wtym03h_PQeD2k4apyAfKVIdBSzGasd3wJJls5-zAqqdVsbAPBk4Y5Vy99ap7IivIEEUi_/w314-h400/d%2527Harnon.jpg" width="314" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">In 2007, a year before her death, d’Harnoncourt did a two-part Drexel interview which can still be seen on YouTube. She must have done the interview shortly after the Dali press preview because on the video she’s wearing the same<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">tree of life</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>broach she wore during the Dali press tour.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">“There hadn’t been a Dali exhibition for so long,” Anne said. “It was time,” adding that she thought the exhibit was timely because Dali was fascinated by popular culture, and the relationship of art to new media, like film. “It was also one of the largest exhibitions we had,” she said.</p><div class="tncms-region-ads" id="tncms-region-ads-fixed-big-ad-middle-asset" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="tnt-ads tnt-image-ad-wrapper" id="blox-ad-position-fixed-big-ad-middle-asset1" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; margin: 0px auto 40px; max-width: 300px; min-height: 1px;"><a href="https://phillypressreview.com/tncms/tracking/bannerad/clicks/?rd=www.phillypressreview.com&i=ros/fixed-big-ad-middle-asset1/e161bb54-7914-11eb-91d0-2b1ee8ff4a1d&r=http://allcitystorage.com" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #231f20; display: block; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><img alt="advertisement" src="https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/phillypressreview.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/bannerad/e/16/e161bb54-7914-11eb-91d0-2b1ee8ff4a1d/603a6c8f3de3c.image.jpg" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; vertical-align: middle; width: 300px;" title="300x308 image ad" /></a></div></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">She continued to talk about Dali, mentioning that he hid behind his big personality, was very shy, and felt things very deeply.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">When the host of the Drexel InterView brought up the term ‘blockbuster’ exhibit,’ d’Harnoncourt did not mind the term at all but in fact said that the idea for a Philadelphia Museum of Art “was born out of a blockbuster, out of the 1876 World’s Fair, when the world’s attention turned to Philadelphia.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">She went on to talk about the general circus atmosphere in a museum. A museum is enticing, entertaining, educating, she said. Museums also carry people away, “inviting them to time travel, sexy travel and even spiritual travel.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">“I model myself,” she said, “after Neil Harris at the University of Chicago, an art historian who wrote a book about circuses.” (<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Humbug: The Art of P.T. Barnum,</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>1981, Univ. of Chicago Press) </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">When asked about the museum’s role in the community, and if the idea of visiting a museum might potentially turn away some people because they think it might be too high brow or<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">exclusive</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>in some way, d’Harnoncourt’s answer would probably not bode well in today’s woke culture.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Woke culture would likely suggest that the museum needs to change to make it more inclusive and accessible to people who feel they are on the outside looking in. But that’s not how d’Harnoncourt saw it. </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">“You first get somebody in a museum, whatever their age, background or status, and you walk with them to find something that catches their attention. You don’t need to do anymore. They suddenly see that something in the collection relates to them.” </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">…A brilliant, simple answer that should be emblazoned in lights over the Rocky statue.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">For d’Harnoncourt, a successful exhibition must have three basic ingredients: The passion of the curator, the strength of the museum in a certain area, and something that’s timely.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">She spoke highly of Dali curator Michael Taylor who put his heart and soul into the project. (Taylor is now the Chief Curator and Deputy Director for Art and Education at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.)</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">d’Harnoncourt told Drexel InterView that she initially wanted to be an actress, then a writer. “I studied the history of literature, did a lot with language, but at the end of my college years I felt that something was missing, and it was art. I spent some time at the Art Institute of Chicago where I met my husband, Joseph Rishel.”</p><p class="inq-p" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p class="inq-p" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Rishel was the museum’s Senior Curator of European Painting & Sculpture and her husband of 37 years at her death. Rishel, a legend in his own rite, died in November 2020 in his sleep after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease. As<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Inquirer</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>noted after Mr. Rishel’s death:</p><p class="inq-p" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p class="inq-p" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSK7pQW9RsKeYDke0yob-NZzCSJ_srJGdIrO-kTPboHiQN8b7yJybLDP3UPhB2GqK_ghGBgTfr3J6XFWW0ylIAzzxp_I2liwHOrRSLohTNjpwyU_mMLfIGqBbkf_IHsFDEG4GTHGC1iGeV/s400/article_large.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="285" data-original-width="400" height="285" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSK7pQW9RsKeYDke0yob-NZzCSJ_srJGdIrO-kTPboHiQN8b7yJybLDP3UPhB2GqK_ghGBgTfr3J6XFWW0ylIAzzxp_I2liwHOrRSLohTNjpwyU_mMLfIGqBbkf_IHsFDEG4GTHGC1iGeV/w400-h285/article_large.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><p class="inq-p" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p class="inq-p" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> “He is most well known for his expansive 1996 Paul Cézanne exhibition… the most well-attended exhibition in PMA history. Nothing before it showed so clearly the power of art and culture to drive civic life and tourism.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Born September 7, 1943 as the only child of Rene d’Harnoncourt, MoMA director and art historian and Sara Carr, a fashion designer, Anne d’Harnoncourt grew up in New York. Her father was not a modernist but a lover of folk art.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWBkq805alcMmyI5zUsf-KYNbND3GIXLeg_SUHghX9zBkJnfQ_G0OfSEipE7DtXYjQYuwW0y4TmCzVCKZXVnshxJ_8T-WODEzlyK4f9oJI1A0bSJSJeUCHwe7uxZLaKC54CzV4ZHVlxfyy/s220/download.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="220" data-original-width="160" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWBkq805alcMmyI5zUsf-KYNbND3GIXLeg_SUHghX9zBkJnfQ_G0OfSEipE7DtXYjQYuwW0y4TmCzVCKZXVnshxJ_8T-WODEzlyK4f9oJI1A0bSJSJeUCHwe7uxZLaKC54CzV4ZHVlxfyy/w291-h400/download.jpg" width="291" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">She told Drexel InterView that she started at PMA as “a pipsqueak,” an assistant to an assistant.</p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>Thom Nickelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00933997449868301693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424128481306152244.post-77361167293691275662021-06-08T19:48:00.004-04:002021-06-08T19:48:47.253-04:00Pearl S. Buck<div class="asset-masthead " style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; margin: 20px 0px 40px; orphans: auto; position: relative; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px;"><header class="asset-header" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block;"><h1 class="headline" itemprop="headline" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: 42px; font-weight: 400; line-height: 1.1; margin: 0px 100px 0px 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-family: 'Roboto Condensed', sans-serif; font-weight: 600;">City Safari: Pearl S. Buck: her books and her children</span></h1><div class="meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-right: 100px; margin-top: 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><ul class="list-inline" style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: -5px; margin-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px;"><li class="hidden-print" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;"><time class="tnt-date asset-date text-muted" datetime="2021-06-02T10:55:00-04:00" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #777777;">Jun 2, 2021</time><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="text-muted tnt-update-recent" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #777777;">Updated<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><time class="tnt-date tnt-update-recent asset-date text-muted" datetime="2021-06-02T11:00:10-04:00" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #777777;">Jun 2, 2021</time></li><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><li class="hidden-print" style="box-sizing: border-box; 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box-sizing: border-box; clip: rect(0px 0px 0px 0px); height: 1px; margin: -1px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; position: absolute; width: 1px;">Save</span></a></li></ul><form action="https://www.phillypressreview.com/users/admin/list/" class="save-list-341e3a7c-c3aa-11eb-befa-eb1026ade7b2-form save-asset-to-list" data-uuid="341e3a7c-c3aa-11eb-befa-eb1026ade7b2" method="post" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></form></div><div class="asset-body has-fixed-share" data-subscription-required-class="asset-body" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 100px; overflow: hidden;"><div class="asset-content subscriber-premium" itemprop="articleBody" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">In 1988,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Washington Post</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>reported that the Swedish Academy shocked the American literary establishment by awarding the Nobel Prize for Literature to Pearl S. Buck.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">“The Nobel Committee had not only passed over such obvious candidates as Theodore Dreiser and Sherwood Anderson; it had given the world's highest accolade to a former missionary and a woman. As Robert Frost remarked, ‘If she can get it, anybody can.’”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Post</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>also maintained that she never again wrote anything as good as the biographies of her parents and "The Good Earth." It was also suggested that she wrote too much for a "serious" artist, that being more than 100 works of fiction and nonfiction.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Post</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>claimed that she “wrote primarily as a secular missionary, using her Nobel status to reach as wide a public as possible.” Buck had to keep writing, The Post stated, so that “she could pay the institutional bills for her retarded child, Carol, for her dozen adopted and foster children, for the often shaky publishing house of her second husband -- and especially for her pioneering charitable enterprises.”</p><div class="tncms-region-ads" id="tncms-region-ads-fixed-big-ad-top-asset" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="tnt-ads tnt-image-ad-wrapper" id="blox-ad-position-fixed-big-ad-top-asset1" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; margin: 0px auto 40px; max-width: 300px; min-height: 1px;"><a href="https://phillypressreview.com/tncms/tracking/bannerad/clicks/?rd=www.phillypressreview.com&i=ros/fixed-big-ad-top-asset1/25504640-8460-11eb-a60f-8ba6fa530abf&r=https://www.friendscentral.org/admission/admission-events" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #231f20; display: block; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><img alt="advertisement" src="https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/phillypressreview.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/bannerad/2/55/25504640-8460-11eb-a60f-8ba6fa530abf/60940f1a196e2.image.jpg" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; vertical-align: middle; width: 300px;" title="300x280 image ad" /></a></div></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">The words “mentally retarded” were not used when I revisited the Buck house this past Memorial Day weekend with friends Marita and Michael T. Poxon. The able tour guide simply said that Carol had the mentality of a four and half year old. (The term ‘mental retardation’ is used less frequently today. For some years it was replaced by the rather cumbersome, ‘developmentally disabled’ although that term is rarely used anymore either. )</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Long before the women’s rights crusader, philanthropist, humanitarian and author moved to the 60-acre estate (or Green Hills Farm) in Bucks County she lived at 2019 Delancey Street in Center City.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">The Delancey Street house, despite its having been occupied by the author of over 70 books and the winner of the 1938 Nobel Prize for Literature for “The Good Earth,” is registered with the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission as the Richard<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Cadwalader</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>house. Built in 1860 for Cadwalter in the Federal style, the multiple dwelling row house was later recast in the Beaux Arts style in 1918 by the Philadelphia architectural firm of DeArmond, Ashmead & Bickley. </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">DeArmond, Ashmead & Bickley (1911-1938), all University of Pennsylvania graduates, were famous for their colonial revival residences and English-influenced style buildings.</p><div class="inline-asset inline-image layout-vertical subscriber-hide tnt-inline-asset tnt-inline-relcontent tnt-inline-image tnt-inline-relation-child tnt-inline-presentation-default tnt-inline-alignment-default tnt-inline-width-default" style="box-sizing: border-box; clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 30px; margin-left: 30px; margin-right: auto; width: 160.078px;"><figure class="photo layout-vertical hover-expand letterbox-style-default" style="box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; display: block; margin: 0px auto; position: relative;"><span class="expand hidden-print" data-instance="#gallery-items-341e3a7c-c3aa-11eb-befa-eb1026ade7b2-photo-modal" data-photo-target=".photo-72ca9252-c3aa-11eb-ae67-b3efdfdb5a56" data-target="#photo-carousel-341e3a7c-c3aa-11eb-befa-eb1026ade7b2" data-toggle="modal" style="background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.498039); border-radius: 5px; box-sizing: border-box; color: white; font-size: 18px !important; left: 10px; opacity: 0; padding: 5px 10px; position: absolute; top: 10px; transition: all 0.25s ease-out; z-index: 1;"><svg class="tnt-svg tnt-expand tnt-w-14" data-fa-i2svg="" data-icon="expand" data-prefix="fas" viewbox="0 0 448 512" xmlns="https://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><path d="M0 180V56c0-13.3 10.7-24 24-24h124c6.6 0 12 5.4 12 12v40c0 6.6-5.4 12-12 12H64v84c0 6.6-5.4 12-12 12H12c-6.6 0-12-5.4-12-12zM288 44v40c0 6.6 5.4 12 12 12h84v84c0 6.6 5.4 12 12 12h40c6.6 0 12-5.4 12-12V56c0-13.3-10.7-24-24-24H300c-6.6 0-12 5.4-12 12zm148 276h-40c-6.6 0-12 5.4-12 12v84h-84c-6.6 0-12 5.4-12 12v40c0 6.6 5.4 12 12 12h124c13.3 0 24-10.7 24-24V332c0-6.6-5.4-12-12-12zM160 468v-40c0-6.6-5.4-12-12-12H64v-84c0-6.6-5.4-12-12-12H12c-6.6 0-12 5.4-12 12v124c0 13.3 10.7 24 24 24h124c6.6 0 12-5.4 12-12z" fill="currentColor"></path></svg></span><div class="image" data-instance="#gallery-items-341e3a7c-c3aa-11eb-befa-eb1026ade7b2-photo-modal" data-photo-target=".photo-72ca9252-c3aa-11eb-ae67-b3efdfdb5a56" data-target="#photo-carousel-341e3a7c-c3aa-11eb-befa-eb1026ade7b2" data-toggle="modal" style="background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.85098); box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 10px;"><div itemprop="image" itemscope="" itemtype="https://schema.org/ImageObject" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><img alt="Image: City Safari: Pearl S. Buck: her books and her children" class="img-responsive full default lazyautosizes lazyloaded" data-sizes="auto" data-srcset="https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/phillypressreview.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/7/2c/72ca9252-c3aa-11eb-ae67-b3efdfdb5a56/60b78e53a0daf.image.jpg?resize=150%2C200 150w, https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/phillypressreview.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/7/2c/72ca9252-c3aa-11eb-ae67-b3efdfdb5a56/60b78e53a0daf.image.jpg?resize=200%2C267 200w, https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/phillypressreview.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/7/2c/72ca9252-c3aa-11eb-ae67-b3efdfdb5a56/60b78e53a0daf.image.jpg?resize=225%2C300 225w, https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/phillypressreview.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/7/2c/72ca9252-c3aa-11eb-ae67-b3efdfdb5a56/60b78e53a0daf.image.jpg?resize=300%2C400 300w, https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/phillypressreview.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/7/2c/72ca9252-c3aa-11eb-ae67-b3efdfdb5a56/60b78e53a0daf.image.jpg?resize=400%2C533 400w, https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/phillypressreview.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/7/2c/72ca9252-c3aa-11eb-ae67-b3efdfdb5a56/60b78e53a0daf.image.jpg?resize=540%2C720 540w, https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/phillypressreview.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/7/2c/72ca9252-c3aa-11eb-ae67-b3efdfdb5a56/60b78e53a0daf.image.jpg?resize=640%2C853 640w, https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/phillypressreview.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/7/2c/72ca9252-c3aa-11eb-ae67-b3efdfdb5a56/60b78e53a0daf.image.jpg?resize=720%2C960 750w" height="960" src="data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAQAAAADCAQAAAAe/WZNAAAAEElEQVR42mM8U88ABowYDABAxQPltt5zqAAAAABJRU5ErkJggg==" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; height: auto; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle; width: 160.078px;" width="720" /></div></div></figure></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">The 9,000 square foot, 5-floor townhouse was purchased in 1964 as the home of Pearl Buck and the Pearl S. Buck Foundation. While the basement and first floor was renovated for use as Foundation space, the second floor was designed to house the dining room, a formal drawing room and the solarium or Sun Room where Buck had large numbers of plants.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">With the famous Rosenbach Museum and Library just a few doors away at 2010 Delancey Street, it’s no wonder that Buck saw this area as a special part of Center City. It may have been the beginning of the tumultuous sixties, but in those days Pearl Buck was referred to as “Miss Buck” and it is said that she dressed like a society matron, while in her Bucks County home she was far more informal.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">The octagonal-shaped dining room was lavishly decorated with a Ming screen with inlaid ivory figures. A long Chinese buffet table was also situated under a smoked glass mirror. Since the dining room also doubled as a place for dancing, the octagonal table could be rolled into a closet and the chandelier could be raised or lowered as needed.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">“Why did I choose Center City, you ask?” Pearl S. Buck once wrote. “Because there was a street, there was the house, there were the people. There, too, was the tradition of brotherly love…” Buck also wrote that no matter where she lived there were always elements of the Chinese. “Sooner or later into every room in any house I own the Chinese influence creeps.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">At 2019 Delancey Street the 3<sup style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 12px; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">rd</sup><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>floor library contained a baby grand piano, the famous “Good Earth Desk,” an ancient Chinese drum on a pedestal which acted as a coffee table, as well as leather bound editions of her books given her as gifts by her publisher. Much of the furniture was imported from the Buck house in China, namely the rose and tan Peking rugs, the blackwood chairs, and a daybed.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">The 3<sup style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 12px; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">rd</sup><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>floor Master Bedroom had a small sitting room and a writing table.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">One walked through the 1<sup style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 12px; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">st</sup><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Floor entryway into a vestibule that exploded with red lacquered doors, stained glass and a large statue of the Chinese goddess of Mercy. Beyond the foyer, near the fireplace with its flanking Mandarin Chinese chairs, was an altar table flanked by two antique candelabra.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">During the renovation of the townhouse in 1964-65, the first floor kitchen was moved to the basement and the former kitchen became the Foundation’s conference room. In the center of the conference room was a six foot round table made of walnut and yellow marble.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><div class="tncms-region-ads" id="tncms-region-ads-fixed-big-ad-middle-asset" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="tnt-ads tnt-image-ad-wrapper" id="blox-ad-position-fixed-big-ad-middle-asset1" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; margin: 0px auto 40px; max-width: 300px; min-height: 1px;"><a href="https://phillypressreview.com/tncms/tracking/bannerad/clicks/?rd=www.phillypressreview.com&i=ros/fixed-big-ad-middle-asset1/132248ac-7915-11eb-9934-1786cbf5c68e&r=https://parentinfantcenter.org/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #231f20; display: block; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><img alt="advertisement" src="https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/phillypressreview.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/bannerad/1/32/132248ac-7915-11eb-9934-1786cbf5c68e/603a6ce2b0c48.image.jpg" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; vertical-align: middle; width: 300px;" title="300x206 image ad" /></a></div></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Many of Buck’s Delancey Street townhouse treasures were moved to the Bucks County home when the townhouse was sold. </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">When Pearl S. Buck submitted ‘<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Good Earth’</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>to one publisher in 1931 she was told that it could not be published because “the American public is not interested in anything on China.” ‘The Good Earth,’ though not the author’s first book, became a critical and popular success despite the conviction of the critic who thought the book would bore American readers. Buck wrote<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Good Earth</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>in three months after the birth of her daughter, Carol, because she wanted to have enough money to support her.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">In 1932, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for The Good Earth; the Nobel Prize for Literature followed in 1938 for her genuine portrayals of Chinese life. The Nobel Prize announcement shocked writers like Theodore Dreiser, John Dos Passos and Ernest Hemingway because they felt that they were more deserving of the honor.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Good Earth</em>went on to become the second all time best seller of the 20<sup style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 12px; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">th</sup>Century, second to<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Gone With the Wind.</em></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">The post-Nobel Buck also had to contend with choruses of critics pointing fingers: “Mrs. Buck is unrepresentative of American letters,” they said. “Her work in no way reflects the literary and ideological ferment of 20th Century.” The high-handed insult stung, but Buck seemed to take it in stride. “Like the Chinese,” she said in her Nobel Prize address, “I have been taught to write for these people.” She meant “these people” as opposed to an intellectual elite. She was not, as some might have wished, an early Presbyterian version of Susan Sontag.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">“’The Good Earth,’” said journalist Edgar Snow, “was the first book that made western countries conscious of the Far East<strong style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bold;">.”</strong></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Born Pearl Sydenstricker Buck in 1892 in West Virginia to Southern Presbyterian missionary parents, at 3 months old she was taken to China where she would spend the next 40 years, barring a sojourn in the United States when she went to a women’s college in Lynchburg, Virginia. She returned to China in 1914 after graduation and met John Lossing Buck. The two were married in 1917, and had a daughter, Carol, who was born with severe mental retardation. In 1925, she returned to the United States to obtain a master’s degree in English at Cornell University. But the situation with Carol plunged Pearl into a depression, and for a time she consulted specialists and doctors in the hopes that Carol could be helped. Buck wrote in her autobiography,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">For Spacious Skies,</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>that she achieved a sense of peace when a specialist told her that her daughter’s condition would never change. </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">After Pearl found an institution for Carol, she and John began adopting children in 1925. Their 18 year marriage was not a happy one although it was during this period that she began to amass the material she would use in<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Good Earth</em>. She had already published her first book,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">East Wind, West Wind</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>in 1930 and was writing stories in Asia Magazine and Atlantic Monthly. Her marital unhappiness would end after the 1931 publication of<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Good Earth</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>when the book’s publisher, William Walsh of Paul Dry Books, and she became close friends. In 1934, she and Walsh would move to the U.S. and marry the following year. With Carol safely institutionalized in New Jersey, she was now free to adopt 6 more children with her new husband. Buck then bought a large old farmhouse in Bucks County and went on to write 70 books, including novels, collections of stories, poetry, and children’s literature. </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">After<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Good Earth</em>, she wrote<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Sons</em>, a tale of sons rising against their fathers as revolutionary winds swept through China. The book was viewed as a critical success; many, in fact, saw it as superior to<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Good Earth</em>. Several other novels in<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Good Earth</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>trilogy would follow. But after years of working and living in obscurity, Buck found her new found fame difficult to handle.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">As Peter J. Conn notes in his study on the author,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Biography</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(1998): “Pearl had decidedly mixed feelings about her new found fame. She had spent too many years in the shadows to feel comfortable in the light. More to the point, she mistrusted her own talent. Although she pretended to be indifferent to hostile opinion, she was sensitive to condescension that she suffered at the hands of the serious quarterlies and advanced taste makers.” </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">In a 1958 Mike Wallace television interview with the author, Wallace starts the questioning in true 1950s fashion by announcing, “The battle between the sexes is a major social problem.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">“Yes,” Pearl Buck answers. “Most women make their home their graves.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Wallace is perplexed, even annoyed at the comment.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">“It’s difficult to understand how women make their home their graves, “he says, to which Buck replies, “I think because they stop reading books that would enlarge their minds or their family’s minds.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> “It’s also difficult to be an American,” Buck adds, “We’re committed to loneliness.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> “I don’t get it,” Wallace confesses.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> “Well, you know, the old countries have a tradition of family and church support, so there’s less choices there. Americans don’t have traditional support systems that Europeans have. They live in a country with no boundaries and no patterns.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">When her autobiography,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">For Spacious Skies</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(1966), written in collaboration with Theodore F. Harris, was published, Buck appeared on the Merv Griffin Show and explained to the talk show host her feelings about Communism in China. Communism, she said, is “a curious impossible, impractical scheme of life; it’s not based on anything that’s sound psychologically….the Chinese are marvelous friends and frightful enemies.” </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Pearl Buck died in Vermont in 1973 from lung cancer although she is buried on the grounds of her estate, now the Pearl S. Buck Foundation, an organization that the author founded in 1964. </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">During my recent visit to the Bucks County estate I was excited to find Andre Gide’s Journal in the massive Buck home library. I also spotted books by Morris L. West and Sloan Wilson.</p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><p><br /></p>Thom Nickelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00933997449868301693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424128481306152244.post-73088831130798372932021-05-10T14:53:00.005-04:002021-05-10T15:02:03.198-04:00<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmhyphenhyphen8C1wMleepjY_lLD4iMDGRT5sLuaxB8bD3sK3rprFvrzNpN3Dq_UyHLcBcaV_EbHq-GXFG2h7oo4hEgMO9nNewE5Yor5mgj7TglLgfFV2aTgba9z04j80YTamumH3HHgAUxa2vJC8Jb/s320/71534882_123059515762287_4877105329348804608_n.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="320" height="641" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmhyphenhyphen8C1wMleepjY_lLD4iMDGRT5sLuaxB8bD3sK3rprFvrzNpN3Dq_UyHLcBcaV_EbHq-GXFG2h7oo4hEgMO9nNewE5Yor5mgj7TglLgfFV2aTgba9z04j80YTamumH3HHgAUxa2vJC8Jb/w640-h641/71534882_123059515762287_4877105329348804608_n.jpg" width="640" /></a></div> Rest in Peace/Memory Eternal Zachery T. Danberry (April 2021) <br /><p></p>Thom Nickelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00933997449868301693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424128481306152244.post-23875484556654989492021-05-10T14:42:00.005-04:002021-05-10T14:48:01.284-04:00Lincolon Steffens<div class="asset-author" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: "Open Sans",sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px;"><article class="clearfix card author card-author-d4c9c74e-4140-11eb-8558-1faec717065a" style="border-top-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392); border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px; border-top: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.098); box-sizing: border-box; display: block; margin-bottom: 20px; padding-top: 20px; position: inherit; 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color: #666666; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.4em; margin: 0px; text-shadow: none;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Photo: Lincoln Steffens Marker in Carmel California.</span></p></span><span class="credit" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #999999; display: block; font-size: 12px; margin-top: 5px; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><span class="tnt-byline" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Courtesy of Wikipedia.</span></span><span class="clearfix" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></span></figcaption></figure></div><div data-asset-uuid="249759c8-adb4-11eb-b26a-eba2a44750ac" id="asset-content" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: "Open Sans",sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="row" style="box-sizing: border-box; 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border-image: none; border-style: none; border-width: 0px; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; clip: rect(0px, 0px, 0px, 0px); height: 1px; margin: -1px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; position: absolute; width: 1px;">Save</span></a></li></ul><form action="https://www.phillypressreview.com/users/admin/list/" class="save-list-249759c8-adb4-11eb-b26a-eba2a44750ac-form save-asset-to-list" data-uuid="249759c8-adb4-11eb-b26a-eba2a44750ac" method="post" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></form></div><div class="asset-body has-fixed-share" data-subscription-required-class="asset-body" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 100px; overflow: hidden;"><div class="asset-content subscriber-premium" itemprop="articleBody" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Investigative journalist Lincoln Steffens (1866-1936) isn’t much remembered today, according to Kevin Baker of<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i style="box-sizing: border-box;">The New York Times</i><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>in 2011.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">The same thing, perhaps, can be written about Steffens in 2021, despite the reissuing of the author’s classic,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Shame of the Cities, and the Philosophy of Corruption and Reform</i>, by Cambridge Scholars Publishing last year.</p><div class="tncms-region-ads" id="tncms-region-ads-fixed-big-ad-top-asset" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="tnt-ads tnt-image-ad-wrapper" id="blox-ad-position-fixed-big-ad-top-asset1" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; margin: 0px auto 40px; max-width: 300px; min-height: 1px;"><a href="https://phillypressreview.com/tncms/tracking/bannerad/clicks/?rd=l.facebook.com&i=ros/fixed-big-ad-top-asset1/4e75a5f0-adbf-11eb-9d0c-2bfb78febfdf&r=http://allcitystorage.com" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #231f20; display: block; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><img alt="advertisement" src="https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/phillypressreview.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/bannerad/4/e7/4e75a5f0-adbf-11eb-9d0c-2bfb78febfdf/6092c851284e5.image.png" style="border-color: currentcolor; border-image: none; border-style: none; border-width: 0px; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; vertical-align: middle; width: 300px;" title="300x390 image ad" /></a></div></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">The Cambridge Scholars edition of Steffens’ work is edited, annotated and introduced by Professor H.G. Callaway, a Philadelphian who splits his time between the United States and Germany. Callaway’s books on American philosophy and intellectual history have earned him some international renown.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Why Lincoln Steffens?</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyusFNon4JauzgrsQvzYMrFbDgXV6jdl6lAPvRtAsmt9v09PiYLYNRoSD769cYL4tLIZmntDv2IdiQBjplWoyXJStHJHGNkCVrYMwlimeqEehMNgmAJWnpEetUiIt594UzLnXbdkDKtG-I/s419/JwinterE3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="411" data-original-width="419" height="393" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyusFNon4JauzgrsQvzYMrFbDgXV6jdl6lAPvRtAsmt9v09PiYLYNRoSD769cYL4tLIZmntDv2IdiQBjplWoyXJStHJHGNkCVrYMwlimeqEehMNgmAJWnpEetUiIt594UzLnXbdkDKtG-I/w400-h393/JwinterE3.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Callaway states in his<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Introduction</i><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>that the volume is an “attempt to better understand the social and political phenomenon of corruption generally.” Municipal corruption, after all, is not limited to Steffens’ time but can be viewed as an all persuasive force existing in every era that seeks to “change the form of government from one that is representative of the people to an oligarchy.” {Steffens’ words}.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Steffens was born in San Francisco but grew up in Sacramento, California. As the eldest of four children, he often clashed with the founder and headmaster of the Episcopal Day School that he attended as a boy. As a journalist, he was known as a muckraker who took on corruption and institutional dysfunction. America, he wrote, was the place of a Great Swindle, where corrupt money changers ruin all of its institutions.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Steffens covered the Mexican Revolution as a reporter and was enamored of the Soviet Communist Revolution.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">He was well liked, even by people who vehemently opposed his views. Teddy Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan, Lenin and Mussolini were among his journalistic contacts.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">“Lincoln Steffens was an original muckraker: part reporter, part civic investigator, part agitator, part reformer, and mostly crusader…. In today’s world, a guy like Steffens might be regarded by the status quo as an ‘enemy of the people,’ or cynically as a purveyor of ‘fake news,’ wrote<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Voices of Monterey Bay</i><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>reporter, Joe Livernois in 2017.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxDip-LSDrKpp9NtCAtvmVndKA9731bLvs8eCm5vWLHKSiA0fAl4Zwe8b5XCeR9LncC_dCT184n4pM5Am27Qj1ASBP4P9k9EU8KIMyJlcQ2YxdOPdId9LyqQHphx2GhF76Z5_gSWE-mnu1/s477/lincoln-steffens.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="477" data-original-width="350" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxDip-LSDrKpp9NtCAtvmVndKA9731bLvs8eCm5vWLHKSiA0fAl4Zwe8b5XCeR9LncC_dCT184n4pM5Am27Qj1ASBP4P9k9EU8KIMyJlcQ2YxdOPdId9LyqQHphx2GhF76Z5_gSWE-mnu1/w294-h400/lincoln-steffens.jpg" width="294" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Steffens advised fellow journalists to “Sit around the bars and drink, and pose, and pretend, all you want to, but in reality, deep down underneath, care like hell.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">One of his most famous sayings, “I have seen the future, and it works,” was a catch all phrase he used multiple times for various issues.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">H. G. Callaway’s<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i style="box-sizing: border-box;">Introduction</i><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>is a smoother read than Steffens’ work itself, which tends to antidotal and of a patchwork journalistic style that often makes for an awkward reading experience.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"><i style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Shame of the Cities</i><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>was compiled from a series of articles Steffens wrote for McClure’s Magazine. The cities Steffens covers are St. Louis, Minneapolis, Chicago, New York, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Although most of the corrupt municipalities he writes about are Republican, Steffens lets his readers know that corruption affects both political parties.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh84I2APv1_tGeNXdwWau9RVOIe-cXpnzW5i5whSC5uHQbockSm3S72MtvOxbw7Jnes7-AWT4DXG2SZs7O6k1ML7ew0f1f1u7vnkeg3ANQe3oVBJlC-lC2ZPX7SpyDd_0eWU3BrcDQR6LOr/s220/Lincoln_Steffens_historic_marker_in_Carmel%252C_California.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="165" data-original-width="220" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh84I2APv1_tGeNXdwWau9RVOIe-cXpnzW5i5whSC5uHQbockSm3S72MtvOxbw7Jnes7-AWT4DXG2SZs7O6k1ML7ew0f1f1u7vnkeg3ANQe3oVBJlC-lC2ZPX7SpyDd_0eWU3BrcDQR6LOr/w400-h300/Lincoln_Steffens_historic_marker_in_Carmel%252C_California.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">In writing about St. Louis, for instance, Steffens comments, “There was little difference between the two parties in the city; but the rascals that were in had been getting the greater share of the spoils, and the ‘outs’ wanted more than was given to them.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Steffens calls Philadelphia the most hopeless city in the nation. “But it was not till I got to Philadelphia that the possibilities of popular corruption were worked out to the limit of humiliating confession,” he writes.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">He equates Philadelphia with general civic corruption and an all powerful city machine that controls the mind of the average voter. This was true when Philadelphia was Republican, and it’s certainly true today when the city is unlikely to ever elect a Republican mayor barring a miracle of biblical proportions.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">“I cut twenty thousand words out of the Philadelphia article and yet I had not written half my facts,” Steffens states, adding, “I know a man who is making a history of the corrupt construction of the Philadelphia City Hall, in three volumes.” In a follow up sentence he then fairly concludes that no writer can put all the incidents of corruption of an American city into a book.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><div class="tncms-region-ads" id="tncms-region-ads-fixed-big-ad-middle-asset" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="tnt-ads tnt-image-ad-wrapper" id="blox-ad-position-fixed-big-ad-middle-asset1" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; margin: 0px auto 40px; max-width: 300px; min-height: 1px;"><a href="https://phillypressreview.com/tncms/tracking/bannerad/clicks/?rd=l.facebook.com&i=ros/fixed-big-ad-middle-asset1/25504640-8460-11eb-a60f-8ba6fa530abf&r=https://www.friendscentral.org/admission/admission-events" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #231f20; display: block; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><img alt="advertisement" src="https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/phillypressreview.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/bannerad/2/55/25504640-8460-11eb-a60f-8ba6fa530abf/60940f1a196e2.image.jpg" style="border-color: currentcolor; border-image: none; border-style: none; border-width: 0px; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; vertical-align: middle; width: 300px;" title="300x280 image ad" /></a></div></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">In concluding his two investigative pieces on Pittsburgh and Philadelphia for McClure’s, Steffens writes that “Pittsburgh may pull itself out of its disgrace,” but that other Pennsylvania city, Philadelphia, “is contented and seems hopeless.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Steffens keeps harping on the corruption in Philadelphia when he writes about other cities. In his October 1902 article entitled ‘Tweed Days in St. Louis,’ Steffens concludes that “[St. Louis] isn’t our worst governed city; Philadelphia is that.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">While Pittsburgh could not be said to be Pennsylvania’s most beautiful city in 1912 (when industry darkened its skies), it is certainly the state’s most beautiful city in 2021.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">With its mountains, three rivers and multi colored bridges forming a kind of OZ canopy around The Golden Triangle, Pittsburgh’s dazzling skyline rarely fails to impress. </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">In Steffens’ chapter on Pittsburgh, he cites the corruption surrounding the building of the cities many beautiful bridges yet avoids going into specifics. Steffens seems to have a soft spot for Pennsylvania’s western city although that does not prevent him from lashing out at it severely. “Pittsburgh has been described physically as ‘Hell with the lid off,’ politically it is hell with the lid on.’ I am not going to lift the lid,” he writes.</p><h1 style="box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: 36px; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.1; margin: 0px 0px 10px;"> </h1><h1 style="box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: 36px; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.1; margin: 0px 0px 10px;">“They are Scotch Presbyterians and Protestant Irish,” Steffens writes about Pittsburghers, apparently unmindful of the large Carpathian-Ruthenian population of Eastern Europeans that account for the large numbers of Eastern Catholic and Orthodox churches that mark the entrance to the city.</h1><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Steffens traces Pittsburgh’s corruption to the railroads while reminding the reader that the corruption rings in both Pittsburgh and Philadelphia form a direct link up to the corruption rings in Harrisburg.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">The corrupt party bosses and politicians that Steffens mentions in<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Shame of the Cities</i><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>are far too numerous to mention, but in every case he traces general municipal corruption back to big business and “the businessman.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">The businessman is for Steffens<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i style="box-sizing: border-box;">a devil out of hell.</i></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Ironically, Steffens ends his article on Pittsburgh by saying that the city itself is “a spectacle for American self-respect, and its sturdiness a promise for poor old Pennsylvania.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">The writer also has an occasional soft spot for Philadelphia, such as when he writes, “Philadelphia, has long enjoyed great and widely distributed prosperity; it is a city of homes; there is a dwelling house for every five persons, men, women, and children, of the population; and the people give one a sense of more leisure and repose than any community I ever dwelt in.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Philadelphia, he adds, “is surer that it as a ‘real aristocracy than any other place in the world, but its aristocrats with few exceptions, are in the ring, with it, or of no political use.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Steffens, on a roll, tells the reader that Philadelphians do not vote but are “disenfranchised.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">“The honest citizens of Philadelphia have no more rights at the polls than the Negroes down South. Nor do they fight very hard for this basic privilege.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Sounding weirdly contemporary, Steffens goes on record as saying that dead people vote in Philadelphia.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">“But many Philadelphians do not try to vote,” he adds. “They leave everything to the machine, and the machine casts their ballots for them.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">This is why Philadelphia is unlikely to have a Republican mayor in the near future. <br /></p></div></div></div></div></div><p> </p>Thom Nickelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00933997449868301693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424128481306152244.post-90819149235151959102021-04-24T11:46:00.003-04:002021-04-24T11:46:38.583-04:00Frank V. Nickels and Howard Hughes<div class="asset-masthead " style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; margin: 20px 0px 40px; orphans: auto; position: relative; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px;"><header class="asset-header" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block;"><h1 class="headline" itemprop="headline" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: 42px; font-weight: 400; line-height: 1.1; margin: 0px 100px 0px 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-family: 'Roboto Condensed', sans-serif; font-weight: 600;">City Safari – My grandfather and Howard Hughes</span></h1><div class="meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-right: 100px; margin-top: 20px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><ul class="list-inline" style="box-sizing: border-box; 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The occasion was the negotiation of land rights for the proposed building of Nazareth Hospital in Northeast Philadelphia.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">My grandfather, Frank V. Nickels was a Philadelphia architect of some note (his papers are archived at the Athenaeum of Philadelphia.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><div class="tncms-region-ads" id="tncms-region-ads-fixed-big-ad-top-asset" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="tnt-ads tnt-image-ad-wrapper" id="blox-ad-position-fixed-big-ad-top-asset1" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; margin: 0px auto 40px; max-width: 300px; min-height: 1px;"><a href="https://phillypressreview.com/tncms/tracking/bannerad/clicks/?rd=www.phillypressreview.com&i=ros/fixed-big-ad-top-asset1/132248ac-7915-11eb-9934-1786cbf5c68e&r=https://parentinfantcenter.org/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #231f20; display: block; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><img alt="advertisement" src="https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/phillypressreview.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/bannerad/1/32/132248ac-7915-11eb-9934-1786cbf5c68e/603a6ce2b0c48.image.jpg" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; vertical-align: middle; width: 300px;" title="300x206 image ad" /></a></div></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Because my grandfather was hired by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia to design Nazareth Hospital, he was asked to try to get an agreement of sale from the owner of the land. Without land rights, the hospital could not be built. </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">The owner of the land happened to be the 6’4” tall Hollywood playboy and movie producer,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bold;">Howard Hughes,</strong>who had made a name for himself in 1928 when his comedy, “<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Two Arabian Knights,”</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>won an Oscar. Hughes had also co-directed the 1930 film, “<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Hell’s Angels</em>,” a film about WWI combat pilots starring Jean Harlow. Hughes’ inherited family wealth enabled him to buy all the combat planes used in the film. A natural daredevil and pilot himself, Hughes took part in the filmed combat dog fights in which 3 pilots died. </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">As Hollywood’s most eligible bachelor, the handsome Hughes had had affairs with Katherine Hepburn, Ava Gardner, Joan Crawford, Rita Hayworth and many others. In later years, he had the habit of collecting beautiful women with movie star aspirations. It was his habit to put them up in apartments or small houses while paying their rent and daily expenses.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Initially Hughes may have shown a romantic interest in these women but over time this interest would wane. Hughes was content to call them once a month as he continued to send them checks, sometimes for years. Hughes was also attracted to male stars like Cary Grant and Randolph Scott but this part of his life was kept secret, given the tenor of the times.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> .</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">In 1939, two years after his meeting with my grandfather, he flew around the world and was honored with a ticker tape parade in New York City.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Let’s go back to 1937 when Hughes piloted his own plane to New York and then to Philadelphia’s Northeast Airport where my grandparents stood waiting for him on the tarmac.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">My grandmother, Pauline Clavey Nickels, a former Irish opera singer from Wilmington, was probably wearing one of her big hats, and no doubt Frank was dressed in his herringbone best.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">When Hughes arrived, pleasantries were probably exchanged, and then the group went off to a meeting near the grounds of the proposed hospital. What was said then can only be imagined. No doubt Frank and Pauline were a little star struck, especially when Hughes accepted Frank’s offer to go back to his home at 40 W. Albermarle Street in Lansdowne to have a look at the proposed hospital design.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">I wonder if the group had lunch on the way to my grandfather’s house. Did Pauline ask about Rita Hayworth, or did Hughes inquire about the large bust of Dante Alighieri on Frank’s mantelpiece? Did Hughes let it slip that in two years he planned an around- the- world solo flight? What I do know is that both Howard Hughes and Frank Nickels were eccentrics, so I’m sure there was an instant bond.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Frank, one of four brothers and a sister, was born in 1891 to William Bartholomew and Dorothy G. Nickels (nee Belz) of Roxborough. As a young man, he was already setting his own style: he had a penchant for getting his shirts dry cleaned and then carrying them on hangers on various local trolleys. In 1914, he graduated from Drexel with a diploma in architecture and after that he established architectural offices in Center City at 15 S. 21<sup style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 12px; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">st</sup><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Street, 225 S. Sydenham Street and later in the Land Title Building. His concentration was industrial and commercial projects, as well as schools and churches for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and in the Reading area.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Several years ago, I had an opportunity to tour two of his buildings, 1521 Spruce Street and the Frances Plaza Apartments at19th and Lombard Streets.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">In the book,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Philadelphia: A 300 Year History</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>(1982), author/editor Russell F. Weigley documents the history of the Frances Plaza Apartments, now demolished. The apartments were constructed in the 1940s by Pearl and Benjamin Mason who won $150K in a sweepstakes. The apartments were built as affordable housing for African Americans. </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">"[T]he Masons invested some $80,000 of their winnings in building the Frances Plaza Apartments at Nineteenth and Lombard Streets. Twenty-eight tenements were bought around that corner... Frank V. Nickels, architect, designed a three-story, cream-colored brick apartment house, with court, play space, and gymnasium so arranged that about 40 percent of the land remained open... The Frances Plaza Apartments are now called Rittenhouse Village [before demolition] and the play space is a parking area."</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">For many years Frank partnered with architect C.J. Mitchell, whose papers are also archived at the Athenaeum. Frank split with Mitchell when the latter challenged him in a bid to design a school for Saint Philomena School in Lansdowne. Somebody who knew grandfather told me that he never spoke to C.J. Mitchell again. </p><div class="tncms-region-ads" id="tncms-region-ads-fixed-big-ad-middle-asset" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="tnt-ads tnt-image-ad-wrapper" id="blox-ad-position-fixed-big-ad-middle-asset1" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; margin: 0px auto 40px; max-width: 300px; min-height: 1px;"><a href="https://phillypressreview.com/tncms/tracking/bannerad/clicks/?rd=www.phillypressreview.com&i=ros/fixed-big-ad-middle-asset1/e161bb54-7914-11eb-91d0-2b1ee8ff4a1d&r=http://allcitystorage.com" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #231f20; display: block; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><img alt="advertisement" src="https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/phillypressreview.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/bannerad/e/16/e161bb54-7914-11eb-91d0-2b1ee8ff4a1d/603a6c8f3de3c.image.jpg" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; vertical-align: middle; width: 300px;" title="300x308 image ad" /></a></div></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Frank and Pauline Nickels raised three children, Frank, Thomas C (my father), and Joan in the Albemarle mansion. Frank’s bonsai garden behind the mansion was so famous that local Cub Scout Packs would organize tours of the space.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Both Hughes and Nickels were basically shy men with loner tendencies. My grandfather was not a joiner. As far as I know he never was a member of the Philadelphia AIA or the “must do” T Square Club, unlike CJ Mitchell who was a member of both.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Both men had a difficult time controlling their tempers.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">When grandfather and Hughes met at 40 W. Albermarle Street it’s possible that they reviewed the Nazareth plans in the dining room at the long table for 16 situated under a chandelier. Grandfather’s drafting room was on the second floor overlooking the bonsai garden and the carriage house, so perhaps he and Hughes retired there.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">“Frank, I like your plans for Nazareth, I really do,” I can imagine Hughes saying. “The design is modern with a touch of art deco and I like the way the building meets the sky. There’s something about your design that reminds me of aviation. I’ll tell you what, Frank. I’m going to give the Archdiocese of Philadelphia this land for free. You can tell them that down at the Chancery…Right after this I am going to fly off to one of my kept women on the west coast.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Yes, Hughes admired the hospital plans so much he gifted the land to the Archdiocese at zero cost. Perhaps they sealed the deal with a drink, a toast of port or a round of straight up Manhattans whipped up by Pauline at the cocktail bar.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Grandfather must have told this story at Sunday dinner parties or at Thanksgiving and Christmas years after Hughes had become a recluse, living as a hermit on top of the Desert Inn Hotel Casino in Las Vegas or jetting around the world to hole up in other darkened hotel rooms with his ten inch long fingernails, and long gray hair and beard resembling the elderly monks on Mt. Athos. </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">What is amazing to me, however, is that not long after Hughes’ visit to 40 West he opened the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. But before that, in 1935, he designed the H1 Silver Bullet, the world’s fastest racing airplane noted for its sleek modern look. As I checked out images of the H1, I couldn’t help but think how the plane eerily reminded me of Nazareth Hospital. How can a plane remind anyone of a hospital?</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">I can only conclude by saying that the plane had a sleek modern look that conjured up the “feeling” of art deco.</p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><p> </p>Thom Nickelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00933997449868301693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424128481306152244.post-6856307150877105332021-04-24T11:42:00.003-04:002021-04-24T11:43:42.799-04:00AIDS and COVID<div class="asset-masthead " style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; margin: 20px 0px 40px; orphans: auto; position: relative; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px;"><header class="asset-header" style="box-sizing: border-box; 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box-sizing: border-box; clip: rect(0px 0px 0px 0px); height: 1px; margin: -1px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; position: absolute; width: 1px;">Save</span></a></li></ul><form action="https://www.phillypressreview.com/users/admin/list/" class="save-list-0053b2a2-9d68-11eb-adbf-bbcb98d68367-form save-asset-to-list" data-uuid="0053b2a2-9d68-11eb-adbf-bbcb98d68367" method="post" style="box-sizing: border-box;"></form></div><div class="asset-body has-fixed-share" data-subscription-required-class="asset-body" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 100px; overflow: hidden;"><div class="asset-content subscriber-premium" itemprop="articleBody" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Now that COVID-19 is slowly falling victim to “the vaccine,” it might be appropriate to reivsit the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s. </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">When AIDS exploded onto the scene in 1981-82, times were so frightening I sometimes wished that I could fall asleep and then, like Rip Van Winkle, wake up when it was all over. </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">I first heard of AIDS on a street in Center City from Henri, an RN, who told me, “They just found out that [gay] sex causes the brain to rot.” The look in his eyes was one of sheer terror as he explained that he had read about the new disease in<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The New England Journal of Medicine.</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>This was some weeks before the iconic<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">New York Times</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>article about a strange gay cancer. </p><div class="tncms-region-ads" id="tncms-region-ads-fixed-big-ad-top-asset" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="tnt-ads tnt-image-ad-wrapper" id="blox-ad-position-fixed-big-ad-top-asset1" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; margin: 0px auto 40px; max-width: 300px; min-height: 1px;"><a href="https://phillypressreview.com/tncms/tracking/bannerad/clicks/?rd=www.phillypressreview.com&i=ros/fixed-big-ad-top-asset1/132248ac-7915-11eb-9934-1786cbf5c68e&r=https://parentinfantcenter.org/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #231f20; display: block; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><img alt="advertisement" src="https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/phillypressreview.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/bannerad/1/32/132248ac-7915-11eb-9934-1786cbf5c68e/603a6ce2b0c48.image.jpg" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; vertical-align: middle; width: 300px;" title="300x206 image ad" /></a></div></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Naturally I assumed that Henri was playing me for a fool.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">My friend, Steve McPartland, was in his mid-twenties and on the verge of what probably would have been a successful ice skaing carrer when he broke his back on the ice. I met Steve while working at Chester County Hospital while living in West Chester, Pennsylvania. Not many years later, Steve became one of the first men in Philadelphia to contract AIDS. Reality hit home in a big way for me when I saw a picture of him in a hospital bed on the front page of the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Philadelphia Gay News.</em></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">The year was 1983, well before there was a test to detect the virus or even a drug to ward off secondary infections of the immune system. It took Steve about two years to die. Although he eventually left the hospital, he became a common sight on the streets of Center City, hobbling along on his crutches, an AIDS buddy by his side. His slow demise was difficult to process. I last saw him on Spruce Street one summer still on crutches eating a vanilla ice cream cone.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> After Steve McPartland’s death, the names of the sick and deceased in the gay press seemed to quadruple. We were now in the grip of a plague, first known as Gay Cancer, then GRID (Gay Related Immune Defiency), and finally AIDS.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Albert Camus’ novel<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Plague</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>had nothing on this thing. A disease caused by sex that “eats the brain” and that puts ugly marks on the body was now causing some people to suggest that AIDS patients be quaranteened.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">There were moments when many thought that gay men would be forced into medical camps.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Fast forward to 2012, namely to a middle row seat on a U.S. Airways flight from Philadelphia to San Fransciso. I was thinking of Steve McPartland while reviewing a program booklet entitle<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Evolution of HIV/AIDS Therapies</em>, a short panel disccusion due to take place at the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation in Palo Alto, California. The seminar focused on the progress achieved in HIV therapies, as well as the global challenges still to be met.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">I went to cover the event as a journalist. The trip got me thinking of another friend who died of AIDS, Dr. William H. Miller, of Tacoma, Washington who was a Harvard med student when I met him one night in the Cambridge Common.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Bill Miller hailed from Ashville, North Carolina, birthplace of American novelist Thomas Wolfe, and attended Harvard Med with the aim of going into general practice. We were both 20 years old old.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">In those days Bill Miller talked about what it was like to be a Harvard med student, like how his personal lab dissection shark fell from a shelf into his lunch, ruining a good Liverwrust sandwich. Sometime later, Miller left for Washington state to do his residency program. I never saw him again although we kept in touch through letters and postcards. He’d send me pictures of his exotic travels to Vienna, Paris, or Central America. After that we lost touch, not an unusual situation when friends take divergent life paths.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">But years later, in a Hitchockian twist, I met an elderly Seattle physican through a friend of a friend and on a whim, asked this physician if he had ever heard of the North Carolina-born doctor. The Seattle physician told me that he’d been a friend of Dr. Miller’s for many years, and had even gone to a party or two at Bill’s Washington state forest cabin. Then he told me that Miller had died of AIDS some nine years before. </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">I knew there would be more memories once I was front and center at the Moore Foundation to hear Gregg H. Alton and Norbert W. Bischofberger, both from Gilead Sciences, and Sir Richard G.A. Feachem and Paul A. Volberding, from the University of California..</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">At the conference, Volberding jolted the audience with recollections about walking around San Francisco General Hospital in the early days and seeing the first person with Kaposi Sarcoma (KS).</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> “It was literally the start of the epidemic,” he said. “It took a while before we realized it was an infectious disease, but once we did there was terror because we didn’t know how it was transmitted. So there was a sense of personal risk in dealing with the patients.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">It was a common pratice for men with AIDS to cover their KS spots with Clearasil tubes or Cover Girl maleup sticks but often the blemish scabs were so pronounced, it was impossible to cover them.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">In the gamey world of pornographic films of the period, the reality of AIDS hit hard: Popular actor Eric Stryker, for instance, failed to hide the KS spots on his body despite a heavy application of makeup. Watching these old films, the effect is haunting and creepy. Viral infections like pneumonia, herpes and KS were secondary infections and they could only be treated with drugs that addresed these secondary symptons, but treating the immune system as a whole went unattended, meaning that the infections came back until they killed the patient.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">KS was particularly devastating in that it was external, a blatant Scarlet Letter that told the world that you had the plague. Prior to AIDS, KS was mostly a skin condition seen in the very old Eastern European or Mediteraran men. First described in 1872 by a Hungarian dermatologist named Moritz Kaposi, non-AIDS related KS was seen as being caused or affected by infrequent bathing, or as a condition that hit people with a history of asthma and allergies. To date, AIDS-related KS is rarely seen in children and is most prominent in Africa and other underdeveloped countries. </p><div class="tncms-region-ads" id="tncms-region-ads-fixed-big-ad-middle-asset" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div class="tnt-ads tnt-image-ad-wrapper" id="blox-ad-position-fixed-big-ad-middle-asset1" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; margin: 0px auto 40px; max-width: 300px; min-height: 1px;"><a href="https://phillypressreview.com/tncms/tracking/bannerad/clicks/?rd=www.phillypressreview.com&i=ros/fixed-big-ad-middle-asset1/e161bb54-7914-11eb-91d0-2b1ee8ff4a1d&r=http://allcitystorage.com" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #231f20; display: block; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><img alt="advertisement" src="https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/phillypressreview.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/bannerad/e/16/e161bb54-7914-11eb-91d0-2b1ee8ff4a1d/603a6c8f3de3c.image.jpg" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; vertical-align: middle; width: 300px;" title="300x308 image ad" /></a></div></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">In the early days of the epidemic, health paranoia affected familes and destroyed relationships. In Philadelphia and elsewhere, many heterosexual couples stopped inviting their gay friends to dinner, while some stopped seeing them altogether. Relatives stopped kissing their gay sons or siblings on the mouth; some even had worried looks on their faces when they kissed them on the cheeks, as if the virus hibernated in pores or blew out of the nostrils in the nose.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">City dentists began to be wary of their gay patients and imagined weight loss when there was none. “You look awfully thin,” my Center City dentist at the time said to me. “Are you sure you are alright? Are you sure? Really?” This Q and A went on for several years. Many times, I felt he wanted me to say, “No, I am not alright,” so that he could tell me to go find another dentist. Because relatives and straight friends were always imagining weight loss when there was none, even these simple questions led to nights of unnecessary worry and panic because of the ‘What If’ factor. </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Discrimination and fear even resched into the corridors of hospitals, especially Ward 54 in San Francisco General, the so called AIDS wing, where so many young men died. Volberding recalled: </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">“We heard horrible stories of patients who had to get up and change</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">their own beds during the night, the night sweats, and would</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">have to go beg for Tylenol from the nursing station.</p><div class="inline-asset inline-image layout-vertical subscriber-hide tnt-inline-asset tnt-inline-relcontent tnt-inline-image tnt-inline-relation-child tnt-inline-presentation-default tnt-inline-alignment-default tnt-inline-width-default" style="box-sizing: border-box; clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 30px; margin-left: 30px; margin-right: auto; width: 160.078px;"><figure class="photo layout-vertical hover-expand letterbox-style-default" style="box-sizing: border-box; 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box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 10px;"><div itemprop="image" itemscope="" itemtype="https://schema.org/ImageObject" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><img alt="City Safari: The Covid vaccine brings back memories of the struggle for the treatment of AIDS 2" class="img-responsive full default lazyautosizes lazyloaded" data-sizes="auto" data-srcset="https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/phillypressreview.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/7/59/759d6e9a-9d68-11eb-aaa4-77895c50f016/60775eb6bdfc6.image.jpg?resize=150%2C240 150w, https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/phillypressreview.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/7/59/759d6e9a-9d68-11eb-aaa4-77895c50f016/60775eb6bdfc6.image.jpg?resize=200%2C320 200w, https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/phillypressreview.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/7/59/759d6e9a-9d68-11eb-aaa4-77895c50f016/60775eb6bdfc6.image.jpg?resize=225%2C360 225w, https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/phillypressreview.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/7/59/759d6e9a-9d68-11eb-aaa4-77895c50f016/60775eb6bdfc6.image.jpg?resize=300%2C480 300w, https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/phillypressreview.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/7/59/759d6e9a-9d68-11eb-aaa4-77895c50f016/60775eb6bdfc6.image.jpg?resize=400%2C640 400w, https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/phillypressreview.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/7/59/759d6e9a-9d68-11eb-aaa4-77895c50f016/60775eb6bdfc6.image.jpg?resize=540%2C864 540w, https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/phillypressreview.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/7/59/759d6e9a-9d68-11eb-aaa4-77895c50f016/60775eb6bdfc6.image.jpg?resize=640%2C1024 640w, https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/phillypressreview.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/7/59/759d6e9a-9d68-11eb-aaa4-77895c50f016/60775eb6bdfc6.image.jpg?resize=750%2C1200 750w, https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/phillypressreview.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/7/59/759d6e9a-9d68-11eb-aaa4-77895c50f016/60775eb6bdfc6.image.jpg?resize=850%2C1360 990w" height="1360" src="data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAQAAAADCAQAAAAe/WZNAAAAEElEQVR42mM8U88ABowYDABAxQPltt5zqAAAAABJRU5ErkJggg==" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; height: auto; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle; width: 160.078px;" width="850" /></div></div></figure></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> “People went blind,” Volberding continued, “and were unable to care for themselves, while caught in the middle was the social issue and the fact that they were gay and families would often descend on the deathbed and try to take over the care from the lover.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Steve McPartland died before the discovery of AZT in 1987, even if AZT was no panacea but a drug with a host of unwanted toxic side effects. “AZT was a troubled introduction,” Volberding said, “it had to be given 4 hours around the clock.” </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">AZT, in fact, was developed by Burroughs Wellcome, a British Pharmaceutical firm, from on old compund they had sitting around on their shelves. AZT was developed in 1964 from herring-sperm extract as a possible cancer treatment but was quickly discounted as too toxic. But it was given new life when it was packaged as a drug that would help delay the onset of AIDS in healthy people infected with the virus. When this happened, the Burroughs Wellcome stock surged to the heavens, in effect capturing the entire scientific community so that there were no scientists left to explore the possibility of other drug treatments. AZT at that time was the most expensive prescription drug manufactured, and the campaign supporting its useage was the biggest government medical research project in history. The drug itself was referred to by one AIDS activist, comedian Michael Callen, as “Drano in pill form.” Patients who took AZT had to have weekly blood transfusions and suffered from nausea and insominia while their bodies wasted away to skin and bones.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">When British scientists discovered that AZT could only provide 6 months of benefits before the treatment backfired and started killing the patient, the information was not only ignored by the American press but AZT continued to be encouraged by a government appointed physician, Margaret Fischl, who urged the 650,000 Americans infected with HIV to continue taking the drug despite yet another finding: a National Cancer Institute report that stated that at least one half of the people who had taken AZT for 3 years could expect to develop an aggressive form of lymphoma, a deadly cancer. According to an article in<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Miami Herald</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>in 1990, AIDS activists were onto the Burroughs-Wellcome stranglehold on the development of new AIDS drugs early in the game, and began calling Fischl a murderer. For years Fischl’s hospital answering machine was flooded with messages from familes of the deceased accusing her of killing their sons. </p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">Panel member Paul Volberding worked with Dr. Fischl at this time, and spoke out in defense of AZT then on a number of occasions. This fact was not mentioned or alluded to at the conference, although Volberding defended his early support of AZT.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">“I remember how the world changed when AZT arrived,” he said in the 1990s. “It was a potentially toxic drug, but it brought the first real light of hope back into people’s eyes. It had demonstrable activity against HIV, and, most important, some AIDS patients who took AZT actually got better.”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> Many died, however, causing one playwright activist, Larry Kramer, who died in May 2020 to write the following 1988 open letter to Dr. Anthony Fauci, an early proponent of AZT:</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;"> “…Anthony Fauci, you are a murderer and should not be the guest of honor at any event that reflects on the past decade of the AIDS crisis. Your refusal to hear the screams of AIDS activists early in the crisis resulted in the deaths</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">of thousands of Queers….”</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">1996 saw the first large trials of triple therapy, namely Protease Inhibitors being combined with various side drugs, that turned the disease around. These were the infamous cocktail drugs, sometimes amounting to thirty pills a day.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">For many, like Steve McPartland and novelist Paul Monette (whom I interviewed by phone as he lay dying of AIDS in his home in Los Angeles), this development came too late.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-size: 16px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px 0px 24px;">But thanks largely to ACT UP, the pharmaceutical world was forced out of its apathetic slumber. Steve McPartland and Paul Monette would be shocked, were they able to come back to life today, on hearing Volberding say how manageable the disease has become: “With my patients now who are motivated and take the drug, it is as easy to treat as hypertension.”</p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><p> </p>Thom Nickelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00933997449868301693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5424128481306152244.post-30989960578288492572021-04-12T19:23:00.003-04:002021-04-12T19:23:58.777-04:00From Phindie: Religious Cults in Philadelphia <header class="entry-header" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #484848; display: block; font-family: Lato, 'Helvetica Neue', helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 22.995px; orphans: auto; padding-bottom: 5px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="entry-meta" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #949494; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.2px; line-height: 1.666; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="cats-links" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #999999; display: inline-block; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 10px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a class="cl-17899" href="http://phindie.com/category/culture/" style="border-color: initial; border-style: solid; border-width: 0px 0px 2px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #949494; cursor: pointer; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.2px; line-height: 1.666; margin: 0px 6px 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 2px; text-decoration: none; text-transform: uppercase; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: color; transition-timing-function: linear; vertical-align: baseline;">CULTURE</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a class="cl-5530" href="http://phindie.com/category/literature/" style="border-color: initial; border-style: solid; border-width: 0px 0px 2px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #949494; cursor: pointer; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.2px; line-height: 1.666; margin: 0px 6px 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 2px; text-decoration: none; text-transform: uppercase; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: color; transition-timing-function: linear; vertical-align: baseline;">LITERATURE</a></span></div><h1 class="entry-title" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 22px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 600; line-height: 1.233; margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Religious Cults in Philadelphia: Interview with author Thom Nickels</h1><div class="entry-meta" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #949494; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.2px; line-height: 1.666; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="author vcard" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #999999; display: block; float: left; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 15px 10px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; visibility: visible;"><a href="http://phindie.com/author/christophermunden/" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #949494; cursor: pointer; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.2px; line-height: 1.666; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: color; transition-timing-function: linear; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Religious Cults in Philadelphia: Interview with author Thom Nickels"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Christopher Munden</a></span><span class="posted-on" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #999999; display: inline-block; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 15px 10px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://phindie.com/22306-religious-cults-in-philadelphia-interview-with-author-thom-nickels/" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #949494; cursor: pointer; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.2px; line-height: 1.666; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: color; transition-timing-function: linear; vertical-align: baseline;" title="March 30, 2021"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>March 30, 2021</a></span></div></header><div class="entry-content" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #484848; display: block; font-family: Lato, 'Helvetica Neue', helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 22.995px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; orphans: auto; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px;"><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://phindie.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/philadelphia-religious-cults-e1617116396537.jpg" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4780b5; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: underline; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: color; transition-timing-function: linear; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" class="alignright wp-image-22308 size-medium" height="300" src="http://phindie.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/philadelphia-religious-cults-199x300.jpg" style="border: 0px none; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; float: right; height: auto; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: 20px; margin-top: 20px; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: top;" width="199" /></a>Religious cults have marked every society throughout history, and Philadelphia has seen its share of peculiar groups. The city’s streets have seen such charismatic figures as Father Divine of the Peace Mission Movement, Anton Szandor LaVey of the Church of the Process, and Madame Blavatsky’s 19th-century Theosophical Society. In a new book, culture writer and sometime Phindie contributor Thom Nickels considers the history of religious cults in Philadelphia. We talked to Thom about<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">From Mother Divine to the Corner Swami</em>, now available from<a href="https://www.through-time.com/products/from-mother-divine-to-the-corner-swami-religious-cults-in-philadelphia" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4780b5; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: underline; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: color; transition-timing-function: linear; vertical-align: baseline;">America Through Time</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>publishers.</p><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 400; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Phindie:</strong><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What inspired you to write this book? </strong></em></span></p><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Thom Nickels</strong>:<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 400; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I was partially inspired by the thought: If all religions are true, then there’s no true religion at all: Belief is just a sliding scale of subjectivity. As a young boy growing up Roman Catholic and going to Mass, I often wondered what if I had been born Protestant, Hindu, or Muslim. Would I have been just as convinced of the truth of my birthright faith as I was as a Catholic? I began to study the roots of various religions. I became a fervent agnostic at 19 but had a breakthrough experience at 23 which caused me to reconnect with my Catholic roots (though I later became Russian Orthodox).</span></p><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 400; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What’s always fascinated me is how people fill the spiritual gap in their lives after turning away from organized religion, since work and career can only do so much. </span></p><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 400; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Phindie:<em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>How do you define a cult? What do you see as the line between religion and religious cult? </em></strong></span></p><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Thom Nickels</strong>: I<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 400; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">n some circles of academia, the word ‘cult’ is never used. Instead, we hear terms like “new religious movement,” a cumbersome phrase that—thank God—has never taken off. I’d define a cult as an organization of followers that disband or die out when their leader dies, whereas in an established church, etc., a new leader—pope, bishop, rabbi—is elected or appointed. Cults harbor absolute authoritarianism, so forget about critical inquiry. A cult encourages unreasonable fears about the outside world. Financial records are also never revealed, and followers who leave are considered evil or in some instances tracked down and harassed, as was the case in Scientology until recently. The leader in a cult has ultimate “personal” authority which goes far beyond the abstract institutional power of a bishop in a church. Jim Jones of Jonestown infamy, for instance, would go up to his many male and female followers and tell them that they were being called to offer their bodies to him in a physical union. And everybody obeyed, even the most heterosexual of men.</span></p><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 400; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Phindie:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Do you think there’s something about Philadelphia that attracts cults?</em></strong></span></p><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Thom Nickels</strong>:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 400; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">William Penn’s emphasis on religious freedom made for a wide playing field in Philadelphia. Madame Blavatsky, called “the great Russian bear,” smoked 200 cigarettes a day and lived in a brownstone at 3420 Sansom Street (now the White Dog Café). In 1874, there were some 300 mediums in the city. Many belonged to different branches of Theosophy and most advocated strict vegetarianism.</span></p><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 400; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Looking back to the 1970s and 80s, Philadelphia had a large New Age movement with magazines like<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic;">New Frontier</i>, Garland of Letters Bookstore, crystals, Reiki, meditation, yoga, and finding a guru who spoke<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic;">your truth</i>. There was the Church of the Process in the 1970s whose members wore long capes and handed out satanic info-leaflets in Suburban Station. I remember a tiny spiritualist church on South Broad Street. </span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 400; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">At 12</span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 400; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">th</span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 400; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>and Locust there was Polly’s Spinning Wheel Restaurant that served mediocre food but with each meal you got a session with a psychic reader. The place was packed with Center City office workers and CEOs.</span></p><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 400; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In the 1980s and 1990s Philadelphia was also sprawling with quasi cults like EST and Lifespring, so-called consciousness-raising movements. EST and Lifespring “missionaries” would go into bars and clubs and make dates with people but instead of going out to dinner, you went to an introductory course where you were encouraged to sign up and open your wallet</span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 400; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">. </span></p><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 400; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Phindie:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Was there something that surprised you when researching it? </em></strong></span></p><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Thom Nickels</strong>:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 400; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I was able to explore the life of Swami Virato, publisher of Philadelphia’s<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">New Frontier</em><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>magazine in the 1980s and early 1990s. Virato was initiated as a guru by the famous Osho Bhagwan Shree Rajmeesh. Virato was all about tantric sex, love, celebration, and humor. “Tantra doesn’t tell you to control your sexual urges to reach God,” Virato said, “but rather the opposite…” Virato lived on South Street but left Philadelphia because he felt it was becoming overcrowded. Virato hated crack smokers and he made a controversial statement in the 1980s that “AIDS was a good method of population control.” </span></p><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 400; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Phindie:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Can you share an interesting anecdote or tidbit you found in your research?</em></strong></span></p><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 400; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Thom Nickels</strong>:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 400; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">My research into the life of Father and Mother Divine of the Peace Mission Movement led me to interview the adopted son of Father Divine, Tommy Garcia, of Las Vegas, Nevada. It was Garcia who told me that Father Divine took him aside one day and told him that he was not really God but to “let the people believe what they wanted to believe.” </span></p><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 400; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Phindie:</strong><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Was there something you saw or thought about recently that made now a good time to write it? </strong></em></span></p><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 400; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Thom Nickels</strong>: </span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 400; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">As the times become increasingly secular, the national obsession with politics keeps growing. Politics for many people has become a kind of orthodox religion—with cultish overtones. </span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 400; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But, really, a cult can be anything now; it can even be a manner of dress and “feeling,” such as living in Powelton Village or Mt. Airy. Avid pitbull lovers can even have a cultish adherence to the breed. Everything, it seems, is about branding now.</span></p><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: 700; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Phindie:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Thanks Thom!</em></strong></p><p style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Purchase the book from<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="https://www.through-time.com/products/from-mother-divine-to-the-corner-swami-religious-cults-in-philadelphia" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4780b5; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: underline; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: color; transition-timing-function: linear; vertical-align: baseline;">America Through Time</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>and other online stores.</p></div><p> </p>Thom Nickelshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00933997449868301693noreply@blogger.com