People in the Street, not Historians and Politcans, Saved DREAM GARDEN

Maxfield Parrish and Dream Garden: Art, Curses, Love and Politics Edward Bok Weekly Press • Wed, Apr 23, 2014 By Thom Nickels Contributing Writer Recently, I gave a talk at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Arts on the history of Philadelphia’s famous mural, Dream Garden, located in the lobby of the Curtis Building on Washington Square. The story is a fascinating one. The story begins with a man named Edward Bok. In 1887, Bok became an advertising manager at Scribner’s Magazine. Two years later, he was at the Curtis Building on Philadelphia’s Washington Square as editor of the Ladies’ Home Journal. Bok transformed the magazine from a fluffy woman’s magazine into a best-selling publication that campaigned for women’s suffrage, pacifism, and the protection of the environment. Because Bok believed that good art should find a place in public buildings, he asked Cyrus Curtis of Curtis Publishing if he would include a mural in what was then the new Curtis building. Bok wasn’t thinking of the lobby, at least not yet, but of the large public dining room on the building’s top floor. He hired Fred Maxfield Parrish to paint a series of seventeen panels between the windows there. The five year long project resulted in panels depicting a series of gardens with youths and maidens frolicking in colorful costumes. Bok then turned his attention to a large blank white wall in the lobby of the Curtis Building. The wall measured over one thousand square feet. The space seemed to call for a mural, much the same way that many outdoor spaces today call to Jane Golden and the Mural Arts Project. Bok wanted to find another artist, and rather than re-employ Parrish, which would have been the logical thing to do, he looked elsewhere, as if trying to find someone better. He traveled to London and visited with English artist Edwin A. Abbey. Although Abbey was working on a project for the capitol building in Harrisburg, the two men struck a deal. Abbey was given the okay to paint anything he wanted to paint for the Curtis Center. Abbey’s idea was a theme based on “The Grove of Academe,” with Plato and his disciples lounging around in philosophical ecstasy. Bok returned to America, but the very day that Abbey started the project in London, he fell over dead, as if cursed by a competing artist’s voodoo spell. Bok then went on a talent scout hunt and found a Wilmington artist named Howard Pyle. Pyle was a good choice because he also happened to know a lot about Plato. But the hoped for connection never came about because when Bok tried to telephone the artist at his Wilmington home, he was told that Pyle had just died an hour earlier while traveling in Italy. Sometimes life is like that, unpredictable, cruel and only sometimes fair. When a third artist, Boutet de Monvel, a famous decorative master, agreed to do the project, Bok invited Monvel to Philadelphia to inspect the space at the Curtis building but almost immediately after arrangements were made, Monvel died in Paris. Now it was time for Bok, who was beginning to feel cursed, to take stock. He started to think collectively. He asked six of the leading mural artists in the county to submit a full color mural proposal on any subject of their choosing. The six anonymous submissions were then submitted and analyzed by a panel of judges. But this time the curse manifested itself in the form of six blatant rejections. He then remembered a glass mosaic curtain by Louis C. Tiffany he’d once seen in Mexico City’s Municipal Theatre. He recalled the look of favrile glass set in cement and how that produced a marvelous luminosity. Bok contacted Tiffany and got him to agree to a partnership but they still needed an artist to provide the preliminary sketch. Bok went back to Parrish and asked him to come up with a sketch for Tiffany despite the fact that Parrish had never worked with glass or mosaics. Parrish’s preliminary drawing was approved. Six months of planning and thirty skilled artisans and over one million pieces of glass later, Dream Garden was given a New York exhibition where it was viewed by over seven thousand people. Art critics at the time were thrilled: they said the mural went way beyond the limited expression of a painted canvass. It took six months for the mural to be disassembled in New York and then reassembled in Philadelphia. Parrish was born in 1870 in Maryland into a family of Quaker physicians. He went to Haverford College but then transferred to PAFA in 1892. In 1894, he got his first commission to paint the Old King Cole mural in the new Mask and Whig Club. After that, success came to him easily. Once he became a seasoned artist he called himself “a mechanic who loved to paint.” His first magazine cover illustration commission was in 1895, and from then on it was a roller coaster ride. A passion for gardening caused Parrish to insist that a reflecting pool be placed in front of Dream Garden when it was installed in the Curtis Center. His idolization of youth in Italianate landscape settings seemed to reflect aspects of his romantic life. He had two love affairs of note, both with much younger women, while maintaining his status of a married man. Sue Lewin was a 16 year old farm girl when Parrish and his wife employed her to look after their two children. Parrish was 32 or 33 at the time, an age difference that in today’s world would almost certainly catapult his name into a scandalous Philly.com breaking news headline. Lewin became Parrish’s model, but she was no random castaway. A journalist once asked Lewin if there was something to her association with the artist and she said, “I’ll have you know that Mr. Parrish has never seen my bare knee.” Sometimes political white lies are necessary, because the exact opposite of this proved to be true when, sometime after both their deaths, workers in Parrish’s Plainfield, New Hampshire home found revealing photos Parrish had taken of Lewin. Lewin remained with Parrish until his 90th birthday when she asked him to marry her. When he refused to do that, Lewin went off and married somebody else. Another love, Nancy Roelker, was just 21 years old when she met the 66 year old Parrish in 1936. Parrish’s letters to Roelker survive, but Parrish destroyed Nancy’s letters to him, fearing a scandal. In the early 20th century, almost every home in America had a Maxfield Parrish print. Parrish’s work saturated the market. He was Andy Warhol before there was an Andy Warhol. He did covers for Life, Collier’s, and Harper’s Weekly Magazines, posters and ads for Hires Root Beer and General Electric. He was commissioned to do murals for office buildings and hotels. In a way, his work—canvasses depicting eternal blue skies—reflected the Age of Innocence, although his popularity began to decline in the 1930s. And it really sunk after WW II. In the beginning of the 20th century, he was as popular as Van Gogh is today. After WW II, American art began to be noticed on the world stage, and Parrish became known as mainly an illustrator, banished by art critics to second fiddle status. Norman Rockwell, who once had a sustained artistic legacy and even a museum near Washington Square, suffered a similar fate—Rockwell, in fact, considered Parrish to be an artistic mentor. Until the summer of 1998, Dream Garden rested comfortably in the lobby of the Curtis Building, attracting tens of thousands of visitors who would view it without fanfare and then shuffle off to view Independence Hall or the Liberty Bell. It was just one more nice Philly attraction. Dream Garden was still attracting visitors despite the fact that Parrish’s artistic reputation had been demoted by those “art scholar squirrels”. Dream Garden in the 40s, 50s, and beyond was pretty much taken for granted in a city already filled with a lot of art. In the late 1990s, before the proposed sale of the mural was announced in the press, I worked in the Curtis Building and can say that many people who worked there at that time knew next to nothing about Dream Garden. The Dream Garden lobby was mostly regarded as a pretty walk-through area where one might only occasionally glance at the body contours of a blue mosaic nymph or naughty satyr. There were no adoring crowds, no multiple clicks of cameras. Before the 1998-Steve Wynn controversy, Dream Garden was another “taken-for-granted Philly treasure,” another addition to a list that ranged from historic houses to personalities. Dream Garden moved to center stage in July of 1998 when it was announced that an anonymous buyer wanted to remove it from the lobby of the Curtis Building. This was breaking news, and attracted considerably more attention than what passes as breaking news today. The impending sale was the result of the actions of Elizabeth C. Merriam, of Wynnewood, wife of real estate developer John W. Merriam, an early Gerry Lenfest-like figure who gave millions to area institutions like the University of Pennsylvania, University of the Arts, PAFA and Bryn Mawr College. Mr. and Mrs. Merriam lived in a Victorian mansion worth upwards of 119 million called ‘Maybrook,’ Mr. Merriam, who died in 1994, left a will specifying the sale. Later, Elizabeth would tell the press, “All I wanted to do was carry out his [Mr. Merriam’s} intentions.” When a friend who worked with me in the Curtis Building suggested that we do something about the sale, we tried to decide what that something would be. We were sitting in a café near the Warwick Hotel and came up with the idea of a 1960s style protest with hand made placards. We would walk back and forth on the sidewalk in front of the Curtis Building from noon to 1 p.m. every Monday, Wednesday and Friday until the crisis was resolved. The next day we bought flagpoles and duct tape, printed flyers and designed the protest signs. Our first day of protest was to be July 27. We told some people about the demonstration but not too many because we didn’t want to be talked out of it. Several people we told spoke up and told us, “It’s a done deal. The situation is hopeless.” In some ways it seemed like a ludicrous idea; two people do not a demonstration make. Or do they? On the afternoon of the first protest, we were driven to the site by a friend, who did not stick around to see what would happen. As I wrote in ‘Coming together to keep a ‘Dream’ alive,’ for The Inquirer, “…Our two person protest attracted immediate attention. Cars honked; tourists in horse-drawn carriages asked for fliers; Curtis Center office workers, couples, artists, students, kids of bicycles, elderly couples, parking meter attendants and others told us how shocked they were at the sale.” Many asked what they could do. We told them to come to the protests on Wednesday or Friday. By the end of the first protest, scores of people had promised to come Wednesday with friends. During that first two-person protest, we attracted the attention of Inquirer photographer Peter Tobia. The next day the picture of the demo appeared on page one of The Inquirer. I’d given Tobia my phone number as the contact number for the Arts Defense League, the name we decided to call our group. That Tuesday, July 28th was a watershed moment. My phone did not stop ringing. Many callers were from outside the city, and nearly every caller wanted to know what they could do to help. The second protest attracted nearly 70 people, plus a large chunk of the news media and the city’s civil disobedience squad. People helped with the petitions and promised to bring more friends to Friday’s demonstration. Suddenly the idea of keeping Dream Garden in the city seemed a very real possibility. We expected over 200 at Friday’s demonstration, but then Mayor Rendell suddenly announced at a news conference that Steve Wynn had backed out of the deal. Dream Garden would not be broken up into pieces or sections and shipped to a casino. We collected almost 700 signatures during that 3-day span. My friend and I were shuffled in and out of TV studios—Fox News, Channel 48, NBC 10, Channel 6 and 35. It was through the roof even if there was no WHYY or Marty Moss-Coane. A few television interviews were conducted in front of my apartment on Pine Street, and with each broadcast more people wanted to help solidify the Arts Defense League. There were other art works in the city that needed saving, we felt. Some of the people who joined us envisioned a new organization along the lines of the Preservation Alliance of Greater Philadelphia with a Board of Directors, a President, Secretary and Treasurer. They asked to be given something to do while taking it upon themselves to write politicians and city agencies as ADL representatives. Get your photo and phone number published on page one of The Inquirer as the co-founder of a new organization, and see how quickly people flock to you with their own ideas about how the organization should be run. What was once so manageable—a simple two-person consensus—was slowly morphing into a large committee where dissenting views always threaten to hamper progress or bring about schism. A reporter from People Magazine telephoned me one night at my job in the Curtis Center, and said he wanted to interview me for the magazine. This created an exciting opportunity but in the end proved to be a disaster, because his wish to interview only me made it necessary for me to tell him that my friend and I were in this together. So while he did eventually interview both of us in an Old City restaurant, when I told my friend about the initial request of a single interview this set off a chain reaction of suspicion and distrust that in the end got this marvelous opportunity---a full feature in People —canned. As a result of the protest and the mayor’s action, on July 29, 1998 the Historical Commission notified the Merriam estate its intention to designate Dream Garden as an historic object under the City of Philadelphia’s historic Preservation ordinance. The Merriam estate appealed the historic designation, and so began three years of very costly litigation. In 2001, the Pew Charitable Trusts agreed to provide 3.5 million for purchase of the mural, as three of the 4 beneficiaries of the Merriam estate transferred their respective interests to PAFA. PAFA then agreed to keep Dream Garden in the city, promising to use its “best efforts” to keep it in its site in the Curtis Building. Until 2001, our group attended numerous hearings and testified at Historical Commission meetings, although as time went on-- and as heavier organizations with a board of directors weighed in--references to the Coalition for Philadelphia Art seemed to diminish. CPA eventually folded, a victim of the passage of time. Today, of course, I’m less than amused when I read references to that early grassroots effort to safeguard Dream Garden. I’m thinking about minimalist references to our efforts like—petition gatherers, a group of demonstrators or even time-warp phrases like, “the public also protested the sale of Dream Garden.” It is important to remember that the public did not also oppose the sale of Dream Garden, but that they were the first to protest the sale, and as such, were the ones to draw in the… politicians, who came later.

Where Do Dead Philly Journalists Go?

The Local Lens Published • Wed, Apr 30, 2014 By Thom Nickels Where do dead journalists go? Presumably they go where everyone else goes, but in the tightfisted, competitive fishbowl world of Philly journalism, once they disappear they are gone without a trace. Of course, there is the obituary, and/or the accompanying news story surrounding the event, but after that there seems to be a great silence. As a working journalist myself, why should I expect more? The answer to that is that I really don’t know. I’m thinking of Philadelphia Inquirer art critic Edward J. Sozanski, who died suddenly in his home in Gladwyne, Pennsylvania, a couple of weeks ago. Sozanski wrote art criticism for The Inquirer for three long decades, and was a familiar face among Philly writers and reporters at press events at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of Art, and other institutions. I saw Sozanski often at PMA, beginning in the early 1990s when opening press events for exhibitions were a bigger deal than they are today. In those days, press events for major PMA exhibitions included a 3 course lunch (with wine) in the museum dinning room while journalists listened to an array of speakers. At the conclusion of the luncheon, everyone went home with the official exhibition catalogue, which was often an expensive art book costing upwards of 35 dollars in the museum gift shop. Philly journalists do not constitute one, big happy family; it is more like a disconnected, dysfunctional hierarchical family, which is to say that at those old time press events, you had Inquirer writers hanging with Inquirer or Daily News writers, while the scribes for the city’s alternative weeklies grouped together in lower cast huddles. Occasionally, writers who wrote for both publications would mix with both groups in a kind of cross pollination bliss. Magazine writers constituted their own special hierarchy, oblivious of newsprint’s "who’s who." But press event seating arrangements changed radically whenever a writer from The New York Times, or a foreign publication, visited. Suddenly the Inquirer writers would be seated off to the side, as if they wrote for supermarket tabloids. It was, in general, a good lesson in humility for all. After Sozanski’s death, Stephan Salisbury wrote an Inquirer piece about Sozanski in which he stated that the critic was "not distracted by institutional marketing efforts or the city’s cultural boosterism." This is no small accomplishment, given the pressures to produce good reviews. Salisbury quoted Joseph J. Rishel, PMA’s senior curator of European painting before 1900. Rishel described Sozanski as being "very thoughtful and very shy." He also stated that Sozanski was "wary of institutional pressure on his critical writing." During these press events I don’t think Sozanski and I exchanged any words beyond a cursory hello. Originally I interpreted this as an Inquirer "attitude" but that later changed. The art critic was indeed a shy person. Going to press events and observing the habits of fellow journalists is like going to the zoo and familiarizing yourself with the habits of different animals. You learn to embrace the weirdness. At some of those early press events, I’d see Sozanski with Inquirer food critic Rick Nichols, never suspecting that years down the line people would confuse my name with his. "You’re Rick Nichols, right?" "Not exactly—I am an N-i-c-k-e-l-s, spelled like the Buffalo nickel. And it is Thom, not Rick." My mind is on Sozanski because I just attended another PMA press event. Sozanski’s absence was noticeable. I last saw him over a month ago at another museum event, his last one as it turned out, and I thought to myself then that he didn’t look so good. In fact, for several months whenever I’d see him at these affairs I would think the same thing: He does not look good. And yet, I noticed that he also seemed a bit friendlier, a far cry from his former 1990s self when he would barely surface from those press event Inquirer buddy huddles. At the latest press event, which showcased the work of fashion designer Patrick Kelly, I looked at the assembled journalists and saw quite a few faces I had never seen before. There’s always a new wave of what some veterans call kid journalists, first timers with Staples-purchased pads and pencils. The majority of them you will never see again but there will always be one or two who will go for the long haul. Among the veterans was Carol Saline of Philadelphia Magazine, who showed me her own Patrick Kelly-like suit made from buttons purchased at the museum store, and Bobbi Booker from The Philadelphia Tribune, who talked up the Pen and Pencil Club. As I listened to Museum CEO Timothy Rub talk about Patrick Kelly, I thought to myself how nice it would have been to have heard a word or two about Sozanski, who had probably chalked up more hours roaming the halls of PMA than even the guards who have been stationed in the exhibition rooms for years. Nobody did speak of Sozanski, of course, not even "we" journalists, which struck me as noticeable, though not necessarily bad or good. This was about fashion design, after all, although it was still a press event, and because of that…I couldn’t help but think that the Sozanski spirit was near and called out for some kind of acknowledgment, perhaps a moment of silence. The world of dead journalists is a big world. But nobody remembers a dead journalist like a living journalist, and that’s because so much of the public really doesn’t even read bylines. Most people just go straight into a column or article without bothering to see who wrote it. That’s why I can be called Rick Nichols, when the only restaurant review I’ve written in my life was the time I ordered steak tartar not knowing what it was, or at least thinking it was an off shot of New York strip steak when it was really raw steak mixed with spices and horseradish. Sometimes I wonder if people even pay attention to journalists. Not too long ago I attended an event and happened to speak with an official and was referred to as Thom Cardwell. Now, I happen to know Thom Cardwell, but I was using T-h-o-m in my work long before Cardwell came on the scene, and yet here was another Rick Nichols moment. Of course, the minute the ID mishap occurred, I realized I knew why: I had forgotten to take off my long winter scarf and was wearing it like Cardwell is known to wear his large scarves. While it is certainly true that nobody has control over their legacy after death, a journalist can be alive and still be called dead. I am sure that I am not the only writer who has heard, "Are you still writing?" What people mean when they say this is that they haven’t seen your stuff in print, and so they wrongly assume that you’ve gone on to another career, like selling shoes or driving a trolley car. My answer to this question is always, "Yes, I’m still writing… are you still reading?" As for Sozanski, I guess what I’m saying is that I wish, in an ideal world, that journalists were a little more like a close knit family, and that when one member dies there would be a reverent gesture done in their memory-- a group hug, a dance, or maybe even a howl at the moon. But that might be too much to ask in today’s dysfunctional world.

ICON City Beat Column April 2014: Dancing Buddhist Monks, Women in Yoga Pants, and Dreams of Anne d’Harnoncourt

 April City Beat 2014

A Buddhist wall tapestry hid PMA’s iconic top- of- the- stairs statue of Diana at the opening press event of Treasures of Korea (till May 26). We watched as Korean Buddhist monks danced to ceremonial bongs, our gaze transcendentally fixed on two monks in boxy headdresses holding bouquets of flowers. We assumed the “flower monks” were women but when they removed their head gear suddenly they became two men holding hands. The ritual dance reminded us of the Dalai Lama, even Thomas Merton’s Asian Journal, and set the tone for a more ‘home schooled event the following week: PMA’s homage to the Rocky Balboa cult. As museum president Gail Harrity told reporters about the museum’s first time ever screening of a Rocky film, we knew that the old “closed” museum world was over. We sensed some change coming about a month ago when we had a nighttime dream of a very happy  accepting our offer of a cherry pie baked years ago by Picasso but frozen after his death and now thawed so that Anne could use it as art distribution food. What is this if not modernist surrealism in the extreme? The “sensurround” museum experience seems to be taking hold everywhere, as our recent visit to the Penn Museum also indicated. At Penn we viewed over 200 objects at Native American Voices (till May 2014), ate Native food (mini buffalo burgers on crackers) and marveled at a long head-to-toe ceremonial headdress that had us thinking of the famous chiefs we knew in childhood—Sitting Bull, the Delaware Chief Tedusyscung, and of course Philly’s own Chief Halftown.

At Treasures of Korea we chatted with Edie, an occasional “art forum” PAFA panelist, who suggested we check out a leggy female journalist in tight yoga pants (a current urban style), running sneakers, and a bulky knit sweater top—by no means an outfit that would warm the hearts of Parisians, at least according to author Edmund White, who writes in his latest Paris memoirs that when the women of Paris leave their homes they dress as if they’re going onstage. “Why do some Philadelphians dress like that?” Edie asked, to which we had no answers. The journalist in yoga pants reminded us of the men in bib overalls we used to see at play openings, and even the shirt-hanging-out-of-the-trousers crowd prevalent today among men trying to hide weight gain. The topic of How Philadelphians Dress resurfaced at a Curtis Institute fundraising event at 1600 Locust, where we accompanied Drexel University’s Vanessa Bender to mix with friendly music loving cultural high rollers, including Charles B. Finch, Director of Special Events at Curtis, and Gerry and Marguerite Lenfest.  While we didn’t spot a single woman in yoga pants, or a man with his shirt hanging outside his trousers, we did see one radical hot fashion trender:  a young male in a shrinking before your eyes petite suit that looked as though it had been painted on his body. It reminded us of the Barbra Streisand song, Sam You Made The Pants Too Long, only in this case the reverse was true. We first glimpsed the petite suit look about a year ago when we mistook it to be a Krass Brothers of South Street-style tailoring mistake.    

We celebrated Jewish kosher culture at a culinary food fest at Vie (600 N. Broad Street), where Kashrut-sanctioned hor d’oeuvres, chef samplings and specialty wine pairings brought us face to face with some of the best looking beards we’ve seen since our visit to an Orthodox Christian monastery. The event raised funds for two non-profits, Philadelphia North and Lubavitch of Bucks County. The music was all Middle Eastern, and reminded us of our first Jewish wedding and the excitement we felt then watching the groom being lifted up on a chair, Priapus style, and then passed over the heads of the crowd like a buoy at sea. In the crowd we spotted former television icon Marciarose Shestack (a judge in the sweet category), but couldn’t find Nancy Glass (also a judge), one-time co-host of KYW-TV’s Evening Magazine.  From kosher beards we went to (the closing of) Other Desert Cities at The Walnut, staring Krista Apple-Hodge (she’ll play Queen Elizabeth in Mary Stuart at the Broad Street Ministry in April) and Ann Crumb (daughter of composer George Crumb) who played, Silda, easily our favorite character in the play. This tale about a disaffected writer-daughter of a Palm Springs California family whose book about her dead brother promises to destroy the family name, had more Jewish references than the play Tribes at the Suzanne Roberts earlier last month. This got us thinking about family identity, and why both playwrights felt it necessary to have characters frequently identity themselves as Jewish. In real life, of course, families never refer to themselves as Irish, Italian, German, Greek or even Serbian, especially when sitting around talking about their dysfunctional selves...

 The acting profession is divided on whether to call female thespians actresses or female actors. Krista Apple-Hodge calls herself an “actor,” (as does Whoppi Goldberg and Gena Davis) but many women in the profession like the word actress because they don’t want the word to defer to men. ‘Female actor’ is somewhat in vogue, but to us it is as sloppily PC as calling a princess a prince or a duchess a duke. And, as so many have observed: Why not give women the dignity that that their separate identity deserves?  One UK Guardian writer put it this way:  “What’s next? Replacing mummy and daddy with male parent and female parent?”   

              

Picasso (sans cherry pie) once said, “I am only a public entertainer who has understood his times and exploited as best he could the imbecility, the vanity, the cupidity of his contemporaries.” At PAFA’s Open Studio Night, we kissed Heike Hass, helped ourselves to coffee and cupcakes, then went on to explore the open studios we did on a scale of one several years ago when PAFA grad Roman Sierra  (now a successful painter in Detroit), invited us into his cubicle. The many open studios covering several floors of the building made us think of a large Farmer’s Market. Some students attracted large crowds, while others waited for visitors the same way that boardwalk gypsy fortune tellers sneak longing looks at passers by. The popular studios were those exhibiting Bo Bartlett, Andrew and Jamie Wyeth-style realism, while the less crowded ones accented abstraction or the macabre. In one cubicle we spotted painted (decapitated) doll heads; in another, miniature penis wire sculptures placed on the wall like light fixtures. One enterprising student generated a circus atmosphere with a life sized transgender doll and its heart shaped red lips, Orphan Annie hair, Mae West bosom and large plug-on satyr’s ceramic erection. His charisma notwithstanding, we wondered who would ever buy such a thing. One visible change was the propensity of male nudes, something that was not the case at PAFA student shows just five years ago.     

For Women’s History Month, we headed to the Rosenbach Museum for a Pearl S. Buck Wine and Readings event. Sponsored by Pearl S. Buck International, we were one of four featured readers who entertained guests from a selection of the author’s books. The mini Bloomsday-like event gave guests plenty of space between readings to chat with Docent, Susie Woodland, a Pearl Buck impersonator, say hello to Rosenbach Director Derick Dreher or other guests like Lisa Heyman, Aaron Ron Hunter, and Philly artist Noel Miles. We were there to celebrate the life and writings of the 1938 Nobel Prize winner who experienced her fair share of critical derision at the hands of stuffy scholar squirrels and literary snobs. Despite these battles, Buck would prove to be ahead of her time: In 1966, she predicted the transformation of communism, was a staunch advocate for birth control and women’s rights, and was one of the first public figures to call people from Asia Asians, rather than Orientals. We have to wonder if Buck were alive today whether she’d be given a top slot in the politically tiered Philadelphia Book Festival, the city’s annual celebration of literacy featuring area authors with new books to promote. Would organizers (who seem connected to the scholar squirrel network) assign her to read at the library’s Central branch, or relegate her to a small branch like Torresdale or Tacony, where the audiences for the festival number in the low single digits?       .   

   

            The mayor wants to sell the Philadelphia Gas Works to a private corporation in Connecticut, the UIL Holding Corporation, for 1.86 billion dollars.

            What a bombshell. The New Deal style political grassroots Democrat had become an urban version of Governor Tom Corbett. Welcome to a Philly nightmare.

  If the mayor’s proposal materializes, the city will be giving up its 178-year ownership of PGW.

            He says the city needs to sell PGW to rescue “the city’s ailing pension fund,” and that sale of PGW would inject 424 million into the city’s pension fund. The pension fund, however, affects only a miniscule group, while the vast majority of Philadelphians have no connection to the fund because they do not work for the city. This tells us that PGW is good for Philly because, as a non profit public utility, it benefits the entire city with gas rates that, although still high, would be three times as high if a private corporation like HIL (which exists only to maximize shareholder value) gains control of PGW.

    Pension funds all over the country are dying out or being drastically reduced. In some cases, such as in Detroit, city pension funds have been radically cut. Philadelphia’s pension fund is, by comparison to other cities, extremely generous. There have been no cuts, although according to the mayor there is an 8 billion dollar pension fund deficit.

           

             UIL promises that it will not raise gas rates for customers for 3 years after the sale, and that it will keep discount programs for low income seniors and others. An additional promise was made that PGW employee retiree pensions will be respected. 

                         Will a private corporation be as benevolent or as generous as PGW when people are late or don’t pay their bills? Can a “for profit” company ever be as “benevolent” as a not for profit company?

            Can you name one large private corporation that has ever put people before profits?  

             

My Italian Journey

Before I traveled to Florence, I wasn't aware that it had become one of the most popular European getaways for Americans, especially for couples and groups. Nestled in the cradle of the Tuscan hills, this city of light, good food and tiny medieval streets has a history as extraordinary as its beauty. Florence is the birthplace of the Renaissance, secularism, liberalism, rationalism and the pagan world.

When I visited the city two years ago, I saw many of the same medieval streets that Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the poet Shelley once traveled. The narrow streets, sheltered from the noonday sun by the close proximity of buildings, have sidewalks barely a yard wide. Strolling along these intimate byways can be a hazardous endeavor: At any moment a motor scooter can zip up behind you. Because of this, it's best to keep from daydreaming when you marvel at the 15th century doors, the historic cobblestones beneath your feet, the religious mosaics or icons encased below the second story windows, or that worn plaque above a door describing a famous 16th century occupant.

Where Florence's small streets splinter into myriad pathways, you may come out onto Piazza Della Signoria, the city's main square, and find large numbers of locals and tourists mixing together. There are so many merchants from West Africa, Algiers and Morocco hawking their wares that sometimes you forget you are in Italy. Florence, in fact, has one of the best wholesale markets for leather goods -- designer wallets for $15, leather knapsacks for $60 that would go for $500 in New York or Philadelphia. The street markets also offer tapestries, jeweled wristwatches with humble "Timex" prices. This is a bargain hunter's paradise.

One afternoon, the owner of a leather store practically pulled me into his shop to show me a variety of garments. When I told him I was an American journalist writing about Florence, he assured me I'd get 70 per cent off the retail price of any coat in the house. Unfortunately, this budget-conscious traveler had to shelve these cloth works of art.

"Don't worry, the offer will be good the entire time you're here," he insisted. "Think about it -- we never do this for anybody." Some shop keepers really know how to make a tourist feel special. 

I told the shopkeeper about a good pair of dress shoes I'd left behind in a Milan hotel room, and then about how I'd been traveling with two friends from Philadelphia, first to Paris, but then by myself to Florence because my married couple companions had to hurry back to the States. "My friends ditched me," I joked, "although they couldn't help it. Now I have to learn to be a solitary traveler."

Which isn't easy, let me tell you.

My home base was the Hotel Londra, an almost elegant four-star hotel situated in the heart of the city (and just a few yards from the train station, Santa Maria Novella) that, like most Italian hotels, didn't have an ironing board or iron, so if you wanted your clothes pressed you had to send them out to be dry cleaned. This is true in almost every Italian hotel, except perhaps the Hilton chain.

"But I don't need dry cleaning, sir!" I told the Londra desk clerk, "My clothes are very clean, they just need an iron." "We have no irons here," the clerk said. "Would you like dry cleaning?" At seven dollars per item, that would mean 40 dollars just to get rid of the wrinkles on my all cotton travel wardrobe. I suddenly understood the value of polyester. "No thank you," I said. My plan was to hand press my clothes with warm water and then hang them in the bathroom to dry. I made do with wearing a suitcase wrinkled shirt to the city's main cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore, or the "Duomo," built in the 13th century but constructed on the site of a 7th century church, Santa Reparata. The cathedral's massive pink, white and green marble exterior lords over Florence like an occupying army. Considered one of the finest examples of Renaissance architecture, it has a dome designed by Brunelleschi that for some reason made me think of multicolored taffy. On the wide cathedral plaza, groups of Moroccan kids sold a variety of trinkets. On that first afternoon, I bought a toy wooden train from a boy who told me he had just arrived in the city with his family from Algiers.

The famous cathedral is a cavernous space with a surprisingly stark interior, reminiscent of soaring but "empty" Catholic Church architectural styles after Vatican II. "A super Spartan structure," I thought, "Take away the few mosaics and the simple altar, and you have a mosque." The long line of tourists that assembled on a downstairs staircase suggested a basement catacomb crypt filled with skeletal saints or relics, but that was not the case at all. The touristy draw was a small book and souvenir shop, and a bad one at that.

A small city by any standard, Florence's boundaries can be walked in 45 minutes, about the time it takes to walk from Girard Avenue into Bridesburg. That walk would include a stroll along the Arno River (where you'll get a good view of the rowers and the Tuscan hills) but where your only challenge will be navigating the huge throngs of tourists -- camera-laden Japanese, ice cream cone licking Americans and student contingents the size of small villages -- as you cross the Ponte Vecchio bridge into the city's other side. I have never seen so many tourists anywhere on the globe.

A Disneyland-style effect permeates the whole of Florence, and on the Ponte Vecchio, the only thing missing are caricatures of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. The elbow-clashing crowds forced me to beat a hasty retreat into a number of museums where I saw reliquaries, each one more elaborate than the next. In a way I began to understand why my friends, who had been to Florence many times, had no great desire to revisit it.

While walking through the city, I was often almost sideswiped by buses and those bee buzzing motor scooters that seemed to scrape the edges of the sidewalks. Other times, I'd do a fast U-turn when I'd spot yet another tourist group with its flag-toting guide. But escaping madcap buses and tourists is easy when you have museums, cafes and shops that Florence offers in abundance.

The Piazzali degli Uffizi is the city's most complete Italian painting gallery. It has paintings by Giotto, Paolo Uccello, Botticelli and Michelangelo. The museum is much bigger than it looks; one can spend an entire afternoon not only contemplating the works of art, but enjoying the spectacular views from the windows. Much of the Uffizi collection was enriched by members of the Medici family.

I visited a small museums like the Valencia a Firenze (Palazzo Medici Riccardi, Via Cavour), which offers a selection of religious panel paintings from the early Renaissance. Here, I spent a serene hour before rejoining the parade of tourists outside. And then, of course, there were the rows and rows of reliquaries, some of them virtual small golden palaces containing the bones of saints I've never heard of. While there's a lot of Catholic stuff in Florence, there's also a beautiful Orthodox cathedral that's much more decorated on the inside than Santa Maria del Fiore. .

My friends had warned me that many Italian museums open and close sporadically throughout the day. Often I would go to a museum only to find it closed even though I'd been assured by the Landro desk clerk that it would be open. Or the reverse would be true. It was hard for me to understand such a lackadaisical attitude. How can anyone, especially tourist groups, plan tours when the moment they arrive at the museum there's an "Out to Lunch" sign posted on the door?

A serene, almost mystical quiet descends on the city about midday as the light patterns mellow into an incredible orangey hue. This is when you're likely to find locals basking like lizards in the midday sun. It's a transcendental time that makes you happy that you are in Italy, even if traveling alone. As I soaked in the golden light (and wanted to become a lizard myself), I understood the "why" behind all those "Out to Lunch" signs. 

Nightlife in Florence can be a wild affair, ranging from the sedate cafes to boisterous bars and clubs like Irish Pub (where half the occupants are East Indian) The Dublin Bar (only a few Irish) and the Hot Pot. Party-hardy teens and young people jam the tiny streets carrying beer or cocktails from bar to bar (it's legal in Florence to drink in the street), often blocking pedestrian traffic.

Good restaurants are easy to find in this city of good food, bread and charming Chianti. I found many medium-priced places near my hotel and the vicinity of the train station. For a mere 16 euros, one can enjoy authentic Italian cuisine that many Italian American restaurants can only dream to duplicate: sumptuous pasta, breads and delectable red table wines that will make you want to prolong your dinner for hours, even if dining alone, as I did night after night.

Of course, not speaking Italian, I had to keep to myself during my five day visit. While it is theoretically possible to start conversations in restaurants and cafes, that's much harder to do when most of the people there are coupled or part of a group. My usual pastime was to walk the city in the middle of the night, when most of the tourists were in bed. It was then that I got to say a few words to some of the Algerians, who spoke broken English, or go over to the cathedral square where I'd watch the gypsy fortune tellers tell fortunes (under a full moon) to random customers. Florence is also an edgy city when it comes to romance. Couples thought nothing of stretching out over the cathedral steps, or cuddling up under old archways

Scenes like this would be shocking in Philadelphia. I didn't spot many drifter types or homeless people, such as I did when I traveled to Vienna. In Vienna, the homeless congregate by the main train station, where they tend to line up in rows like a chorus line and beg for money all at once. The police do not chase the homeless away; apparently the train station area is known as a "free zone." (My Austrian guide told me that the beautiful Vienna opera house where Beethoven once worked is built over a series of tunnels where the city's heroin addicts hang out).

In Vienna, I once gave a panhandler some change, but after counting the money the panhandler told me it wasn't enough. "Enough for what?" I said to him, shocked at his attitude. "I just arrived here from America." When I told him I didn't have any more change, he followed me for a block or two, forcing me to seek temporary refuse in a hotel lobby until the coast was clear. Years ago when I went to Paris for the first time, I was walking in the Right Bank district when a passerby stopped alongside me and gestured as he picked up a large gold coin on the ground. Holding it up to my face, he insisted that I had dropped it. "I did?" I said to him in total astonishment, inspecting the stunning gold piece. "That's funny. I just arrived from America and haven't exchanged my money yet." His ruse, of course, was to make personal contact so that he could then con me into taking the coin "for free," after which something even stranger and more unexpected would happen. I didn't hang around to find out what.

When I left Florence and took the train to Rome on the last leg of my journey, I ran into several beggars near the Trevi Fountain. After tossing three coins in the fountain (as instructed by that famous Hollywood movie), I wondered at what point the beggars waded into the pool to pocket the coins.

The Trevi Fountain area was filled with many North African and Moroccan kids selling a variety of trinkets. I wasn't buying, however, although the mood at the fountain was giddy and quite contagious. In many ways, it's probably the happiest place on earth. I attributed that to the vortex of foaming splashing water running down the façade of the largest Baroque fountain in Rome.

I ended my Italian journey with a walk around the ancient Coliseum. I circled it three times, running my hands along the ancient stones while thinking of all the emperors who had passed through the grand entranceway to the roar of the crowds.

But you can't walk around the Coliseum three times without becoming slightly disorientated, so after my third time around I lost my bearings completely, and had to take a taxi back to my hotel.

Pearl S. Buck Celebration

Event Details
Wine and Readings at the Rosenbach Museum & Library

Wed, 12 Mar, 2014 5:30 PM - 7:30 PM
Time Zone: America/New_York
Local Time: Wed, 12 Mar, 2014 5:30 PM - 7:30 PM
Discover the Legacy, Life and Literature of Pearl S. Buck at a complimentary Women’s History Month event with wine and readings honoring the one of the most notable authors of all time. Readers include Thom Nickels, author and City Beat Editor of ICON magazine, Docent Sisue Woodland of the Pearl Buck House, and Carol Breslin, Professor of English at G. Mercy College.

Mayor Nutter and PGW

The Local Lens
Published • Wed, Mar 12, 2014
By Thom Nickels

When Michael Nutter first became mayor in 2007, I was lukewarm in my support for him. The progressive maverick seemed to have all the "right" positions on issues; he was articulate, polished, professional, although perhaps too much so. Can a politician be so polished that he/she comes across as slick, as in, I smell a con job in there somewhere? In 2007 I even had a Republican Tea Party friend who volunteered for the Nutter campaign. "Joyce" felt that Nutter would help improve life in the City of Philadelphia.

Dreams (and illusions) die hard. Fast forward seven years and "Joyce" is hardly a Nutter fan at all, but in fact has moved out of the city to the relative quiet of New Jersey. As for me, I could never understand the excitement and support that Nutter received from political progressives. Liberals everywhere seemed to put him on a pedestal. For me it was always a case of when the "real" Michael Nutter would surface.

For me, that happened when the mayor announced his proposal to sell the Philadelphia Gas Works to a private corporation in Connecticut, the UIL Holding Corporation, for 1.86 billion dollars.

What a bombshell. The New Deal style political grassroots Democrat had become an urban version of Governor Tom Corbett. Welcome to a Philly nightmare.

I say this because I wonder if most Philadelphians know just how bad an idea like this is. The media, namely broadcast news, has had an almost indifferent reaction to the impending sale, choosing instead to headline stories of North Philadelphia crime, or home invasions in the Northeast as ‘breaking news," while giving minor play to the PGW story. But the fact is, if the mayor’s proposal materializes, the city will be giving up—forever--its 178-year ownership of PGW. Why is this important? It’s important because PGW continues to be a not for profit public utility company, not for profit meaning that PGW’s profit margin has more to do with covering operating expenses rather than the accumulation of major wealth.

The mayor says the city needs to sell off PGW (for 1.86 billion dollars) in order to rescue "the city’s ailing pension fund." He adds that the sale of PGW would inject 424 million into the city’s pension fund, a fund that affects only a miniscule percentage of Philadelphians, while the vast majority of Philadelphians have no connection to the fund because they do not work for the city. This tells us that PGW is good for Philly because, as a non profit public utility, it benefits the entire city with gas rates that, although still high, would be three times as high if a private corporation like HIL (which exists only to maximize shareholder value) gains control of PGW.

Look at it this way. Pension funds all over the country are dying out or being drastically reduced. In some cases, such as in Detroit, city pension funds have been radically cut. Philadelphia’s pension fund is, by comparison to other cities, extremely generous. There have been no cuts, although according to the mayor there is an 8 billion dollar pension fund deficit.

But why should any public employee, whose salary is 100% taxpayer funded, ever collect $400,000 on day one of their retirement plan (the DROP program) and then turn around and collect over $100K or even $50K per year in pension?


The mayor’s pro-sale PGW friends insist that $50K per year in pension payments isn’t really all that high. Well, let’s compare that to maximum Social Security benefits at $2,600 per month (and it is almost impossible to qualify for this). When you spread that $50K city pension per year over 12 months it comes to $4,166 per month. Even the so called "cheap" city pension is about $1,600 per month higher than the maximum social security possible. City pensions kick in after 25 years on the job (you start working at age 25 and collect at 50), whereas maximum Social Security requires 47 years in the system so that you can collect it at age 67. What this all means is simple: The current pension system is in fact, outrageous.

For starters, an annual pension of $50K is huge. Most people in fact do not make that amount annually when they are working, let alone in retirement. And the vast majority of people, who are not city workers, do not even have a pension. The Philly system is bloated, mismanaged, and broken.


Politicians, city workers—sans police and firefighters—and the mayor are the only ones who would benefit from the sale of PGW to UIL. How could this group not be happy that they are the only ones who stand to benefit from the sale of PGW? If the sale of PGW happens, they will keep their high pensions, while the rest of the city—the overwhelming majority of Philadelphians —will be subject to the whims of HIL.

The mayor and his "for sale" cronies want to appease the public with promises that UIL will not raise gas rates for customers for 3 years after the sale, and that UIL will keep discount programs for low income seniors and others. An additional promise was made that old PGW employee retiree pensions will be respected.

But three years is a very short time, and when that flash in the pan is up, if you think that UIL, a "for profit" company will behave in the low rate increase and caring customer manner that PGW has been adhering to for 178 years, then you are just naïve. As a smart public relations gimmick, UIH’s first rate increase after 3 years will of course be very small, because they will not want to arouse customer antipathy, but very soon after that, the scenario will change. Next will see moderate increases, and then UIH will do what all private corporations do: accelerate the motion and go in for the big money.

Within ten years or less, gas rates under UIL will be through the roof. In the meantime, the temporary fix that Nutter made back in 2014 to fund the "ailing pension plan" will be history, and not only that, but the "for sale" money, 1.86 billion will be all used up. The brash of new city pension funds, if pension funds are even still around then, will go hurting because of continued city mismanagement. But the lasting legacy of all this will be the fact that PGW will be gone forever. There will only be HIL, a for profit corporation.

Philly is a poor city, one of the poorest in the nation. With very cold winters in our future (friends of mine pay as much as $200 a month for gas heat), future gas rates under UIH may very well spell disaster for most city residents. Will a private corporation be as benevolent or as generous as PGW when people are late or don’t pay their bills? Can a "for profit" company ever be as "benevolent" as a not for profit company?

Can you name one large private corporation that has ever put people before profits?

While it is true that City Council has been at odds with the mayor over many issues, this issue—the sale of PGW—is different because City Council members stand to benefit from this attempt to rescue the ailing fund.

Will City Council members vote for their own self interest and support the mayor, or will they think about the vast majority of Philadelphians who are not city workers, and who generally have no pension plan whatsoever?

Most importantly, why should the entire city suffer just because the mayor wants to rescue the "ailing pension fund" for a special few?

March 2014 City Beat ICON MAGAZINE——————————————————— by Thom Nickels

THEATRE EXILE’S DERANGED BROTHERS
Every Philadelphia theater company has its cultish following. The Wilma crowd looks different from the opening night audience at Suzanne Roberts, while Walnut Street Theater people are worlds away from Theatre Exile. We visited Plays and Players recently to see Theatre Exile’s performance of Sam Shepard’s “True West,” a black comedy about what happens when two deranged writer brothers compete to win the attention of a fast talking producer. We had hopes for this play before things went Animal House. One brother attacked the stage set with a golf club before turning it on a typewriter. The scene made us think of Jimi Hendrix’s guitar-smashing. Applause at the end was tepid, though one person stood up and cheered as if intent on igniting a standing ovation. The shoe-box structure of P&P makes the flow of large crowds there painful at best. At the reception (three flights up narrow stairs) patrons helped themselves to fabulous food, though not many were able to get a drink at the dollhouse bar. Unlike opening nights elsewhere, P&P has a one-drink ticket policy. We spent twenty minutes trying to get the bartender’s attention, but even flashing money like those rammy
dudes at Delilah’s Den didn’t work. We looked (in vain) for a golf club to use as an attention-getter then decided to call it quits. On the way out, we noticed the dedicated staff working hard to clean up the Shepard’s pie on stage.


DIDDLING WITH THE DILWORTH
When the Center City District announced plans for a redesign of Dilworth Plaza, we wondered what would become of Emlen Etting’s public sculpture, Phoenix Rising, a memorial to former mayor Richardson Dilworth. Etting (1905-1993), a Philadelphia blueblood bisexual married to the former Gloria Braggiotti, lived on Panama Street, and knew everybody from Hemingway to Henry McIlhenny. It’s not often that the home of a Philadelphia gentleman artist gets raided, but that’s what happened in 1958 when Emlen hosted a party for the cast of The World of Suzy Wong, and a neighbor called police to complain about noise. Etting contacted then-Mayor Dilworth about the “Gestapo tactics of Center City police,” implicating Capt. Frank L. Rizzo, who wrote the original police report. Not only did Rizzo insist that the police had been polite, but after his election as mayor he turned a deaf ear when the artist needed City Hall’s help around the time of Phoenix Rising’s installation. We visited the Rizzo statue recently and saw that it was holding up well… aside from pigeon droppings on the shoes. We found that the most intricate part of the sculpture is the shoelaces. They are so authentic looking it’s easy to imagine a passing toddler trying to unlace them. When tourists are not photographing the sculpture, they’re positioning themselves (for selfies) with their arms draped around Frank’s thighs. The statue must be the least vandalized sculpture in the city, even if its frozen wave is anything but benevolent, at least for Etting. We see the Rizzo wave as a get lost gesture to Phoenix Rising, moved last year to an area near Society Hill Towers. Etting would not have wanted that since the piece was designed for the Plaza, not condos in the sky.

INKY: WAY COOL OR HALF IN THE SEWER
We headed over to painter Elizabeth Osborne’s house for a party and met former Inquirer cartoonist, Tony Auth. The winter soiree massaged our spirits and brought news that the Grand Dame of Philly painters is also the daughter of architect Paul Cret. While munching on tasty edibles, we followed Liz’s suggestion to rotate seats so we could chat with everybody present. Auth, who appeared months ago at a public lecture with Charles Croce at the Philadelphia History Museum, mentioned where his papers would go when he’s no longer around. “We’re getting to the age now where you have to think of these things,” Liz added. It’s not possible to talk to Auth without bringing up the old Inquirer, so the comments drifted to that hybrid Inquirer-Daily News creation, Philly.com, which has evolved into a salacious, tabloid-like broadside where breaking news amounts to the misadventures of a so-called Swiss cheese ‘pervert,’ or random teachers caught having sex with students. How does the spawn of a Pulitzer Prize-winning empire wind up in the sewers? Auth suggested it might be because Inky-DN head honchos have staffed Philly.com with twenty-something “editors” who think the tabloid style is way cool. We were relieved to hear this, since we didn’t think it was the handiwork of Daily News Editor Michael Days, who seemed fairly respectable when we met at the Franklin Inn some time ago.


2014 POET LAUREATE
Poet Frank Sherlock has been selected to succeed Sonia Sanchez as the city’s 2014 Poet Laureate. We wish Sherlock well in putting together a public face even though we’re surprised to hear so many say that they’ve never read his poetry. Poets are the opposite of politicians: The raw, unfiltered juice from the Muse caused Ginsberg to take to the harmonica, W.H. Auden to begin wearing bedroom slippers, and Hart Crane to jump
into the sea from the stern of the Olympia. We’re sure Sherlock is more the Wallace Stevens type, stable and constant, though we’re pretty sure he knew he was the winner when we saw him at Dirty Frank’s the night before the announcement. He had a different look on his face then. Was it a shadow cast from the weight of City Hall?


GIVE THE SKATEBOARDERS SOME LOVE (PARK)
Is the Nutter administration determined to leave its design mark on the city? Like the re-make of Dilworth Plaza—where a plastic cheese grater structure that makes us think of patio furniture is slowly rising—JFK Plaza (LOVE Park) is headed for a redo.
The 15-million rehab job (city tax dollars) will rid the plaza of the (slippery when wet) terraced surfaces, add more greenery, and add one or more food concession stands. Something’s wrong when the city has to sell assets in order to pay current expenses. The impetus behind the rehab is the poor condition of the parking garage underneath the plaza, so to “do” the bottom you have to “do” the top—despite the fact that the Plaza has just been rehabbed. We say bring back the skateboarders. Skateboarders provide entertainment and keep the homeless to a minimum. Both
Mayor Nutter and City Council President Darrell L, Clarke want food courts on the Plaza, but just as every blank wall doesn’t need a mural, so LOVE Park doesn’t need a café or a food concession stand. LOVE Park can do without an overpriced Stephen Starr commissary, or a mini-Rouge with a lineup of fancy dogs (in sunglasses) eating alongside their owners.


KEEP YOUR PENCILS IN YOUR POCKET
We like the Barnes Museum as much as the next person, so when we heard that there’s a rule there against visitors doing sketches (in notebooks) of the paintings on the wall, we wondered why. Sketching makes no noise and it is an intensely private endeavor, and yet to be caught sketching in the Barnes is tantamount to lighting up in front of a Degas. No such taboo exists at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. We know that Barnes was a fussy curmudgeon, and that many of his in-house Merion rules were of the “stick-in-the-mud” illogical kind. While it’s true that a case can be made for our friend Katharine being asked to leave after photographing a painting there, even at PMA they
would first ask you to put the camera away before kicking you out. We somehow imagined that the Barnes would be so grateful for having sidestepped Albert’s will that they would err on the side of generosity when it comes to the little stuff.


PRESS CONFERENCE-SPEAK
At any City Hall press conference, broadcast journalism always sets the tone with its cameras, testing of lights, and the constant moving of cameras to different angles in the room. We were constantly switching seats at the last press event as different broadcast cameramen (they are usually men) kept moving their cameras, blocking all views of the podium. This game of musical chairs continued until we found a safe haven toward the front. Observing other journalists in the room, it was easy to locate the talking heads with their stamped NBC 10 jackets. Compared to the invisible notepad-holding print journalists, who wore no jackets or name tags and who for the most part had no identifiable “faces,” the broadcasters seemed like first class Titanic passengers as compared to we print ruffians in third class.
The big moment in any press conference comes when the mayor’s entourage enters the room. Then it is a single file procession of bigwigs, faces you’d recognize in
the news, the usual suspects in dark suits. Like a chorus line, they know how to assemble around the podium near the speaker. Since this announcement was about the new Mormon construction at 16th and Vine Streets, the city officials were up front with most of the Mormon delegation standing off to the side.
The mayor spoke first. He’s a good public speaker. We like speakers who make eye contact with the audience. Standing directly beside the mayor was City Council President Darrell L. Clarke, in his trademark Clark Kent glasses. Clarke’s speaking style isn’t as forceful as the Mayor Nutter’s. In fact, it has an “aw shucks” shy, self-effacing quality to it, as if he was insecure about speaking in public. At the Q and A, the mayor’s tone was politician sharp. There’s a knack to delivering one word answers, like “Yes” or “No,” and doing this in a way that makes the delivery sound like the crack of a whip. We call it press conference-speak, something that most seasoned politicians have learned to master. (Clarke is also a very tall man, so seeing him standing beside the mayor made us think—for the first time—about the mayor’s height.)
The end of a press conference is always anti-climactic. The political suits disappear first; journalists scatter to the four winds, and the cameramen are usually the last to leave.

March 1, 2014
Emlen Etting with self-portrait.
Tony Auth.
Frank Sherlock.
Featuring Jeb Kreager & Brian Osborne with Joe Canuso & E. Ashley Izard. Directed by Matt Pfeiffer
Plans for Dilworth Plaza.
Barnes Museum.
Mormon Temple.
March 2014