Metropolis

A Managerie of Men

2012-02-03T13:16:39Z

By Leslie Cottle

This weekend my girlfriends were approached by a 20-something man claiming that Philadelphia girls just weren't making the cut compared to the usual "Southern Belles" he was used to. He even defined Southern Belle for my friends.

Southern Belle (noun)- A girl born and raised in the South. Southern cooking, Southern accent, and Southern "old money". The kind of girl everyone dreams to be or meet. Proper, educated, has etiquette, says, "Yes, sir" and "Yes, mam" and means it.

Since I grew up in Virginia and moved to Philadelphia as a teen -- with my "Southern Belle" roots intact - I understand the guy's point of view. But, here is my question: Does he know what kind of men roam around Philadelphia?

Being the ripe age of 23, and having roamed the Philadelphia bar scene since I was 18, gives me some insight into Philly men. To summarize, the men of Philadelphia and its suburbs vary widely. You can't put them all into one group, but after talking to them for oh, 30 seconds, you can usually put them into one of following five categories:

Category 1: Bar Creep

The looks they give you, their smile, whether they're strategically following you around the bar, offering you free drinks or telling you you're the most beautiful girl in the "whole joint," you know him when you see him. He's just creepy. Advice: Grab the closest non-threatening meathead, explain the situation and let him deal with it--there's nothing better than a damsel in distress. These men have been known to go to single's nights, go to bars alone, stalk, and make a threatening phone or two. Being nice only confuses them into thinking they stand a chance.

Category 2: Mr. Right Now

This man is mildly good-looking and really into you. You might not be so into him, but hey, at least he's paying attention to you. Mr. Right Now can be found while trying to get to the bar for a drink, on the dance floor, or when asking for directions to the nearest facility. He could be desperate, he could be a good distraction, hell... he could even be human--but this guy will only last the night and you'll probably just lead him on, even though you know you are not that into him. Advice: Be friendly, not selfish, and don't play with the boy's heart.

Category 3: All talk, No delivery.

This guy's head barely fits through doorways because his ego is protruding from every pore of that good-looking face and gorgeous head of hair. He is the asshole, hilarious, and you hate to love him and his grade-school flirting technique. He might buy you a drink, he might dance with you all night, and he will definitely ask you for your number, but don't be fooled by great personality and the generic texts he sends you and 15 other girls on his "Booty Call" group list. You know what I'm talking about: "Hey Babe, haven't talked to you in a while. How are you doin?" Please, spare me. These men have also been known to be disguised as bouncers, bartenders and members of the band.

Category 4: Drunk, inebriated, and beyond words

This is the guy who approaches you, slurring his words, between the hours of 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. looking to do another shot. If there is one time to meet someone and hook up, it's after 1 a.m. However, this guy isn't going to remember your name, let alone that you met him last night, so take your free shot and move on to the bigger, more sober fish of the bar-pond. This man will reach at least one of three paths tonight: blacking out, throwing up, or waking up in his own bodily fluids. As my friend Jenny would say, "NEXT!"

Category 5: Taken, but not tonight!

Usually this guy is out with his man-pack, having a good time, drinking up for boy's night. What you don't know is that while he is flirting with you, his poor, unsuspecting girlfriend is waiting for a phone call at 3 a.m. just to hear, "I love you" and that he got home safe. Then, inevitably, one of his friends will tell you he has a girlfriend. Uh, Excuse me, sir, what? He will of course deny the fact. He'll suggest your place for the night--he can't have you over at his place with the interior design so stylishly done only by a woman, and not to mention the hot pink tooth brush and feminine products oozing from "her side" the medicine cabinet. We can pretend everyone is faithful, but we all know the truth. This mess usually leads to calls from the girlfriend, feeling like you're crazy, and knowing that you've been used, and played.

So to this man who thinks Southern Belle's are so obviously the premium choice, I have some advice: Take into account what the women of Philadelphia have to deal with on a weekly, if not daily basis. Okay, good. Now, tell me you wouldn't have your guard up too.

And to the women of Philadelphia I say, hold out for a hero.

Leslie Cottle is a writer and bar-scene sociologist who lives in Philadelphia.

My Philadelphia: Icons

2012-01-28T15:28:49Z

Through our stories and essays, Metropolis serves as a chronicle of modern Philadelphia. Over the summer, under the title My Philadelphia, we ran a series of essays about five city neighborhoods. In another series, we profiled young Philadelphians who are using their skills, creativity and drive to change the city for the better.

Today, we begin a second part of the My Philadelphia series. Instead of words we use images -- striking pictures of the city taken by Philadelphians. This first photo essay in the series is a crowd-sourced tribute to Philadelphia landmarks gathered from Flickr. We call it, simply: Icons.

Click the arrow to start. For a full-screen version, click on the four small arrows in the lower right hand corner of the screen.

ICONS

Sleight of Hand

2012-01-27T21:49:32Z

It's early in the year, but I feel confident in predicting that the biggest political train wreck in Philadelphia in 2012 will be the AVI, the city's plan to reassess all properties to more closely reflect market value.

AVI stands for the Actual Value Initiative and it is due to be rolled out sometime in the fall. It will replace the old fashioned method of assessing real estate, a function done for years by the Board of Revision of Taxes.

Mayor Nutter stripped the BRT of the power to assess and handed it to city government.

AVI will be a mind blower for property owners even if it all goes well.

Under the current system, the city determines the market value of a home and multiplies that by 32 percent to come up with the assessed value. It then applies a 9.8 percent tax on that assessed value.

In short, we have become used to low assessment numbers in Philadelphia -- numbers that often bear little relationship to the real value of a home, even before the 32 percent is applied.

Now, imagine this fall when you get a letter from the city telling you that your home, which previously had been assessed at, say, $100,000 will henceforth be assessed at $400,000. That's called sticker shock.

The $400,000 is supposed to reflect the market value of your home. i.e., the price it would fetch it you put out a "For Sale" sign tomorrow.

Re-assessing every home in the city -- along with all commercial properties -- is a gigantic undertaking, even with the use of computer programs and statistical analysis based on actual real estate sales.

But, wait, it gets trickier.

]]> Coming up with a new assessed value is Part One of the process. Changing the tax rate is Part Two.

When AVI was first announced the administration said it wanted it to be revenue neutral. In other words, while individual tax bills may change, at the end of the day the city wanted to raise $1.1 billion in real estate taxes, the same total as under the old system.

(Sixty percent of real estate tax revenue goes to the school district, 40 percent goes to city government.)

Since then, the Nutter administration has admitted that the goal is not to be revenue neutral. It wants a higher yield from the real estate tax. How high, no one is saying.

To repeat, here is how the process is supposed to work:

The city does this massive re-assessment and releases the new numbers in the fall.

Then, based on the new total values, it will change the tax rate.

One figure I have heard mentioned is a 1 percent tax rate. So, if your home is assessed at $400,0000 under AVI, your real estate tax will be $4,000 a year.

Even with a revenue neutral AVI, there will be winners and losers. If your real estate values have risen above the city average in recent years, you will get socked with much higher taxes because of your market value.

Now comes a new twist. As Troy Graham reported in the Inquirer, Council and the Nutter administration have decided they can't wait until the AVI is completed before changing the tax rate. They want to lock it in this spring, as part of the new budget.

You've heard of putting the cart before the horse. This is putting the cart before the horse before the horse is born.

Any rate determined in the spring will be purely speculative because Council and the administration will lack fundamental data: the new figure of the actual cumulative value of real estate in Philadelphia.

Why engage in this loopy exercise of flawed math and bad public policy?

For one thing, council members want to get past AVI this year. They realize it will be unpopular. They know people will be screaming. Best to inflict pain now, in the first year of their four-year terms, than later.

For another, the Nutter administration wants the money. It wants the additional revenue AVI will yield and it apparently isn't ready to wait another year to get it.

The talk in Council that if the rate turns out to be too high, it can be adjusted before tax bills go out next December. But, who is kidding whom?

The bottom line: many thousands of taxpayers are going to be paying high real estate taxes next year, ready or not, because of an increase in the value of their homes. And, on top of that, there will be a tax increase -- my guess is somewhere around 20 percent -- that all homeowners will have to pay.

And it will all be done by slight of hand.

-- Tom Ferrick

My Philadelphia: Faces

2012-01-27T16:13:04Z

In the second installment in our series of Philadelphia images is by photographer Alan Barr. Barr is a born street photographer, traveling the city's neighborhoods, camera in hand, waiting for the right face and the right moment. Thiis is slideshow represents a small sample of his large collection of photos. You can see more on his photostream on Flickr. All photos copyrighted by Alan Barr.

Click on arrow in the center of the screen to begin the slideshow. Click on the arrows in the far right hand corner to go to full screen.

My Philadelphia: The Past

2012-01-27T13:47:53Z

We continue our series of Philadelphia photo essays with one on faces from Philadelphia's past, compiled from city and Free Library and Philadelphia photo archives.

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This Old House

2012-01-26T13:44:25Z

By Rachel Levy Lesser

I grew up in a house built my grandparents. The new construction was complete in 1967, and it was distinctively theirs. The 6-foot bathtub and extra high counter tops were designed by and for my 6-foot-4 grandfather. The art studio complete with a science-like lab sink and oversized slots for canvases was what my grandmother, the budding artist, had always wanted.

It wasn't their house for as long as they would have hoped. After my grandfather died suddenly, my grandmother wanted nothing more of their dream home in Yardley. She moved to New York City where she could be near the art and culture that she craved.

This left my young parents in a precarious position. They had outgrown our small ranch house just 5 minutes away in suburban Philadelphia, but they couldn't find a place that felt right. When my grandmother generously offered them the house, they accepted, although my mother had her doubts. She feared seeing ghosts of holidays past in what would be her new home.

"It was the best decision we ever made," she would later say. "I love the house for all of the reasons I said I wouldn't." She loved that my grandmother, who never looked down on any of my mother's decorating decisions, could tell her that there were, in fact, hard wood floors under the living room carpet. She was the one who had them installed.

I loved that I slept every night in the same room that my young father had. I loved that the extra attic space built for my grandmother's love of coats became my secret playroom. Her art bins were used to store my brother's baseball gloves and lacrosse sticks, and the extra-high counters became a fun challenge for us to climb up on as children.

Neighbors urged my parents to cut back the 5-foot high hedges, but my father watched them grow with pride as he remembered when they were planted around the property some 40 plus years ago.

The house has seen happy and sad occasions - some more memorable than others. As a little girl, I'd walk down the long staircase with an oversized towel hanging down my back imagining that I'd one day walk down those steps wearing a wedding veil. I eventually did just that as my soon-to-be husband met me at the bottom of the steps before we headed out the door to be married.

My brother and I both celebrated our bar and bat mitzvahs in and around the house. The party tents that famously blew down the day before the big events caused my mother to panic and my father to reassure her that the house could handle whatever the weather had to offer.

What I remember most about that house, was feeling safe and happy inside it. The noise of the heavy kitchen door opening and closing reminded me that extended family and friends had stopped by for a quick visit or to drop something off.

My friends always felt welcome there. Everyone knew where we hid the spare key (in the metal band aid box inside the delivery closet) and they figured out where we kept the good snacks (in the oversized drawer below the silverware one.)

We mourned the death of several grandparents and of my mother inside the house. I'll never forget how empty my mother's closet - the one with the cool slots and shelves made originally for my grandmother's shoes and pocketbooks - looked after we had cleaned it out.

The house is in a precarious place once again. My brother and I are grown with families of our own. My father, a man who has lived in it for most of his life, wonders what to do with it.

When he re-did the kitchen last year replacing the white Corian countertops with modern granite and the old coiled top stove with a sleek stainless steel one, I thought he was getting ready to put it on the market. There is still no sign up in front of the hedges.

When I was growing up, I imagined that I'd live there one day with a family of my own. Although I have the family, I no longer have the desire to live there.

I understand now that it is simply a place, and that our time in it is complete. I sometimes think of it as "The Giving Tree." It sheltered us, kept us safe, gave us wonderful memories and now has no more left to give to us.

I bet that it still has more left to give to a new family. If and when my father does sell it, the new residents will have my blessing.

And if they're really nice, I'll tell them about the "hidden" key.

Rachel Levy Lesser is a writer who can be found in her own home iin Yardley, Pa.

Wretched Excess

2012-01-23T21:33:37Z

We all end up with adjectives attached to our names. Penn State football Coach Joe Paterno had a number of them -- beloved and legendary are two. He added another on Sunday, when he died at age 85. He is now the late Joe Paterno.

Or, if you prefer, the beloved, legendary, late Joe Paterno.

Paterno won a lot of football games. He was a a God-like figure at his school and -- here's that word again -- much beloved in the region.

But, he did not cure cancer. He did not found a major religion. He was never the President of the United States. He did not negotiate peace in the Middle East. He was not the King of England. He did not win a Nobel prize. And, although he was God-like he was not God. Nor Jesus. Nor Moses. Nor Buddha.

He was, if you strip away all the adjectives, a football coach.

So, how to explain the wretched excess of local coverage of his death? Take the Philadelphia Inquirer, please.

On the front page of the Monday paper we were greeted with an above-the-fold '9-11-bombing' sized headline Lion at Rest, along with a five-column, 7-by-11-inch picture of the coach (who wasn't the Pope either.)

In the front section, the paper ran a 5,000-word obituary and seven sidebars spread over 6 1/2 pages. There also was an editorial about Paterno.

But wait there's more.

In the sports section, there was another 5 pages of coverage including tributes/remembrances/critiques of Paterno by six -- count 'em -- six columnists, most of which -- again stripped of adjectives -- said he was a winning football coach who was much beloved, but whose final days were tarnished by a scandal involving former

]]>

Paterno was unceremoniously fired after the scandal broke because when it came to reporting the crime he (to use a football phrase) punted to the folks upstairs who were (nominally, I assure you) his superiors.

So, the beloved, legendary coach hears a a report of a crime from a young assistant coach who witnessed it and he does nothing. Not good.

But, I digress, Let's add the coverage up: a total of 11 full pages and about 25,000 words of text, headlines and captions to tell us that Joe Paterno was dead at age 85.

What could they have been thinking? Did someone put amphetamines in the water coolers at the White Tower? And why did 85 percent of the coverage deal with the beloved, legendary part and not about the disgraceful/negligent behavior part that led to his dismissal?

The whole package reminded me of George Bernard Shaw's observation that newspapers seem unable to tell the difference between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilization.

Paterno's death was certainly not a bicycle accident. It was front page news -- though not the entire front page. And devoting five-pages to Paterno's life and times in the sports section wouldn't be excessive either -- unless you consider the six-and-a-half pages devoted to the same topic in the A section.

Metropolitan newspapers have taken a lot of hits in the last 10 years, but they still have the ability -- as no other local media has -- of flooding the zone. They can still send a mass of reporters to cover a single news event on any given day.

But, if they do it on something like a football coach's death, it makes them look ridiculous.

When something like a Paterno story breaks, the job of a newspaper isn't to go hysterical and lose all sense of proportion. That's TV's job.

At newspapers, you have to have some sense of proportion. Otherwise, people will think that you have gone mad or, worse, that you are silly.

We can't afford that. Newspapers have too important a job to do to look silly.

-- Tom Ferrick

The Reluctant Park Mom

2012-01-20T12:51:08Z

By Kate Wright

I recently attended a birthday party for my son's two-year-old friend. I knew only a few of the people there -- namely, the hosts and their extended family -- but that afternoon I met other moms, dads, and kids who live in my neighborhood. I settled in, keeping watch over my son, who was not yet one, as he played with the big kids. The sun was out. I had a cold drink in my hand. It was a beautiful day.

A woman approached. We introduced ourselves and she asked me where I lived. When she found out I was from the neighborhood, she seemed surprised and said: "Oh. Are you a park mom? I've never seen you at the park before."

I stood there, staring at her, until our hostess explained: "She's a friend from before the park."

"Yes," I said, suddenly feeling awkward. "I do go to the park from time to time, but we do other things as well."

The truth is, I don't want to be a Park Mom.

It's true. I live just blocks away from a lovely Philadelphia park that includes a playground --complete with swings, jungle gyms, and Park Moms. It's also true that I take my son there when it's nice outside, especially when I'm feeling guilty that he hasn't seen any kids for days because he's been stuck to my hip.

However, I only really like going to the park if I am meeting a friend there. Otherwise, I find myself chasing after my son while trying to hold a conversation over, under, and around the dinosaur-shaped jungle gym about teeth and sleep. I don't even think the other moms know what I look like because they never look directly at me. They are looking down, at their children. I fancy good conversation, but I don't enjoy conversing with someone who cares nothing about me and everything about my child's sleeping patterns.

It gets worse. I generally try to be patient, but I find myself answering a typical Park Mom question sarcastically for the sole purpose of enjoying the reaction I get. For example:

Park Mom: So, how is your son sleeping these days?

Me: Well, I've started giving him a bottle of whiskey with water right before bed. That usually gives me nine or ten hours. It was just getting way too hard when he woke up throughout the night, you know?

At this point, Park Mom typically grabs her child as if rescuing him from a child molester and hurries away.

You see, I'm not into comparing children as if they are talents or skills, as if growing up is a competition. I don't feel good about myself if my son walks before your daughter, and I don't feel bad about myself if he says fewer words than your son. My child will grow as he will grow, and I will allow him to do so without putting pressure on him based on what the Park Moms think is best.

I have had a few refreshing trips to the park that involved meeting a mom (or a dad) who made eye contact with me and asked about what type of work I do or what my thoughts are on Philly's public schools. I return home feeling accomplished, happily telling my husband, "I made a new mom friend! And at the park, too!"

Deep down I don't care about what a Park Mom thinks and I find great relief in my Real Mom friends. I like it that we can sit around drinking coffee, discussing life and the world while our kids play at our feet. I like feeling comfortable calling them in tears because I didn't get any sleep or because my son told me he loves me for the first time. I like knowing about their children and I like knowing about them -- really knowing them.

Of course I want my son to be socialized. Of course I want him to play on a playground, to run around with kids his age. That's why we go to the park in the first place.

But I don't ever want to be a Park Mom. What does that even mean? A woman who is defined by the fact that she takes her children to the park on a regular basis? I prefer to be defined by who I am -- whether I'm at the park, at home, or traveling around the world. If the Park Moms don't like it, that's okay with me. Because I like it just fine.

Kate Wright is a freelance writer/editor and doula who lives in Philadelphia.

Murder, Inc.

2012-01-18T13:05:05Z

Just when you think you have a problem under control, it slips from your grasp.

Mayor Nutter is probably regretting his rhetoric over lowering the homicide rate,

At least he is getting frustrated at the trend lines, using the word "evil" and "assholes" recently to discuss the alleged perps .

The mayor's immediate problem is his long-standing promise to lower the homicide rate, but the number of murders was up slightly in 2011 over 2010 and the first three weeks of January have seen a record number of homicides.

The brutal killing of Kevin Kless, 23, in Old City last weekend is a reminder of how frightening the crime can be.

Kless, a recent Temple grad, tried to hail a cab that had its vacancy light on. The cabbie passed him by and Kless yelled and cursed him. Some guys riding by thought he was yelling at them so they got out of their car and beat him to death.

It was your classic ugly, vicious urban nightmare.

When it comes to overall story of homicide, though, the Kless killing was an anomaly. For starters, Kless was white. He did not have a criminal record. He was killed by strangers. The instrument of crime was not a gun.

In Philadelphia, only 15 out of 100 homicide victims are white males. Most murders happen between people who know each other. Last year, 80 percent of the victims had criminal records and 81 percent of murders were using firearms (with 9 MM handguns the weapons of choice.) All this data comes from the Philadelphia police.

Horrid deaths like the Kless case are sure to get those of us in the media wringing our hands. Words like "epidemic" get spread about. There is much solemnizing about the sad state of our city and our society, with the chorus led by the mayor.

The reality is more mundane and more encouraging.

]]> We have far fewer murders today than we did 20 years ago.

In decade that began in 2000, homicides were down 25 percent from the previous 10 years. That is a significant decline.

In fact, murder has been on a slow, but generally steady, decline since its heyday in the 1970's. In that troubled decade, an average of 425 people were killed in Philadelphia each year. Lately, it has averaged 302 a year.

The other significant change is the mix of victims.

Homicide in Philadelphia today mostly consists of one black man shooting another. That wasn't always so.

In the 1970's, which was the city's most violent decade, 65 out of every 100 murder victims was a non-white male (to use the tag applied by the Health Department). Today, the average is 76 out of every 100.

The racial/gender breakdown on murderers is similar.

Our Cover Story by Frank Rubino explains part of the reason why. The police don't like to talk about it, but there is a thriving gang culture in Philadelphia -- different from the gangs that dominated the headlines in the 70's, but no less pernicious.

These gangs tend to be smaller. but are jealous of their turf. Often, they are involved in drug sales. Interlopers -- rival dealers from rival gangs -- are dealt with harshly.

Murders don't happen only in disputes over turf. They happen for a host of trivial reasons: a friend dissed by a guy from out of the neighborhood; a girlfriend stolen by the guy around the block; guys who carry a fight at the basketball court into the street.

It's incredibly stupid stuff. Trivial arguments that that take a fatal turn due to the presence of a gun.

Criminologists have looked deeply into the cause and cure of murder and have come away dazed and confused. This much we know as true:

Part of the reason for the variation year to year is that there are always variations. The rate rides up and down, moving to its own unknown rhythms. To determine the trend, it's best not to compare year to year, but clusters of years.

Demographics provide a big part of the answer as to why homicide is down.

Black males between the age of 15 and 29 constitute about 40 percent of all homicide victims.

In 1970, there were 71,000 black males between the ages of 15 and 29 in Philadelphia. By 1980, there were 92,000 -- due mostly to increased birth rates, but also migration into the city. By 1990, it had gone down to 89,000.

Then, the numbers of males in this 15-29 age group began to decline. Today (actually, in 2007, the latest year available) it stands at about 63,000.

In other words, the pool of likely perpetrators and victims has shrunk -- by about 28 percent between the 1990's and today. During the same period, the number of homicide victims has gone down 25 percent.

This reality should help shape whatever debate we have over murder in Philadelphia.

-- Tom Ferrick

Harder Than I Thought

2012-01-15T08:46:35Z

By Debra Bourdeau McLoughlin

It was harder than I thought.

We had joked about it - "Promise you'll pull the plug," my mother would say. "Sure, no problem, " I'd answer. And we'd laugh. As time went by it was less joking and more promising. I promise I won't let you suffer. I promise no life support. I promise I won't let you lay there with tubes coming out of you.

As I watched her sleep - at least I hoped she was sleeping - I looked at all the tubes. And I thought about broken promises, and the phone call. "You have power of attorney, will you consent to surgery? Without surgery, she will not survive the night." My brother, who was there with her, pleaded for her life. And so I consented, against the thousand promises, against my better judgment.

It was harder than I thought.

My siblings and I fought over feeding tubes and respirators and extra measures and what she wanted and what she didn't want, over medical care and nursing homes. Over life and death. Because one did not have the heart to stop treatment and another did not have the heart to keep it going. One believed she would get better, another believed she was already gone. One wanted to sell her house, another held on to the hope that she might one day go home. I consented to a feeding tube. Then, she had a stroke.

Someone had to decide and so I, the one with the power, decided.

But then I wavered.

She trusted me. With her life. It was harder than I thought.

Things happened quickly. And there was no sense to be made of it. The decision was out of my hands.

The tubes came out slowly, first the breathing tube. She silently screamed "Help Me!" over and over. She pointed to the machines and shook her head, and screamed with no sound. There are no words. I wanted to die but I knew that wouldn't be fair. I hadn't let her die.

A few days later, I walked into the room and she said: "Debra! You look great!" I caught my breath and said "Thanks, Mom you look great too." So had -- inexplicably -- revived.

The IVs came out and finally, the feeding tube. It left a horrific sore that took months to heal. But it did heal. We moved her from the hospital to a nursing home.

Over the weeks, she progressed from being spoon fed pureed food to eating the lobster tails my brother would bring her. And pizza. From being bedridden to pushing herself about in a wheelchair, visiting other residents. From being unaware of time to being painfully aware that she had missed her granddaughter's wedding. We brought pictures and tried to comfort her.

When she was on life support, her husband left. It was not his fault, it was a decision that must have been made for reasons that had nothing to do with love or commitment. She had nothing now except her house, because she owned it with her first husband, my dad. He died decades ago after being subjected to medical treatment that offered no hope for his cancer, just radiation burns and blood transfusions and suffering. My mother brought him home, to stop the doctors from prolonging not his life but his death. He died there, in his own bed.

It was harder than I thought. To move that reality to a different place in my mind, to make room for hope.

In the nursing home, my mother, as she always has, had her hair and nails done every week and put on her own makeup each day. I overheard another woman bluntly say to her: "You think you are special, you have nothing." And my mother sat up straight and looked her in the eye and said: "I have my children and my home." And I realized then that we had to bring her home, not to die, but to live.

That January day was cold but sunny. The transport pulled up to the house and as mom disembarked in her wheelchair, she waved. She was wheeled into her living room, now bedroom, and she was home. Over the following months, she regained her independence, learning to take care of herself and walk again. She spent the days in her beloved porch, watching the birds and the deer, doted on by my brother and his wife who had moved in to care for her. She was back to living and she was home. All my doubts drifted away. We had done the right thing. During the following months, we all slowly healed along with her.

Then she was rushed to the hospital. Her kidneys failed. And we had to relive it all, all the decisions about life support, DNRs, quality of life had to be made again and again over the next few months. She would rally, then fail again. We were more informed now but the decisions did not come easier. And all the issues that drove us apart the first time returned with a vengeance. I began to pray that she would die, then I would be consumed by guilt. Hope was replaced by dread that I had failed her. Finally, she recuperated enough to be transferred to a nursing home. On her good days, when she was conscious, the damage was cruelly evident, and took my breath away. But she always recognized me, and always called out "Debra!" when she saw me.

It was harder than I thought.

In November, she developed an infection. We decided to send her back to the hospital because she was in pain. While she was in the ER, an aide fed her and she aspirated the meal and went into cardiac and respiratory arrest. Then, in violation of her living will and the DNR order, she was resuscitated and put on a respirator. Two weeks later, we all finally agreed it was time. My brother and I were haunted by the thought that we had sent her to the hospital, a decision that we could not know would have this result. But the reality forced a decision. The doctors told us she would not last another day without the respirator. It was turned off. And she began to breathe on her own. The hospital demanded her immediate transfer to a long-term acute care facility.

At the facility, mom continued to breathe on her own. Last week, I showed her a picture of her new great-granddaughter. She looked right at me and although she could not speak, she mouthed the words "Oh My God" which is what she always said when she thought something was amazing.

Oh My God.

Mom died today. It is harder than I thought.

Born to Boycott

2012-01-10T17:39:28Z

By Janet Golden

Not so long ago I emailed a close friend an article that revealed her favorite line of yoga wear, Lululemon, came from a company that promoted the works of Ayn Rand. I expected her to be grateful for the news and, since she is a good left political activist, to thank me for alerting her so she'd never shop there again.

Instead she asked: "Why did you have to tell me that?"

I was shocked at her response. But then, I come from a boycotting family.

Growing up in Southern California we boycotted all things John Birch Society. No Russell Stover candy ever passed my lips. As my mother taught me, Mrs. Stover gave money to the Birchers.

Ditto for Knott's Berry Farm. Everyone went there, often combined with a trip to Disneyland. Not me. Those Knott's folks, I learned from my mother, were Birchers. I'm just glad Walt Disney never gave money to rightwing groups, or if he did, that my parents never found out about it. Otherwise, I'd never have gotten to ride the Pirates of the Caribbean--the ride that inspired the movie.

Moving to Philadelphia gave me a whole new set of boycott opportunities. Local unions produced boycott lists and with the Internet age they migrated to web. I had my list. But I didn't need an organization to tell me what to boycott. When a local restaurant destroyed a surprise 50th birthday party planned by a friend for her husband by canceling the reservation at the last minute, I promised to boycott the place forever. And even though no one specifically asked me to, I tried to avoid the local Barnes and Noble and Borders and shop only at the small bookstores around my local university. I don't think I can be praised or blamed for the fact that all of them are now closed.

More recently I've become an aficionado of Facebook group boycott pages. I'm not an Eagles fan and if I was I'd probably have to wait years to get season's tickets, but when that Boycott the Eagles Facebook Group page went up after they hired Michael Vick I felt as if my habit of never watching Eagles games on television was no longer simply something I took for granted, it was a political action.

If you'd invited me over to watch football instead of saying, "no thanks" I'd probably have answered, "I'm boycotting the Eagles." My mother, who still lives in Los Angeles, and is the boycott queen, actually told me she now hated the Eagles even though she'd never been a professional football fan. My children, on the other hand, are big Eagles fans and won't even discuss this with me. This suggests, contrary to what I'd always believed, that there is no boycott gene.

One problem with boycotts, is that when they end it is hard to resume using whatever it was you were boycotting.

When Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta led the United Farm Worker's grape boycott in 1965 those items disappeared from our house. It took me decades to learn to eat them again. Another problem is that there are a lot of boycotts, perhaps too many.

You've got to set your bookmarks and check websites before you buy anything or go anywhere. And with all the evil in the world, no matter how hard you try you are probably contributing to some nefarious practice--whether it is child labor overseas, or mistreatment of workers here at home. If you come from a boycotting family this only leads to guilt. And you can't boycott guilt.

But I guess you can spread it around. That's probably why I like to let my friends know what they should be boycotting. Like me, they'll probably (unknowingly) own things they never should have purchased in the first place. Maybe they'll feel guilty, like I do. Isn't that what friends are for?

But I suppose if I don't tame this habit, I may soon be the object of a boycott by my friends.

Management by Dithering

2012-01-10T17:25:12Z

One of the lessons to be learned in the forced closure of dozens of Catholic schools in the region is the danger of institutional drift.

For decades, Catholic schools had a fixed and firm role in the world: education and faith formation of Catholic children. They ran on models the church was comfortable with: parish-based education, overseen by the pastor and run by a religious order of nuns.

The model worked well until it did not. And the 'did not' period began in the late 1980's, most noticeably in Philadelphia.

The path of this decline was obvious to anyone who looked at the numbers: fewer Catholics = fewer Catholic children = lower enrollment in Catholic schools.

In the same way that fewer vocations = fewer clergy and nuns = replacement of nuns and clergy with more expensive lay teachers and staff.

The archdiocesan leadership responded by not responding -- at least not in any systemic way. As the trends began to accelerate, they began a round of annual closings, usually targeting elementary schools where enrollment dipped below 200 students.

Nominally in charge of deciding the fate of their parish's schools, pastors found themselves caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place: keep it open and it would serve as a drain on diminishing parish resources; close it and become an enemy of parishioners -- a "Judas," in the words of one pastor I talked to.

By the first decade of the new century -- again, especially in Philadelphia -- the tension began to mount over the reality of where the schools were heading versus any decisive action from the archdiocese's leadership over what to do.

]]> For a project, I talked to several dozen priests and Catholic educators in early 2010 and their frustration was palpable.

In the field, there were two theories on why the leadership had not acted to deal with the issue: One was that they were so consumed by other problems -- among them the priest sex scandals -- that they could not devote attention to the fate of the schools. The other was they were deliberately not taking action because they knew that eventually the situation would deteriorate to the point where wholesale closings would have to take place. As one pastor told me: "Not making a decision is making a decision." Perhaps there was also a hope that vouchers would arrive to rescue them.

Whatever the reason, it was management by dithering.

The situation changed mostly because of external pressures. Foundations and large givers who were supporters of Catholic education pressured Archbishop Justin Rigali to do something that resembled action. He responded by creating the Blue Ribbon Commission that issued its report last week, calling for the closing or merger of many dozens of schools, most of them in Philadelphia and inner ring suburbs. The closures include shuttering a number of beloved institutions, including West Catholic, Bonner and Prendergast, St. Hubert's and Conwell-Egan High Schools.

The Blue Ribbon Commission report (that's what they actually named it) isn't a solution to the problems of Catholic schools. It simply culls the herd -- dramatically and painfully.

It doesn't reposition Catholic education to face the new, more competitive environment brought about by demographic trends and the growth of (tuition free) charter schools.

It does make smart recommendations for improvements, though the implementation will be up to the existing leadership in the archdiocese and the parishes.

There is a successful model for the Catholic schools to follow: the private school model, with strong academic leadership, concentration on brand identity, and an active program of fundraising (so many graduates who have become successful in life). The archdiocesan high schools are trying to replicate this model, with uneven results.

On the grade school level, an overworked pastor, with an advisory committee of lay people, and a former eighth-grade teacher recently promoted to principal won't do it, even if you guarantee them a number of refugees from closed schools to bolster income from tuition.

So, the real challenge of Catholic education lies ahead. It has to make fundamental changes in the way it operates, especially at the grade school level, or else the trend lines will continue downward.

Consolidation is only the first step. This will be a long and arduous journey.

-- Tom Ferrick

Photo: West Catholic High School

A New Wave of Street Gangs

2012-01-07T14:27:33Z

By Frank Rubino

The downtrodden commercial strip on North 60^th Street between Market and Arch Streets includes a barber shop, a check-cashing joint, a hole-in-the-wall Chinese takeout and a bar. The Market Street end is marked by a prominent, three-foot-high metallic "60" that overlooks the block from its perch on a SEPTA El stop.

To passersby, unfamiliar with this West Philly neighborhood's street culture, that giant "60" marks an El station. Period.

But to many who live in the vicinity, the big "60" symbolizes something more. This is a home turf of the 60^th Street Posse, also known as "Six-O," which controls organized criminal activity on this and surrounding blocks.

"They got about 20 to 30 members," says anti-gang activist Malik Aziz, who has first-hand experience with gangs. He once ran with North Philly's infamous Oxford Street gang and served a decade in prison before righting himself and co-founding Men United for a Better Philadelphia eight years ago.

Aziz, 56, says members of Six-O, one of several descendants of 70's-era West Philly mega-gang the Moons, sell crack, move automatic weapons, commit robberies and worse. "They're pretty ruthless," he says. "They have hostilities with 56^th Street (a rival gang), and they'll shoot each other on the street without thinking twice. There's been gang-related killings up there for sure."

What's worse, according to Aziz, is that gang-related killings occur all over Philadelphia these days.

In the 1960s and early '70s, when epic street gangs such as the Moroccos, the Zulu Nation, the Valley Nation, the Moons and scores of others battled ferociously during Philadelphia's well-documented gang-war era, the reality of street-gang violence across the city was undeniable. These days, however, police (who declined to discuss anything specific for this article) seem reluctant to acknowledge its existence. But just because no one in authority wants to talk about gangs doesn't mean they don't exist.

Aziz and other streetwise activists say there are numerous new-wave gangs in Philadelphia. While they tend to be smaller and less regimented than their forbearers, they are greedier, better armed and nearly as prolific.

"The cops say there's no gang problem, and you got gangs all over this city," scoffs Aziz, as he began to tick off some gang names: the Richard Allen Mafia, the Erie Avenue Mafia, the Empire, the Lemon Crew, the Albanian Blood Brothers, the Norris Street Crew, Underworld, Diamondworld .

Aziz, who travels each year to Chicago to make a presentation before other members of the National Gang Crime Research Center, adds that many of Philadelphia's new-wave gangs -- often called posses, squads or cliques -- are also known by the same monikers made infamous in his day on the streets.

"Say there's a gun battle over drug turf between a gang from around 12^th and Oxford, which used to belong to Oxford Nation, and 8^th and Diamond, which was part of Zulu Nation," he explained. "If somebody gets shot, a lot of times the neighborhood people will still say, 'They killed that boy from Zulu Nation.' The names have been handed down from generation to generation, and the territorial mentality in certain neighborhoods has never died."

New-wave gangs, unsurprisingly, are largely comprised of teenagers, many of whose parents know the old-school traditions all too well.

Take Aziz's longtime friend "Kareem" (not his real name), whose 17-year-old son "Jerome" (also a pseudonym) reputedly runs with Six-O.

Kareem, who is 59, headed Germantown's feared Brickyard gang four decades ago. He spent 19 years in state and federal penitentiaries before getting off heroin and staying out of prison for good. Today, he lives a tranquil life, save for the angst he suffers over his youngest child.

"I worry about him," he says soberly. He has reason to. He already lost a son in 1993 when the boy was shot and killed by his best friend while the two were playing with a loaded gun.

Kareem, who sports a graying beard and an Islamic skullcap, is especially concerned about Jerome's continuing habit of hanging around 60^th and Arch Streets, the neighborhood Jerome grew up in. Kareem, a father of five who relocated his family to Overbrook more than a year ago, fears that Jerome might be targeted (read: shot on sight) if he strays near, say, William L. Sayre High School at 58^th and Walnut Streets, just a few blocks from Six-O's turf, because of Six-O's ongoing beef with the 56^th Street gang.

But that's a hypothetical. Jerome's juvenile legal problems are real.

He loves basketball and is smart enough to have mastered a Rubik's Cube on his first try. But he's also been on probation since being released in mid-October from a youth detention facility outside the city, where he served 19months for participating in a West Philly street beating and robbery of a victim he describes as "a Chinese man."

Weeks after being released, he got into trouble again, this time for allegedly threatening another teen. A judge ruled that Jerome had violated his probation and remanded him to the Youth Study Center, where he is now awaiting a December court date.

Jerome contends he never threatened the other youth. He likewise denies membership in Six-O, although the tattoo he had inked into his right forearm on Nov. 7 tells Aziz and others something else.

The tattoo includes a "6" and an "O" divided by a vertical sequence that reads: "6NS2." Asked by a reporter last month what those letters and numbers signify, Jerome shrugged, "North of Market, but I ain't in no gang. I used to rock the block (read: sell drugs and take part in other criminal activity) up there with the dudes that be doing that. But now I just go up there to see my friends."

"What the tattoo tells me is he's a full-fledged 60^th Street member," counters Aziz.

"Plain and simple. That's what he hollers. That's what he claims. And that's what he's reppin'.

Shawn "Frogg" Banks, a former gang member turned documentary-filmmaker, seconds Aziz's statement. Banks knows Jerome and has tried to redirect him and other teens away from the gang life.

"I would think he's still affiliated, still full-fledged Six-O," Banks said. " Of course he's going to say he ain't with that. The code of the street tells him to deny it. He's probably like, 'You might find that out on your own, but you ain't hearing it out of my mouth.'"

Kareem isn't convinced his son is full-blown Six-O. He does believe Jerome is stuck in follower mode, tagging along with his lifelong buddies whether they're doing right or otherwise.

"I believe his active participation is probably not exactly what (Aziz and Banks) think it is," he says. "He does what his little group does. If they get in trouble, he'll get in trouble, but if they stay out of trouble, he'll stay out of trouble with them."

He pauses before adding, "and if they get in a fight and need some help, he's going to be there for them, even if that means going back to jail."

Asked whether he frets about the prospect of Jerome losing his life on the treacherous turf around 60^th Street, Kareem alphabetizes his concerns: A, that Jerome will, in fact, die in the street, B, that he'll kill someone else and C, that he'll follow in his father's footsteps and spend years in prison.

To try to preclude these options from becoming reality, Kareem says he'll continue to counsel his son and surround him with as many positive influences as he can.

"But if he wants to be from 60^th Street and develop a whole gang mentality, that's something I'm powerless over," he acknowledges. "His whole attitude's got to change. Until that happens, he's gonna be stuck on 60^th Street with them other guys."

Tomorrow: How gang activity is the true cause of violent incidents across the city.

Reading the City

2012-01-05T11:24:11Z

By Samantha Kirk

My father, a Navy veteran and contented suburban Maryland home-dweller, has trouble understanding why I love the city. When I talk about the row house I'm moving into in North Philadelphia, with its bathroom window offering an unobstructed view of the neighbor's bedroom, its crumbling drywall, its nightly chorus of stray cats, he waxes poetic about the Jeffersonian virtues of the countryside and the joys of homesteading. He knows I love the wilderness and the country; so why, he asks, have I spent most of my adult life seeking out the experience of the city?

It's true that I am quite the nature lover. I hike, I climb rocks, I garden; plant identification is one of my hobbies. Being able to read a forest or meadow by the leaf shapes hidden within it is a wonderful thing. Much, in fact, like walking down a city street and reading the ages of the houses by the shape of the windows and doors--and, for good or ill, reading how rich or poor an area is by seeing which fonts the shop signs use and counting the number of check-cashing joints per block. For the obsessive symbol-analyst, the urban and the rural both tell incredibly complex stories. I'm an editor, so I read words all day. (Actually, I read half the day, and then I spend the rest of the day answering the phone and looking at sales reports. But let's not split hairs.) It's only natural, I think, for me to want to read everything else.

So I read Philadelphia. It is a visual city in so many ways. Its residents are visual. It has, by my count, five [visual] art schools within the city limits--that's four more than D.C., although I doubt anyone's surprised. Its buildings are bold, both the good and the bad; the crumbling face of the Divine Lorraine is just as proud and fierce in its own way as the once record-breaking tower of City Hall.

My street at the very edge of Northern Liberties features its own little series of essays. In them I read about people who love to garden, people who've lived in Northern Liberties since it was just "that place near Fishtown," people who've moved into the neighborhood in the past 10 years with their small children and their dogs and their graphic design jobs (there's that visual element again). And when I put those stories together, I read a larger story about urban renewal in Philadelphia, or maybe about gentrification. I see a specialty food market eyeing a grubby deli from down the street. I see ground breaking for a major grocery store a block and a half from the local strip club. But mostly I see what happens when a group of property owners start thinking and talking about themselves as a neighborhood.

I love all of this visual negotiation. I never noticed as much of it at my previous home in College Park (a suburb of D.C.). We certainly all complained about the new high-rise student housing and the vacant properties on Route 1, but what I thought of as the real center of that town--namely, the University of Maryland campus--was a fixed set of structures, a pleasant but static place. The conversations College Park had with itself about being a neighborhood weren't as easy to read in the landscape as they are in Philadelphia. And aside from the college campus, I think the reading difficulty was also because reading the suburbs is like reading Keats with no annotations; plenty of people do it, and it's still an enjoyable experience, but parts of every poem remain silent, unexplained, like closed garage doors in suburban houses. I like to buy the annotated edition, I like to peek in garage doors. These impulses made College Park begin to chafe at me.

Then, conveniently enough, I fell in love with a man who lived in Philadelphia, specifically Fishtown. He described it to me in detail over Guinnesses at McGlinchey's when we first met, not knowing how much I loved to read places

His description of that Irish immigrant neighborhood was the beginning of two important relationships for me; one with the man, and one with the city. My father, like most fathers, may not like the part about the man, but he at least understands that kind of relationship. To help him understand the other kind, I think I'll take him with me on a reading tour of the city. I can't decide if I should start with City Hall or the Divine Lorraine.

Samantha Kirk is an editor who lives and reads in Northern Liberties.

New-Wave Street Gangs: Armed and Violent

2012-01-04T23:38:10Z

By Frank Rubino

Longtime anti-crime activist Greg Bucceroni wears a three-inch-long scar on his forehead, a souvenir from the June 5, 2008 evening when more than a dozen members of the heroin-dealing "Bart Simpson" gang - named after the brand of dope they peddled - backed him against a concrete wall in West Kensington.

Bucceroni wore a blue polo shirt inscribed with the words, Philadelphia Police Youth At-Risk Program that night as he walked toward the home of a troubled teenage boy he was mentoring. After quickly surrounding him at Mascher Street and Indiana Avenue, several Bart Simpson members with Spanish accents shouted words to the effect that they'd "fuck up anybody who helped the cops."

Another hollered "Kill him!" in Spanish moments before someone else heaved a brick that crashed off Bucceroni's skull. Luckily for Bucceroni, a police cruiser pulled up seconds later, probably saving his life.

Count the 46-year-old Bucceroni, a onetime New York City Guardian Angel who still occasionally dons a beret over his shaved pate, among a cadre of volunteer crime-fighters who dispute the notion that gang-connected violence in Philadelphia is a problem of yesteryear. As reported in Part One, today's gangs are smaller, greedier and often more dangerous than the street gangs of the late 1960's and 70's who made headlines with their turf wars.

"There are violent gangs all across this city," says the father of three, who believes a high percentage of Philadelphia's street shootings have gang overtones, although print and electronic media, relying largely on the police for information, rarely report those angles.

"The Philadelphia police historically are going to deny that there's a spike in gang activity," Bucceroni asserts. Police officials refused to discuss any specifics regarding gang activity for this series.

Bucceroni cites the Nov. 2 assault on a 25-year-old man shot multiple times inside a Buick LeSabre at 11^th and Norris Streets as an example of a crime he suspects was spurred by new-wave gang conflict.

"I call that section the 11^th Street corridor," he says, adding that drug-dealing posses based at 11^th and Master, 11^th and Norris and 11^th and York regularly skirmish over turf incursions. Scenes like the one cops discovered when they peered inside the Buick are often the upshot.

Bucceroni, incidentally, says many of the Bart Simpson dudes who attacked him, including the alleged brick chucker, were subsequently gunned down by members of another Latino dope-peddling gang, this one headquartered at Tusculum and Hope Streets.

"A detective asked me whether I knew anything about those guys getting killed," he recalls, "and I told him, 'No, but you know what? Somebody did society a favor.'"

Inside his movie studio in Oreland, Pa., 20 miles west of Philadelphia, ex-North Philly gang member Shawn "Frogg" Banks looks a little like P. Diddy as he sits at his desk in a flashy orange shirt and discusses Philly street gang culture, a topic he's lived and made documentaries about.

The compactly built former drug dealer, who found himself in police handcuffs more than once, narrowly survived a 1995 kidnapping and murder plot. Motivated by the realization that he should probably be lying in some cemetery right about now, Banks speaks in schools and takes kids on getaways to the Poconos, using his "ghetto pass" to counsel them about alternatives to dealing drugs and joining street gangs.

Banks agrees with Bucceroni that there's often another layer to the perfunctory homicide brief you read in the Inquirer or Daily News. In fact, he speculates that as many as half of the 305 homicides that occurred in Philadelphia in 2009 likely had street gang implications.

Frighteningly, the 40-year-old Banks reports that gangs have ratcheted up their viciousness even over the 15 years since he ran with a latter-day version of the original Zulu Nation, a 1960s and early-'70s mega-gang that operated in North Philly east of Broad Street.

"We used to have an initiation called a gang line," he says, describing a scene in which a fledgling gang member had to fight his way through two long rows of punching, elbowing homeboys. "But fighting's out the window now. The kids today can't even take an ass-whipping. You beat one of 'em up, they wanna get a gun and come back and kill you."

Automatic weapons have obviously become more available since the 70's or even Banks' street-running days. He points out that nowadays it's nothing for gang members to stroll around packing TEC-9s, AK-47s, Uzis and other menacing forms of heat.

"All of 'em got a gun, and you can't even bump into 'em. Brush up on 'em by accident and that might be it. They talk with their guns, and they're so heinous now, they don't want to shoot you one time, they want to shoot you 14 times, lift your body up and blow your head off, demean you beyond killing you. It's like a medal to them. They want to impress the other guys in the squad with how ruthless they are."

Females are increasingly getting in on the act, Banks adds, relating that more than one schoolgirl has brought him up to speed on the horrors of a "buck-fitty" - a punitive measure in which a girl who crosses members of a girl gang, perhaps by being too pretty or by resisting their recruitment overtures, is held down and slashed across the face with a box-cutter.

"Buck-fitty" refers to the hope that the gash will take at least 150 stitches to close.

"She gets scarred for life," Banks says. "Girls are terrible nowadays."

Jack Stollsteimer, who served as the governor-appointed safe schools advocate for the School District of Philadelphia from June 2006 to August 2009 - and who asserts he regularly encountered resistance and denial when apprising school district officials of the violence problem - backs up Banks' assertions.

Now working as an attorney for the state Treasurer in Harrisburg, Stollsteimer recalls a conversation he had in 2008 with a dean of students for a public high school in North Philadelphia (Stollsteimer won't name the school). The dean related how one day as he was counseling a teenage girl in his office, she scratched her head and inadvertently shook loose from her pile of hair a slew of razor blades that fell to the floor.

"She was a part of a group of girls, a gang, whatever you want to call it," Stollsteimer says. "That's the kind of thing that parents hear and, you know, go off the charts. You can see why school officials don't want information like that to get out."

Chief Inspector Myron Patterson, the school district's chief of safety, didn't respond to repeated interview requests. School district spokesman Fernando Gallard, however, responded to Stollsteimer's assertions that district officials routinely play "see no evil, hear no evil" with respect to student-on-student brutality.

"This district is one of the few you will see in the nation that is leading the way in providing specific information on crimes and safety in our schools," Gallard says. "That's actually why we are one of the few districts that has schools that are considered 'persistently dangerous.'"

Greg Bucceroni, who's worked with his share of school kids, sides with Stollsteimer. Moreover, he believes too many Philadelphia neighborhoods remain persistently dangerous, at least in part, because those fearsome street gangs of '60s and '70s lore never actually went away.

"I have a big scar on my forehead that reminds me of it every day," he says.