Dear Mr. Springsteen:

Later today I'll be joining with three dozen other writers and artists and editors and lovers of language in my city, Philadelphia, to read your words on behalf of Writers Resist. I'll invoke the authentic, there's only one of you you, I promise. Thank you for giving us words to hold onto.

When the way is dark and the night is cold
One sunny mornin' we'll rise I know
And I'll meet you further on up the road.....

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thoughts on Philadelphia's Grand Lady (and freedoms, artistic and otherwise), in the Inky

Last Friday, as readers of this blog know, I took my father to the Academy of Music to see the fabulous musical "Once." Before we got there, we toured the birthplace of American liberty and sat within the spell of Maxfield Parish's "Dream Garden."

I write about that in today's Philadelphia Inquirer.

The link is here.

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Nathaniel Popkin asks about LOVE (in Hidden City)

Philadelphia long ago discovered the gem who is Nathaniel Popkin. He shows up at Emmy Award celebrations, on the jackets of wonderful novels and nonfiction collections, in the pages of Philadelphia magazine, as book review editor at Cleaver. He is, as well, a force behind Hidden City, and what I say here is the truth: few people know more about this city, or think about it more deeply, than Nathaniel Popkin.

So it was a distinct pleasure to be interviewed by him for Hidden City. Our conversation about walking, seeing, thinking, and believing (and Philadelphia) can be found here. I always learn from the questions he asks.

Thank you, Nathaniel.

We're launching Love: A Philadelphia Affair at the Free Library tomorrow night on a stage that will sparkle with the warm wit and intelligence of broadcast pioneer Marciarose Shestack. We hope you'll join us.

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one single man. one world. the Pope in Philadelphia.

One single man unites three cities, also the world. He wears white. He raises his hand. He stops his Fiat to kiss a young boy on a head, to touch a baby, to nod at an Argentine flag, to laugh at something, to mime a quick sprint. He speaks, at a mass, of St. Katherine. He honors educators and peacemakers. He talks about the power of being individually different together and about the devastations of attempting global sameness.

Celebrate your history.

Celebrate your culture.

Celebrate our many languages.

He celebrates the immigrant, reminds those who must be reminded that we, here in America, we, here, in Philadelphia, are all products of movement; my own Italian great-grandfather became a naturalized citizen not even 100 years ago. He asks us to look past walls and barriers. To be honest with each other. To seek out peace, to stop perpetuating damage, to hold together family and family life.

Money, fame, celebrity, awards, job titles: These things do not impress him. He prefers his own shoes, his own small apartment, his single suitcase of possessions.

We are watching him, learning from him, studying the skies (the morning hue here is the brightest pink). We are celebrating with those, like Sister Kimberly Miller, who have stood in his presence. We are praying for him today, another long day, and we will be praying for him, as his plane departs tonight, and then after, when he has more meetings to attend to, another continent to greet and to inspire.

Make the peace, he says. Or keep it.

Be honest.

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Our Pope in Our City

His humility humbles us.

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on the street where I lived (Camac)

When I lived here the doors and shutters were red. A single room on the second floor was mine. Later, when I got married, I rented three full rooms on the floor above.

Camac Street. Philadelphia. Where I wrote bad poems, read at night, bought ice cream as an extravagance, waited for the phone to ring, but it hardly ever did. Where the big meal out was the Middle Eastern shop; I've still not tasted hummus like they made at that Middle Eastern shop. I met Precious near Camac, when I walked (in sneakers) Locust late at night. I went back and forth to my job until, at the age of twenty-five, I went into business for myself.

So that this place, which had red doors once, was where I waited to be married, then was. Where I had a job, then created one for myself. Where I stopped writing poetry so that I could write short stories. Where I learned I would have surgery that would wire my disintegrated jaw shut.

So much happened on Camac Street.

I walked by the other day. I remembered.

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remembering a Mayor Nutter moment in Philadelphia

Philadelphia. I love her. I write about her. I celebrate her. But don't think that I can't see. This can be a hard-knock city. It doesn't always love you back.

Today I'm remembering a moment I will forever cherish. Dangerous Neighbors, my Centennial novel, being featured as part of a First Book celebration. Mayor Nutter, standing beside me, signed my books for 120-plus young people who had never owned a book before.

I was honored.

I always am.

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On Finding Grace and Papal Visits, in Today's Inquirer

Not long ago, in Krakow, I discovered the living legacy of Pope John Paul II. I reflect on that, and on the anticipated arrival of Pope Francis to Philadelphia, in today's Philadelphia Inquirer. The story can be found here.

With thanks, as always, to Kevin Ferris and the thoughtful design team at the Inquirer. And with thanks to dear Karolina, whose impassioned stories about her childhood home, Krakow, led me across the waters to that beautiful city. And with thanks to Philadelphia, this city that I love.

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Schuylkill Banks: remarkably effective and far from done

I walked the new Schuylkill Banks Boardwalk before my river talk last evening. The skies were expressive, pewter and blue, and from this 15-foot-wide float of walkway over the river herself, I saw the city as I had not seen her before. One of the many exhilarating advantages of this new and elevating space.

Another advantage? The joy of it. The Philadelphians who are coming to know, and to better see, their river. The sense that they don't take this for granted, and why should they? It wasn't all that long ago that the Schuylkill was sludge and noxious fumes, dead water, a place to be hurried past. Now, thanks to the Schuylkill River Development Corporation, Fairmount Water Works, Schuylkill River Heritage Area, the William Penn Foundation, the people I have met this week at the 2014 Pennsylvania River of the Year events, and many others, the Schuylkill is the place to be.

I've written here about the Heritage Area. I've written here about Fairmount Water Works. Today, my spotlight is on the SRDC.

Already offering kayaking and river tours, skateboard parks and overlooks, this brand-new boardwalk, and the idea of the bucolic in an urbanscape, the SRDC is hardly done with its quest to build "trails and greenway running along both banks of the Schuylkill River wherever possible between the Fairmount Dam and the Delaware River." Now planned or in play are the Bartram's Mile, destined to run along the west bank between Grays Ferry Avenue and 58th Street (and one-day connecting to the Grays Ferry Crescent by an abandoned railroad bridge); a pedestrian/biking west bank trail; and an east-side trail between the South Street Bridge and Christian.

All I know is words. The SRDC, the organizations mentioned above, the river advocates who work on behalf of tributaries, against run-off, for the future—they are the ones making the physical, even quantifiable difference to our city.

Find a way to thank them the next time you head off toward the river. You wouldn't be there without them.

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For good and for bad, I am still me.

My love affair with Philadelphia began long before I settled on the University of Pennsylvania as my undergraduate home. I was my mother's daughter, already convinced. I believed in that city.

As a student at Penn, I left the campus alone, prowled the streets of West Philadelphia, wrote poems upon my return. As a new graduate I took a job as a marketing coordinator for an architecture firm, where I, in part, researched and wrote history-rich installation placards for projects at Penn's Landing and elsewhere.

But it wasn't until I was selected, in the mid-1980s, by the team at Center City District to write a series of "permanent" installations about Philadelphia's history that I felt fully fledged and entrenched as a Philly girl. Those permanent installations, created with the graphic designer Lynda Cloud Weber, hung block by block, east by west on Walnut Street until they were not visible any longer.

The permanent installations had disappeared permanently.

Yesterday, however, while researching a series of new stories for the Philadelphia Inquirer, I discovered one of the long-lost  panels—came upon it quite unexpectedly. It was as if a story I'd written had been lost and then returned to me. I waited to be alone with the panel. Read it while no one was watching. Shook my head.

I haven't changed much, all these years later. Not in what I write about, nor in how I write it.

For good and for bad, I am still me.

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tracking the light in Philadelphia

Extraordinary weather. The sun alive.

Here is Philadelphia, toward the end of one recent day. The sky splitting. A million glass panes holding a mirror up to the atmosphere.

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YA Chapbooks instead of Sugar Snacks? It's happening in Philadelphia and your stories could be part of this tale

My YA writing friends — not only is this an incredibly inventive development (a craft press publishing YA chapbooks for area students)—but this spells opportunity, for you.

The press release from The Head & The Hand Press follows. I'm stoked to be part of the process and program, happy to be traveling to the Science Leadership Academy on May 12 on behalf of this initiative. But I'm equally stoked to share this publishing opportunity (I'm look at you!) here.

We at The Head & The Hand Press <http://www.theheadandthehand.com/> , a craft publisher based in Fishtown, are so excited to collaborate with the students and teachers at the Science Leadership Academy <http://www.scienceleadership.org/>  on our latest project, the 4th Floor Chapbook Series <http://www.theheadandthehand.com/4th-floor-chapbook-series/> . We've been vending chapbooks for the general population to great acclaim <http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/inq-blinq/Philly-coffee-shop-is-vending-verse.html>  in Philly establishments like Elixr coffee house and Honeygrow in a custom-built countertop vending machine, but now it's time to swap out snacks for YA lit and poetry in a new vending machine to be installed at the SLA high school in Center City this fall. To celebrate this partnership, YA author Beth Kephart <http://beth-kephart.blogspot.com/p/we-could-be-heroes-berlin-novel.html>  has graciously agreed to do a reading of her recent novel Going Over, a love story set in Berlin before the wall is torn down, at the high school. A bit more about the book and Beth are below. The reading will take place on Monday, May 12 at 11:40 a.m. at the Science Leadership Academy at 55 N. 22nd St.

About Going Over:

It is February 1983, and Berlin is a divided city—a miles-long barricade separating east from west. But the city isn’t the only thing that is divided. Ada, almost 16, lives with her mother and grandmother among the rebels, punkers, and immigrants of Kreuzberg, just west of the wall. Stefan, 18, lives east with his brooding grandmother in a faceless apartment bunker of Friedrichshain, his telescope pointed toward freedom. Bound by love and separated by circumstance, their only chance lies in a high-risk escape. But will Stefan find the courage to leap? Will Ada keep waiting for the boy she has only seen four times a year ever since she can remember? Or will forces beyond their control stand in their way?

Told in the alternating voices of the pink-haired graffiti artist and the boy she loves, Going Over is a story of daring and sacrifice, choices and consequences, and love that will not wait.

Click <http://beth-kephart.blogspot.com/p/we-could-be-heroes-berlin-novel.html>  for downloads, trailers, interviews and guest blog posts

Beth Kephart is the award-winning author of eighteen books, an adjunct professor of creative nonfiction at the University of Pennsylvania, a frequent contributor to the Chicago Tribune and Philadelphia Inquirer, and the strategic writing partner in a boutique marketing communications firm. Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir won the 2013 Books for a Better Life Award (Motivational Category). Nests. Flight. Sky., Kephart’s first memoir in years, was recently published by Shebooks. Most recently, Beth’s ninth young adult novel, Going Over (Chronicle Books), a 1983 Berlin story and a Junior Library Guild Selection, was launched to three starred reviews.

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a peaceful, proposing morning

All morning long I have been at work on a proposal for a book about my city.

It was so peaceful, sitting here.

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my city in lights

waiting at the edge of the platform 

for the train home.

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My City, My River, early afternoon, after the worst was behind us

We returned our son to the city in the early afternoon.  His apartment had power.  Our house did not.  On the way back, I snapped these photos of the river that I love—high and deep grey blue.

I am in awe of nature.  I am grateful that when the sky lit up last night and the winds howled heinously the three ancient trees that fell in these parts hurt no one.  I am grateful for the men in bright orange jackets who stood in ladder buckets minutes ago and got us back to heat and light.

I am thinking of those who are not as fortunate. I am thinking of our Jersey Shore.

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Florentine light in Philadelphia, my son's joy, and two half moons

Philadelphia this September is Florentine light and half moons.  It is the old Drake and the new performing arts hall.  It is walking beside my son (taller now, even more handsome), who tells stories of new friends and old, four concurrent office projects, a place called Whisper, laundry rooms. 

I didn't live as fully as my son now lives when I was his age.  I didn't know half as much, didn't have nearly the number of friends, didn't see the future as clearly as he sees his future.  He has a greater talent for joy, a larger embrace of life, a more intelligent reading of other people and their intentions, a greater forgiveness of those who get things wrong.  He has more, and he has earned more.  He is more complete.

Which in the end (and of course) completes me.

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city love, Main Line Media News, and a memoir panel at Penn

Late yesterday afternoon, I took a quick dance lesson then hurried to the train to see my kid, city side.  I have been down there untold times of late—checking out apartments, moving boxes in, arriving, breathless, to help with something, and of course, this young man (not a kid) needs no help at all.  I'm just drumming up excuses to spend an hour here or there with him.

So that I have seen the city under sun and the city swollen with rain, the city just after dawn, the city late at night.  And I have felt more energized and alive than I have felt for a long time.  Philadelphia does that to me.  And so do snatches of conversation with my guy.

This morning a text comes in, six a.m.ish.  I'm working on my story, it said.  Because my son shares this with me, this love of words.  This pleasure taken in filling the silent hours with vivid fictions.  By now, he's off to work, first day.  And my happiness for him is giant.

Meanwhile, Ryan Richards of Main Line Media News interviewed me yesterday morning at 8:15 a.m. (not-ish) and, 13 hours later, this Springsteen-infused story (which is also about the making of Small Damages for Philomel) had been posted.  Tuesday is day-before-pub day there at Main Line Media News and Ryan plays a central role in getting all stories out and prettied up for show.  I have no idea, therefore, how he wrote such a nice story in the midst of all that, but I thank him.  I hope he got some sleep last night.

Finally, tucked into the day was this formal announcement from Penn about the Homecoming Weekend Panel I'll be sharing with my friends Buzz Bissinger, John Prendergast, and Cynthia Kaplan, as well as James Martin, whom I am eager to meet.  Join us if you can.

October 27, 2012/Saturday 4:30 PM - 6:30 PM  

  
Memoir: Methods and Meanings
 Kelly Writers House
Arts Cafe
 3805 Locust Walk
 
Join alumni authors at Kelly Writers House as they read from and talk about their work in memoir.  Panelists include Pulitzer Prize-winner Buzz Bissinger C'76, whose latest book is Father's Day: A Journey Into the Mind and Heart of My Extraordinary Son; essayist and performer Cynthia Kaplan C'85, whose 'true stories' are collected in Why I'm Like This and Leave the Building Quickly; Beth Kephart C'82, author of multiple memoirs and young-adult novels, and of the forthcoming Handling the Truth; and James Martin W'82, author of In Good Company, which tells the story of his conversion from GE executive to Jesuit priest, and eight other books. Pennsylvania Gazette Editor John Prendergast C'80 will moderate the discussion. Advance registration is not required, but seating is limited. RSVP to whhomecoming@writing.upenn.edu or call (215) 746-POEM.  

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Philadelphia Street Scenes: transferring the keys to my city

I call Philadelphia "my" city, but it does not, of course, belong to me; nothing is ever for keeps.  But I did grow up visiting my mother's mother and father in southwest Philly, and I went to Penn across the river, and I lived first in the Art Museum area, then on Camac (two different apartments) and next on Gaskill, and I've returned, repeatedly, to take photographs, to collect stories, to teach.  If any city were, for a moment, mine, it would be this one.

But now this place I love will also belong to my son, as he moves into a new job and apartment among the gridded streets.  Last night, perhaps the nicest night Philadelphia has seen all summer long, we took him to a special dinner.  I, being my perhaps overly enthusiastic self, suggested a before-dinner stroll down near Delancey, where much of Dangerous Neighbors takes place, before working back toward Rittenhouse Square and east.

I caught the moment with my tiny Canon.

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Philadelphia: where graffiti got its start

Riding back from the Big Apple on an Amtrak Keystoner, I watched the sky go from gray to blue as we neared Philadelphia.  It was that time in the afternoon when that glitter thing can happen, and Philly's graffiti was lit up, as if for a show.  Modern graffiti (for of course there were cave painters eons ago) started here, the legends go, in the early 1960s.  Cornbread and Cool Earl left their tracks everywhere.  Embellishment ensued.

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Jan and Lana Dance Jive at 30th Street Station

I've written about Jan and Lana so often on this blog that I don't need to introduce them (do I?).  They are the dancing stars, the soon-to-be movie stars, the team that keeps me honest in a Norah Jones waltz, the instruction that burns but lasts.

Here they are, dancing at Philadelphia's Thirtieth Street Station.

Because that's how good they are.

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