Philadelphia 1876

This coming Thursday, I'll be down at the Constitution Center being interviewed for the still-to-be-titled Sam Katz documentary on Philadelphia. I'll be talking about one of my favorite Philadelphians of all time, the philanthropist and Public Ledger editor, George Childs, and about a period of time (the late 19th century) that has forever captured my own imagination.

Yesterday, while speaking with one of the film's producers—while trying again to conjure Philadelphia at what I feel was its most glorious—my thoughts sifted back toward this passage from my novel-in-progress:

Katherine climbs and tells no one where she is. She climbs looking for her end, her final day. She’s climbed through February and March, through April and May, through seasons that cannot decide on the weather, confusing the tulips and squirrels and Katherine as well, who nevertheless finds her way. Sometimes Katherine leaves the house in a light wool dress with a scarf looped loose around her neck and then, of a sudden, the weather will change. In will blow an infiltrating wind and there Katherine will be on Belmont Hill, all the way up, on the highest tier of the Sawyer Observatory. She’ll secure the scarf around her chin and stay. She’ll stand until the city can be seized—the coves and hollows of the Centennial park; the spire of Saint Peter and Paul; the houses, theaters, marketplaces, banks set tight upon the city’s checkerboard squares; the bulbous steam above Baldwin Locomotives. She’ll stare out onto the Renaissance pile of City Hall—like a cake, she thinks, with excess butter cream. She’ll look for a clap of bakery flour. And it won’t matter how fiercely the weather blows: Katherine stands. She stands and dares herself to the very edge, almost but not quite losing her balance. Getting ready.

“Anna,” Katherine says aloud, “how could you?”