I found Katherine and Anna (of Dangerous Neighbors) at The Barnes Foundation, in a Renoir painting

My husband and I have returned from a magical 24 hours away from construction boxes and dust, from a sinkless and unusable kitchen, from ceilings finally painted and repaired, only to be ruined by the rain that leaked through the roof that we've been waiting (for several months now) to be fixed.

We needed to get away.

And so we went to Philadelphia, stayed at glorious, expansive Loews (seventeenth floor! corner room!), had lunch at the Reading Terminal Market among thousands of soccer coaches, and ate dinner at the magnificent Fork Restaurant (where we had the chance to tell Ellen Yin just had perfect the entire meal had been, and when I say perfect, I mean perfectly perfect, perfectly considered, perfectly surprising and comforting, perfectly served). Between lunch and dinner, in the cold heart of the afternoon, we went to The Barnes Foundation for the first time. Something every Philadelphian should do at least once.

I have never seen so many Renoir paintings in one place. I fell in love, again, Modigliani. I encountered a local watercolorist—Demuth—whose work I had not known before, or, at least, anchored with a name.

And then, at near the end of our tour through those many rooms, I gasped. For there on the wall was this painting by Renoir. Titled La Sortie du conservatoire, it was painted in 1876, the year of my Centennial story, Dangerous Neighbors. It was as if I'd seen this image before, as if I'd worked from it, as if I'd lifted those two girls from this canvas. My Katherine and Anna, the ginger-haired twins that live on the pages of my slender novel, are Renoir's two girls. They look and stand precisely like this—the color of their hair, Anna's vivacious pose, Katherine's steady watchfulness.

We are back home now, with leaking and unfinished things, and with way too much work for the week ahead. But Katherine and Anna are in the house. They are alive again.

Read more...

Some people just have it all going on

You have to love the CEO (I do, at least) who walks down the steps of his own immaculate corporate lobby to lead you up to the meeting.  Who talks (fluently, seamlessly) about the genesis of shirts, the affability of a certain car mechanic, the allure of the farm and the sea (also the fish-stocked stream), and the holism of a certain river before settling into the meeting itself—a review of numbers and themes.  I see this man once a year, maybe twice, if I'm lucky.  What makes him extraordinary is his willingness, always, to grow.  I guess I should mention that he runs an extraordinary company extraordinarily well.  Which isn't precisely beside the point.  It's in addition to.

Some people just have it all, and I'd wager that they're the ones who figured out long ago that personal wealth is not in the end about money.  It's about how we reach toward the world, and how we allow the world to reach back out to us.

Read more...

Pulling back the curtains on my city

City Hall, the mayor's home, as viewed from the 22nd floor of the former PSFS Building, now the Loews Philadelphia Hotel.

Read more...

In which I go on the perfect date with my husband

This year my husband surprised me at Christmas with plans he'd made for an entire evening out.  Philadelphia would be our destination—an upper room with views in the impeccable Loews Philadelphia Hotel, located in the former PSFS building; a matinee showing of Tango Fire; and a dinner at Amada, the Jose Garces (you might have seen him on the TV show, Iron Chef) tapas restaurant.  A night like this would be special by any accounting; it was and is especially wonderful for me—an evening like no other in my married life.

I love Philadelphia; you know that I do.  I loved our lunch at the Reading Terminal Market before the show, loved walking, in anticipation, up Broad Street, loved stepping inside the melting pot that Philadelphia has always been—so many different voices and languages in the sold-out audience of the Merriam Theater.  And of course, I love tango—fell at once for the passion and talent and acrobatics and commitment of the Fire dancers—and tapas are my favorite meal at any time; no one does them better than Jose Garces.

But if you look here, at these photos, you will find, between a picture from the Reading Market lunch and the view outside our hotel window, that something utterly unexpected happened during this already perfect afternoon and evening; the dancers from Tango Fire had come as well to Amada.  I had my little camera with me.  They acquiesced to a photograph.  So that there I am, happier than I can say, among the things and places and man I love.

Read more...