Archive: January, 2009
One of the most thoughtful notes was from reader Charlotte Harper, whose comments were so helpful and positive, they deserve printing here.
Take it away, Charlotte:
"I think your column summarizes the problem faced by Imhotep Charter School very neatly, and your conclusions (that while the national flag flown at half-mast out of respect for a beloved educator is permissible, flying it at half-mast to mark the death of a student who died in an act of violence is not) are valid.
"I would encourage the Charter School to contact the WWII veteran - and every other WWII veteran they can find in their community! - and ask these men and women to share their memories of that conflict with the students.
"The purpose is twofold:
"Firstly, the veterans are a historian’s treasure - Primary Source Material - and they are a finite resource that is rapidly diminishing. The students should learn to respect and to honour this precious resource that, for this instant, is all around them! Maybe the Charter School could take on conservation and preservation as a project in honour of their late educator, a project that would help them to “heal” - and, ultimately, perhaps come to grips with the subjects of death and loss by assisting their community in preventing the loss of their own history.
"Secondly, should Imhotep take up the challenge of conserving and preserving (listening to and learning from) their WWII veterans, perhaps they could broaden their historical research and begin to preserve the memories of those who served in subsequent military actions – Korea, Vietnam and Desert Storm.
"Perhaps hearing from men and women who were thrust into combat and who lived with mortal danger for the sake of these children’s freedom would move these young people to eschew pointless violence in the streets of Philadelphia.
"Maybe hearing from the genuine heroes living amongst them would inspire these kids to pursue goals worthy of their intellects and discourage them from engaging in any kind of risk-taking, illegal behaviour that will endanger their futures.
"The young people need to take pride in 'who they are,' and the best way for them to learn 'who they are' is to learn from those living around them 'where they have been'. The past informs the future by making the present comprehensible.
"Our history is all around us in rich, vibrant colour and we ignore so much of it! I wonder how many Tuskegee airmen live in ordinary houses within walking distance of Imhotep? Is there someone who fought their way up the beach-head at Anzio sitting on that front porch? Was Aunt So-and-So in England ferrying bombers? And what was it like, and what does she remember about being there? What did 'Gramps' feel when he heard about Pearl Harbour? Did he rush to 'join up' and get rejected by the brand-new Army Flying Corps, so he joined up with the Marines, instead? What was it like to be seventeen in 1942 and be not quite old enough to serve? Did Uncle Whomever lie about his age and end up on a Tin-Can floating in the Pacific?
"Our young people need to hear these stories from the source, not read about them second/third-hand in a book written by someone else. They need to make the film, not watch it on WHYY or have it served up to them like canned soup by an editorializing Hollywood film-maker. Why be a mere passive observer when one can be engaged in living history?
"Education is a lot like mining for precious metals: Unless you grab what’s to be had on the surface while it’s available, you’re going to have to shift a lot of rock to find the good stuff. Imhotep should use these tragedies to pursue gold."
Thank you, Charlotte Harper. I couldn't have said it better.
Ya never know what those crafty TV-news reporters aren't telling you, when you tune in for your daily info.
Fox-TV features reporter Gerald Kolpan, for instance, can sing. Not like Pavarotti, but the man has a lovely set of pipes, as evidenced by a link on the website for his new book, "Etta."
The novel, which goes on sale in March, is a fictionalized account of a woman who may have had flings with Butch Cassidy and/or the Sundance Kid and/or the entire Hole in the Wall Gang.
She was one Wild, Wild Westerner.
In "Etta," the song "Hard Times Come Again No More," by Stephen Collins Foster, features prominently. So Kolpan thought it made sense to include an audio of it on his website. He sings "Hard Times" in duet with local singer Eliza Jones, of Buried Beds, who also has a lovely voice. But, in truth, Kolpan could've carried the song alone.
Makes me wonder what skillz those other FOX-TV reporters might be keeping to themselves. Maybe Jeff Cole is a tap dancer?
I was there, so I can attest to the civility of the masses. What helped was the generosity and decency of the staff at L’Enfant Plaza Hotel, a four-star wonder situated right atop the L’Enfant Metro stop.
As the ceremony ended on the mall, the masses started moving toward the stop, whose entrance was backed up for blocks. Looking for warmth, food and restrooms, thousands of revelers descended upon the hotel.
My family was among them. We were freezing, starving, exhausted and in need of a place to catch a second wind before we braved our journey back to Philly.
At first, the staff would let only registered guests into the hotel, asking to see room keys before they’d admit anyone. But as the crowds grew, the doors were flung open.
And in we went.
It was gridlock inside. You could barely cross the lobby, because people sat on every square inch of polished floor and carpet. And hundreds of others packed the wide hallway that encircles the hotel.
The restaurants had a four-hour wait, and then ran out of food altogether. We scored coffee at a lobby kiosk, and junk-food snacks in the gift shop, where the checkout line wound right out the door.
Back in the lobby, a kind custodian directed us to the second floor, whispering, “Take the stairs behind those closed doors. There’s more room. There’s no lines for the bathroom up there.”
We darted up to the floor, which houses conference rooms, and set up camp in a hallway corner, along with many others who’d found that secret staircase. The thick carpet felt like a mattress, compared to the cold, hard ground of the mall, where we’d been sitting and standing for hours.
We inhaled our coffee and Pop-Tarts, became best friends with our fellow hall-mates and marveled at the historic event that had drawn us all to D.C. for the day.
Hours later, we finally made our way back outside, bought souvenirs and eventually got onto the Metro and then drove home.
I was so blown away by the unflappable and accommodating L’Enfant staff, I called the hotel the next day to thank the director of guest services, Salman Bhatti, for saving so many of us from frostbite and exploded bladders.
Basically, I told him, he and his staff had allowed us to make a hostel out of his four-star hotel – and yet they never stopped smiling and asking, “Is everyone okay? How can we help?”
“There was no way to prepare for it. The people just kept coming,” Bhatti told me. “It was like Katrina, in New Orleans. You do whatever you have to do to help people.”
The hotel even set up a medical triage area behind the registration desk, staffed by D.C. EMS workers, for those in need of assistance – and apparently there were quite a few.
“
"People dressed for the cold, but the lobby got so hot, they started fainting,” said Bhatti.
The hotel also had to deal with its paying guests, who were frustrated that room service shut down, leaving them as hungry as the rest of us.
But most people were understanding, said Bhatti.
“What could we do? We couldn’t turn people away. Everyone who enters our hotel is our guest.”
His kindness wasn’t lost on anyone. The day after the Inauguration, his phone was ringing off the hook with thank-yous, and grateful e-mails to the staff were pouring in.
“It was exciting,” he said.
It was more than exciting. It was kind, generous and unexpected – the icing on one big, fat cake of a day.
What a thrill to see not only Obama climb the stage but his wife and daughters, too. There was almost as much media as there were hand-picked guests in the audience - including KYW1060, thankfully, which has already posted audio of Obama’s short but moving speech.
Local pols were also in attendance, obviously, and they could be divided into two categories: The Buttowned-Down Gang and the Fun Guys.
The BDG included Ed Rendell, Michael Nutter, Allyson Schwartz, Arlen Specter, Bob Casey Jr., Chaka Fattah, Wilson Goode Sr. – all dressed in crisp, professional attire.
The Fun Guys? Who else but Bob Brady and John Dougherty, both dressed in Eagles attire. Brady, in fact, led the crowd in a raucous chant of “E-A-G-L-E-S: EAGLES!!”
Kinda classed up the joint.
The wait for justice is over for Christopher Pearo, the Daily News and Inquirer driver who was shot while making early-morning deliveries on June 18, 2007.
My colleague Julie Shaw writes in today's Daily News that Pearo's assailant, Dante Robinson, has been sentenced to a minimum of ten years behind bars.
A decade doesn't seem like enough time for a man who thought Pearo's life could be reduced to a $15 transaction, which is how I described the assault in a column I wrote about Pearo's harrowing ordeal.
Especially since Pearo, a good and decent man, was already dealing with plenty of personal hardship.
Below is my column from June 19th, 2007, published the day after I sat with Pearo's on his mom's front porch, where he told me about his life - a life that almost ended on a dark street in Southwest Philly.
****************
THE NEWS HITS CLOSE TO HOME
By RONNIE POLANECZKY
It's true, says Christopher Pearo . When you think you're about to die, your life really does flash before your eyes.
It's true, says Christopher Pearo . When you think you're about to die, your life really does flash before your eyes.Pearo , 36, a newspaper-delivery driver for the Daily News and Inquirer, had just been robbed of $15 by two assailants and shot in the neck as he deposited papers yesterday in a locked drop-box at a deli at 64th Street and Buist Avenue, Southwest Philadelphia.
It was 3:40 a.m., the streets were empty, and the movie of his life played in his mind. What Pearo saw, as he ran down Buist Avenue screaming for help, were those he loved and what his death would do to them.
His mother, who'd already lost two sons, would be destroyed if she had to bury another. His dad, a retired cop who'd never been shot in the line of duty, would be devastated that a bullet had felled his son. His deceased brother's little boy, to whom he was close, wouldn't understand why God had taken yet another loving man from him.
He even thought of his 17-year old dog - sick, feeble and at the end of her life. Who would care for her?
So much heartache, for 15 lousy dollars.
Pearo saw his own life, too. How, when he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1998 and confined to a wheelchair, doctors told him he'd never return to work. He told them to go screw themselves and re-learned to walk.
Two months later, when the disease claimed the sight in his left eye, he could've succumbed to despair. Instead, he and his bosses re-worked his job so he could continue to earn a living.
No, he hadn't come this far to die in the middle of Buist Avenue.
The blood from the gunshot was pouring down his neck as he ran, pounding on cars, setting off their alarms, desperate to rouse the neighborhood for help.
Finally, an angel appeared in a doorway, with a phone.
"I've been shot!" he yelled. "Call 911! "
And then he leaned, shaking, against a car, hoping help would arrive before the credits rolled on the movie of his life.
***
This isn't how violent crime is supposed to be playing out in this city.
We're supposed to be in the midst of a thug-on-thug war, in which the victims at least partially set themselves up for trouble by their own stupid behavior. You know - running with the wrong crowd, cheating the wrong dealer, playing the wrong scumbag for a fool.
The only wrong thing Christopher Pearo did yesterday was to go to work, the way he has for the last 12 years - something I suspect his assailants haven't been doing.
Instead, they interrupted a good man on the job and tried to end his life.
Thank God, their record of failure continued: The bullet that had been fired into the back of Pearo 's neck angled cleanly past his spinal cord and artery before exiting the left side.
"The doctor told me, 'If you're going to get shot, this is the way to do it,' " Pearo recalled of his stint in the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania's ER, where he was treated, and was released within hours of the shooting. "The bullet missed everything. "
He was sitting yesterday on the front porch of his mom's East Falls home, surrounded by family. A stack of gauze pads sat on the arm of his chair, ready to replace the two that covered the jagged holes left by the bullet.
"We tell him, 'Only the good die young,' " his cousin Brandi joked affectionately. "So that's why he didn't die this morning. "
"Yeah, us bad guys are the lucky ones," Pearo joked back.
***
The humor only sharpened his anger at what had happened. Instead of imprisonment for his assailants, who are still at large, he had a better idea: Hand them over to his fellow Daily News and Inquirer drivers, whom he'd ask to mete out justice on his behalf.
"It could have been any one of us who got shot," he said, upset. "All we want is to do our job, pay our bills and live our lives. "
Now, when he thinks about returning to work, he feels butterflies in his gut.
"It's a weird feeling," he said. "I want to work hard. But I don't want to die for it. "
Still, Pearo was trying to focus on the fact that he had lived to muse about it all on a porch.
"If I don't stay positive, I get stressed, and that can make me relapse with the MS," he said. "I'm not gonna let this thing put me back in a wheelchair. "
I've got news for Pearo . Even in a wheelchair, he'd be a giant next to the cowards who think a human life can be reduced to a $15 transaction.
Come back to work soon, sir. We're so glad you're OK. *
Something doesn’t make sense about the city’s plea that we recycle our Christmas trees.
In a story last week by my colleague Val Russ, Streets Department Deputy Commissioner Carlton Williams asked that we refrain from putting our used Tannenbaums at the curb on garbage day, since the city will treat them as trash – i.e., toss ‘em in a landfill – “and that's not good for the environment.”
Nor is it good for the city's finances, Val noted, which are already burdened. Those trees would not only take up a lot of landfill space, but will cost the city extra dollars to dispose of the added bulk.
"We pay $63 a ton for trash," Williams told Val.
Instead, the city wants us to take our trees to one of three city collection areas, where they’ll be mulched.
But how many people, realistically, are going to do that?
Speaking for my own household, the chore would require us to:
1. Rent a car from PhillyCarShare or ZipCar (as we have no car of our own);
2. Ferry the dry, shedding, resin-sticky tree (which, by the way, the city doesn’t want us to bag or tie) to the collection spot.
3. Vacuum and wipe out the filthy car when we get home.
This effort to be “good for the environment” would actually consume gas, emit a short-trip carbon belch and consume electricity (needed to vacuum the car we couldn’t protect with a bag or string).
And if you consider that other civic-minded Philadelphians, at the behest of their government, might perform the same chore, well, it's hard to see the environmental benefit Williams is referring to.
Wouldn’t it just make more sense for the city to pick up our damn trees and take them to the recycling centers? And save on those landfill fees at the same time?
Besides, the city knows that the best way to get people to recycle is to make it simple for them to do so. Otherwise, why would Mayor Nutter be so giddy in all those new promos, in which he tells us that recycling is now easier than ever, since the Streets Department will now collect our recyclables each week, with our regular trash?
The news comes on the heels of a prior, and very smart, change that allows us to combine paper, glass and metal in the same bins – yet another nod to the fact that compliance rises when recycling takes as little extra thought as possible.
So why, then, is the city dropping the ball when it comes to Christmas trees? Given what a pain it will be to get them to the recycling centers, people are gonna leave them at the curb anyway. That might end up costing the city more, out of pocket, than if they just recycled the dried-out things in the first place.
My call to Williams for a comment wasn’t returned last week, so the city’s public affairs people are trying to track down some answers about this. I’ll keep you posted when I hear back.
Meantime, if you’re inclined to haul your tree off for recycling, here’s where to drop it, through Jan. 17th:
* 63rd Street and Passyunk Avenue, in Southwest Philadelphia
* State Road and Ashburner Street, in the Northeast
* Domino Lane near Umbria Street, in Roxborough
Because this is Philly, the caller doesn’t say, “My name is Bob, or Mary, and I wonder if I could have a moment of your time?” Philadelphians are far too direct for that. They just say “Yeah, so what happened was…,” and then tumble into a tale they’re desperate to tell a perfect stranger (me) in the hope it will be told to a wider audience. I love getting these calls (even the ones where it becomes clear, after 30 seconds, precisely where the caller sowed the seeds of his own misery), because they give me chance to connect with my fellow citizens in a way that no other job would allow. Well, okay, no other job that I’m remotely qualified for.
That’s why my blog is titled “So What Happened Was…”, which, to me, has become the quintessentially Philly way of saying, “Once upon a time.” When I hear it, I know a good story is coming. And I can’t wait to see how it turns out.
Ronnie Polaneczky has been an award-winning columnist for The Philadelphia Daily News since 1999, offering a front-steps perspective on every aspect of city life, from the sublime to the stupid. In her past life, she was the editor-in-chief of Atlantic City Magazine, associate editor at Philadelphia Magazine and a fulltime freelancer published in Ladies Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, Redbook, Reader's Digest, Men's Health, MarieClaire and others. She lives with her husband, daughter, two dogs and two cats in the city's Fairmount section, where she dreams at night of one day singing The National Anthem at an Eagles game. In addition to her column and blog, you can enjoy Ronnie's musings in podcast form here.
Read more from Ronnie Polaneczky at Earth to Philly, the Daily News blog on anything and everything "Green
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