here's to philadelphia
One week before formally moving back to Philadelphia, I was riding a car through the "rough" streets of Philadelphia. Suddenly, the sense of place flooded back to me. I remembered spending my summer here. Walking past old men and women sitting on their porches in the scorching sunlight. Walking past the kids laughing with delight at the cold, refreshing water from the open fire hydrant. Walking past a group of young overweight mothers playing a game of cards. And sensing beneath that deceiving appearance of idyllic calm (What gave it away? Was it the broken glass on the streets? The metal bars on the windows?), the hopelessness that lives in those streets.
Every city is has a different dark spirit hovering over it. New York is dominated by greed, Washington DC oppressed by power, and Philadelphia sinks slowly under despair. "Soul-stirring desolation" writes Jonathan Franzen.
Yet as I ride the train and watch the changing and growing skyline of Philadelphia, I can’t help but smile. I walk past the Schuylkill river, meander through Penn campus, eat lunch with a building maintenance man in Rittenhouse square and walk to 30th street station in a cool summer evening. Coming back to Philadelphia feels like slipping back into a comfortable winter coat, one that will hopefully warm me from the biting cold.
Here's to a city for which I can care, rejoice and mourn.
Here's to a city for which I can hope.
(A feeling of place. A feeling of home. It's good to be living back in Philadelphia.)
4 comments:
the closer i get to leaving philly the more i realize how much i love this city.
A feeling of not updating your blog. Ha! Not that I'm one to talk. Hope you're doing well.
I felt like that when I went back to Chicago last week. Philly feels the same way...I love Philly.
What do you think of what Nicholas Kristof say about sweatshops here through a video "Factory of the World." http://video.on.nytimes.com/index.jsp We can choose to buy clothes from thrift stores and on some level they may be more expensive than if buy clothes on sale. I know it's not money that's the concern; it's the morality behind our intention to shop. What are we saying when we refuse to buy "sweatshop" made clothes. How can we define sweatshops if it's the only way people can make a living?
The idea that sweatshops are the "only way" people can make a living is predicated on the assumption of an economy of scarcity. But most sociologists will tell you that scarcity is a myth. There are actually more than enough resources to go around, more than enough jobs, etc. The impetus behind buying "clean" clothing is twofold: 1. to take responsibility for what I myself support with the the money I am a steward of (esp. once we realize there is no such thing as "my" money), because purchasing is voting, and 2. to use that anti-ignorance in a very small way to make it more difficult for large companies to profit off of the assumption of scarcity. If nothing else, American Apparel has demonstrated that you can maintain a very high level of pay and benefits and still make huge profits. If ethics prove to be a SELLING POINT for companies, rather than just an absolution, then ethics will start getting incorporated into business models.
Just think of it this way: people who are conscious of how and where their clothes are made actually exhibit STRONGER brand loyalties than average consumers, because they feel like the companies they buy from are trustworthy and required work to find. Once corporations realize that responsibility is not just altruism, but it MAKES MONEY, then they'll start being responsible. But they'll never figure that out unless we start buying more carefully.
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