has a new job as chauffer for the Mt. Airy Chronicle's newest editorial intern. See her first article http://tinyurl.com/lvs9oo # had my first Norristown Zep sandwiche today and my first milkshake in a year # Continue reading
In Pennsylvania today, we face an budget crisis of huge proportions. In the face of drastically reduced revenues due to the recession, the state faces a enormous deficit. And there are only two ways to deal with it. The Republicans in the State Senate have proposed massive reductions in state spending that would had devastating effects on education and health care, particularly for children. The Democrats, lead by Governor Rendell, have proposed temporarily raising the state income tax, which is one of the lowest in the country. The state budget crisis is all about the Republicans in Pennsylvania being captured by the extreme anti-tax, anti-government ideology that has dominated the Republican party in the South and West for years but is relatively new here. These ain’t your grandfather’s Republicans. And, frankly, when Republicans control the Senate by ten seats, I’m not sure there is all that much we can do… Continue reading
Hannah Miller’s blog post, which I discussed in my previous post, also points to another way in which the urge to document our lives might be problematic, one that I actually was writing about over the weekend. To get to my point quickly, let me reference a great New Yorker cartoon. A woman is addressing the guests at what is evidently a fairly fancy party. She says, “The video of the first half of the party is now playing in the family room.” The apprehension to which this cartoon points, and that I see in Hannah’s post is this: the urge to document our lives, indeed the urge to reflect on our lives, can be a way to escape from living our lives. (I certainly see, though, why Hannah is writing about it at a family event. The urge to reflect is likely to come forward when one is hanging… Continue reading
My friend Hannah Miller has written a fascinating blog post that got me thinking in a little different way about some issues that I’ve been working on for a book I’m slowly finishing. Indeed, I had a two-fold reaction. This is the first. A second is in another post. Hannah starts by asking why we are so busy documenting our lives, implicitly pointing out how so much of what we do on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Picassa, among other sites, is devoted to putting down a record of what’s happened to us and what we care about. She ends by pointing out that geologists whose focus is on deep time—the changes in the planet that take place over eons–both recognize the extent to which our lives are a mere blip in time but also get a sense of connection to eternity. To see the wonderful way she gets from the… Continue reading
There are reports that The Valley Swim Club is offering the Creative Steps Day Camp an opportunity to return. I know nothing more than what is being reported in the Daily News at http://tinyurl.com/moea74. That’s a good first step. But I don’t know whether the club has offered an apology for its actions or is willing to take other steps to undo the harm it has caused. In the meantime, while things remain unsettled, the pastors, and people in the neighborhood, and those of us who have been organizing protests to this point, believe they should continue. Continue reading
is it conceivable that state politics in NY is even screwier than it is in PA? # It's 2009 and black kids are ejected from a pool in our region because of skin color! A response is being planned.http://tinyurl.com/lmog59 Continue reading
First the critical news: Protests at The Valley Swim Club will continue Saturday, July 11, at 12:00 noon at 22 Tomlinson Road, Huntingdon Valley. Please join us. Yesterday about 45 people joined at various times in a hastily planned protest that lasted for a number of hours. We stood and marched around the entrance to the swim club chanting “Jim Crow Swims Here” and “No Justice, No Peace.” I was really gratified to see that most of the people protesting came from in the neighborhood. There were about four or five of us from West Mt. Airy. Continue reading
You may have read or heard or yesterday that a Huntingdon Valley swim club decided to cancel an agreement with a Northeast Philadelphia day camp to allow campers to swim at the club two time a week because, the black campers would “change the complexion…and atmosphere of the club.” Kids who came to swim were summarily asked to leave the pool and told not to come back? What is there to say to decent people about the existence of blatant racism in this day and age? It’s grossly immoral. It’s enormously ignorant. It’s a throwback to days most of us hoped were long gone. And it can’t be allowed to stand without legal action and protest. Not to stand up and say that this sort of behavior is beyond the pale, is to allow it, and the attitudes behind it, to survive one more day. Continue reading
OK, here is the funny thing—or rather two funny things—about my writing on this topic. The first is that I’m one of the most net connected people I know. I use a computer for work or fun probably eight to ten hours a day and always have email, and IM windows open on my computer. And when I’m not on my computer, my phone is connected to a broadband connection through which I email, text, and IM. The second is that one of my closest friends is organizing around media related issues and has a particular concern with overcoming the digital divide. And yet, until today, when I read some responses to a very good op-ed in the Daily News by Hannah Sassaman and Todd Wolfson about the possibility of securing federal money to create a public broadband network in Philadelphia–a network that would help overcome the digital divide in… Continue reading
It’s long past time for the United States to create a program of reparations for Black Americans, not just for slavery but the second, third, and fourth iterations of systemic racism in the United States–the segregation in North and South after the Civil War, the terrorism against Black people perpetuated by the lynchings and chain gangs of Jim Crow, the attack on Black communities through urban renewal and red-lining, and the mass incarceration carried out as a result of the war on drugs. Each of these policies were created by the white supremacy and systemic racism that was created in the 17th century by rich white people who sought to use create and heighten racial division to undermine opposition to them. Each of these policies have had not only an immediate and devastating impact on the Black people in one generation but have had been repeated in different ways in… Continue reading