October 5, 2006 Issue
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Classified Chestnut Hill Local Online Editor Don't Miss an Issue, Tell us what you see or ©2006 Chestnut Hill Local Winner of One |
Opinion
Fighting isn’t easy First are those who love our letters and opinion pages. They tear the paper open to page four immediately, perhaps winding up on a front-page story or two once they’ve imbibed a good dose of scandalous accusation or enjoyed a good scolding. Anecdotally, I’ve learned this group is largely male, though women I’ve spoken to also enjoy the letters — they just tend to be interested in other sections as well. Second are those who feel the conflict they read here just may be hastening the decline of Western Civilization. They are appalled by the allegations and unruly prose of those who feel the need, the right really, to dress down those who disagree with their worldviews. What’s wrong with us? Why can’t we all just get along? This question is posed to us this week by letter writer and self-described former Mt. Airy resident, Esta Jo Schifter. I don’t mean to pick on a letter writer who raises some very good points, but the sentiment that Mt. Airy and Chestnut Hill are two diametrically opposed states of mind, that disagreement doesn’t occur in Mt. Airy, is one that I find pretty amusing. First, it is pretty silly to pit Mt. Airy against Chestnut Hill. Both are far more similar than the residents of either neighborhood would care to admit. In 2000, the census reported that the wealthiest tract in Northwest Philadelphia was in Mt. Airy (along the westernmost portion of Allen’s Lane). Mt. Airy people shop in Chestnut Hill and I know Chestnut Hillers who belong to the Co-op, a bastion of communist ideals antithetical to all that is Chestnut Hill by reputation. And I’ve never met a Hiller younger than 50 who doesn’t love McMenamin’s. It’s just not possible. Distinctions and disdain among our two neighborhoods seem worth little more than that which divided nations in Dr. Seuss’ Butter Battle Book. But more importantly and to the point, Chestnut Hill only seems to be more conflicted because this newspaper keeps it honest with a forum dedicated to printing every opinion that refrains from libelous and obscene expressions. Issues facing our neighborhood often become the subject of letters to the editor and other op-ed pieces. And Mt. Airy readers are no strangers to the practice either. They are free to voice their opinions, and many do. Every week. The last point I’d like to make on getting along and the apparent lack thereof, and evidence that Chestnut Hill can get along nicely despite the conflicts in the Local’s editorial page, was abundantly clear last Sunday to anyone who managed to park and then walk to Germantown Avenue for the Fall for the Arts Festival. No conflict prevented Bob Previdi, Peggy Miller, Peggy Hendrie and Kate O’Neill from orchestrating an event that seemed to attract thousands to Chestnut Hill for artwork, music, food and lots of inflatable children’s activities. Conflict didn’t seem to prevent anyone from coming out to join this throng for the party. Yeah, it can be tough to live in Chestnut Hill, and sometimes it seems
all the people who live here manage to do is engage in wars of words.
But like Mt. Airy, Chestnut Hill is composed largely of people who have
decided to live here in the most intentional fashion. They love it and
they couldn’t be without it. It’s not important that we all
just get along but that we choose to live where we do and battle through
problems rather than pack up and leave. It’s much harder to fight
for what you care about than to not care at all.
And if you’ve been out on the avenue over the past three weeks and seen the crowds, special is what AbZOOlutely Chestnut Hill has become. The animals are a hit! From the stately giraffe to the “chair” bear, to gaily decorated pigs, ducks and a whole marvelous menagerie of other animals, the result has been more smiles than you can shake a stick at. The good news is that the hits will keep on comin’. There’ll be different AbZOOlutely events every week leading up to the big auction on Saturday, Nov. 18. (More about this later.) And this Friday is not to be missed. AbZOOlutely Wild About The Artists. It’s officially from 6 to 9 p.m., but we believe the fun will abzooutely last longer. To start with, you’ll have the opportunity to meet and greet many of the artists who painted the AbZOOlutely animals. They’ll be out on the avenue to say hello and exhibit their other work. And all of the avenue’s restaurants and bars will be featuring AbZOOlutely cocktails. What’s an AbZOOlutely cocktail? Well, it begins with Absolut vodka, but only your bartender knows what else is in there. You’ll be able to vote for your favorite and the winning recipe will win a prize and will be featured at the auction. Many of the restaurants will be featuring alfresco dining, too. But how festive would a festive evening be without music? Well, not very (festive). That’s why three groups will be serenading strollers and shoppers (did we mention stores will be staying open late?) with a variety of musical styles. Already scheduled to appear is the Jim Dragoni band and singer Denise Montana. What an evening! Artists, dining under the stars, shopping, music, a special AbZOOlutely cocktail or two if you wish. Hmmm. Maybe you better leave the stroller and dog at home for this event. But there’s a Fun 4 Families coming up Saturday afternoon, so there’ll be something for everyone this weekend. And here’s that quick reminder of the AbZOOlutely Lions, Tigers and Bears, Oh, My Auction on Nov. 18. It’s from 6 to 10:30 p.m. at Chestnut Hill College and already promises to be a really grand celebration to these 10 weeks of fun. But the best part is you can bid on your favorite animal and who knows? You may end up with an original, one-of-a-kind AbZOOlutely animal in your back yard. So, mark your calendar now. And check out all the events that are happening every weekend. Hey, isn’t it great living in Chestnut Hill? AbZOOlutely! |
I was asked to participate in our New Zoo Revue fundraiser a few weeks ago. The financial details go something like this. Businesses give various sums to have animals decorated by artists that were then placed around the hill. In almost all cases, the beasts were placed in front of the establishments that had paid for them, for a period of two months. These guaranteed sums ranged from a few hundred dollars for ducks to many thousands for elephants. These guaranteed moneys were not then given to any charitable organization or our community fund. It went to buy publicity for the event and for its operating costs, including paying artists fees and supplies. The “profit,” I am told, will come in November, as the animals are auctioned off. This is what’s known in the business world as “Back-end Spec,” and any business person who uses his front end guaranteed money to bet on his back end is either stupid, crazy or not playing with his own money. The Business Improvement District of Chestnut Hill has received $103,000 of this guaranteed money. They’ve spent $63,000 already on costs. I look forward to see what we all eventually receive. But that’s not what this story is about. It’s about a little duck. His birth name was Lil’ Quacky. But his present name has created a controversy so profound that it compelled Bob Previdi, director of the Chestnut Hill Business Association, to call the police. On me. Again. I know, I know, although Sanjiv Jain, former CHCA board member and Hill celebrity threatened on two occasions to call the police on me at board meetings, to protect himself from … (menacing music) a direct question at a public meeting, he never actually did so. Maybe he thought the threat was enough. He was wrong. But Bob did feel the threat to the public from my duck was great enough that the police should put aside their petty duties of fighting violent crime and ensuring the public safety to investigate. And investigate they did. And giggle. And leave. I like the police, they’ve seen it all, and nothing rattles them. They deserve a good laugh now and then. When I was asked to ornament said fowl, by people who KNOW me, it was paid for (those rapidly diminishing guaranteed funds) by the CHCA Executive Committee in the amount of $675. (I hope you all appreciate that I am assiduously avoiding the use of the word “bill” in this piece). What DID they expect? As I have taught in my lectures at Moore College of Art, Penn, Philadelphia University, and at other venues all across the U.S. and Canada, “if art just makes you comfortable, it’s not doing its job.” Such credibility! I was the only artist to refuse payment for my work or my materials, bought at Kilians. Such altruism! Such integrity! So when I mentioned in conversation that I was thinking about graduate cap and gown motif for Lil’ Quacky, with Gothic scrip spelling out “DUCK U” on its side, I was shocked to be called into a meeting to discuss the choice. WHAT DID YOU EXPECT? If Picasso had been given a duck, would you have expected him to put the tits/nose on straight? (Pete may have substituted “nose” for a funnier sounding body part, and if he did, I forgive him. No cops swarming over the Local please.) This affable yet surreal meeting left me undecided, but I had time to think, because, according to the Biz office my duck was late in arriving from its place of manufacture, China. You remember China, that’s the country we were taught to hate and fear in the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s, filled with communists and festooned with nuclear missiles aimed at us. We had to hide under our desks at school to protect our Flintstone pencil cases, lest we return to the Stone Age ourselves. But now that The Peoples Republic has bought up most of our foreign debt with the money the make selling us most of the plastic crap at Wal-Mart, I guess they’re not so hateful any more. Even though they’re sill Communist and still have those missiles aimed at us. Note to Al Queda, this is how it’s done. Start making plastic Dale Ernhart statues today! So when I found out that my duck would be placed at the all night flower store at the bottom of the hill to, as I have said in a previous article, geographically marginalize L.Q., I changed the design. With the help of my sister Marcia, my daughter Amanda, and her boyfriend David, a talented prosthetic makeup technician, we created a duck with its beak and eyes sewn shut, and the words “quack no evil” across its chest. I coated the duck myself with Marine varnish and installed it myself on Saturday morning, the day Richard Snowden’s signs appeared. The Biz’ Arts squad ruled my duck proper, on-site (but not before The Print Shop’s Chris Lane kicked my extension cord out in mid screw, an act of assault by extension … sorry). The non reaction to the Snowden signs by this same group has been well documented, by me, in these pages. But how to respond to this act by the coalmine owning (perfect!) vacant store mogul? It screamed for an artistic response by anyone with a sense of whimsy suitable to the situation. GUESS WHO? But how? My duck was installed. I’m to busy and too lazy to take it down and reconceptualize (an artists’ term). Luckily fate stepped in. The Duck was broken, repaired at the legs and I was called to repaint it. I reminded the Biz people that it was broken on their watch and I had taken no money. No matter, I was responsible. Here was my big chance! I repainted Lil’ Quacky and put vinyl letters down both sides spelling out DUCK SNOWDEN. Oh the rare triple entendre, a play on the middle-aged boy wonder’s name, the lack of action taken against him, and well, the obvious. It was ready for display this past Saturday. I decided to test it at Buckley Park as I volunteered to sell Zoobalicious Swag, the proceeds to be used for I-don’t-know. The reaction was one of almost laughter, encouragement, and praise. “You go Girl” was its general tenor. Until Chris Lane showed up. You remember Chris. He’s defended Snowden in these pages. He avoided eye contact with me and said nothing. Then Bob showed up, and then the police. The duck is now in an undisclosed location. Until I am given assurances that his message can be displayed unchanged, he will remain there, making unannounced appearances under the protection of the LQDSW (Lil’ Quacky-Duck Snowden) Posse. But what about the long term? And what about the November auction? I predict my duck to be a top seller. Nothing sells like controversy. But will the Biz Association even allow it to enter the building? Private armed guards may be in place at the doorways. I fear for Lil Quacky’s safety. I maybe a dangerous individual, but this poor little fella never hurt anyone. So I leave it to you, dear readers. How can we ensure freedom of expression, ridicule Snowden, who clearly has ridiculed us, raise money, and protect a scared little duck, all simultaneously.I’m taking suggestions. Write in to the Local with your ideas! I’ll give autographed pictures of you and Lil’ Quacky to the best suggestions. How about an online auction? Bid on a duck in hiding! If we can make that happen, we can show those who let a powerful man like Snowden say what he wants to, but who try to censor a duck exactly how wrong, how stupid, and how un-artistic they are. P.S. I’ll be meeting with the Biz Association this week over what to do about Snowden. Now I have something to negotiate with. Lil’ Quacky. |
Opinion: Trapped in the vice of greed As working class kids, we went to public school, which seemed up to the task, and after high school to one of the branches of what later became the City University. At colleges like Hunter, tuition was free (though there was a fee of $24 a semester). My dad worked for the United Parcel Service, was a fierce union supporter (a Teamster); my mom a housewife who had joined the workforce at 15. We never felt poor, even though we lived in a one-bedroom apartment and, indeed we were not, as my father’s wages rose steadily as a result of the prosperity of the times and of belonging to an effective if not always squeaky-clean union. My sister and I knew we’d get “good jobs” after college, which to us meant doing something more “interesting” and socially useful than what our parents had to do to earn their bread. We thought that was what happened: my sister became a claims representative for Social Security. I kept going to school after my B.A. and became, finally, a professor of English literature. We had families and bought houses. That was before the renaissance of greed. Having recently gone on a Circle Line Cruise around New York Harbor. I was struck by the way the tour guide went on about Donald Trump and his children and other tycoons. And a recent book by an author named Julian Edney, entitled Greed: A Treatise In Two Essays, begins about New York City, “Sign the tab in certain Midtown eateries, and your neighbors’ eyes slide over. Is that a $48,000 Michel Perchin pen? What’s on your wrist, a $300,000 Breguet watch?” Well no. My current pen is a ball-point I picked up at Staples, and on my wrist I have a nice Seiko, 20 years old, that cost me about $100. I drive a 1997 Subaru Outback Sport, and my husband and I live in a big stone Mt Airy house that is worth maybe $400, 000. I have realized for some time now that I couldn’t live in NYC, not without a serious downward slide in my lifestyle. My stepdaughter and her husband, who are artists and paralegals, will rear their daughter in a three-room rent-controlled apartment in Brooklyn, and she will grow up in an apartment smaller than the one I lived in as a child, even though her parents went to college. They don’t know if they will send their child to public school since, with a few exceptions, the NYC schools are not considered educationally adequate anymore, yet how could they afford private school, especially in New York? But there are those for whom high prices are part of the fun. In Greed, Edney reports, “In New York at an exclusive Morell & Company auction last May, a single magnum of Dom Perignon champagne was sold for $5,750.” I realize that from the perspective of the super-rich, I am not on the economic map despite an academic career that culminated in my becoming a full professor, my big old house and all-wheel drive car! The present climate at times makes me feel pinched. It is not only New Yorkers who are squeezed and made to redefine their achievements by the greed of the times. In Philadelphia private schools are viewed as even more essential than in New York, and the big building boom in Center City has focused on condos that cost close to a million. But resources for ordinary people are inadequate, and greed reigns everywhere in the U.S.. Edney says, “In Palm Springs and Bel Air, $100,000 twin-turbo Porsches and $225,000 Ferraris buzz the warm streets. Hotel rooms, anyone, at $10,000 a night? Estate agents in suburbs of Dallas and Palm Beach have advertised baronial homes for sale at over $40 million. These are prices paid by the exceptionally wealthy, the folks who skim the pages of the Robb Report (average annual salary of subscribers: $1.2 million) in whose glossy pages are reviewed the best of everything. . . . In a recent issue a southern plantation is advertised, ‘everybody’s dream,’ at $8.5 million. Yet my cousin, who at 54 needs cataract surgery, must get her 90-year-old father to pay for it; she and her husband own a small business, and their profits are not enough to pay for medical insurance. How did this happen in our country? Has the U.S. broken from its traditions? Edney: “There are now more than 200 billionaires. Some five percent of American households have assets over $1 million. And we are back to levels of extravagant consumption not seen for 100 years.” Thomas Frank says in the NYT Times (8/18), that this kind of society of economic extremes, a country ruled by business, is part of our history. For him the 19th century is “relevant again in all sorts of startling ways” because “the reigning economic faith of our time . . . is merely a souped-up version of the Victorians’ understanding of the market-as-nature. Again Americans thrill to the exploits of the great tycoons, and gradually we are becoming reacquainted with pervasive inequality.” Of course the United States has other traditions besides rule by a wealthy elite. The movement to abolish slavery, the women’s rights movement, the effort to create and maintain civil liberties, the struggle of working people to form unions and get legislation passed that would keep them healthy and safe on the job, the civil rights movement, the second wave of the women’s movement, the effort to have pure food and drugs. But what are we going to do about living in a reconstituted plutocracy? First, we have to get our values straight. On a spiritual and emotional level the consumption of more and more commodities does not lead to inner peace; indeed, it is all about feeling superior to other people, which leads to loneliness. We should keep this in mind, along with the fact that despite those billionaires, very, very few of us will ever even be millionaires. (My students seem sad when I tell them this truth, for the myth lives on that anyone can get to the top, that it is simply a matter of determination. In 1983 57 percent of people polled believed that in America one could go from very poor to very rich. (According to Harper’s, September 2006, 80 percent still believe that!) America changed from the 1930s to 1973, becoming more egalitarian, and this was because of some very good leaders, but more importantly, because of social movements in which people struggled together in order to better their lives. According to a recent article in the New York Times, between 1929 and 1947 the real wages of production workers in manufacturing rose 67 percent while the income of the richest one percent actually fell 17 percent. And between 1947 and 1973, the years I was growing up to be a proud American, real wages rose 81 percent. Between 1980 and 2004, real wages in manufacturing fell one percent while the real income of the richest one percent of Americans with incomes of more than $227,000 in 2004 rose 135 percent! The concentration of wealth in a few hands leads not only to everyone else getting poorer but also to distrust and contempt for those below oneself economically. And so it is crucial to resist this: to encourage ourselves and our children to have respect for those at all levels of society and to strive for material prosperity but not require fetishized commodities for self-esteem. My father, whose self-esteem was excellent, used to announce (to our affectionate derision) that he was “a common man.” I didn’t understand then, but he was expressing how much he identified with the general welfare. In the movie The Devil Wears Prada, Miranda, the fashion diva played by Meryl Streep, bullies her personal assistant into getting a not-yet-published Harry Potter book for her twins. When the young woman is miraculously successful and shows her a copy, Miranda snaps, “Did you expect them to share?” Her comment satirizes the ethos of the corporate elite that Miranda represents, its rapaciousness, its individualism run amok. One irony here is that sharing, including shared membership in a society, is one of life’s deepest emotional satisfactions, far more satisfying, I suspect (though I confess I can’t be sure) than a Michel Perchin pen or a Brogue watch. | |
