4 November 2011 | Philadelphia Inquirer
But to drink the Kool-Aid, as we’ve all done for so long, is to engage in a damning misreading of history that says only the colonial, or early Federal, period matters. This is why the brick - symbol of one historical moment, metaphor for a shrunken imagination - is so dangerous.
21 October 2011 | Philadelphia Inquirer
When Marianne Bernstein was a little girl, her mother eschewed regular toys. Instead, she was given a simple wooden cube with a hinged door - a playhouse - and there had free rein to invent her world. She has been reinventing her playhouse in city lots ever since.
12 October 2011 | Hidden City Daily
I was struck by the architectural conservatism in the room, a conservatism that felt elitist and hostile at times. And clearly no one has made a cogent argument to neighborhood groups like this one that contemporary architecture has value in a “traditional” neighborhood. Least of all this developer, whose architect is working from Looney Tunes.
21 August 2011
“What do you think Thomas Eakins would think of this?” asked my father. We were standing on the Schuylkill Banks admiring Miss Rockaway’s Armada, the floating circus made entirely of trash docked under the Walnut Bridge.
31 May 2011
This Friday at 6PM I return to Frank’s world for the opening of an art show: “Northern Liberties: A Transformation” at the Projects Gallery at 629 N. 2nd organized by Jennifer Baker. I’ll read selections from Song of the City. Plus there will be a viewing of a film about the neighborhood by John Thornton.