Adam Levine, the author of a new book about the Philadelphia public garden scene was recently the featured guest speaker at the Franklin Inn. He's a charming person, and has given us a great book.
He draws to our attention that the Philadelphia region is pre-eminent in the garden world, and has been so for several centuries. While it is true that Philadelphia has a mild enough climate to be suitable to two climate zones, the early settlers came from a region of middle England that has been a garden center since Roman times. And they were Quakers, uncomfortable with the outward show in buildings and furnishings, but flowers were innocent instruments of the display. Although Chanticleer was created by a Pennsylvania German family, the great centers of public gardens are mostly traceable to the influence of Quakers, and the du Pont family. Since one or two years of neglect will ruin almost any garden, the essence of great gardens lies in the ability to survive.
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The Horticultural Society
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In fact, the Philadelphia area contains hundreds of gardens which have decayed and virtually disappeared. The Horticultural Society is at the heart of garden preservation, financed in large part by the annual flower show, but even that thriving organization is hard pressed to do justice to the vast areas that need tending. Woodlands would be an example of an area needing tending, and Friends Hospital is an object lesson. When that venerable institution was sold to sharp pencil types from out of town, the Azalea gardens on the grounds were closed to visitors, except for two hours a year. It makes you tremble to imagine how long this famous azalea collection will probably survive. Meanwhile, Germantown's famous gardens are maintained in a minimal way, stretching the resources of the owners who have more urgent demands to meet in their buildings and furniture. Indeed, it is hard to name a really outstanding garden within the city limits, with the exception of the Morris Arboretum, which barely makes it within city boundaries. The area back of the Art Museum along Boathouse Row makes a brave attempt in the spring, but it's a pale reminder of the glory which used to be seen in East Fairmount Park, especially at Lemon Hill, Stenton, and Cliveden. Stotesbury is just a relic.
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Morris Arboretum
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Gardens have moved to the suburbs. Chanticleer, the Morris Arboretum, Longwood Gardens, Nemours, the Scott Arboretum at Swarthmore, West Laurel Hill, The University of Delaware in Newark, Cabrini College in Villanova, Haverford College Arboretum, Temple University's Ambler campus, and the Trenton Sculpture Gardens on the old fairgrounds -- all would demand mention in any list of outstanding gardens in America. But only a few of them aspire to the standards of an outdoor sculpture garden, where the goal was to surround each piece of sculpture with a garden in such a way that only one sculpture could be seen at a time. Now, that was gardening on the grand scale.
Hidden in a regional garden scene is the seed merchants, starting with John Bartram and famous under the Burpees, which make gardens possible. After all, there has to be a place to find these things. Perhaps the catalog stores, like Wayside Gardens, are the hope for the future. Every shrub or tree transported from a nursery takes up a ball of topsoil along with the specimen, and the appearance of nurseries around the periphery of a city is usually the first step in the development of housing projects. If there is an investment of topsoil in every garden, perhaps we ought to think a little bit about the way we let the investment dry up and blow away.
REFERENCES
| Gardens of Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley William Klein Jr. ISBN-10: 1566393132 |
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Boker, George Henry, (1824-1890), Section A, Lot 91. Poet and dramatist. Helped led its Civil War propaganda Activities.
Bradford, Andrew Section W, Lot 231 Andrew Bradford (1688-1742) published Philadelphia's first newspaper.
Brown, Charles Brockden, (January 17, 1771 - February 22, 1810), an American novelist, historian, and editor of the Early National period, is generally regarded by scholars as the most ambitious and accomplished US novelist before James Fenimore Cooper.
Bullitt, John Christian,(1824-1902)Section P, Lot 52. Lawyer and author of the Philadelphia City Charter.
Childs, George William.(1829-1894)Section K, Lot 337. Publisher of Victorian best sellers and one of Philadelphia great 19th century newspapers-the Public Ledger
Conrad, Robert, (1810-1858). Section 14, Lot 266. A literary figure who served as first Mayor of the Consolidated City of Philadelphia.
Cummings, Brig. Gen. Alexander (1810-1879) Section I, Lot 224 Founded the Evening Bulletin, oversaw procurement and raised troops in Civil War. Governor of the Colorado Territory. Nicknamed "Old Straw Hat."
Curtis, Louisa Knapp. (1852-1910)River Section, Lot 31. Editor of the Ladies Home Journal.
Duane, Mary Morris (Section L, Lot107-112) was a Poet.
Elverson, James. (1828-1911). Section T. Lot 41. Developed the Inquireras a major newpaper.
Fagan, Frances.(Fanny)(1834-1878) Section G, Lot 272, first daughter of John Francis Fagan by his first wife, Mary (Armstrong). Fagan committed suicide and was buried at Laurel Hill Cemetery, on 2 February 1878. Poet.
Godey, Louis Antoine. (1804-1878) Section WXYZ Oval. Lot 3. Publisher of America's first great magazine for women-Godey's Lode's Book.
Hale, Sarah Josepha. (1788-1879). Section X, Lot 61. Editor of Godey's Lady's Book, a crusader for women's medical education, and the person chiefly credited with establishing Thanksgiving as a national holiday.
Hildeburn, Mary Jane,(1821-1882) Section G-190. Author of Presbyterian Sunday School stories.
Hirst, Henry Beck.(1817-1874). Section Q, Lot 225. Poet
Hooper, Lucy Hamilton. Section W, Lot 17 was an assistant editor ofLippincott's Magazine from the first edition until 1874. She also wrote for Appleton's Journal and the Evening Bulletin. She wrote several books of poetry and she was also a playwright. One of her plays, Helen's Inheritance, had its premiere at the Madison Square Theater in NYC. After moving to Paris in 1874, she became the "Paris correspondent" for various American newspapers. She was also a novelist, with one of her novels, Under The Tricolor, causing quite a stir. It was a thinly-veiled satire of the lives of certain expatriates who were living in Paris at the time.
Kane, Elisha Kent. Section P, Lot 100. Elisha Kent Kane(1820-1857) became famous for his arctic explorations. Kane's publications include: "Experiments on Kristine with Remarks on its Applications to the Diagnosis of Pregnancy," "American Journal of Medical Sciences, n.s., 4 (1842), The U.S. Grinnell Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin, A Personal Narrative, New York: Harper and Brothers, 1854, and Arctic Explorations in Years 1853, '54, '55, Philadelphia: Childs and Peterson, 1856.
Lea, Henry Charles.(1825-1909) Section S, Lot 49. Pro-Northern propagandist during the Civil War, Civic Reformer, and author of a classic history of the Spanish Inquisition. Sculpture by Alexander Stirling Calder.
Leslie, Eliza. (1787-1858) Section6, Lot 45. Author of MissLeslie's Directions for Cookery (1851)and other cookbooks.
Lippincott, Joshua B. (1831-1886)Section 9, Lot 118. Founder of the distinguished Philadelphia publishing company.
Marion, John Francis. (1922-1991) Section S, Lot 118. Philadelphia historian, author, and gentlemen.
Mc Michael, Morton.(1807-1879) Section H, Lot 45. Publisher of the North American, mayor of Philadelphia, and president of the Fairmount Park Commission.
Neal, Joseph Clay, (1807-1847) Section P, Lot 71. Editor and humorist, best known for Charcoal Sketches in a Metropolis.
Read, Thomas Buchanan. (1822-1872) Section K, Lot 206. Both poet and sculptor, Read is best remembered for his Civil War poem "Sheridan's Ride".
Singerly, William. (1832-1898) Section K, Lot 235. Made fortunes in street railways, real estate, knitting mills. Published the Philadelphia Record.
Townsend, George Alfred.(1841-1914) Section 9, Lot 98. One of the most important American Journalists during the Civil War and Reconstruction.
Wireman, Katharine Richardson. Section 9, Lot 160. was an illustrator who studied with Howard Pyle. She worked for the magazines that Curtis Publishing produced.
Wister, Owen. (1860-1938) Section J, Lot 206. Author of The Virginian. American writer whose stories helped to establish the cowboy as an archetypical, individualist hero. Wister and his predecessor James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) created the basic Western myths and themes, which were later popularized by such writers as Zane Grey and Max Brand.
WITH British troops in the process of disembarking at New Brunswick, apparently intent on hanging rebels, Robert Morris and John Dickinson annoyed everybody by refusing to sign the Declaration of Independence. Both were fully engaged in the Revolution after the fighting finally got started, and Morris signed up in August 1776. Dickinson had some further reasons of his own, but Morris explained his position quite succinctly. He didn't mind being a British subject, he didn't want a new King, what he wanted was Constitutional Liberty. There is no record of his being directly confronted about this later, and thus no detailed explanation. But whatever did he mean?
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Iliad and the Odyssey
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Morris was of course very bright, even brilliant as a businessman. He had an astonishing memory for detail and was capable of holding his own counsel. He was a person of great daring and prodigious amounts of work. But there is very little evidence that he thought it was useful to be mysterious, or deep. So why not take him at his word, which was essentially that what mattered in a government was whether it kept its promises and allowed its citizens all possible Liberty. It did not matter whether the government had a king, or seldom mattered much who that king was. What mattered was whether it kept its promises, and for that a Constitution is useful. There is no great pleasure in being capricious and arbitrary, so a king who leaves the citizens alone is mostly the best you can ask for. It does, however, help considerably if the rules are fair, clear, and binding. Beyond that, it is unwise to go about toppling governments in the vain hope that a new one is somehow better than the old one. This is putting words into his mouth, to be sure. What he did say was he saw no advantage to getting a new government when what we wanted was Constitutional Liberty. Eleven years later, he was a personal friend of just about everyone with the power to design a new government. Washington lived in his house, or in one next door. Ben Franklin was a business partner. Gouverneur Morris was his lawyer and partner. Just about everybody else who mattered was meeting with him in secrecy for months at a time, in the Pennsylvania Statehouse. And so on.
An essential part of this puzzle of Morris' role could be that the American Constitution was very close to unique in being written out as a document, like a commercial contract. The British Constitution was unwritten at the time and continues to be unwritten today. Many other members of the British Commonwealth operate without a written constitution. And in fact, what passed as constitutions for thousands of years have been unwritten; it was the written American one which was the novelty, not the other way around. It may stretch matters a little to describe the Iliad and the Odyssey as constitutions, but they do in fact describe the system of governance of the Ancient Greeks, clarifying many axioms of their culture for which they were willing to fight and die. We are able to understand the rules for Greeks to live by from reading Homer, almost surely better than we understand the rules of American culture by reading The Federalist Papers. Modern students of geometry, for another example, are taught that all the rules of Euclidian geometry are based on a few axioms stated at its beginning. Change one of those axioms, and you make mathematics unrecognizable. Even Newton's Principia are now seen by mathematicians to be rules which apply only to our universe for certain. There may exist many other universes to which they do not apply. Axioms are themselves mostly regarded as unprovable assumptions. A Constitution, therefore, is regarded in modern times to be much the same thing as a set of mathematical axioms. With one new exception: they are written out on a piece of paper for all to see and agree to -- just like a commercial contract. It would not be surprising to discover that America's great merchant trader, Robert Morris, was horrified at the idea of depending on Vestal Virgins or Judges, or Kings, for their recollection of what the contract says. It, therefore, seems quite natural for a maritime merchant to be agitated by having the rules of British society depend on what King George III chose to emphasize or ignore. Write it down, negotiate it, then tell us what you want so we can agree to it; that's a proper way to define Constitutional Liberty and limit disputes. International maritime trade could not be conducted in any other way, because sea captains who feel abused in a foreign port can abruptly up-anchor and sail away, never to return to that port again until or unless local rules are clarified.
Unless someone discovers some relevant documents in a trunk in the attic, that's about the best conjecture to be made about the American novelty of a written constitution, and its transformative effect on the legal system of all other nations which have one. It would still be nice to know, for certain, whose idea it was.
Today’s New York Times, the stately and respected establishmentarian of American newspaper industry, will sell almost a million copies around the nation.
Its news and editorial pages will send ripples of concern or support to those who run universities, business and government. Its front page will help define what is news, setting an agenda that will help guide television networks, newspapers and national news magazines. Its reviews can launch young talent or snuff it out. And its four full sections will undoubtedly be the first public version of yesterday’s happenings reviewed by future historians the newspaper of record’s durable rendering of the events of January 7, 1986.
This powerful newspaper, whose readers include most of the nation’s elite or “the very very very top top top, “ as Times Co. Vice Chairman Sydney Gruson described the paper’s audience, conveys solidity and security to its loyal subscribers . But as many of those who produce The Times and some of those who obsessively read it said in interviews over the past few months, this image of unshakable stability is increasingly misleading.
The New York Times today is a nervous institution preparing for what may be one of the most difficult periods in its 134 year history the retirement of Executive Editor Abraham Michael Rosenthal. In May 1987, after almost 20 years of increasing dominance over this powerful journalistic kingdom, Rosenthal will reach 65, the mandatory age for Times executives to move on, and the tremors have already begun to shake the foundations under the gray lady of the Times Square.
Talented young journalists, who once yearned for even the lowest job on The New York Times, are increasingly opting for better position on “publications The Times once considered not even in the competition,†as one top editor lamented recently.
Potential heirs to Rosenthal’s journalistic throne find themselves nervously doing their jobs while anxiously eyeing their competition. “It is a paper in waiting,†as a reporter in the Washington bureau put it. “We’re in a kind of psychological limbo.â€
Once the waiting is over, the change at the top of The Times will be more than a mere switch in corporate personnel. It will be the end of a brilliant, Lucrative and tumultuous era two decades in which one of the world’s most distinctive and controversial men.
The daily offering of a great newspaper is rather like the menu of a great restaurant a direct reflection of the energy and personality of the person in charge. And it seems a virtually universal view among The Times’ 650 writers and editors that in the Rosenthal era, the chef’s personality has been dominant as never before. Famous for his strong emotions, Rosenthal has total control over the news side of his institution. Basking in a strong paternal love or cowering under his anger, Times journalists have been known to despair when they have taken what Rosenthal considered a wrong journalistic or personal step or to rejoice when one of his warm notes arrived the interoffice mail.
Rosenthal also gained power at The Times in a period when the newspaper struggled to pull itself out of a financial slide. Through the paper prospers today as never before, in the early 1970s there were whispers on Wall Street that it might have to close, so bad was it financial performance. Times Publisher Arthur Ochs (Punch) Sulfberger spent a good deal of his time denying to the financial community that he would ever perform euthanasia on the staid but solid journalistic product that had been in his family since 1896.
In New York’s financial crisis of the mid 70s, when the city government perched on the cliff of bankruptcy, Times advertisers scaled back their media buys. Circulation dropped as readers fled to the suburbs. At the same time, printing costs soared, union contracts brought rising wages, and the various journalistic and financial parts of the paper run like independent fiefdoms sometimes seemed to compete more with each other than with any news organization outside the paper.
But almost at the same time such publications as Business Week were lamenting that “the financial health of The Times has seriously deteriorated,†the paper was beginning to recuperate primarily through the efforts of three men: Sulzberger, Walter Mattson, now president of The New York Times Co., who pushed the paper to appeal to new readers in the ‘70s, and Rosenthal, who captured those new subscribers by providing stories about asparagus and anthropology as well as politics and the economy.
“I think what I’m proud of is that I was able to change The Times and not change it,†said Rosenthal of this crucial period.
“I remember the day I became managing editor, trying out my fancy new desk, sitting behind it, and Harrison Salisbury, then assistant managing editor, came in and said, ‘Well, Abe, you’re the first editor of The Times that will have to worry about money,’ Rosenthal said recently in an interview for this series.
Marketing data in the early ‘70s showed that the paper was missing thousands of readers Times managers though should be subscribers, Rosenthal said. “There was no particular demographic or educational reason, “he said. “If everybody had behaved like a good American and read The Times everyday like they should have, we wouldn’t have had this problem.â€
“I guess the fundamental decision had to be made by Punch when we were in this (economic) crunch,†Rosenthal said later. “That is, there are two ways The Times could go a lot of business face the same problem and that is to put more water in the soup or more tomatoes in the soup. And the business decision here…was to put a lot more tomatoes in the soup. You know, make it a bigger, fatter paper.â€
Rosenthal was referring to what some Times observers call “the sectional revolution†the expansion of the paper into four weekly sections. The traditional news sections were bolstered my new ones devoted to business, sports, home decorating and life styles, entertainment and science. The first was Weekend, which appeared on Friday, April 30, 1976 by Sports Monday and, in May of that year, Business Day (daily).
Although the style and panache of the new sections were widely admired, The New York Times as it was called was not universally applauded. In 1977, when Rosenthal was about to be promoted to executive editor, it was a standing joke in the Times news room that the paper was about to create another innovative section. It was going to be called News.
“It wouldn’t have meant anything it the Times had become a different kind of paper, if its character had changed,†Rosenthal said, responding to those early critics. “It didn’t it’s still the same paper. You pick it up, you like it or you don’t like it, it’s The New York Times.†While Rosenthal gave in to additional sections for “soft†features on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays they were largely the results of prodding from Mattson on the business side he says he drew the line at Tuesdays. The Business executives at The Times, looking for segments of the economy that could spend big money on advertising wanted a fashion section, he said.
“I didn’t want to do it. I had this stomach feeling against it,†he said, adding that fashion would have been “a kind of parody, really.â€
“I wants to do something very Timesian. I wanted to do something for the readers who loved us and stuck with us,†he said, “I had an image in mind, it was (author) Teddy White’s face, a very nice guy, our type of reader in a sense.â€
So, as Rosenthal recalls it, he borrowed space from other sections of the paper and simply started putting out the science section.
“I remember somebody from the business section coming down one day and saying, “Abe, you stole Tuesday,†he remembered.
Says one editor who has been critical of Rosenthal on other matters: “The Bottom line virtue to Abe’s regime is that you have to give credit to anybody who has conquered that transition from an uncomplicated newspaper to very complicated one without a diminution of quality.
“It’s really hard to remember how boring and lazy this newspaper was. We were always quick to punditize, and when we did reporting, we sometimes did it very, very, well,†said the editor. “But we weren’t very hungry. We rested on our laurels a lot.â€
Charges of Elitism
As the paper of the “very very very top top top.†The New York Times “product,†as it now called in business circles, carefully caters to its consumers, and some critics suggest that the newer, more lucrative Times misses many of the social issues that were widely covered in that earlier era.
A Story on Nov. 2, for example, analyzed the anxiety of parents scrambling to make certain their child goes to the “right†nursery school in order to get into Harvard. When Hurricane Gloria swept across the East Coast, The Times carried as large front page story about a young couple who could not get electricity for their mansion, a Yankee version of Tara complete with a storm damage column on the front portico.
Such stories excite despair and anger among some members of The Times staff and among some readers of the paper who believe The Times caters to its upper crust readers by sparing them too much detail about the downtrodden. One example widely cited by those interviewed for these articles was the discontinuation of Pulitzer Prize winner Sydney Schanberg’s column on New York.
Schanberg’s often railed against the city’s treatment of the poor and the homeless, and his friends suggested that it was because of his subjects that he was dropped from the Op-Ed page. Times insiders said that Schanberg’s voice was quelled because he angrily criticized The Times own coverage of the Wednesday highway proposal through lower Manhattan and also because his work had become “monotonous.â€
Rosenthal and others at The Times have said that the discontinuation of Schanberg’s column was Sulzberger’s decision, not Rosenthal’s.
However, how the less glamorous sections of the New York community are covered is Rosenthal’s territory. The New York Post noted with some glee last May that The Times was breaking with tradition and assigning a reporter to Queens. The story, headline “Times discovers Queens.†Said that the new reporter, Joseph Fried, would join the ranks of other “Illustrious Times foreign correspondents†stationed in such spots as South Africa, Italy and Moscow.
Asked about the criticism that the paper avoids some areas of the city and some of the seamier local issues. Rosenthal said: “It seems to me we cover every bloody issue. Do we cover Hispanic news, let’s say? Not well enough. But the reason we cover Hispanic News is not for Hispanic readers. Hispanic readers do not but The New York Times to read about Hispanic news, nor will they ever.â€
Readers buy the paper, he said because they are interested in New York City its culture, its politics, its ideas, and it's business a package that provides most completely each day in The New York Times.
The Rosenthal Regime
As the paper evolved during Rosenthal’s term, he amassed control ending warring baronies by taking over control of the news and culture sections of the paper as Times Publisher Sulzberger asked him to do when Rosenthal became managing editor in 1969.
But with the increasing power came problems, and many Times staffers said in interviews that as Rosenthal’s control over the paper became absolute, he and the paper sometimes seemed virtually interchangeable. To love The Times was to love Rosenthal; to criticize Rosenthal was to criticize The Times...
At the same time, Rosenthal’s reports and editors bemoaned this emotionally exhilarating and exhausting way of doing business, they had to acknowledge his formidable talent. One editor said that for all the talk of the awesome fury Rosenthal, he often dominates news meetings quietly, first finding the loose end in a story, unraveling it quickly as he reminisces about some articles in his own career. At the other end of the des, the editor in charge of this story lapses into embarrassed silence.
As Rosenthal himself put it: I’ve thought a lot about why it is (that) I ‘am a good editor. I’m a good editor. You may not like this or that, but I’m a good editor. It’s silly not to recognize that.
“I recognized that I was a good foreign correspondent,†he added, laughing. “Matter of fact, there was once a poll taken about who was the best correspondent in the world at the time, and (broadcaster) Dan Schorr said he voted for me, and I said, “That’s nice because I did too. “It’s part of the myth, this story is part of the Rosenthal arrogance myth.â€
But the kind of chutzpah and energy that was necessary to kick starts the sluggish old New York Times also pears to have taken its toll in the past decade.
In interview with reporters, editors and managers who work for The Times or who count themselves among The Times distinguished alumni, few described Rosenthal in neutral terms. For them, Rosenthal’s portrait is painted with primary emotions love, hate, fear, anger, devotion, compassion. And most members of the staff who agreed to discuss Rosenthal spoke nervously, often reluctantly. “We haven’t talked†were the last words in several conversations with Times reporters some of whom feared they were speaking too critically of Rosenthal and others who were concerned that their praise of Rosenthal would look too sycophantic in print.
Salisbury, in his 1980 book on The Times. “Without Fear or Favor,†described Rosenthal’s emotional Managerial style, a style that some say is based on fear but that Salisbury believes was “founded on love.â€
“what neither he nor those around him really grasped was the swiftness with love, that capricious and untidy emotion, could change at the flicker of an eye, a perceived tonality of speech, a physical gesture; could change from milky, almost maudlin affection into Othello’s paranoia, suspicion, fear, and hate,†he wrote.
Rosenthal, friends, and critics agree, is an emotional man. He can seethe at people who displease him; can break into tears over some historic moment, like the death of Robert Kennedy: he can suddenly hug a young reporter who has performed masterfully: and he can send a staff member into a kind of journalistic deep freeze.
Such was the fate of Ben Franklin, a reporter at the Washington bureau who Rosenthal reportedly suspected had talked about an in-house announcement of job changes at The Times to USA Today. Rosenthal, according to persons familiar with the event, ordered that Franklin’s name not appear in the paper.
And although Franklin slowly began to resurface in print after 4 ½ months without a byline, one of Franklin’s friends trying to make sure he doesn’t get blown away.â€
Others have faced the worst Rosenthal storm and survived.
“A lot it goes back to 1963 when Rosenthal (as metropolitan editor) took over what everybody agreed was a very encrusted, antediluvian operation and he had to break some crockery,†says the Washington editor of The Times, Bill Kovach, who praises Rosenthal for the results. “Some of it may have been pretty tough, pretty rough, and he got the reputation for being callous and the more power he got and the more people whose lives were touched by him, the more that reputation grew.
“But I can tell you as somebody who had a personal problem with him I’ve been on what is called the shit list but it obviously didn’t hurt me in the long run,†Kovach said.
Recently, however, the credit given Rosenthal for rejuvenating the paper has been submerged in a wave of criticism over perceived excesses during his stewardship.
In October, writer Pete Hamill, once a personal friend, wrote a tough sorrowful attack on Rosenthal in The Village Voice. Hamill, whose piece drew private and grudging praise from Times executives, described a “climate of fear and demoralization on staff†and accused Rosenthal of practicing “the journalism of punishment or revenge.â€
John Hess, a former Times foreign correspondent and critic, has written bitingly about his former paper’s cultural coverage, accusing Rosenthal of overseeing “an era of personal favoritism and spite.â€
And in the Washington Journalism Review, Robert Kuttner, a staff writer for The New Republic and former view of Rosenthal: “The metaphors are shocking: King Lear, Louis XVI, Captain Queeg, the last days of Stalin’s Kremlin, Even Watergate.
Rosenthal, analyzing the bitter charges that have been leveled against him, has broken down the criticism into categories. Up to 20 percent, he said is his personality; another 15 to 20 percent is his role as “an agent of change†at the paper. But the chief reason, as he sees it, is political the reaction to his open effort to pull the paper back from a slight tilt to the left.
“I was once asked what my epitaph should be, “he said “I never thought a minute before I said, ‘I want it to be: “He kept the paper straight.â€
Originally the "lower counties" of Pennsylvania, and thus one of three Quaker colonies founded by William Penn, Delaware has developed its own set of traditions and history.
Start in Philadelphia, take two days to tour around Delaware Bay. Down the New Jersey side to Cape May, ferry over to Lewes, tour up to Dover and New Castle, visit Winterthur, Longwood Gardens, Brandywine Battlefield and art museum, then back to Philadelphia. Try it!
Millions of eye patients have been asked to read the passage from Franklin's autobiography, "I walked up Market Street, etc." which is commonly printed on eye-test cards. Here's your chance to do it.
In 1751, the Pennsylvania Hospital at 8th and Spruce was 'way out in the country. Now it is in the center of a city, but the area still remains dominated by medical institutions.
Grievances provoking the American Revolutionary War left many Philadelphians unprovoked. Loyalists often fled to Canada, especially Kingston, Ontario. Decades later the flow of dissidents reversed, Canadian anti-royalists taking refuge south of the border.
