Fiber artist Melissa Maddonni Haims leaned precariously over the railing of the widow’s walk atop historic Mount Pleasant mansion. She was checking her work, a yarn-bombing job commissioned by Philadelphia Parks and Recreation.
“You know, usually this takes place in the middle of the night,” Haims quipped, as she returned to safer ground.
A fiber artist since 2006, Haims once saw yarn bombing as a way to keep busy between projects. She didn’t even bother to take pictures of her work, never thinking she would one day have the opportunity to bomb a historic house.
There is a ghost economy at work in Old City. Hand-painted advertisements from a different era, faded to the point of hardly being there at all, emerge like apparitions during building renovations.
“The signs have been buried behind a brick wall, or a building, or stucco for however many decades, and all of a sudden it’s there again,” said Lawrence O’Toole, author of the photography book “Fading Ads of Philadelphia.” Sometimes it gets covered right back up and it’s only there for a couple weeks, or less.”
O’Toole started taking photos of old advertisements painted on brick buildings as a thesis project 20 years ago, when he was a student at Drexel.
He was fascinated by the lettering and layout of the old signs, and how time had its way with them. That project turned into a blog, The Ghost Sign Project, and later, the book.
Three young priests — John Stokely, 26; Thomas Viviano, 28; and Sean Loomis, 28 — will be ordained to the Catholic priesthood this weekend.
The young men will be the first seminarians to be ordained in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia since the conviction of Monsignor William Lynn last summer. Lynn was sentenced to three to six years in prison for covering up sex abuses by priests under his supervision and endangering children.
Behind the iron gates at St. Charles Borromeo, the seminarians have not turned a blind eye to the landmark conviction or the scandal.
Stokely said last summer they spoke about the scandal nearly every day.
“The scandal caused a real sad awakening for many of us,” said Stokely. “We realize that evil is real and even priests aren’t impervious to its influences.”
Despite the hurt and betrayal that Catholics have felt over the scandal, Viviano and Stokely see their role as being a part of the healing process for the church.
ABC’s “Shark Tank” is kind of like “American Idol” — except instead of wannabe pop stars, it features entrepreneurs pitching their million-dollar ideas to a panel of big-name investors.
On Saturday, Philadelphia’s NextFab Studio will host the show’s only open casting call on the East Coast.
NextFab’s Itsuki Ogihara says it’s been a crazy week.
“We’re getting a huge amount of phone calls every day. People are asking me if they can camp out outside days in advance,” Ogihara said with a laugh. (The answer is no, she says. But she admits she can’t do much to prevent it.) “It’s a pretty exciting time.”
Ogihara is expecting more than 500 people to show up. MORE
Abandon desires for gentility or small talk, questions about your day or how you’ve been. A server will walk up to you and look at you — not ask what you want to drink — just look, unmoving, usually with bagged eyes and almost never, except on the rarest of occasions, with a smile. And in the 100 or so times I’ve come here, I’ve never said anything in response to that hollow look but “Just a lager.”
I love this bar more than any other place I’ve ever spent money.
This essay drew some very negative comments. Does the writer love or hate the bar? We think it’s pretty clear. You decide for yourself. And if you disagree with him, we leave it to you as to whether you should personally attack him or just go on about your day.
Listen to Philadelphia High School of the Creative and Performing Arts students perform “Over There” by Philadelphia-born bass player Derrick Hodge at the Clef Club as Blanchard explains why he takes time out to teach the discipline and inspiration needed to play jazz.
Transforming the right-of-ways into greenways could start on a section of the Reading Viaduct known as the SEPTA Spur. That part of the network functions like a ramp, which could lift people unto a renovated area of the elevated railway. Proponents of the plan liken it to the highly successful High Line elevated park in New York City.
Fans of one of the brightest stars of 20th-century science fiction would like to see a modest tribute in West Philadelphia.
Writer Isaac Asimov spent three years in that neighborhood, from 1942 to 1945, while he worked as a chemist at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard.
Though Asimov would write 500 books by the time he died, he may be best known for the Foundation series and the Robot series. Both are set in a distant future shaped by advanced technology. Asimov started writing both while living in a brick apartment building at 50th and Spruce streets.
It's a big Internet out there, but some things tend to stand out. Here are some favorites from the folks at NewsWorks, the public media news source for Philadelphia, South Jersey and Delaware. Curated by Eric Walter.
Fans of one of the brightest stars of 20th-century science fiction would like to see a modest tribute in West Philadelphia.
