September 2009 Archives

Race is back in the news and not a minute too soon. For awhile there some of us were beginning to nod off or not notice that, by and large, white people tend to live in white neighborhoods and black people tend to live in black neighborhoods. Twas ever thus in America and in Philadelphia. These neighborhoods could be hard upon one another, divided by a single unremarkable street, which would shift by one or two streets, north or south, east or west, like the waxing and waning of the moon. White population waxed with gentrification and waned with fear. The black population resented this waxing and was oblivious to the causes of the waning. Mostly they were glad to have a place they could afford to live.

Last week we were reminded that America may have a black family living in the White House, and Philadelphia may have its third black mayor -- yet a Nutter brother, as the joke goes -- in City Hall, but that doesn't mean our president is welcome without insult in our House of Representatives or kids that look like his kids are welcome in our white suburban swimming pools. I don't say that to be snarky, that's just the way it is. And nobody seems to be able to describe the way it is without expressing fear of being called a racist, like the only people who feel free to speak an opinion on race are wearing white pointy hoods or selling Muhammed Speaks on street corners.

Here's the stupid open secret about race: most black people feel exactly the same way about the black people white people are afraid of. Black people are afraid of them too. But they fear that admitting that will embolden white racism, followed by cops, followed by sons in jail. Black criminals fear three things: other black criminals, the cops, their moms. White criminals fear nothing. Ask Vince Fumo. To admit that race matters in the conversation of America, of Philadelphia, of black and white and you and me, is what I used to think was so obvious, so FREAKIN' obvious. But we seem befuddled by the nature of the obvious conversation we should be having. It's not about who among us has been poisoned by racism. Ask who has not. All of us have been drinking water from the same racist well our entire lives. It's our duty to speak up when when we notice that the the poison is acting out. But our childen didn't grow up drinking the same water we did. Have you noticed? Have you tasted the water in Philadelphia lately? For the most part, it's pretty sweet.

The last important thing I learned from my father was that he was on an American troop ship off the coast of Japan when we dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yes, I am that kid. My father never told me, of course, never told anyone about his experiences in World War II but I found out and I tell you now because I must. My Dad was on a ship off the coast of Japan awaiting the invasion. In letters home to his sister, Dad drescribed it all, in old letters dated October 1945 from Okinawa, an island he discovered at the age of 36 with a wife, a son and a daughter back home in Philadelphia, letters that I first read eight years after he had died.

My dad was no hero, that's understood. But his lack of heroism amazes me to this day. We would have parades for a man like my father today, a citizen soldier drafted into the army at the age of 33, married with children, who did his duty because, well, that's what men did back in the day. Not once in my lifetime did I hear my father complain about going to war. And this was a man who complained about everything all the time. My dad was a complainer and a blamer. At least, that's what I remember most. He was 40 when I was born, the first of three new children born to Harry and Anne DeLeon after he returned from World War II.

Dad sold plumbing supplies for a living. I remember growing up thinking that American Standard toilets were porcelain gold. When he told me the facts of life -- so awkwardly I almost felt sorry for him -- because I had actually connived to force him to tell me "something" at the age of 13, when I had actually learned the awful truth about where babies came from at the age of 10. I heard the dirty truth on the concrete parking lot/ playground of a Catholic grade school at lunchtime. I didn't believe a word of it. I had heard of the "F" word, understood the mechanics, sort of. But it all sounded like a dirty joke until I found out from one of my classmates, in all seriousness, that THAT'S how babies are made.

And being a true Philadelphia Catholic school boy, I replied as genuinely and innocently and logically as any Philadelphia Catholic school boy would respond to such filth: "Are you telling me that Mary and Joseph did THAT?!" And thus was born the great awakening within me about all these important things about my religion that were talked about all the time, but I had no clue what these words meant. "Virginity" for instance.

Mary was a virgin. Who don't know that? But what's a virgin?

You tawkin' to me? I was a full grown Catholic before I understood, even a little bit, how important sex was or wasn't to my religion. Catholicism is defined by sex, always has been, in one way or another, in the city of brotherly love. Phildephia Catholics are proud because they are Philadelphia Catholics. I love that feeling of knowing what it feels like. And I love the rage I feel at my religion I lost so long ago.

Some people forget, I can't. Some people forgive, I do.

Some people are deeply disappointed by the behavior of our church in general, and in particular by genatalia belonging to clergy.

I trust the Catholic church about as much as I trust the United States government.

And yet to each I pledge my life, my fortune and my sacred honor.

Who said that? You, me or Jesus.

And do you want to know how my father told me the facts of life? He used a plumbing analogy. I had unloaded trucks at my dad's warehouse and I knew from male and female pipes. Dad said, "You know how a male pipe screws into a female pipe?. . ." And. . . well, the rest was history.

He had me with "screws."

With just a week gone by in his 55 month sentence in federal prison, this is hardly the time to wax nostalgic about can-do Pennsylvania political leaders of the past. No one is suggesting that it's time to dust off the hardbound commemorative copies of "Vinnie, We Hardly Knew Ye" but instead of scrubbing toilets in a minimum security pokey in Kentucky, I think most of us would agree that former state senator Vincent Fumo's talents could be better served by cleaning up the budget mess in Harrisburg.

  The toilet analogy is not all that much of a stretch since the current veto-threatened budget deal reportedly began with with a phone conversation between the opposing party leaders in the state senate when Democrat Robert J. Mellow told Republican Dominic Peleggi, "We look like crap. We're not doing anything."

Their subsequent compromise $27.9 billion budget deal, which would clean out the state's $1.2 billion Rainy Day Fund, was announced -- fittingly -- on Friday, while Philadelphia and the rest of the state was being drenched by a No'reaster that dumped up to four inches of rain on an already saturated region.

   Gov. Rendell has promised to veto the current senate version of the budget as insufficient, which shouldn't help Philadelphia today when the state senate majority Republicans consider lifeboat legislation that would spare our city a doomsday budget scenario that would result in the layoff of thousands of city workers. Oh, Vincent, whereart thou?

Of course, politicians in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia and the United States Congress didn't get us into this jam overnight. It has been decades in the making. Perhaps even centuries. It is the result of small minded men with short term vision who see as far as the next election but are frequently blind to the present.

   I wonder if things would be different if they took a page from the daily planner of Benjamin Franklin, one of our earliest Pennsylvania poiticians, who started his days with a morning question: "What good shall I do this day." Franklin listed his morning ritual beginning at 5 a.m.: "Rise, wash and address Powerful Goodness (God); contrive day's business and take the resolution of the day; prosecute the present study; and breakfast." And before blowing out the bedside candle Franklin asked himself an evening question: "What good have I done today?"

 You can sleep on that, Vince.

AFTER RETURNING FROM driving my college-bound daughter to Boston over this holiday weekend, I have this fact to report: There are two hundred and ninty-four stone steps up top of the granite tower of the Bunker Hill Monument. I know this by reason of good old fashioned shoe-leather journalism. I read it somewhere.

Actually, I read it on the several warnings prominently posted around the Washington Monumentesque oblisk that stands atop the highest hill in Charlestown, a neighborhood in Boston where a long time ago some men made a stand that changed the world. The fact that all those signs were so clearly posted to dissuade the timid and at risk from venturing to the top,. . . now THAT, my friend, is what you call "journalistic verification."  There are 294 steps to the top of the Bunker Hill Monument because they said so.

Of course I climbed them. Am I a patriot or what? And I even counted for awhile. When I saw the bright number "10" painted white on the front of the tenth stone step, followed by "20" on the twentieth, I figured I'd trust the arithmetic of the National Park Service to count by tens. By 50 these tens began to matter in a disinterested, you know, observational or theoretical manner. If I feel like this after 50, what will I feel like climbing four more fifties with spare stairs to go. By two hundred and 40 I was looking for those white painted step numbers like a blood hound on a death march. I am breathing like a man on a good run and eager to have it over. Give this dog his bone.

The higher I got the more I marveled at the people coming down this crowded spiral staircase of stone that allows only two people to pass each other. Little kids with parents. Old people -- people 20 years older than me -- and they're, like, still alive. They were puffing and sweating, but they were happy, and more importantly, not dead! I fear I resented their happiness for selfish reasons. They were happy because gravity had become their good friend. They were on a downward spiral and loving it. I, on the other hand, was practicing my slow breath (you know, like the guy who starts the slow clap in teen movies of a certain vintage) which I was prepared to do when I met the other survivors on the top.

And when I got there, I gotta tellya, I never saw so many people with bursting lungs trying to breathe slowly. Who were we trying to impress? Ourselves, certainly, but I swear I saw an 80-year-old woman take the last step in a crouch with a big grin on her face and she was as winded as the average 30-year-old breathing slowly through clenched teeth as if it were a conversation with his blonde attractive (not that that is important) girlfriend. No one seemed to know what to say, including me. Maybe there are no words.

But that would really suck for writers, wouldn't it?

I start back at school today. I'm teaching English and Journalism  at Montgomery County Community College and I always build myself into a lather before the first day of school because I expect too much.  Not of my students so much as myself. I expect to change their lives, each and every one of them.  I expect them to experience what I experienced from a teacher in my freshman year of college.  All she did was change my life.

  I was working at a Mobil gas station in Narberth at the time.  I'd been working there fulltime since graduating Lower Merion High School a year and three months earlier, and the only thing I was sure of in life was that I didn't want to be working in a gas station for the rest of my life.

  The symbol of this ambition was a permanent line of grime that had embedded itself into the outside of the index finger of my right hand. This was the ground in grease from twisting a thousand gas caps.  At the end of the day I could wash myself clean of any workman's smudge except for that permanent shadow between the fingertip and the second knuckle of my dominent hand.

  It became a symbol, this human smudge, of something I did not understand but had decided I didn't want to be a permanent part of my life. Little did I know that I traded being a grease monkey to become an ink-stained wretch.

  And I owe it all to my first college English teacher, Diane Whitehead, who did what teachers are supposed to do. I don't know what she did or how she did it but she did it.  She opened my eyes and heart to the beauty and power of the English language.  I tell this story so often that is sounds trite.  Blah, blah, freakin' blah. If it hadn't happened to me I'd never believe it.

  But it did.  And as a result I believe in the power of a teacher on the first day of school to change a life forever. Ridiculous as that sounds, I've been runnin' down that dream every opening day since I started teaching at my alma mater.

  Yeah, I'm a community college kid.  And proud of it.

Anyway, I thought you'd appreciate the first writing assignment I'll be presenting to my students tomorrow morning at 8 a.m.

A message from your teacher:

My name is Clark DeLeon and here's what I expect from you:

An honest effort. Attend class. Attend class on time. Participate in class discussions. Speak your mind. Don't be afraid of embarrassing yourself. Help your teacher teach by saying what others won't. Especially when the teacher asks, "Anyone know what I'm talking about?"

Be funny. Makes jokes. Show me and your classmates that being a college student at community college can be all that and more. Put your stamp on life. Make yourself known to others. Stand up and dance. Relax. Be yourself. Now is your time. Be serious about yourself and your future. Take advantage of this time in your life. Don't be stupid. You know that you are capable of being stupid. Don't.

Try harder than you've tried before. Make a fresh start and commit yourself to being the best you can be. Maybe even excellent. Prove to yourself what you've got to show the world, and the world will follow. Don't settle for Wawa. But recognize that Wawa is pretty damn good considering. Does the Wawa Hoagie Balloon float over every city or just ours. What is Wawa? What is hoagie? Can you explain where you come from to yourself?

Who are you? What makes you tick? What's your story? And if you knew it could you tell it? And if you could tell it would you enjoy the sound of your own story?

Today is the first day of the rest of your life. That's a cliche. Most cliches are true. Which doesn't mean that they aren't annoying. A stitch in time saves nine. Benjamin Franklin said that. But what does it mean? Take responsibility for being who you are. Don't blame others. Carpe diem. Wake up and smell the coffee. Seize common sense. Make yourself heard over the noise. Forgive your parents. Love yourself. Most importantly, love yourself enough to believe in yourself. Change the world starting with you today.

Now write a reaction to my expectations. Pick one sentence that struck a chord or react to the entire piece. You have 20 minutes.