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Saturday, December 29, 2012

We Are All "Souls" Full Of Humanity

Be mindful of the souls around you

December 23, 2012

Elizabeth Dow

is president and chief executive officer of Leadership Philadelphia

Sometimes on vacation, you get a perfect snapshot that sums up the essence of the trip in one great photo. Likewise, occasionally a movie offers up a brilliant and impressionable concept that makes seeing it worthwhile. Such was the case recently when I saw Flight, the Denzel Washington movie.

The movie is a nuanced character study of a pilot whose heroism, demons, and humanity entwine and unfold around a fascinating plot.

In a conversation between the captain and a stewardess, he asks, "How many souls on this plane?" Not how many people (a generic way of seeing them), or how many seats filled (the economic view), but how many souls.

Soul is not a word much in use these days, especially when applied to designate an individual. This use of the term reflects a time-honored maritime and later aviation convention in which passengers are referred to as souls - as in, "How many souls were lost when the Titanic went down?"

As a frequent flier, I find this word not only respectful and comforting, but startling in the way a perfect word choice sometimes stops you in your tracks. Using the word souls reminds the crew of the gravitas of their work - of the precious cargo they carry: not simply undifferentiated people, but loved ones, soldiers, and a mass of humanity.

I find the concept of serving souls, as opposed to serving people, a powerful reminder of how important it is to see the humanity in each person - to be careful with them. For years I have been saying that we teach people that the city of Philadelphia has a heartbeat - it is a living entity that needs cultivation and care. Showing you the soul of the city makes what was invisible visible and causes you to care enough to make an effort to connect with it and serve it.

At a recent staff meeting, I shared the Flight story, and suggested that in private we refer to our clients and alumni as souls. Something about serving souls makes you stand at attention - at the ready - knowing how precious, important, and enduring this contact is. We already see our work as a calling - so referring to clients in this way makes sense.

Today as you walk down the street, or talk to coworkers, or watch the news, try thinking of people not as strangers or colleagues, but as souls. When you walk in the door and enter the chaos of your family (or past your neighbor or doorman), try labeling them as souls. See what changes in you - and in them. Together let's make this a soul-full season.

E-mail Elizabeth Dow at edow@leadershipphiladelphia.org.

Philadelphia Inquirer, Currents, Sunday, December 23, 2012

Friday, December 28, 2012

Ghost Signs(=Fading Wall Advertisements On Old Buildings)

Changing Skyline: A new book reads Philadelphia's history in its faded signs

December 27, 2012|By Inga Saffron, Inquirer Architecture Critic

MICHAEL S. WIRTZ / Staff Photographer

They are the text messages of an earlier time.

Instead of appearing on digital screens, the cryptic words are embedded in the very skin of our city, on the bricks and mortar that form our buildings. They whisper instead of shout, fading in and out of our consciousness depending on the weather, the slant of the sun, or our particular powers of observation:

"Quick Relief"

"'asoline"

"H.O."

"Kolb's Pan-Dandy"

These words, and others like them, are the surviving fragments of advertisements painted long ago on the sides of Philadelphia's shops, factories, and warehouses. Blurred by time and weather, they are known as ghost signs.

Even in their faded state, the ghost signs have much to tell us about what we once were - about the chocolates we favored (Wilbur's) and the beer we drank (Gretz), about products we made (pianos) and where we made them (13th and Chestnut Streets). All the information is right in front of our eyes, if only we knew where to look and how to read it.

That problem has been solved for us by Lawrence O'Toole, a graphic designer who has just written a guide to the mysterious signs called Fading Ads of Philadelphia (History Press). The book catalogs nearly all the city's surviving advertisements - among them some from recently departed businesses - in color photographs, supplemented by archival images and detailed histories that help exhume the lost meanings of these messages from the past.

A South Philadelphia native, O'Toole said he was drawn to the signs while studying graphic design and architecture at Drexel University. Walking around the city, he was struck by the signs' unusual typefaces and artful typography. So much of the original content had disappeared that the remaining patches of letters and colors were almost like abstract paintings. Yet within these blurs, O'Toole saw a whole history of Philadelphia's material culture.

Whenever he spotted a sign, O'Toole would take a photograph. "But while I was doing that," he recalled, "I started seeing buildings I liked coming down. The Jack Frost sugar refinery and others. When I thought about the age of the buildings and how long the signs had been there, it was just painful to me. I thought, 'I should gather these up before they disappear.' "

O'Toole decided to catalog Philadelphia's entire inventory of ghost signs for his thesis project. That was 1998.

After submitting a version for his senior project, he realized there was more work to be done. It wasn't enough to just photograph the signs. He also needed to understand their history. But many of the signs were so old that no one could recall anything about the brands they advertised.

Organized by neighborhood, his book is as much a detective story as a guidebook. O'Toole began doing research in libraries and archives, hoping to piece together the full texts of the signs. He was lucky to uncover several archival photos of signs as they originally looked. He cross-referenced surveyors' maps to learn the names of long-departed manufacturers.

Photographing the signs was a challenge, too. Sometimes right after a rainstorm, or when the light shone at a certain angle, he would discover signs he had overlooked. Even with all his effort, many advertisements remain inscrutable blurs.

As he worked on the book and an accompanying blog, ghostsignproject.com, O'Toole, 36, was also pursuing a career in graphic design. He now works in New York City, where he is often involved in designing advertisements for billboards, which are printed in sections on vinyl and pasted up for short periods of time.

Will we ever feel as nostalgic for billboards as we do today for painted signs?

"There is more appreciation for the tactile quality of the painted signs," O'Toole acknowledged.

The more that screens compete for our eyeballs, the greater the interest in the old technologies of letterpress printing and hand-lettered signs.

"Things seem to have a little more perceived value when they're handmade," O'Toole said.

Contact Inga Saffron at 215-854-2702, isaffron@phillynews.com and on Twitter @ingasaffron.

Thursday, December 27, 2012

The Gift Of Time For Cancer Patients And Their Families

(The Jack and Jill Late Stage Cancer Foundation also does the same thing.)

For Pete's Sake charity sends families dealing with cancer to vacation spots

ELIZABETH ROBERTSON / Staff Photographer

At home in Secane are the Macks: (from left) Sean; Brynn, 7; Kelly; Sean, 9; and Emily, 7.

Jessica Parks, Inquirer Staff Writer

POSTED: Thursday, December 27, 2012, 5:38 AM

Kelly Mack and her family just returned from a weeklong, professionally planned, all-expenses-paid trip to Orlando.

The best part of the vacation? "No one asked how I was doing," said Mack, a 42-year-old mother of three who spent the last year battling an aggressive and often fatal form of breast cancer. "No one knew, so no one asked. And it was nice."

Of course, 9-year-old Sean and 7-year-olds Brynn and Emily had their own favorites: The Buzz Lightyear ride at Walt Disney World. The dolphin show at SeaWorld. The Simpsons ride at Universal Studios. Swimming every night in the heated outdoor pool. And waking up each morning to see what mischief their Elf on the Shelf had been up to.

They named the elf "Pete," a tribute to the For Pete's Sake charity that sent them to Orlando.

The Plymouth Meeting-based nonprofit was founded by Marci Bossow Schankweiler, who lost her husband to testicular cancer in 1999.

Marci and Pete Bossow were each 28 when he was diagnosed. They had recently bought a home. They were just beginning their lives together, but within a year, he was gone.

From the Health Desk