Preserving the Past, Building the Future

This week in North Philly Notes, we highlight Preserving the Vanishing City author Stephanie Ryberg-Webster’s upcoming panels and appearance at the Urban Affairs Association conference.

Stephanie Ryberg-Webster will be at Temple University Press’ booth in the exhibit hall at the 2024 Urban Affairs Association annual conference on Friday, April 26 from 10:00 to 11:00AM to talk with attendees about her new book, Preserving the Vanishing City: Historic Preservation amid Urban Decline in Cleveland, Ohio.

The book chronicles the rise of the historic preservation sector in Cleveland during the 1970s and 1980s and is set against the backdrop of the city’s escalating decline. Historic preservation grew in popularity in the mid-20^th century as demolition stemming from urban renewal and highway building increasingly threatened older and historic buildings across the nation’s central cities. In the Industrial Midwest, forces of deindustrialization compounded the population and economic contractions spurred by an exodus of residents to suburban areas. In cities like Cleveland, a city with an oversupplied built environment combined with concentrated poverty and reduced municipal coffers, historic preservationists confronted unique challenges.

Preserving the Vanishing City tells a highly local story to convey the history of historic preservation within the context of decline. The book chronicles the rise of Cleveland’s local preservation movement, which had seeds in growing awareness about architectural heritage in the 1950s and 1960s. Ultimately, Cleveland created the Ohio’s first local preservation commission, the Cleveland Landmarks Commission, in 1971. As preservationists navigated how to establish a preservation ethos in the city, they confronted local policies that heavily prioritized demolition, local skepticism that the city had much of anything of historic value, and a lack of resources that made their work a constant uphill battle. In response, they adopted an entrepreneurial approach that relied on cultivating advocates who had a deep passion for the city’s history and future, establishing local partnerships, engaging with national networks, and finding creative sources of funding.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Cleveland’s preservationists tackled an array of preservation challenges, with varying degrees of success. They were deeply passionate about the city’s industrial heritage, which included unique infrastructure and machinery, the preservation of which often remains in question today. They engaged in physical planning and urban design to transform the city’s downtown Warehouse District, while simultaneously working to change state and local zoning and building codes to support, rather than ban, creative adaptive reuse. Preservationists worked in neighborhoods across the city and neighborhood preservation was often led by resident activists and neighborhood organizations. At the same time, Cleveland’s preservationists, like many of their peers around the nation, struggled to engage with the city’s Black residents and lacked the tools and ability to navigate the city’s changing racial landscape. This was particularly evident in the Buckeye neighborhood, once the nation’s largest Hungarian enclave, which underwent rapid racial change from the 1960s through the 1980s and is now a predominantly Black neighborhood. Preserving the Vanishing City also dives into the landscape of residential rehabilitation by stepping outside of traditional preservation to explore if and how other public and nonprofit initiatives support the retention and rehabilitation of Cleveland’s vast residential landscape.

You can also find Stephanie in two sessions on Thursday, April 25. At 1:00 pm in the Booth room (on the 5th floor), she will present “Redlining, Revitalization, and Preservation Practice: Uncovering Connections in Cleveland and St. Louis,” co-authored with Dr. Kelly Kinahan (Florida State University). Following this, at 3:00 pm, Stephanie is part of a colloquy session on Democratic Practice, Organizational Resilience, and Equity in Urban Arts Ecosystems, where she will be talking about a new project that looks at how arts and cultural districts around the nation support diversity, equity, and inclusion in their organizations and neighborhoods also in the Booth room.

Stephanie Ryberg-Webster is a Professor of Urban Affairs and the Associate Director of the Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs in the Levin College of Public Affairs and Education at Cleveland State University. Her research focuses on urban historic preservation and its intersections with neighborhoods, community development, equity, and revitalization. Her work places a particular emphasis on preservation within the context of urban decline and legacy cities, such as Cleveland. She earned a PhD in City & Regional Planning from the University of Pennsylvania, a Master’s in Historic Preservation from the University of Maryland, and a Bachelor’s in Urban Planning from the University of Cincinnati. She can be reached at s.ryberg@csuohio.edu.

Welcome to the Zombie Apocalypse

This week in North Philly Notes, we showcase Zombie Apocalypse: Holy Land, Haiti, Hollywood, by Dr. Terry Rey, our latest title published by North Broad Press, a joint open access imprint of Temple University Libraries and Temple University Press.

 

North Broad Press,has published a new textbook. Zombie Apocalypse: Holy Land, Haiti, Hollywood, by Dr. Terry Rey.

Zombie Apocalypse: Holy Land, Haiti, Hollywood explores the intellectual and cultural histories of two highly influential and essentially religious ideas, that of the zombie and that of the apocalypse. The former is a modern idea rooted in Haitian Vodou and its popular African and European religious antecedents, while the latter is an ancient one rooted in Zoroastrianism and the Bible and widely expanded in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and is arguably one of the most influential ideas in world history. Today the merger of the zombie and the apocalypse has pervaded popular culture, with the zombie surpassing the vampire and Frankenstein as the most prolific monster in popular American consciousness.

Drawing on biblical studies, African studies, Caribbean studies, and the sociology and history of religion, Parts I (Holy Land) and II (Haiti) explore the religious origins of these ideas. Part III (Hollywood) uses aspects of cultural studies, literary analysis, critical race theory, and cinema studies to document the (primarily) American obsession with the zombie and the zombie apocalypse.

The apocalypse and the zombie have been momentous intellectual, historical, and cultural realities and social forces in both very ancient and very recent human history and culture. As such, Zombie Apocalypse provides a focused analysis of certain fundamental aspects of human existence. It challenges readers to cultivate their critical thinking skills while learning about two of the most compelling notions in human religious history and the impact they continue to have. 

Terry Rey is Professor and Undergraduate Chair of the Department of Religion at Temple University, where he specializes in the anthropology and history of African and African diasporic religions. His current research projects focus on violence and religion in Central African and Haitian history. Rey developed the Temple course “Zombie Apocalypse: Holy Land, Haiti, Hollywood,” which he began teaching in spring 2020. 

A Book Celebrating Black History in Philadelphia

This week in North Philly Notes, Amy Jane Cohen, author of Black History in the Philadelphia Landscape, writes about Philadelphia’s African American experience.

When Carter G. Woodson launched Negro History Week in 1926, he was not advocating for Black history to be the focus of only seven days of the year. In his view, “Negro History Week is the week set aside by the Association for the Study of Negro Life & History for the purpose of emphasizing what has already been learned about the Negro during the year.” Unfortunately, Woodson’s vision did not come to fruition. Even when expanded to a month in 1976, far too many American educators came to think of February as the one time of year to pay attention to the Black experience.

Fortunately, however, students in Philadelphia’s public high schools have the privilege of spending an entire year studying African American history. In 2005 the School Reform Commission unanimously passed a mandate making African American history a graduation requirement. I had the privilege of teaching that course from its inception until I retired from the school district in 2013. I have continued, however, to read and write about Black history, with an emphasis on the Philadelphia experience.

I’ve been particularly interested in how that history—much of which has received increased attention in recent years—is reflected in the landscape. Whether through the many blue and gold historical markers sprinkled through the city, or as a full-fledged monument such as the Octavius V. Catto memorial at City Hall, Philadelphia is full of information about the long and continuing presence of Black Philadelphians.

When Black History Month 2024 began, my book, Black History in the Philadelphia Landscape, had just been published. The book is meant for anyone with an interest in Philadelphia history. For those not familiar with the city’s Black history, the nineteen chapters will provide a solid overview of African Americans in Philadelphia from the late seventeenth century through the end of the twentieth century. People already knowledgeable about this history will be able to view it through a new lens.

Consider, for example, Reverend Richard Allen. Born enslaved to Benjamin Chew, the first Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Allen later bought his freedom and became a Methodist preacher in late 18^th century Philadelphia, the national center of free Black life. Along with Absalom Jones, Allen founded the Free African Society, a mutual aid society that was the first independent Black organization in the United States.

After being part of a group of Black worshippers evicted from St. George’s United Methodist Church (still an active congregation at Fourth and Vine Streets), Allen purchased a lot at Sixth and Lombard Streets that has been home to what became known as Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church since before the turn of the nineteenth century. No other property in the nation has been Black owned for this long a time. The name of the church is a reference to its being the founding home of the AME denomination of Christianity, a sect that has spread throughout the country and the world.

A remarkable leader, Richard Allen has long been honored in the Philadelphia landscape. Philadelphia’s first federally funded public housing project, the Richard Allen Homes, was named in 1941. Historical markers for both Mother Bethel and the Free African Society were installed at Sixth and Lombard in the early 1990s thanks to an effort by the late Charles Blockson. To commemorate the bicentennial of the founding of the AME denomination, in 2016 a statue of Allen was installed at the corner of Sixth and Lombard in the Mother Bethel parking lot, and a large mural of Allen was painted at 38th and Market Streets.

An additional mural depicting Richard Allen was recently unveiled on Washington Avenue in Queen Village. In 1830, the last year of Allen’s life, he organized the first Colored Convention, a meeting of Black leaders to strategize on improvements to the lives of African Americans. Colored Conventions continued to be held until the 1890s, and eight of them took place in Philadelphia. The mural depicts Richard Allen perched atop a triangle-shaped pantheon of Colored Convention leaders and participants.

Most significant to me as a resident of Allens Lane in Mount Airy, one block of Allens Lane (named for William Allen, a Philadelphia mayor and an enslaver) was renamed Richard Allen Lane in February 2022. Eight months later, our SEPTA Regional Rail station was renamed Richard Allen Lane station and two informational panels about Allen and Mother Bethel were installed nearby. There is poetic justice in the fact that this station is situated less than half a mile from Chew Avenue, the street named for Allen’s enslaver.

These alterations to the landscape may seem small and insignificant, but as State Representative Chris Rabb said at the dedication ceremony for Richard Allen Lane, “When we take time to research our history, it gives us a chance to reflect and correct choices made with the inclusion or consideration of a diversity of stakeholders. We must closely examine the history we choose to memorialize and honor, especially versions of the past validated by false narratives that marginalize the value of Black people and other communities of struggle.”

As Black History Month 2024 comes to a close, I hope you’ll join me in seeking out, and perhaps even advocating for, reflections of Philadelphia’s African American experience. Please check my website for upcoming speaking engagements or to inquire about inviting me to speak (amyjanecohen.com).

Recounting an almost forgotten period of baseball history

This week in North Philly Notes, Bill Ecenbarger, author of Work, Fight, and Play Ball, writes about the safe shelter leagues of WWI.

I’m almost certain there’s a baseball gene that my father passed on to me and I gave to my son and two grandsons. I can’t remember ever not knowing about baseball, and so it was almost inevitable that I ever not knowing about baseball, and so it was almost inevitable that I would write a book it.

Growing up in the New York City area in the 1950s, there were three teams, the Dodgers, the Giants, and the Yankees, and the existence of three competitive Major League teams within 10 miles or so of each other resulted heated rivalries among adults and children. Your affiliation, like your religion, was known by all. You were Protestant, Jewish, or Catholic, and you were a Dodger, Giant, or Yankee fan.

My loyalty  was pre-ordained. I was born in the Bronx, a few blocks from Yankee Stadium, and in my family you either rooted for the Yankees or entered Witness Protection, courtesy of my father, grandfather, and three uncles. True, one of my grandfathers was a Dodgers fan, but we always suspected that not all his gear was stored securely.

Baseball clearly and unquestionably was the top sport in America. Professional football and basketball existed, but they were far, far behind what was then the National Pastime.

Moreover, New York was the epicenter of baseball. How much so? During my boyhood, there were a total of 49 World Series games, and all but four of them were played in New York. That’s amazing, so let me restate it. Fully 45 of the 49 World Series Games between 1949 and 1956 were played in the Big Apple, though no one used that phrase back then. In fact, we didn’t even call it New York. It was simply “The City.” 

Now fast forward to the early 1990s when I lived in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania. I regularly walked my dog in an abandoned, turn-of-the-century amusement facility called Penryn Park. Every day Sarah (my dog) found an olfactory extravaganza on a grassy expanse with a sign identifying it as “Babe Ruth Field.” My curiosity finally led me to contact the Lebanon County Historical Society.

            “Why is it called Babe Ruth Field?” I asked. “He never played here, did he?”

            “Yes, he did. In 1918. We have his uniform.”

            I was hooked. I showed up at the Historical Society the next day.

The uniform was gray with blue striping and “Beth Steel” in red letters on the chest. There was no number or name on the back. Players didn’t wear numbers until about 1930, and players’ names didn’t appear on uniform backs until 1960. The Yankees’, by the way, still don’t include names but they have numbers.

The society had a thick “Babe Ruth” file, and among other things, it contained a Bethlehem Steel employee card issued to “Ruth, George ‘Babe.’” It listed his eyesight as merely “good,” and to the question, “Use Intoxicants?” the answer was “no,” a response that would have elicited guffaws from anyone who knew Ruth’s habits. Indeed, behind his back, he was sometimes referred to as the Sultan of Sot. The card showed that Ruth was on the steel mill’s payroll from September 25, 1918, to February 28, 1919. The society also had a grainy photograph of the Lebanon team with Ruth standing third from the left, looking as though he had been weaned on a lemon. That photo is on the cover of Work, Fight, or Play Ball.

These discoveries moved me to write a magazine article for the old Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine. It ended with a question:

            “What was Babe Ruth doing at a steel mill in Pennsylvania?”

            And answered it.

            “Staying out of the war. He wasn’t alone.”

The idea that this 5,000-word magazine article could blossom into a book lay somewhere in my subconscious until about 2012, when I decided to look deeper. But after a couple of months of research, other more pressing projects intruded, and my baseball book lay dormant in my computer. Then a few years later, I mentioned it to Ryan Mulligan, an editor at Temple University Press. He was immediately enthusiastic about the idea and asked me about it for several more years while I was engrossed in other matters.

Finally, two years ago, I was having lunch with my wife and she sensed impending boredom on my face. She asked, “Why don’t you just write the baseball book?” So I took the plunge.

It took me back to the year 1918. Mobilization for World War I had begun to alter the fabric of American life.  U-boats were spotted in the Great Lakes, spies lurked in barber shops, and there were saboteurs in cigar factories.  It was considered unpatriotic to eat sauerkraut and schnitzel, and scores of towns named in colonial times for German settlers were rechristened in less Teutonic terms. 

Then on May 23, the War Department issued its famous  “work or fight” order, which set July 1 as the deadline for young men to either get “essential” work or face induction into the armed forces.  Playing baseball was not deemed an essential occupation.

Some Major League players entered military service, but others sought essential work.  It was easy for farm boys—they just went home.  But most of the players chose steel mills or shipyards, since, conveniently, the Bethlehem Steel Corporation had previously set up a six-team league of teams from its mills and shipyards These jobs were in heavy demand, but ballplayers had the inside track because the industry magnates wanted a fast brand of baseball played at their plants.  By mid-year, nearly every mill and shipyard had a powerful squad, and collectively these teams formed what was known contemptuously as the Safe Shelter League. That’s the source of the book title, the credit for which goes to Mulligan. My suggestion was “The Year Babe Ruth Was a Dodger,” but more sensible heads prevailed.

The best circuit was the Bethlehem Steel League, which had teams at three Pennsylvania mills–Lebanon, Steelton, and Bethlehem–at the Sparrows Point, MD mill, and at two subsidiary shipyards–Harlan in Wilmington, DE, and Fore River in Quincy, MA. Major Leaguers Babe Ruth played in Lebanon, Shoeless Joe Jackson in Wilmington, and Rogers Hornsby in Bethlehem.

The league had been formed in 1917 as entertainment for mill hands, with these instructions from Board chairman Charles Schwab:  “I want some good wholesome games that will furnish amusement and entertainment for the Bethlehem Steel Company’s employes, and don’t bother me about details of expense.”  In its first year, the league was strictly a low-key operation, drawing its players from the body of regular plant workers.  But after the work-or-fight order was issued in 1918, individual plants began luring big leaguers by promising them soft jobs and salaries as high as $500 a week, more than most of them were paid by their ballclubs. 

As the draft accelerated through 1918, the American and National Leagues got weaker and the Bethlehem Steel League got stronger. Perhaps the greatest hitter in the league, Shoeless Joe Jackson of the Chicago White Sox, who played center field for Harlan, was quoted in a company newsletter as saying, “It is harder to hit in this league than in the American League.”

By the summer of 1918 teams in the new Bethlehem Steel League were drawing larger crowds than many Major League teams. Nothing like this had ever happened before, and no doubt it will ever happen again.

The struggles of Black migrants and refugees are everyone’s problem

This week in North Philly Notes, Philip Krestedemas, coeditor of Modern Migrations, Black Interrogations, writes about the impact of the wet foot/dry foot policy.

The U.S. government’s wet foot/dry foot policy for Cuban and Haitian refugees, which was rolled out in the mid-1990s, is often cited as an example of the racially biased double standards that are baked into U.S. refugee policy. Under this policy, Cuban asylum seekers who touched ground on U.S. soil were eligible to receive asylum. Haitians who did the same thing were detained and returned to Haiti. But on closer inspection, the wet foot/dry foot policy is not just a story about how Haitian refugees were treated differently from Cubans.  It’s also a story about how the exclusionary treatment of Haitians established a precedent that weakened asylum rights for all Caribbean asylum seekers.
            The disparate treatment of Haitian and Cuban asylum seekers is most apparent in the way the “dry foot” criterion was applied (i.e., what happened once refugees reached U.S. soil).  The “wet foot” criterion was applied the same way to Cubans and Haitians. This wasn’t much of a change for Haitian refugees. For Cuban refugees, on the other hand, it marked the end of the more generous “open arms” policy that had been in effect since the early 1960s. Under the “open arms” policy, Cuban refugees were fast-tracked for asylum whether they were apprehended at sea or on the shores of south Florida. Under wet foot/dry foot, this generous asylum policy was limited to Cubans who touched U.S. soil. Cubans who were apprehended at sea were treated no different from Haitians. 
            The saga of wet foot/dry foot is just one example of a story that has repeated itself many times over in U.S. history. Black communities are often the first to be affected by deprivations, coercions, and incursions on personal liberty that, eventually, spread to the wider society. Modern Migrations, Black Interrogations aims to give the reader an insight into the depth of this problem, examining it from several theoretical, historical, and geo-political vantage points.The book’s contributors note that anti-Black racism doesn’t just describe a group-specific experience of race; it is foundational to the structures of thought and feeling that gave rise to the modern world. One implication of this analysis is that the problems that Black people contend with can tell you a lot about problems that pervade our entire society. 
            Think of a house that is built on top of a sinkhole. The people on the bottom floor of the house are more at risk of falling into the sinkhole. The people on the upper floors of the house may not feel the same sense of urgency to address the problem and may feel comforted by the thought that they are in a somewhat better situation. But they are ignoring the fact that when the foundation finally gives way, everyone’s falling into the hole. 
            This may not be a perfect metaphor, but it captures a dynamic that is very common to the Black experience. Haitians, for example, were the first U.S. refugee population to be subjected to mandatory detention. Thirty years later, mandatory detention is not only standard for most asylum seekers in the US., it has become the norm for how governments around the world manage refugee populations.  The same can be said for the interdiction practices initially rolled out to control Haitian asylum seekers in the 1980s. These were expanded throughout the 1980s and 1990s to all refugees trying to enter the U.S. by water, imitated by European governments in the 2000s that were trying to control flows of African and Asian refugees trying to cross the Mediterranean, and were also cited as a precedent by the U.S. government in the 2010s when it rolled out programs to control the growing numbers of asylum seekers (mostly Central American, but also including Haitians and many other nationalities) at the US–Mexico border. These are just some examples from the recent history of U.S. refugee policy.  You can find similar processes at work in the U.S. history of mass incarceration, predatory lending practices in housing markets, unsafe work conditions in low-wage employment sectors, medical neglect in the health care sector, and the list goes on.
            Although Modern Migrations, Black Interrogations is focused on the migrant experience, it engages this experience with an eye to the bigger picture I’ve just described.  Our analysis is premised on the understanding that the Black experience can be used as a starting point for diagnosing problems that affect everyone, and also in a way that elevates the value of Black life. But in order to do this, we have to step outside of the ways of seeing that normalize all of the problems I’ve just described. This sums up  the purpose of the book—to invite the reader to take this step.
 

The issues raised by this blog will be discussed in more depth at a free webinar hosted by the Acacia Center for Justice, to be held on Monday, February 26, 3pm (EST), featuring faculty from Morehouse College, Temple, and Bowdoin Universities and guest speakers from Undocublack, Families for Freedom and the Haitian Bridge Alliance. Click here for more info and to register.  

All Work and No Play—Or the Reverse?

This week in North Philly Notes, Paul Gagliardi, author of All Play and No Work, writes about the contradictory attitudes towards work.

 

Like most people, when I first think of the word “work,” my mind goes to my career as an English professor. I take a great deal of pride in my career and it provides me with a sense of self-worth. But  “work” extends far beyond a 9-to-5 job and can, at times, feel all consuming. Recently I spent a considerable amount of time explaining to my youngest child that my wife, a middle-school teacher, and I often need to spend our weekends trying to catch up on work, doing everything from answering emails to grading to doing research. He couldn’t quite process why people needed to do work on the weekends, a time that he felt “should be for playing.”

Our professional work has become so pervasive that we might not consider how many other types of work—or markers of success—we encounter.  I might be reading an email about my retirement plan while checking out at the grocery store while the person ahead of me purchases a bunch of lottery tickets. I can believe in the value of an honest day’s work, but I cannot help but root for a swindling character on a television show who is able to outwit an unscrupulous businessperson for a small fortune. I might watch that television program—itself full of a range of visible and invisible labor—while attending to everything from laundry to cooking in an endless loop of home labor.  

These views of and contradictory attitudes about work compelled me to write All Play and No Work: American Work Ideals and the Comedies of the Federal Theatre Project. Our complicated relationship with work in all its forms is not just of the current moment. People have been wrestling with these ideas for decades, as seen in one of the unlikeliest of places: theater produced by the federal government during the worst economic crisis in American history. 

During the Great Depression, a New Deal program entitled the Federal Theatre Project (FTP) was charged with producing plays across the country to provide both entertainment to Americans and jobs to unemployed theater workers. Working under the guiding principle of “free, adult, and uncensored,” the FTP often performed plays that challenged theatrical norms and audiences. Given that most New Deal programs were, at their heart, concerned with working and employment, it should not be a surprise that many plays produced by the FTP addressed those issues, including several s, such as Power or Triple-A Plowed Under, that have been analyzed at length by other scholars.

The discussion of work in the plays I analyze in All Play and No Work is unique. Radically, at a time when seemingly everyone from the Roosevelt administration to everyday Americans were concerned about work, these plays critique the dominant views of working and, at times, question accepted pathways to success. And perhaps even more surprising, these plays were comedies, a mode that is often downplayed by critics and the public as incapable of addressing serious issues. A common refrain was that comedies during the Great Depression simply served to distract audiences from their economic troubles. Yet I have found  that these plays—rather under the radar—connect to larger conversations about work, security, and social status happening in economics, government, and culture at large during the Great Depression. And perhaps more important, these plays pose questions that extend to contemporary experiences with working. They include, how much work should determine our daily lives, what lengths will we go to in order to gain security, and how much are we willing to risk to achieve success. 

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Only the Paper You Need

This week in North Philly Notes, Beth Kephart, author of My Life in Paper, writes about our relationship with paper.

A sheet of paper is a promise or a dare, a letter, a list, a story, a smudge, a treasure or the evidence that finally proves the crime. It signifies (or can signify) the death of a forest, the corruption of water and air, a coming heap in the trashcan or the dumpsite.

Each office worker consumes, on average, 10,000 sheets of paper a year, claim some who have dared to quantify the situation. And with paper accounting for more than a quarter of the total waste in landfills, TheWorldCounts, an organization that uses live trackers to help the rest of us understand the magnitude of global challenges, presents this fact for our imagination: “With all the paper we waste each year, we can build a 12 foot high wall of paper from New York to California!”

Paper, ubiquitous paper, isn’t even a human invention. Give the patent rights to the paper wasps and yellow jackets who, millions of years ago, heeded some inborn directive and began to saturate chewed-up wood with their own saliva and convert the fibrous material into their thin, architecturally brilliant nests. It would be a long time before anonymous humans would leave traces of the stuff in Central Asia and even longer before Cai Lun, a Chinese official employed by the Eastern Han Court in 105 CE, acquired fame for his understanding that you could beat the heck out of cellulose fibers, set the loose organic material to float in a watery vat, and, using a screen of some sort, dip into the suspension before leaving the material to dry and flatten in a variety of ways. It was in this way that old clothes, for example, became new paper, and that paper, in time, became new clothes.

The technology of paper spread. Various cultures had their paper making secrets, but the mechanics were essentially the same—pound, suspend, dip, dry, let those hydrogen bonds do their thing. In the United States, William Rittenhouse made an early claim as key colonial papermaker when, in 1687, he purchased a 20-acre wedge of land along an active tributary of Philadelphia’s Wissahickon Creek, and constructed, with help, the first paper mill of British North America. Families who had worn their old night clothes or shirts to ruin were paid, by the mill, for their rags. A class of rag pickers emerged.

Paper offered proof of the power of recycling. It also offered proof of Nature’s profound versatility. Consider Dr. Jacob Christian Schaeffer (1718-1790), a German mycologist who, among many other things, made the making of paper one of his lifelong obsessions. Experimenting with cabbage stalks, moss, grapevines, nettles, cat-tails, thistles, mallow, corn husks, potatoes, old roof shingles, reeds, beans, St. John’s wort, aloe, clematis, sawdust, burdock, and asbestos, among other organic materials, Schaeffer ultimately created a six-volume book to showcase his methods and samples. The fibers, always, were the thing—wherever they could be found.

After the Hollander beater was invented by the Dutch in 1860, hand beating gave way to machines. Demand, already on the rise, grew—outpacing, sometimes overwhelmingly, supply. Though the Frenchman Nicholas Louis Robert had invented the first paper-making machine in 1799, it wasn’t until the 19th century that papermaking became an industrial force. All those trees. All that water. All those chemicals. All that stink in the air above the factories.

Recycling was—and remains—the answer, or at least an answer to our paper needs. Recycle your paper and you are saving the trees, contributing to lower levels of air and water pollution, reducing the need for chlorine. Being a wise steward of paper helps, too—printing on both sides, widening your margins, writing smaller numbers, maybe, memorizing your grocery-store lists.

But there is also, I have learned in recent years, this: Grab a vat. Acquire or build a deckle and mold. Save your ratty T-shirts or buy actual couch sheets. Hunt about your yard or in your refrigerator or other places where plucking flowers is not the work of thieves for some delicious fibrous stuff (lawn clippings, cattails, dandelions, arugula, wheat straw, the inner flesh of mulberry trees, say). Save your journal scraps, old drafts, last year’s reports, yesterday’s printed news, your abandoned holiday gift list, the books you no longer wish to read. Make, in other words, your very own paper, which perhaps you’ll lace with blanched flower petals, or perhaps you’ll size with okra juice so that you might write, on it, a story.

Stand in the breeze pulping and vatting and dipping and drying, and this is what you’ll see: Every sheet of paper is a miracle of sorts. Use it well. Recycle honorably. Imagine yourself as a paper wasp, making only the paper you need.

Beth Kephart is the award-winning author of some forty books, a memoir teacher, and a book artist. Find her online at bethkephartbooks.com and bind-arts.com.

Recounting the History of Temple University Japan

This week in North Philly Notes, Richard Joslyn and Bruce Stronach, coauthors of The History of Temple University Japan, reflect on their experiences at TUJ and on writing their book.

Richard Joslyn

Preserving the history of Temple University Japan (TUJ)—which was in danger of being lost as principal participants passed away in the 1980s and 1990s and documentary evidence was forgotten or shredded—was a labor of love. With the support of Temple’s Provost and the Director of the library’s special collections research center, files in many university offices were searched and considerable documentary evidence was found and placed in a newly created TUJ Archive. These materials were supplemented with oral histories and essays by TUJ old-timers on what they considered to be important aspects of TUJ’s development. Without those contributions the historical record on which the book is based would have been much less complete, authentic, and revealing and fewer voices would have been heard.

Looking back, it is remarkable that the infant of 1982 and the young adult of 2002 has become the mature, confident, prosperous, and accomplished TUJ of today. Starting in 1982 with about 200 Japanese students taking an intensive English-language program exported from Temple’s Main Campus, with little knowledge of the students’ educational histories or linguistic abilities and no library or other amenities, classes were taught in a low-rise nondescript office building in the shadow of Tokyo Towe,r  TUJ now boasts a degree-seeking undergraduate enrollment of over 2,000, well-regarded graduate programs, a diverse student body and faculty from around the world, and first-class facilities on the campus of a Japanese university with which innovative partnerships have been created. Along the way, the very existence of TUJ was seriously in doubt three times, initial Japanese government hostility to the venture had to be overcome, University support sometimes (but infrequently) wavered, and the Fukushima earthquake and COVID pandemic seriously tested TUJ’s institutional capabilities and the University’s long-term commitment. 

Forty years later, TUJ has become emblematic of Temple’s slogan, “Perseverance Conquers All,” and is a beacon of hope and opportunity for thousands of students from around the world. It has been a privilege to attempt to tell its story in a way that does justice to its accomplishments and to share that story with others who are interested in the concept and practice of international education.

Bruce Stronach

Other than the pleasure it gave me to review the history of TUJ and its interesting trials and tribulations, failures and successes over the years, I found the  most important things about writing this book to be the partnership between Rich and I over the several years of writing, and the book’s timeliness.

Rich’s and my experiences with and perceptions of TUJ were quite different, given that Rich was first and foremost a Temple person whereas I, a Japan person, parachuted in from the outside. He was able to see the sweep of the years better than I, while I was completely focused on the contemporary context.  This gives the book the right balance of history and contemporary case study.

The other important thing about the book is, to me, its timeliness. As someone who is actively involved in supporting the development of global education, especially in the context of Japanese-American relations, I know that much remains to be accomplished  to create a truly global educational experience for each country’s universities. This book is a great blueprint for how to develop an effective overseas campus and, through that, educate students from around the world in a context that goes beyond the limiting designations of Japanese or American.

The one anecdote of many that sticks in my mind is the student from a Japanese university who “studied abroad” for a semester on the TUJ campus. When she went back to her home university and met one of her professors she said, “Wow, now I know what a real university is like.” I’ve always loved that.

No More Consenting to Corruption in Philadelphia

This week in North Philly Notes, Brett Mandel, author of Philadelphia, Corrupt and Consenting, offers ideas about how to overcome the perils of public corruption.

Philadelphia is weeks away from an election that will help set a new direction for local government. Change is badly needed, given the unsatisfying state of the city. Candidates for mayor and for other offices are talking a lot about poverty, gun violence, and lack of economic opportunity. They should also be talking about public corruption, which underlies so many of Philadelphia’s problems. Today, corruption is consented to—through action and inaction by so many in our hyper-connected town—and it costs so much to run a city so poorly. To move Philadelphia into a better future, we must change a culture of corruption and implement key anticorruption reforms so we can best address the city’s challenges.

What is public corruption? It is when officials put their own private gain before the public good, abuse their public authority to advance private agendas, and pervert the work of public entities by excluding the public from official decision-making processes in order to favor private interests. Corruption increases the price of government services and reduces resources that could be used to address our many challenges. Corruption also imposes further costs in denying opportunity for those who deserve It, trampling on the values of fairness and equity, and threatening the health and safety of residents. 

Philadelphia, Corrupt and Consenting details the city’s history of corruption and show how it threatens our future. The book recounts the story of the city’s most important corruption investigation so far this century. It discusses the roots, effects, and reasons for corruption’s persistence, places our current issues into perspective, and offers recommendations to make positive change. Every candidate for office should read the book, review its recommendations, and tell voters what they will do to stop consenting to the corruption that holds Philadelphia back.

To make change for the better, we must understand certain things.

• We need to learn to recognize corruption when we see it. We are on the lookout for overt shakedowns or passing envelopes of cash to bribe seekers, but Philadelphia corruption generally consists of officials doing favors for friends and subverting the work of government to benefit special interests
• Arguing about whether corruption in Philadelphia is worse or better than it previously was is counterproductive; asserting that today’s corruption is different from that of the past does not reduce its cost or blunt its other damaging effects today
• Norms, laws, and accepted standards change; what was once an everyday practice can become stigmatized, even demonized, so we cannot count on the legal system to solve these problems
• We cannot leave the fight against corruption up to a few reform actors or a single reform moment; each of us needs to want our city to function systematically and properly for everyone more than we want to know someone who can get something done for us — and we cannot stop the fight after any small victory is won

We need a mayor and other elected officials who will confront our culture of corruption and embrace an anticorruption honor code for themselves and those they hire—to not only not engage in corruption acts, but to report instances of corruption they see. Ultimately, it is not enough to change rules or laws and we must all stop enabling corruptors with our silent consent. The defining characteristic of Philadelphia corruption is its collegiality. We are all so closely connected to each other, which makes us reluctant to call out bad behavior by anyone who is “one of us.” 

If we cannot stand against those who engage in corrupt activities because too many ties bind us together, then we need to organize a different “us” to oppose corruption. An anticorruption movement or slate of candidates, or even a formal local anticorruption political party could build a movement so we can split from those who do wrong by the city—and those who try to play both sides. If we refuse to consent to more corruption, we can create the thriving city that Philadelphians deserve.

Brett Mandel is a writer, consultant, and former city official active in reform politics in Philadelphia.

Why I revisited painful memories to write A Refugee’s American Dream

This week in North Philly Notes, Leth Oun, author of A Refugee’s American Dream, explains the reasons for penning his memoir about surviving the Cambodian Killing Fields to realize his dream of becoming an American citizen working for the U.S. Secret Service.

When I first met my coauthor, Joe Samuel “Sam” Starnes, almost a dozen years ago, I told him I hoped to write a book about my life. I said during my interview with him for Widener University’s alumni magazine that I wanted to do it while I was still young enough to remember the details of what I survived in the Killing Fields. I was forty-five at the time. Although it took me, with Sam’s help, more than eleven years to take the book from a dream to a reality, I am thrilled that my story is finally on the page for others to read.

Writing my book involved returning again and again to many painful memories I had kept inside. It is filled with details of incidents and images I had not talked about and tried not to think about for years as I was striving to build a career in America. Why would I want to go back and relive that pain? There are, I believe, three good reasons.

Education. I hope to educate others about what happened in Cambodia under Pol Pot in the late 1970s. I survived a holocaust. Approximately two million people, about a quarter of Cambodia’s population at the time, were killed or died of starvation and disease under the Khmer Rouge’s reign. My father, a lieutenant in the Cambodian army, was executed. Even though it is one of the world’s worst genocides, many in America and around the world do not know the story of what happened in Cambodia less than 50 years ago. It is important we don’t forget our history. It is important to remember and understand and do all we can to prevent something like this from happening again. And I want to make sure that my father and all of the two million people who did not survive are remembered.

Inspiration: I hope I can inspire others who are facing hardships. After being starved, tortured, and almost worked to death, I recovered and made a life for myself in America that makes those miserable years seem like they were thousands of years ago, almost like they never happened. Despite all the success and happiness I have found here in America, I will never forget that suffering, but I also know that if I can survive that period, I can survive anything. If I can live through the Killing Fields of Cambodia to become a protector of the president of the United States, nothing in this world is impossible. I hope that others going through hardships can read my story and be motivated to overcome their challenges as well.

Relief Efforts. For a number of years now I have sent money to help Cambodians who don’t have enough food to eat or fresh water to drink. Whatever money my coauthor and I earn from this book, we have pledged to support projects to make life better for Cambodians living in poverty. I also want to support schools in my native country. My goal is to return the many favors and generosity that I have received by paying it forward to help those who are very poor. I would not be where I am without the support that helped me when I needed it. I hope that some of the children we help can go on to live their own dreams as I have been able to do.

Considering these three goals, I am happy I took the time to go back into my painful history to tell my story of survival and finding success. Writing my book has been a hard journey, but it is well worth it.