Just a Little Respect, Please

This column originally appeared on Sunday, March 28, 2010

What is going on in Coatesville?

That is the question Judge Thomas G. Gavin posed last week, albeit somewhat rhetorically, in response to hearing about a near-riot that broke out in the lobby of a district court in Valley Township, the city’s neighbor and near-twin sibling.

The story, when you tell it, is something you might expect from a gritty urban crime novel: A young man disappears, and a city man is later arrested and charged with his murder. Police say the victim was shot, then his lifeless body dismembered with a chain saw. During their investigation, police say the accused’s mother purposefully tried to keep them from searching her son’s SUV by dumping it in a high crime area in New Jersey.

At the mother’s preliminary hearing, tensions directed by the murder suspect’s family against that of the victim boiled over. The suspect’s sister and cousin lost control and tried to attack one of the victim’s cousins. His sister swung violently at her while dozens of others stood and watched, then fought her way through police officers who tried tor restrain her to the point she had to be forced into a bathroom by three uniformed men – including the township chief of police – and held down against her will. His cousin tried to join in the fray and fight, all the while holding in her arms her own infant child.

Both were arrested and charged with various crimes, including assault, resisting arrest, and endangering the welfare of a child.

Gavin, never one to shy away from commenting on matters outside the realm of the courtroom, took the time to explain to the two women his own experience in Coatesville. As a young assistant district attorney, he’d come to the city in the early 1970s and remembered sitting in the district court handling all sorts of cases. But none like the ones they presented.

“Coatesville was a different place in the 1970s than it is today,” he said.

I agree. The city is different today than it was when I first went there to cover City Council in the 1980s. Then, even as the shadows were gathered around the Luken’s Steel Co. operations there, some had high hopes for the city’s revitalization, and put their energies into re-establishing the city’s image as the show place of Chester County. There was a pride at the bottom of the way people spoke of the city, the way they wanted it to be considered.

What makes it different is anybody’s guess. A downward spiraling economy. The lack of political acumen on the part of city leaders. An endless drug culture that offers fast money, slow dissipation, and eventual ruin. A lack of understanding and the will to help by those outside its limits.

Some of what has gone on there is beyond there is beyond tragic. This year, I attended the trials of two young city men not even out of their teenage years who decided to accompany older men they should not have trusted to West Chester for some easy money coming from the robbery of a borough drug dealer. The dealer ended up losing his life in a shooting that made no logic or sense. The two men face the reality of spending the rest of their lives – 50, 60, 70 years? – behind bars. One shakes one’s head in disbelief and disgust.

Ask Gavin what is wrong with the United States of America and he will likely offer up an opinion or three or “how long have you got?” Ask him what is wrong with Coatesville and the answer comes back in one word. “Respect.”

“Part of what changed is the respect individuals in Coatesville don’t give to each other anymore,” he said in sentencing the two women to prison. “They don’t have any respect for the system, and they don’t have any respect for themselves. And when you have no respect for yourself and no respect for the system, you have chaos.”

One of the women involved in the district court melee had shouted out an epithet that people in law enforcement have, quite frankly, become used to across the board. “(Blank) the police,” she shouted as they tried to control her and calm her down. This stuck the judge as beyond unacceptable.

“The only things that saves us from chaos is people like the police officers who stepped in to handle things like this,” he said, perhaps thinking of the men and women who work to solve the crimes that are committed against Coatesville residents every day, even though they themselves are refused the respect of those they are trying to help.

“It’s about time that people in Coatesville, instead of saying (blank) the police, say thank you to them. The police are the ones that are keeping that city from collapsing altogether,” he said.

How To Hide A Subaru

This column originally appeared on Sunday, March 21, 2010

I know you scan the newspaper every day looking for some good news, news that will lift your spirits out of the doldrums that the constant caterwauling over health care reform and terrorism and financial bailouts and Lindsay Lohan leaves us all in.

I know that at least once a week you sigh as you put your newspaper down and look across the kitchen table at your spouse and say, wearily, "Must I be sentenced to forever reading daily news stories about filibusters and senatorial holds and pour taxes and Lindsay Lohan, like some common prisoner being punished for a crime I did not commit?"

I feel certain that there are evenings when you sit down in front of the television set to watch the nightly newscast, hoping for a few stories about the defeat of polio or landing a man on the moon or passage of women's suffrage, and instead get snippets of gloom in the form of stories about sex scandals on the golf course, sex scandals in the governor's mansion, sex scandals involving Academy Awards winners, and Lindsay Lohan.

I feel your pain. That's why I am here to let you in on some good news, some spectacular news, some news you can really open the bedroom window and shout to the world about without fear of retribution from the neighbors. According to my colleagues at the Associated Press, researchers at Germany's Karlsruhe Institute of Technology report they have made progress in creation of the world's first working cloaking device.

The good Damen and Herren at KIT — as the school is known in the Sweet 64 Scientific Researcher Playoff brackets — were able to cloak "a tiny bump in a layer of gold, preventing its detection at nearly visible infrared frequencies," the AP reporter wrote. "Their cloaking device also worked in three dimensions, while previously developed cloaks worked in two dimensions, lead researcher Tolga Ergin said."

Yeeeaaah, baby! That's what I'm talking about! Gold cloaking in three, count 'em, three dimensions! I have been anxiously awaiting this next development since learning that scientists at the University of California at Berkley were working on a similar project back in 2008.

Back then, I wrote that creation of a cloaking device would give us residents of West Chester the ability to hide our hometown from pesky outsiders who want to visit and, well, frankly, vomit on, our friendly downtown during constant bar-hopping contests. I don't know whether it has hit your radar screen, but my neighbors and I have made frequent comment about the increasing influx on weekends of people from Delaware County for such activities, and we wonder aloud about the ability of immigration authorities to get a handle on anything if they can't stop such obvious violations of the nation's culture barriers.

But the news from Berkley left me encouraged, at the time, because I had always assumed that the soonest the cloaking technology was going to be available was sometime in the mid-23rd century, and then it was going to be used exclusively by the Romulans to hide their Battle Cruisers until they were ready to fire their Plasma Torpedoes at the Starship Enterprise.

According to last week's AP story, the cloak is a structure of crystals with air spaces in between, sort of like a woodpile, that bends light, hiding the bump in the gold layer beneath. In this case, the bump was tiny, a mere 0.00004 inch high and 0.0005 inch across, so that a magnifying lens was needed to see it. Which would lead one to believe that there is still some road to travel before we are able to install a device that will be able to hide a geo-political entity one mile square.

Nevertheless, we assume the team at KIT will not fall prey to the "always say die" mentality that apparently has kept their colleagues at NASA from putting the finishing touches on that human teleportation device I've assumed was well on its way to completion.

Besides, for immediate purposes we don't need the cloaking device to be functionally able to hide all of West Chester. Cloaking an object the size of a small Subaru station wagon would suffice, with enough portability to allow it to travel to various parking spaces along West Chester's Gay Street corridor. After all, I have begun to get the impression that the parking ticket payment department at District Court 15-1-01 in West Chester has pretty much gotten fed up to here with my appearances every month to clear up the latest in an on-going series of apparent misunderstandings.

Almost as fed up as I am with stories about Lindsay Lohan. But not quite.

Wait, Wait! Don't Rush Me!

This column originally appeared on Sunday, March 14, 2010

I hope you are not thinking that we folks who live in the 200 block of West Miner Street in West Chester are hopelessly lazy. Because, if you were of a mind to consider us hopelessly lazy, you would be wrong. Not that I would entirely fault you for the lazy perception, but you would be wrong nevertheless. Sorry.

I can understand that the idea of us being drudges, when it comes to keeping up with our day-to-day tasks, might have been planted in your minds by the fact that more than one of us still has Christmas and holiday decorations on our front porches. That idea may also have gained traction with a majority of you who pass by our homes if you were also to learn that some of us still have holiday lights burning both inside and outside our homes.

The fact that the winter holidays are rapidly fading in our rear-view mirrors and that we are approaching ever rapidly the arrival of the vernal equinox is, I must admit, unavoidable. I cannot deny that the calendar has moved a notch or two from where you might ordinarily expect to see red ribbons and green wreaths on one's doorway, and even if I did, I do not think you would be so naé�ve as to believe me. However, I would point out, merely for the sake of the record, that until just a few days ago, snow, which usually is a dead giveaway for winter and thus, winter holiday scenes, was still on the ground in the fronts of some of our homes in the 200 block of West Miner Street. We know it's gone now, but, well, who can predict the future? Give it time, we say.

I would also point out that unlike the very strict rules that West Chester borough authorities have developed for winter storm emergencies (in a nutshell they boil down to the firm request, "move your bloody automobile, you lazy bums! Or else!") the good burghers at Gay and Adams streets have yet to set any guidelines, rigid or not, on the deadline for removal of holiday house decorations. We can leave our ribbons and wreaths and lights up until Memorial Day for all Mayor Comitta and Chief Bohn care, it seems reasonable to assume from their silence on the matter. They might have a problem with Halloween pumpkins being left on the porch past Martin Luther King's Birthday in January, but more for aesthetic or olfactory reasons than anything else.

But back to that accusation of laziness.

My argument against that designation is not that it is unreasonable to assume we West Minerists are a pack of laggards and lollygaggers, but merely uninformed. It's like thinking that everyone who lives in Willistown is a multi-millionaire, when I have it on good authority that the number of multi-millionaires in Willistown is no more than 50 or 60 percent of the entire township population. 65 percent, tops, I'm told. It's a simple matter of perception over reality. Maybe 75 percent, but that's it.

You outsiders would be more accurate when describing the overall characteristic of the people who live on our block if you were use the words "cautious" and "patient." We move slowly not because we are sluggish or slothful, but because we are thoughtful, considerate, and not given to rash action of any kind. We know that the winter holidays have come and gone for several weeks, months perhaps, depending on how you read the calendar. But we simply believe that there may be a few of our West Chester neighbors who have not had the chance to walk by our homes and enjoy the seasonal decorations we spent so much time picking out and setting up. When we are reasonably certain that everyone who wants to get a peek at the December greenery on our doors, we'll happily take them down.

I believe that we take as our example the Japanese sakura, or cherry tree, that the late U.S. Rep. Thomas Stalker Butler received from ambassadors from that Asian nation in 1912 and brought home to his place in the 200 block of West Miner. This massive cherry tree blooms in tremendous fashion once a year in the spring, and it takes its time. It starts slowly in March, and bloom by bloom eventually fills the streetscape just about dead center in the block with its white-pink blossoms in late April. It takes its time, not in any hurry, and eventually sheds those floral decorations when it will — with no reminder, I might add, from the mayor or the chief of police or anyone from the borough's Office of Parking Punishment. It takes its own sweet time, and why shouldn't we?

Now, if you excuse me, I feel the need for a nice nap.

One Reader Comments

Here's a comment from one my my readers on the Phoenixville column:

" Michael, I would not expect anything less from you. The Blob culture and it's local popularity has probably saved the historic Colonial Theater from the wrecking ball! Because of your abrasive negative reporting, I overlook anything with your name on it, but I could not overlook this. You owe phoenixville an apology for your ignorance! If you don't like the town, don't ever disgrace it further with your presence. If you are not educated in your empty rants, don't write about them. I don't know why they keep you. you always distort facts in such a negative manner, you must be a very unhappy person. No wonder your weekly reports on your adventures are always solo. I hope some day you get a life with friends! In the mean time, stay out of P'ville! We don't want you! Go find a bar in West Chester! "

Now, there's an idea!

The Blob Loves Phoenixville

This column originally appeared on Sunday, March 7, 2010

I have heard them talk for quite some time now, these folks who love Phoenixville.

I have heard them rant about the great movies at The Colonial Theater, which they repeatedly tell me was featured in the Grade-D movie classic, “The Blob,” which I saw on commercial television when I was in high school and have never felt tempted to watch any part of again.

I have heard them rave about the great restaurant and night spots in downtown Phoenixville, and about the great shopping outlets there and the ubiquitous sighting of the Bacon Brothers, Michael and Kevin, whom I once saw act in the movie called “Footloose,” after I had graduated from college and have never felt tempted to watch again.

I have heard them ramble on about the famous folks who grew up in Phoenixville, including baseball stars Andre Thornton and Mike Piazza and famous outlaw Harry Longabaugh, alias “The Sundance Kid,” who was profiled by Robert Redford in a movie that I saw when I was in grade school and have never felt tempted to stop watching whenever I see it come on television, even if I’m in a department store looking for new cookware.

Whenever those folks start talking about Phoenixville, they ultimately ask me if I’ve been there lately because, you know, its got “The Blob” and The Bacon Brothers and The Baseball Players and I stare at them for a moment and ultimately answer, “Does Kimberton count?”

I don’t get to Phoenixville much, and it is not Phoenixville’s fault. My attitude towards Phoenixville has been colored by death and mishap, and you can’t blame either of those things on a geopolitical entity unless you are speaking about Coatesville and then, well, never mind.

My first thought whenever I think about Phoenixville is that I had a car crash there that put a literal dent in my first new car – a 1984 Renault Alliance, thank you very much – and a figurative one in my bank account. I was driving along Nutt Road one morning looking for a fire that I had been sent out to cover when the Chevy van that had been in front of me suddenly stopped while I was wondering whether I had to turn right or left off Nutt Road to get to the Colonial Theater.

The driver of the van got out, looked at my crumpled hood, then looked at his pristine rear bumper, and said, “Hummpf!” and drove away. It took me months to fix the car, during which anyone who came in the newsroom and wanted to know which car belonged to me was directed to the car with the accordion hood.

My second thought when I think about Phoenixville is of the morning I stood in a cold wind outside a church downtown, Sacred Heart I think it was, and approached people who were coming to pay their last respects to John T. “Jack” Jeffers, the district justice who had died in office and whose funeral I had been sent to write about.

It wasn’t the first funeral I’d attended with a reporter’s notebook and ball point pen in hand, and it likely won’t be the last, but I will always remember how overcast the sky seemed, and how sorry the people coming to the church were to have to say goodbye, and how disappointed I was that I hadn’t gotten to know Judge Jeffers a little better while he was around. He was a writer for newspapers and a courtroom aficionado and I probably could have learned a bit about both from him.

It’s not Phoenixville’s fault that I have bad memories of it, and perhaps I should try to erase them. It might actually be therapeutic for me to stop by the downtown scene some warm summer night when the music is good and the food is hot and the crowds are friendly. I could have a nice dinner and find some good dessert, then wander over to the Colonial Theater and catch whatever’s playing.

But if it’s “The Blob,” I’m leaving. I’ve seen that movie before, and I have no temptation to ever see it again. Not even if Kevin Bacon remakes it.

Unexpected Discovery Sunday

This column originally appeared on Sunday, Feb. 28, 2010

There are times when life affords serendipity an opportunity to intrude into your world more than others, and I am a firm believer in always giving serendipity its due. Folks like to spend a lot of time talking at end about irony, or vitriol, or perspicacity these days, and I don’t begrudge them their labors. But for me, a dose of serendipity is always more than welcome.

I got such a dose a week ago, as I left Downingtown Friends Meeting after an hour of comfortable reflection. I know folks who contend that an hour’s worth of comfortable reflection should include mostly spiritual concerns or ruminations on the nature of time, space, life, and death, and I would never be so unseemly as to disagree with them in public, but manys a time my thoughts during a period of comfortable reflection drift to somewhat more mundane concerns. The week’s shopping list, for one example. Questions to pose in an upcoming interview with the county’s recycling coordinator, for another. What’d I’d really like for my birthday. Not the sort of thing that would, if discussed in the quiet sanctity of the meetinghouse, inspire one’s fellows to paroxysms of rapture, I’ll admit, but there you have it.

My thoughts last Sunday circled around winter scenes that would make good photographs. I’ve been on a hunt lately for pleasant visual images that will remind me, or inform others, of what beauty we have had spread before us in the past weeks, thanks to the recent snowfalls. Sunday persuaded me that views of the Barndywine Creek from bridges that crossed it would be a good target to aim for, and off I went.

I felt somewhat disappointed, however, because a scene I had come across several months ago and had, at the time, passed the chance to record haunted me, and I did not know where to find it. The scene was composed of a quiet village, that to my mind featured a rippling descent of the Brandywine above which a fine stone span crossed. I thought it would be picture perfect, so to speak, for my mission but could not remember where it was. When you gambol about the confines of Chester County as I do, you can lose track of where you’ve been.

Nevertheless, off I set, choosing my course with a modicum of randomness, but also not without purpose. I could not expect simply to stumble upon a picturesque bridge over the Brandywine Creek accidentally, stumbling about like the proverbial man in the cane break wildly swinging about in hopes of finding a clearing. I knew I had to point myself in the right direction, so I grabbed the ADC map from the rear seat and traced the creek back to a spot where I saw I could find a suitable number of creek crossings. Up Horseshoe Pike to the suburbs of Icedale, east towards East Nantmeal on Chestnut Tree Road. Such is headwaters country, near Struble Lake.

Wouldn’t you know that as soon as I descended the hill towards the village of Cupola that I realized I had rediscovered my quiet village scene. There over the Brandywine was the sturdy stone bridge I had visualized in my mind before leaving, along with a few homes dotted on either side of the creek, and a creekside scene worthy enough of stopping for more moments of quiet, calm reflection. Plus photos.

The Chestnut Tree Road (love the name) serves as a dividing line between Honey Brook and East Nantmeal there at Cupola, and the Brandywine gives the locals a reason to stay put even if their taxes approach half their annual salary. I stayed awhile and shot, then moseyed on in a haphazard way towards Glenmoore and home, finding a few other pleasant scenes of snow covered creek banks and blue-grey sparkling waters to make the trip more than worthwhile.

So now I would like to thank the folks who live in Cupola for letting me intrude a bit on their perfect world. I would like to thank the folks at Downingtown Friends Meeting for giving me a place to spend an hour in calm reflection. I would like to thank the folks who stopped in their Jeep Cherokee as I pulled over on Lewis Mill Road, asking whether I was lost and needed help finding my way.

And mostly, I would like to thank Horace Walpole (1717-1797), Fourth Earl of Orford, author of “The Castle at Otranto,” because he’s the guy who thought up the word, serendipity.