It's a sammich!

Pursuing yesterday's multi-cultural theme, this mammoth mouthful is a classic corned-beef-on-rye as served at a traditional Jewish diner in downtown Philadelphia. I couldn't stretch my jaws to encompass it, let alone finish my half. (Growing up in post-war Britain, corned beef, or bully beef, was often on the menu but those rectangular slices of fatty compressed meat were nothing like today's offering.)

Appropriately enough perhaps our snack was preceded by a visit to the Rosenbach Museum, a monument to the gracious lifestyle and sophisticated taste of two wealthy Jewish brothers, Phillip and Abraham, who devoted their lives to collecting: the former books, the latter fine art. Their elegant townhouse has been preserved in immaculate order, with oil paintings, oriental rugs, crystal chandeliers, beautiful furniture and of course an exemplary library of rare books that includes first editions and manuscripts of Ulyssesand Dracula, first editions of American history and literature and the drawings of Maurice Sendak. The two brothers occupied different floors of the house and neither married; they died a year apart in the 1950s.

Somehow I couldn't help but be reminded of those two other Jewish collector brothers who have become the benchmark for compulsive hoarding. The Collyer brothers, Homer and Langley, lived in large house on Fifth Avenue, New York, where they obsessively collected books, furniture, musical instruments, and many other items, with booby traps set up in corridors and doorways to ensnare intruders. Their behaviour became increasingly eccentric and their house jammed with some much stuff that in 1947 they were discovered dead, buried under their own clutter. Do the Collyers and the Rosenbachs represent two ends of the same spectrum I wonder?

Fuelled with the corned beef energy we walked all the way to the Eastern State Penitentiary, browsed an excellent cat-patrolled bookshop, as blipped by GPZ, passed a peculiar dogs' playground, and caught a beautiful view of the Philly skyline as we crossed the river on our way home. Altogether a very enjoyable final day in city which has endeared itself to me in so many ways.