Reflections on Brotherly Love

Philadelphia, the city of. Optimistically so-called by William Penn to be a place where religious tolerance and the freedom to worship were ensured, like its Biblical name-sake in Asia Minor that was spared from the Apocalypse in the Book of Revelations. How free and tolerated you are depends where you are situated in relation to the socio-economic see-saw that exists beneath the American Dream.

The weekend following my arrival made headlines as being 'homicide-free'. I don't know how unusual that is but enough to be worth reporting by the media:
Indeed, there hasn't been a slaying in the city since last Tuesday night, when a 50-year-old man was shot and killed.This not to say there has been no bloodshed.
At least three men were shot and one man was stabbed in violence Sunday. But all are expected to recover.
The previous weekend there had been 7 murders and a dozen woundings. Par fot the course I should imagine.

Where I have been staying is peaceful enough with students hunched over laptops in glossy coffee shops, contented infants in strollers being wheeled to baby gyms, health conscious youngsters jogging in the park, pampered pooches and cossetted kitties living in luxury. So it's all too easy to forget that Philadelphia is the poorest of the nation's largest cities, one in three children live in poverty and many of these go hungry every day. Whole districts of the city are no-go areas for the largely white middle-class and I have rarely been close to those. (In fact, only 41% of Philadelphia's population is white.)

So here's the centre city skyline, not glittering in the sunshine but brooding under dark clouds, and reflecting in the leaden Schuylkill river on a damp and chilly Autumn (whoops, Fall) day. It was my final complete day here and we cycled several miles up and down the river banks, discovering cormorants, windfall apples and a wasp's nest. Then it grew colder and started to rain. Summer's over and so is my holiday.