Our Great Philadelphia Adventure (Part 3)

Funny moments and other stuff...

During the tour of Independence Hall, our guide, an informative and enthusiastic National Park Service ranger, pointed out that in that place in 1776, with the Declaration of Independence, and in 1787, with the Constitution, men from different backgrounds who had little previous experience with one another, found ways to compromise and iron things out to form and perfect a nation. A man called out from the crowd, "Do you think that we could get those guys back here today?"

During a bus tour of the city, we passed an anti-war demonstration. One protester, hat firmly pushed down overhead, bandanna tied to conceal face, held a sign that asked, "I want Congress to bail me out of my student loans."

There was a mix-up on the charge for our room at the hotel where we stayed. The clerk on duty took care of things. I noticed that he had a Phillies shirt, reflecting the excitement we saw in everyone there about the National League playoff series beginning the night of our arrival. I told him that, as a fan of the Cincinnati Reds, which hasn't won a World Series since 1990 and has pretty much lived in the cellar for the past two decades, I envied his excitement. It was pointed out to me that though the guy had worked miracles with our bill, he could do nothing about the Reds!

Philadelphia has one of the most vibrant central cities I've ever seen. On Friday, we were baffled to see so many cars leaving downtown as we breezed along on the Interstate to Independence Park at the center of town. We later found out that more people commute from the central city to the 'burbs in Philly than in any other town in the country. As we walked around the central city exploring, we saw tons of downtown area housing, something that's virtually non-existent in other big US cities. We also met people who live downtown and work downtown, enabling them to walk and bike to work each day.

Of course, it isn't all nirvana, either. We decided to take a surface road, Ridge Avenue, from downtown to our hotel in Plymouth Meeting, a suburb. Poverty is much in evidence. Jesus did say that the poor would always be with us. But He didn't say that to excuse inaction or indifference in the face of poverty. Widespread poverty in places like Philadelphia, the birthplace of the American experiment, should always be unacceptable to us, whatever our party. We can do better!

One bright spot of this part of our tour: There was a gas war happening in Roxbourough, initiated by the owner of a newly-reopened filling station. We found gas for $3.05 a gallon! (Today somewhere in Pennsylvania, we found it for $2.99 a gallon, all of which is reflective of the recent decrease in gas prices generally.)

A bright spot of the entire trip: In spite of the recent financial crisis, all the restaurants we visited were packed and travel on the Interstate and state routes was brisk. A major freight carrier had a huge banner in front of its corporate offices so that travelers on the Interstate could see. The banner announced that the company's employees had just received the largest pay increase in company history.

Our Great Philadelphia Adventure (Part 2)

It wasn't all fun, education, and inspiration on our just-ended trip to Philadelphia.

We also ate. I had to have authentic Philadelphia Cheese Steaks. I got them at two places. The first was in downtown Philly, just blocks from Independence Hall: Sonny's.

There's nothing fancy about Sonny's. It's simple, in your face fare. (The ambiance reminds of me my all-time favorite pizza place, Tommy's, in Columbus.) You can eat inside or, if you can find a spot on beautiful fall day like we enjoyed two days ago, out on the sidewalk. According to Sunny's, authentic Cheese Steak uses Cheese Whiz. I couldn't go there. Provolone suited me fine. You could tell that the cut of meat was high quality. It was great, although there's no indication that Sunny has found a way to remove the cholesterol from the sandwich.

Yesterday, we were in Chadds Ford, a suburb of Philadelphia. A little spot called Hank's Place, which we later learned is frequented by local Andrew Wyeth, appeared from the outside to be a good place for lunch. Little did we know that we'd found a gem. The restaurant was packed. Regulars waiting in line told us that everything on their menu was great. Their Cheese Steak, which used an even better cut of meat, was outstanding.

We were in Chadds Ford to visit the Brandywine River Museum and the home and studio of Andrew Wyeth's father, N.C. Wyeth. The museum had displays that included the works of various illustrator/artists, people who, like the first Wyeth, have done both commercial art for magazines, advertisers, and books and what's called "fine art." Among the artists represented in the display are Maxfield Parrish and Howard Pyle, the latter being Wyeth's mentor. The tour of Wyeth's home and art studio is informative and fun.

In Philadelphia on Friday, in addition to seeing Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, we also took in a display of the portraits by Charles Wilson Peale and other of his late-eighteenth, early-nineteenth century contemporaries of important historical figures of that period. Peale was a showman, part Da Vinci, part Walt Disney, part P.T. Barnum, part scientist and historian. His museum in Philadelphia was a way for ordinary folks to not only see samples of the world's animal and plant life, but also to look at the faces of the celebrities and heroes of their time. Peale's portraits in particular, now in what was the Second National Bank in Philadelpia, appear not only to faithfully render the faces of his subjects, they also seem to convey something of who they were. One of his portraits of John Adams, for example, seems to catch the second president in mid-sentence, about to turn to you with a clinching argument. His Jefferson seems duly aloof, yet ready in an instant, to employ his vaunted charm when necessary.

And if all of this weren't enough for our family obsessed with history, we also went to Valley Forge, where Washington and his battered army wintered in 1777-78, and what's now called Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania, where the miraculous crossing of the Delaware River on Christmas, 1776, took place.

Also worthy of mention and a visit: Washington Memorial Chapel at Valley Forge and Christ Church in Philadelphia.

Our Great Philadelphia Adventure (Part 1)

I've been away for a few days. We went to Philadelphia, my first trip there in thirty-nine years. What a great city!

Of course, we went to Independence Hall. It is amazing to be in the room where the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution came into being.

But I got goosebumps when we walked into another chamber of what was, in Colonial days, the Pennsylvania state house. I recognized the room instantly from portrayals in books and film. It was where the US House of Representatives met for ten years and was the place in which our second president, John Adams, was inaugurated. As Adams delivered his Inaugural Address on March 4, 1797, Thomas Jefferson, the incoming vice president, was seated to his right, and George Washington, the outgoing president, was two seats away.

This event is important because it represents the first time in world history that the chief executive of a nation voluntarily and peacefully stepped down to allow a duly elected successor to take that same position.

We take this for granted these days. But we shouldn't.

After all, up to that point in human experience, power was taken, wielded, and maintained with violence. It was ceded by force of death or by surrender. Here was a leader who could have, had he chosen, held onto executive power until he died. But Washington happily turned the presidency over to Adams and retired to his Mount Vernon estate.

It's a tribute not only to the honorable characters of Washington and Adams that this peaceful transfer of power happened. It also spoke volumes about the other framers of the US Constitution, ratified just eight years before.

The Declaration of Independence trumpeted people's right to be free. But the Constitution, created to replace the weak, ineffectual, and naive if well-intentioned Articles, understood that even free people must opt for mutual responsibility and accountability.

The basic underlying insight of the Constitution is that free people are people, meaning that they're imperfect. The Constitution, imperfect in itself, reflected the hard-won wisdom of pragmatists who saw that human nature being what it is, you can't allow a nation, dedicated to the proposition that all are created equal--paraphrasing Lincoln--to destroy the promise of equality by leaving everything to chance or to people's good will.

Liberty without accountability and freedom without a government strong enough or active enough to prevent the strong and powerful from running roughshod over the humble or constrained enough to prevent it from running roughshod over everyone, is anarchy. The Framers understood this.

Of course, having a philosophical understanding of an important truth about humanity is one thing. Acting on it is another. The Framers did that.

Fortunately for we Americans and for people from every other country who have taken heart from the example given in 1797, Washington believed in the twin principles of the United States--liberty and mutual accountability--and acted accordingly.