I WAS SURPRISED by a recent story in Metro that reported a decided coolness by students at Community College of Philadelphia (above) to Mayor Nutter's idea to change the name of the school to City College of Philadelphia. Few of the students quoted in the article seemed to engage the name-change idea enthusiastically, a typical reaction being that of a 19-year-old freshman who dismissed the mayor's new name proposal in an almost aggravated manner, "It won't make any difference," said Terell Watson of North Philadelphia. "If you want to change something, change these murder rates."

You were expecting, maybe, "Huzzah, Your Honor!"?

Young Mr. Watson can be forgiven for his rather impatient assessment. As a first year student, the name Community College of Philadelphia still seems freighted with delicious possibilities. It is, after all, College. It looks like a college and feels like a college. It's his college and he's proud to be there. Will changing the name to City College of Philadelphia give him a better education?

Well, maybe not him, but perhaps his younger brothers and sisters.

Forgive my bias as a proud graduate -- and current adjunct faculty member -- of Montgomery County Community College, but the label "community" college has sort of outlived its 1960's fuzzy-wuzzy inclusiveness. The architects of Pennsylvania's Community College Act in 1964 used the word "community" as a way of signalling taxpayers that "Hey, this is your college too! Come on over and take a course. It's just like a Big Y, except you can transfer the credits to Temple or Penn State." Or Harvard or Yale as it turns out.

"Community" college sounded so much more progressive and grown up than "junior" college, which is what most two year colleges were called back in those days. This was back when West Chester University was known as West Chester State Teachers's College, which in itself was a great improvement over it's original designation as neither a "university" nor a "teacher's college" but rather a "normal school." Teachers recieved degrees to teach at state normal schools, a name that sounds as strange today as community colleges will in another couple of decades.

Even when I was a student at Montgomery County Community College in the late '60's I didn't like the name. I loved the school; it changed my life. But the name sucked. In those days we attended classes in what had been Conshohocken High School on Fayette Street in downtown Conshy. I'm sorry, but the Montgomery County Community College of Conshohocken was a mouthful I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. "Where do you go to school?" asks a LaSalle student at a kegger. And I would reply, "I go to Em Cee Cee Cee Cee Cee Cee Cee Cee Cee (I never knew when to stop.) Cee Cee Cee Cee Cee Cee Cee . . ."

These days students, faculty and administrators refer to the sprawling campus off Rte 202 in Whitpain Township as Mc3, which is easier written than abbreviated in spoken language (Em Cee Cubed?).

In those innocent Conshy High days we called it Montco, even though that name was better known and trademarked as a bargain brand of canned fruit and vegetables in all caps -- MONTCO. Others chose to refer to it in its fully abbreviated and awkward sounding nickname, "Montco Com Co." And there were a diabolical few who made it sound like a Latin dance craze: "Mo Co Co Co."

Oh, No No No.

In Philadelphia (Phila Co Co?) the college is known universally by the appellation "Community." Which is fine. Except if you walked into a Foot Locker and ordered a pair of sneakers with the brand name "Community" all the other college customers would be snickering "Bobos." And, frankly, bobos are fine. I made my kids wear them all through high school just to prove that footwear does not make the boy or girl. Of course they are now man and woman and they haven't spoken to me since.

I like the name City College of Philadelphia. It's classy. In New York, where City College is known simply as "City" rather than its full name (the City College of the City University of New York), the institution of higher learning shares a level of prestige and respect enjoyed by Temple in Philadelphia. Of Pennsylvania's 67 counties eligible under the Community College Act, Philadelphia is the only city that is also an entire county.

Why not celebrate that distinction? City College of Philadelphia. I could get used to that.

Continue reading "What's in a name, fellow co co students? Plenty!" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 03:10 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

OK, OK, BY NOW EVEN REPUBLICANS recognize that this ain't right. Or at least that this ain't normal. Since when did Philadelphia come to the end of February wth an Atlanta winter? Last year. Year before that. Year before that. Year before that. Have you noticed, we're getting used to these balmy months of January and February. Not to mention November and December.

March? March always sucks. Always too much one season when you want the other. Cold spring, warm winter, brilliant sunshine, gray days, mud, rain, wind, glory. March is dependably March. But winter used to be dependably winter. Winter used to make us who we are! Northern people. Proud, fearless, resolute.

Now we listen to weather forcasts and get upset by the newest lame ass description by TV meteorologists of a normal day in February containing a "wintry mix." OOOOOooooooo, wintry mix, wintry mix! Alert the media! Close the schools! SHEESH!

Winter in Philadelphia used to be like rain in Ireland. It was part of our lives. It was family. But now we treat winter like an unexpected visitor

And how quickly did we get used to that?

Continue reading "You Call This Winter?" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 10:12 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

YOU KNOW THERE'S A NAME for that verticle indentation beneath your nose and upper lip: it's called a philtrum, from the Greek "philos" meaning "mucus" and "trumin" meaning "gatherer." Scholars may disagree on the etymology of the word but it has always proven true in my case and I can be forgiven as a little boy with a constantly runny nose for thinking that the proper name for philtrum was "that's what sleeves are for."

I remember having this maroon corduroy jacket in third grade at St. Margaret's that I had to wear to school everyday during a particularly sniffly winter season. The right foresleeve grew so crusty from continuous philtum swabbing that it hurt to wipe my nose, forcing me to seek unused swaths of sleeve and eventually to wipe left-sleeved. By the month of March both sleeves on my Catholic school boys jacket looked like one big booger.

Forgive the indelicacy of today's subject matter but I have just emerged from the other side of the tunnel. Not the one with the bright light shining at the end, I speak of the annual tunnel that goes by the name "whatever's going around." Call it the flu, call it the common cold, call it Satan; it's all the same to me.

But whatever's going around is usually what puts some people in the hospital, and others in bed for a week. One thing's for sure, nobody walks around for long with whatever's going around. It wins in the end. With me it starts with a tiny little parched spot deep in the back of my throat that no liquid can moisten. Within 24 hours the parched spot has become a desert covering my entire throat and at the bottom of the dryness is a well of wetness -- let's call it disgusting goo -- that keep forcing itself upward and outward with great hacking coughs.

Then come the aches, like the day after the first football practice, a universal ouch set off by the slightest movement. This is accompanied by an overinflated basketball that has replaced my head, filled not with air but more disgusting goo. And then. . .the tunnel. Blessed oblivion. Nothingness for 36 hours of sleep and people being nice to me. Even my children.

At the other end of the tunnel I am reminded of what my mother told me about the origin of my philtrum: "That's where God put his finger on you to say you were ready to leave heaven." As an adult I see that indentation more as a reminder that in God's eyes I can be dispatched as easily as an ah-CHOO!.

Continue reading "whatever's going around is going around" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 11:41 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I AM PREPARING MY OBITUARY. I The older I get the more I read about men whose lives are defined, to some, by their acts during wartime. My father's generation is dying off so fast I can't appreciate the heroes as they flash past. And there are so many of them . I like to think that rugby cured me of feeling like a weakling in front of my father. It wasn't easy. And I wasn't alone.

There was the rugby, of course. The hardness. The voluntary hurt. The friendships. Rugby was my Vietnam and I embraced it. I wanted, I needed, to feel tested. And I had everything to lose by playing rugby. There was nothing in it for me except what it made me feel about myself. Play rugby every week for ten or so years, two seasons a year, and you get to know something about madness. The good kind. The "I can't believe I cared that much about that back when I cared about that." And to realize I still care about all that. Still crazy after all this rugby.

My father never got it. I can speak of this now because I am a man, and in the maul of my life I have learned how to speak of hurt without it sounding pitying. I pitied my father. He was the biggest influence in my life . He was the huge. And he was completely out of his mind. There was alcohol involved. The more I understand my father the more it breaks my heart. All that stuff left unsaid because he never found the language of his own life.

I understand his rage, his rage against the dying of the light. I just wish he had found the words or gestures. My father used to talk about World War II when I was a kid. I remember everything he said except where he was, and he never talked about the stories we found eight years after he died in letters he wrote to his sister. He was in Okinawa in August 1945. The first letter he got through to his sister was dated Oct. 16, 1945.

He filled in the blanks as best he knew them. He had been part of the invasion of Okinawa, saw frightened Japanese-hostage Okinawains emerge from a cave, and since then had been placed on a ship off the coast of Japan awaiting the order to invade. Which is where he was the day America went mediaval on Hiroshima. In his letter my father never mentions the means. He described the atomic bomb as "the Japanese surrender proposal." Regarding his feelings about invading Japan my father wrote "but the Japanese surrender proposal put an end to that interesting assignment." And then, to prove he's human, he added, "Thank God." My father was 36 years old. I wouldn't be born for another four years.

This new knowledge of how close my father was dying in the awful battle that never happened because of the Atomic bomb was the first time I was forced to consider life without me in it. I quickly came to the conclusion, "That sucks!" Suddenly I felt more pride than pity toward my father.

Boo-fuckin'-hoo. Am I breakin' any hearts here? We all had it rough. Or if we didn't, we do now because we play rugby. Or try to. Or did. I'm all fucked up from playing rugby. Won't begin to name the places. But let me point out that the heart of ruck and roll is till beating. I regret nothing. Not the waste of time. Not the misplaced values. Not the sad inventory a rugby braveheart has to submit himself to when he confronts the reality of how much time he spent on rugby rather than on family. Or job. Or success. Did I mention I'm also a mummer?

Oh, to get back to that opening "obituary" remark, I want rugby mentioned in my obituary. I want the world to know in the last story of my life how how much I loved the game of rugby football. And I love the game. Then and now. The game is better than ever. Much better than back when I played. But back then I actually played it. I played rugby as hard as I could. And now I feel like a man, for having played it, with purpose, year after year.

To speak such feelings iin front of rugby players is to feel like a fruit in front of the ripest bunch of bad apples I ever met. Slap a pair of tits on me, I'm a woman. But ask yourself this: "Would I have ever met this asshole if it weren't for rugby?" I could name names, and maybe I will. But let me speak the great unspoken about rugby players: We Love Each Other Because.

There was a bumper sticker back when I first started to play in the late '60's. All it said was "Rugby Because"

To this day I have no idea what that means and yet that's my best explanation for how I feel. In my wisdom gathered from years of living in my own skin, I know I needed to play rugby. Besides being the coolest sport I ever heard of, my older brother played it. And my older brother Bill was the coolest guy in the history of the world. Short, but cool.

I didn't realize my big brother was short until he beat me up when I was 18. He'd be away at college or something and I had taken over his room on the third floor to get beyond smelling distance of my younger brother Doug, who slept next to me for the first 18 years of my life. I had my reasons. But Billy would hear none of them. Like the Tank Man in Tianamin Square I stood defiant in front of my older brother. He proceeded to kick the shit out of me.

I remember this because it was the last time he ever kicked the shit out of me and I remember each moment like a bad scrum. I blame myself. I could have done better. I ended up running like a scolded dog down the stairs, even though I was six inches taller, 50 pounds heavier and eight years younger. Of course, Bill was drunk. And I was still a boy. And so, once again, I slept next to my brother Doug.

Rugby became a symbol for me. It was different. It was manly. It was out of it's freakin' mind. Oh, the adventures. And I wanted that. I wanted that bad. And I found it with the Whitemarsh Rugby Club, a name that gives me chills as I write it, because it means nothing except everything. We were brothers once, and young. We became men in front of our own eyes. I would trust them with my life, my fortune and my sacred honor. Beyond that, I got no time for any of them.

Continue reading "Every Son Must Find His Own War" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 06:19 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

YOU'VE HEARD OF BEER GOGGLES. These are the special eyeglasses through which bar patrons tend to observe members of the opposite sex after a few hours of socializing at the local singles bar. At closing time beer goggles tend to turn into magic mirrors, in which the eyes of the beholder reflect the desires of the beholder rather than the mutt in front of him. Or her. Or him. At times like this, it doesn't matter.

Rarely have anthropologists been able to capture such a moment live on film. I believe I may have gotten lucky.

Not as lucky as "Steve" (not his real name) who tends bar at Kelliann's at 44th and Spruce in West Philly. By the end of the evening "Steve", who hadn't been drinkinbg, was clearly smitten by "Marmaduke" (not her real name) a fetching great dane with balls around her ankles..

Some of us shooting pool at closing time tried to give "Steve" a subtle heads up: "Ixnay on ogday ocktay." But there's no accounting for taste. Or fur.

I haven't seen "Steve" since Friday morning. But on Saturday I saw "Marmaduke" chasing a beagle through Clark Park. The great beast paused when he recognized me. Then he stood up on his hind legs and gave me a paws up.

Continue reading "Last Call at Kelliann's?" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 02:27 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

SOME GUYS PLAY POOL. Some guys play cool. Some guys play hard to get. But then some guys just jump into the shot when another guy is trying to take a picture of some pretty girls. I'm not going to name names, but the ugliest girl in this picture is a guy like that. This was last Friday night at a bar in Grays Ferry. The good looking girls, of course, are from Second Street.

Continue reading "Dude, way to ruin a picture!" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 09:55 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

PENNSYLVANIA GOVERNOR ED RENDELL spoke the unspeakable the other day in a private session with members of the editorial board of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. He said that some people -- he didn't say WHO -- would not vote for Barack Obama because -- GASP! -- he's black.

Will someone alert the media, for crying out loud.

This actually made news. People seem shocked, SHOCKED, that Rendell would speak such, such, kes ca say? duh, no shit, who don't know that, common sense, truth. I wonder if Rendell went out on a limb and said that some black people might vote for Obama because he is black.

Oh, my God, there I've gone and done it. I've brought race into this election.

Will everyone please grow up. Saying that some white people might not vote for Obama because he is black is like saying some Republicans won't vote for a Democrat. Are we supposed to act surprised? Do Republicans vote for Democratic candidates? Yes. Do Democrats vote for Republicans? Yes. But is that the way to bet on an election?

Rendell -- who got into trouble in 2004 while chairman of the Democratic National Committeee for suggesting that some people might not vote for a Jewish vice president -- got into trouble for that despite being Jewish himself. He also told the editorial board of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette that he thought some voters wouldn't vote for Hillary Clinton because she was a woman. (Don't stand next to Fast Eddie in a lightning storm!) According to the radio report from NPR's WHYY-FM, the Post-Gazette columnist who wrote about Rendell's remark about people not voting for Obama because he's black didn't mention Rendell's remark about people not voting for Clinton because she's a woman because the columnist wasn't surprised by that.

Doh!!!

Continue reading "fast eddie, you got a biiiiiiggggg mouth" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 06:05 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I JUST FOUND OUT SOMETHING I DIDN'T KNOW BEFORE and I am so excited to tell you about it. The tenth largest city in China is called Harbin. I didn't know this until yesterday when my wife emailed me with a message saying that Harbin is a city in Russia where they have this magical ice palace with snow sculptures (like the one above) and an ice version of the Great Wall of China.

I was sort of disappointed when I found out that Harbin is in China instead of Russia. I wanted to believe that my wife cared, even though she's Irish. But Harbin cares where it is, doesn't it? I never heard of Harbin before. Would never have looked it up if my wife hadn't sent me these pictures like the one above. But Harbin is in China, not Russia. The Internet was wrong. At least the first voice you heard about Harbin was wrong. And the internet made it easy to find out the truth.

Point is, I'm glad I know this. This gives me pleasure. I have learned something today I didn't know yesterday. It is a small fact that opens up an enormous anything. What if I really like Chinese geography? What if I'm fascinated by the other? What if Harbin was the capital city of Alaska while Hong Kong was Miami?

I must be trippin'. I'm thinking like a student.

Continue reading "I want my students to read this because. . ." »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 02:07 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

"BEING CAREFUL IS VERY IMPORTANT to me," says an attractive, intelligent-looking young woman on a TV commercial that could be for wealth-management financial planning. Before I can pull out my checkbook, she adds, "Because I have genital herpes." Suddenly an attractive intelligent-looking young man steps out from behind her and adds, "And I don't."

There is something just a little too smug about both of them. Conditioned as I am by modern advertising I know that I am supposed to trust these poised confident spokespersons and whatever product they're selling. At first I was all ready to buy me some of those genital herpes because the careful woman has them. But why doesn't her boyfriend have them? Don't tell me there's a critical shortage of genital herpes!

TV commercials for these kinds of "intimate personal" products remind me of a joke that was going around when I was a teenager: a boy goes up to his mother and asks her when he'll be old enough to have a period. (This was years before the term "menstruation" was used in polite company -- let alone "genital herpes.") The mother tells the little boy that he'll never have a period and the boy begins to cry. "That's no fair! When girls get a period they get to go swimming and horseback riding and rock climbing and . . . " Drump-CHISH!

It was a more innocent time -- if not innocent, at least discreet. Young boys knew not to ask what those military field bandages in the Kotex box in the hall closet were used for. But today we are bombarded -- and I do mean bombarded -- by commercials that would have banished the TV to the garage when I was growing up. Today there's probably a generation of young boys who can't wait to be old enough to get erectile dysfunction because that means they get to wash a '58 Corvette or sit in a bathtub on the beach.

What gets me about the Valtrex commercial (that's what the genital herpes ad is selling, a drug to control outbreaks) is the creepy tone of superiority by both the herp-she and the herp-he. "Being careful is very important to me," she begins, leaving out "ever since I had that ankles-over-ears night of unprotected sex with a stranger who left me with an incurable sexually transmitted disease." And his declaration, "And I don't," leaves out "although I do wear a condom every time even though we've been together five years and while I may appear insufferably smug, in truth I am a cauldron of resentment and insecurity."

Continue reading "Advertise here for Genital Herpes" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 04:56 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I'VE NEVER KNOWN ANYONE who lives in Philadelphia to actually take a horse drawn carriage ride through the city. I don't know why, it's just something we never get around to doing. Like a native New Yorker visiting the Statue of Liberty, or taking a hansom cab ride through Central Park.

I have no idea if these lovely ladies bundled up against a rainy night and clip-clopping up Spruce Street near Broad the other night were tourists, but their smiles as I took this picture made me feel like they were seeing Philadelphia for the first time.

Continue reading "Hello pretty ladies. Welcome to Philadelphia" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 06:11 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

AFTER WATCHING THE BEST SUPER BOWL in the history of the NFL, I woke up early this morning and made the mistake of tuning in to WIP Sportstalk. I figured even the gang of cannibals that populates the morning show would find words of exaultation and historic moment.

Instead I heard the same old time religion. There are no winners, only chokers. Within seconds of tuning in I heard the antichrist, Angelo Cataldi, accuse Peyton Manning of being jealous of his brother Eli, who had just led the New York Giants to a gritty stunning victory over the undefeated three-time Super Bowl champion New England Patriots. "I think he was faking," Cataldi said of Peyton Manning's stadium box celebration. "He was not happy.".

Now if you watched that game and saw Peyton Manning jumping up and down with joy and excitement at ever completed pass his younger brother made down the stretch in the fourth quarter, you'd think Cataldi was full of shit.. And he is. And he smeared that shit on me and now I can't stand my own stink.. And that's after listening for two minutes.

Yes, I know it's his schtick. Yes, I know he's insincere. Yes, I know it's entertainment. But my stomach almost hurts because of a what shitty thing it was to say. Not about the Mannings in particular, but about anyone at that moment. It's like the guy at a wedding who whispers "I give it six months" through a bullhorn as the couple walks up the aisle.

Sir, at long last have you no decency. I hate the Giants as much as any Eagles fan but I was rooting for them all the way once the whistle blew and the Patriots scorched them for 40 yeards in the opening kickoff return. How could anyone have watched that game and not come away with goosebumps. I could imagine Cataldi doing the day after battle commentary when David slew Goliath. "The kid got lucky and that overfed Philistine is a stinking choke artist."

Phillies hall of famer Mike Schmidt once famously said that Philadelphia was the only city where an athlete could experience the thrill of victory and the agony of reading about it in the next day's paper. At least he didn't have to hear it the moment the radio alarm went off.

Continue reading "A Super Bowl for the ages stinks the next day" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 07:56 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

TUESDAY IS THE FIRST DAY of the rest of our lives, which is about how long the 2008 presidential campaign promises to last. Super Tuesday's primary results will certainly be a more accurate indicator of who will become the next American president than those Groundhog Day elections in New Hampshire and Iowa, when the first winning candidates poke their heads above the snow causing the eager news media to predict the coming of spring in November. Even if the groundhog happens to be a Huckabee.

By Tuesday midnight we'll know if Barack has a shot at the title, if Hillary is more unpopular than imagined, if Mitt can catch on despite being too rich, too handsome and too Mormon and if Die Hard candidate John McCain can out-box office his name-alike movie hero in this primary sequel. Bnt no matter what, when the fog clears Wednesday morning, the elephant will still be standing in the living room crapping on the carpet.

America will still be trapped in a foreign war we never should have started in a country we never should have invaded for reasons the proved to be a pack of lies. Not only did we not impeach the liar directly responsible, we reelected him. And instead of shaking an outraged fist at the White House, Democrats argue over which candidate came out against the war last, while Republicans argue over who spoke words that might comfort an enemy that didn't exist until we blew up their country.

And you know what? I've seen it, heard it all before. "If we don't beat them there, we'll have to fight them here." For those of us of a certain age, Vietnam was the defining personal and political argument of our youth. Vietnam posed all the right answers that started with the wrong question: which side are you on, boy, which side are you on?

Of course, American boys died by the boxcar load in 1968 -- more than four times as many as have died in Iraq in five years of war. There was a presidential election that year and Americans chose the candidate proclaiming to have a "secret plan" to end the war. His name was Richard Nixon. For the record, we lost the war in Vietnam in 1975, three years after Nixon was reelected , and a year after he resigned.

As for the inevitable Vietnamese Communist threat to America, I offer this anecdote: about a year after 9/11 I bought a baseball hat from a street vendor. It said NYFD on the cap and inside on the tag it said "Product of Vietnam."

Who said irony is dead?

Continue reading "The elephant in the living room" »

Posted by clarkdeleon at 03:30 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)