“Before I go on with this short history, let me make a general observation — the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.” F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Crack-Up” (Part One), Esquire, February 1936.

Ah, Philadelphia!

We are home to Independence Hall — and a sewage treatment plant strategically located so as to greet you just as you leave the airport to taxi into Center City.

At the Graff house, located at the southwest corner of Market and 7th, Thomas Jefferson wrote the words, “We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal” — and one block down and two blocks over, at Chestnut and 9th, at the Benjamin Franklin Hotel, the Brooklyn Dodgers were refused lodging in 1947 because of the presence of Jackie Robinson on their team, in town for a game against the Phillies.

Our city has hosted some of our nation’s most revered deliberative bodies, including the First Continental Congress, the Second Continental Congress, the Constitutional Convention of 1787, and great public figures such as Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, and Franklin. Our city has also hosted Philadelphia City Council (Expressio unius est exclusio alterius), and public figures such as Leland Beloff, Buddy Cianfrani, and Jimmy Tayoun (all three of whom did Federal time).

Even Sun Ra was of more than one mind about this great city of ours. He moved his Arkestra to Philly in 1968 because “To save the planet, I had to move to the worst spot on Earth. And that was Philadelphia, which is death’s headquarters” (although the same source adds that he had also been evicted from his apartment in NYC, which, I suppose, might have also been a factor). Yet when lightning struck a tree in a vacant lot across the street from the home of the Arkestra (notice that the 1st 2 and the last 2 letter of that word form a palindrome of his last name), Sun Ra suggested that James Jacson fashion a piece of it into the Arkestra’s famous Egyptian Thunder Drum.

Why? Because he understood that the place has power and mystery in it.

So here’s to this wonderful city, full of life and magnificent contradictions.

Dave