Murals of Philadelphia

I became interested in finding out more about the fabulous murals I see everyday throughout the city of Philadelphia.  I searched online and found an article written by CBS News reporter Anthony Mason filed last year.  I hope it is okay for me to have used some of his article to share the story of the murals.  (I have included a link at the end of the post to his article)  

There are so many murals around the city I will only get to see a few of them during our year. 

Jane Golden, a Stanford-educated "dynamo", founded the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program, the most prolific of its kind in the world.  It has created close to 4,000 murals since 1984 when she was hired by the city to lead a short term anti-graffiti campaign. There is a "giant waiting list of people who want work", she says. The amazing thing is that no one ever wrote on the murals.  Everyone expected that they would be completely vandalized, but none of the murals have been touched.

Each community helps determine a mural subject then an experienced artist co-ordinates a diverse team of workers.

This mural above was painted on a methadone clinic.  Some of the 1,200 artists who contributed were patients. One person said, "I no longer feel like an addict; I feel like an artist." The people who contribute may be painting next to someone who is very different from them but the work can be very humanizing and engages everyone in a spirit of community.

This work had a particularly tender story for me.
The article tells of man by the name of Michael Whittington who took Mural Arts classes when he was in prison.  He had done time for a shooting in 2003.  He didn't pull the trigger, but he provided the gun that shot and paralyzed then-19-year-old Kevin Johnson.  When he joined Mural Arts out of prison, Whittington told Jane Golden he wanted to visit the victim of his crime, to say he was sorry, but once he arrived he didn't want to get out of the car. Jane, who had driven him there, told him, "Michael, I'm gonna tell you what real courage is.  Courage is getting out of this vehicle and going up to that young man and apologizing for ruining his life. And that's what you're going to do right now."

What Michael didn't know was that Kevin and his mother were watching from the house.  She said that when Kevin saw Michael get out of the car her son smiled, "And his first words once he was able to speak was, 'Mom, just forgive so we can live.  Forgive so we can live.'"

Before Kevin died of his injuries in 2006, he and Michael became friends.  The mural was Michael Whittington's idea.  It depicts Kevin and his mom, and is called simply "Forgiveness".

What a wonderful program this is!!  Way to go Philadelphia!

Other murals that I like are below for you to enjoy.  If you want to read the article written by Anthony Mason, here is the link: 
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/philadelphias-murals-the-autobiography-of-a-city/


If you want to look at more murals on your own, here is the link to see a map of the city: 
https://map.muralarts.org/
By clicking on the pins on the map it will bring up each mural with it's title.

Enjoy!

Reach High and You Will Go Far
(we drive by this one every day we ride the shuttle home)

Philadelphia Muses
(We walk by this one every day on our way to the Historical Society)

Sanctuary

SUMMER RENDEZEVOUS

Taste of Summer

Garden of Delight
(I this one on our first full day of work across the street from the restaurant where we had lunch)

Dr. J
(Julius Erving....enough said)

Falling Snow, Falling Ice

We have had a strange weather week.  Monday was actually quite nice, but the storm that paralyzed a lot of the northeast impacted Philadelphia as well.  Monday afternoon the school districts declared they would not be open on Tuesday.  That meant that HSP would be closed and city officials were encouraging businesses to close as well.  Most did.  The snow (some predicted 1 foot) was supposed to fall overnight but early in the morning there was maybe 2 inches on the ground around us.  I could look out our windows and see that there was essentially no traffic.  It was nice for a change because we didn’t hear much in the way of emergency vehicles which we hear often normally.

Tuesday morning without any vehicles or workers on the building next door

By Wednesday morning we were ready to get back to work and went downstairs to catch the shuttle bus to take us to work.  We learned that there would not be a bus at all that day.  Surprised but undaunted we made sure we were dressed warmly enough and proceeded to walk to work.  It was scary!  This was not snow, it was ice! 

The courtyard at our building the morning after the snow. 

Our building did a great job clearing the way to the street directly in front

We were so happy so see the cleared sidewalks even if we had to leap the ice piles to get to them!

We saw huge chunks of ice falling from these buildings.  Walking is hazardous!!

With the ordinance that buildings/businesses clean their walkways within 3 hours of the end of a storm, most of the walkways were clear, but the problem was getting across the street.  We had to climb over mounds of snow/ice to get from the cleared street to the cleared walkways.  It was challenging, to walk the mile to work, especially for us old people.

This isn't a great photo but it shows a little bit of what the downtown streets were like.

Scanner problems and fix!

Wednesday morning my prayer was that somehow my scanner would be fixed today or that I would know what to do to be able to work.  I was feeling very unproductive.  Sitting in front of the computer and seeing the error message that has become so familiar to me over the past week I realized that the IP address showing on the popup was the wrong number.

Even thought the program "crashes" it doesn't lose the images I have already scanned although they leave the screen until I can get the computer up again.  I really didn't want to scan 510 pages again!!!

The thought occurred to me that I had seen the experts moving around remotely on the screen and I had seen them change the IP address so I thought I could do that too.  I did and the scanner came right up!  I had been led to a backdoor that would work until a permanent fix could be found.  I was so grateful for this answer to my prayer.  I have been able to do the same fix multiple times as the “crashes” continue to happen, but I can get right back to work. Friday was a banner day for me as I completed almost 3,000 images.  I look forward to doing much more than that in the days to come. 

Photos this week: 

This is the window sill in the lunch room.  I thought it was hilarious to see these cactus growing in the window with the snowtopped roof in the background.

Don't you love the sculpture?  They are talking about moving "the clothespin" somewhere else.  It is right across the street from City Hall right now.  

The temple as we walked home last Friday. 

Elders Moench and Mpalomby and recent convert Daniel.  We ate a Panera's on our way to the Saturday meeting of Stake Conference of the Valley Forge Stake. 

Driving down Broad Street on our way home after the Saturday night.  Hello William Penn!

This woman became my new best friend.  She saw us with the missionaries at Panera's on Saturday night an paid for all our meals.  That is the first time in all my missions that someone has paid for my food because I was a missionary.  Usually we get to take the young missionaries.  Elizabeth Laty was so excited to do it because their son is serving in Utah right now.  He has been out 5 months.  This photo is with her girls on Sunday morning.  Wonderful young women!!

Machines at Work??

Historical Society of Pennsylvania (HSP)

Elder Moulder on the front steps of the HSP

Years ago I saw a wonderful cartoon.  I don’t remember who the character was, but he was all alone and it went like this:

First frame: “I’m down.”

Second frame: “Down. (Sigh)”

Third frame: “Down, down.”

Fourth frame: “Down, dooby doo down down…”

Last frame: “Comma, comma, down dooby doo down down….”

This describes our week.

We have had a week of struggles with equipment and it could have been discouraging except that we know why we are here and we know that if it was going to happen to somebody, why not us?  So we are making the best of being where we are supposed to be and trying to overcome the obstacles.

So here are our obstacles:  We broke our machines.  Both of them.  We are dead in the water and aren’t getting anything done.

Well….WE didn’t really break the machines (at least that is what our supervisors in Utah tell us over the phone) but we still feel responsible because it happened on our watch and there is no one who has been able to figure out what is going on yet.  I do say “yet” because I have hope.

Let me explain our situation a little more in detail.  Here is a picture of the Copibook scanner I work on. 

My work station

I took a photo of it with my first project, a wonderful, old, falling apart book from about 1880.  

This book was saved for me by the former couple because they worked on a different scanner, the Zeutschel, a German made scanner which is what Ed spent most of his time training on.  

The Copibook scanner I am most familiar with is a French made scanner and can handle these types of books more easily because of a feature on the machine which allows the spine of the books to be cradled lower than the sides of the books, making the opened book flatter which creates better scans.

This old book is falling apart, but not in too bad of shape.  It was difficult because it is essentially a scrapbook of correspondence kept by one man who was writing to people to gather family information in 1875-1880 and he kept the responses he received in this book.  These responses were glued onto the pages any way he could to be sure they were readable and he folded them up and put some close enough together that they were basically like a puzzle. 





To scan these pages I had to unfold and turn the book and then refold to get to the other letters on the page.  It was a challenge, but doable. It took me essentially 3 days to complete this book.  When finished I had 917 images from this book.  It was good work, but not very fast.

I completed this book on Monday, March 6.  All was well.  I completed several other projects the same day and added more images on Tuesday, March 7. Ed had finished some administrative work and was ready to begin scanning on Tuesday but when he went to start up the Zeutschel it wouldn’t start up.  This was discouraging because this machine had replaced another Zeutschel that had broken last October so it wasn’t very old.

Then on Wednesday afternoon the Copibook had a problem and stopped responding except with error messages. 

We cannot figure out why we keep getting this error!!

We were both shut down!! (dooby doo down down)

The rest of the week was spent on the phone with smarter people than us, trying to get the Copibook up and running again.  A new module was sent and Ed and I had to become technicians very quickly to open the back of the machine (very carefully and with detailed instructions coming from my phone) and replacing this module and the leads.  

Seriously???? You want us to do what?????

(Did we really sign up for this? This machine is a lot of money!!) But we did it and that fix didn’t fix the problem, so by Friday afternoon the technician from Dallas opened a “back door” for me to use to at least get some work done.  It worked for 1 ½ hours and then shut down again. 

The decision on the Zeutschel is to send it back to Utah and they will send us another on.  The Copibook is still out of commission and we don’t have a decision on it yet.  We will see tomorrow what the week will bring.

So basically, we left on Friday with very little work done for the week and on pins and needles for this week.  But……that didn’t spoil our weekend.

I went to my first event in downtown Philly with Ed’s sister (Judy) and cousin (Trish).  It was the Philadelphia Flower Show at the Convention Center a huge building that is spread over four blocks.
The theme this year was "Holland" so the bridge with the bikes, the windmills, the "white bikes" display along with lots of tulips and other bulb flowers. 

Just in case you didn't know what the White Bike Plan was.

This is what I brought back from the flower show....

After that we had a family get together on Saturday night with more family.  It was fun to be together with these family members who we didn’t see very often over the years.  Now that we are here for a year it will be nice to have more time together. 

It was a good evening sharing stories from family times growing up.  We laughed and had a few somber moments, but mostly laughed together.  Most of the stories I had never heard so it was priceless for me.  I think everyone left with a little more thought about writing things down. 

Maybe we all should!

First Week in Philly

We have been in Philadelphia for one week now and are almost settled in. We are happy where we are and have met wonderful people and are excited and engaged in the work already.  Here are some of the things that have happened over the last two weeks.  In the future I will publish once a week so the blog will be shorter. We didn't have internet until last Wednesday night.

    Making the Long Drive

We left a day earlier than planned due to snow coming to Utah.We played tag with a storm during our drive.Since we planned on meeting Ashley in Denver we didn’t have to push too hard, just enough to stay ahead of the storm. It was fun to spend the evening with her and Ed’s sister and her family who live in the Denver area.

It was interesting that we began ahead of the storm and then it passed over us while we slept in Independence, Missouri but we caught up to it as we drove to Columbus, Ohio to spend the night.  There was only about 20 minutes of really heavy rain during which Ed kept telling me that we should be out of it because he was looking at weather.com on his phone.  After a few minutes of this he went quiet and then announced to me, “Oh, my phone had just updated and we were in the middle of it.”  (“Yes, yes we are!”)

Not a great shot for focus, but the rainbow was awesome....

I drove most of the way, but on day five I decided I needed a rest.  It was in the evening and we were about 50 miles away from our destination and driving on the Pennsylvania Turnpike so I asked Ed to drive.  I was able to relax see the beautiful sunset and rainbow along the way, even if it was through the rear view mirror on the passenger side.  

1     Moving In

Elder and Sister Christiansen emailed us on Sunday to say they had moved out of the apartment so we could come earlier if we wanted to.  It was a real blessing for us to be able to make the move on Sunday.  The apartment is very nice and the people at the building are as well.  It is a very secure building with a security person at the front desk 24/7.  These people are awesome.  This is a large building (350 +/- apts) and they know the first names of everyone.  There is only one way into the building and a key fob is required to open the door right in front of the security officer or she/he has to recognize you and can buzz you in.  We met Teresa on Sunday night and Brenda Monday morning.  They were very welcoming.  Everyone seemed to know that we were replacing the Christiansen’s and why we are here.  Nice!

We were able to get set up and wake up Monday morning ready to go.  It was fun to wake up to the sun coming up over the buildings. This is our view from the bedroom every morning for the next year!

1     Lunch At The Mission Office

Monday morning the weather was warming and clear. Elder Moulder and I drove our car over to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. We had our first taste of the work as we spent a couple of hours with the Christiansen’s talking through the work process.  At 11AM we all got into our car and the Christiansen’s trusted me to drive them around while they told us about getting to places that we might need. We used the GPS in our car to direct us to the mission office and Elder Christiansen kept saying I don’t recognize anything about the way we are going until we finally turned toward a street he recognized which was about 2 blocks from the mission home. 

We were met there by President Randall and his wife in the parking lot as it turned out and then the office couples and the young missionaries who are assistants to the President.  We felt very welcomed. We had lunch and then learned a little bit about each other after which we had a brief one-on-one with the President.  He asked us to continue to support the South Philadelphia Branch as the Christiansen’s had been doing.  We are happy to do so.

After we left the mission office we came back through town.  It was so confusing for me to be driving in a place with so much traffic and having no sense of reference for anything.  The roads are not straight and at one point I found myself in the middle of a 5 way intersection with red traffic lights around me and not knowing where to stop.  I stopped for a moment and then started again but I did so as the pedestrians and the bicyclists started across the street and one of them thought I was going to hit him and it was just not good.   

But we got through it and I didn’t kill anyone.

The Christiansen’s told us that they did their shopping in New Jersey because it was closer and faster so off we went across the Ben Franklin Bridge to another state to do our shopping.  It was a wonderful shopping place; a huge mall with every store we could ever need right there.  At least we are still in our mission boundaries!

    First Full Day At HSP-Tuesday

We began the day by getting on the shuttle at the apartment and meeting our new best friend, Sam, who is the shuttle bus driver.  We will see him probably twice a day for year, except weekends.  This shuttle is for two apartment buildings owned by the same company.  The shuttle drops us one block from the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (HSP) and picks us up again at the end of the day. 

We had our pictures taken for our security badges and received them in the afternoon.  We began going through our work with the Christiansen’s helping us along the way.  They have things very well organized so there is a place for everything and everything is in its place. The only problem is that they were using the Zeutschel scanner exclusively because there was another couple on the Copibook scanner. I was trained on the Copibook scanner and Ed was trained on the Zeutschel so he has his own work area and I have another work area on the other side of the room.  Mostly the process of getting the material to scan, logging it, doing the scanning, completing the two audits needed, submitting the completed scans to Orem and returning the items to the stacks at HSP are the same, so we should be good to go!

Nora inside the stacks getting information from the boxes of papers to scan. Some of the boxes are quite heavy and I was worried about letting Ed get up on the ladder.  As it turns out, he is doing just fine! 

1      On Our Own - Wednesday

The Christiansen’s left this morning.  We are all alone with only one day training on site.  I think we did pretty well.  I only set off the alarm once by going through a door before using my badge….all the while I was reading the words: WARNING: FIRE EXIT ONLY, ALARM WILL SOUND. Yes the alarm did sound and I quickly shut the door and uttered a quick “I’m sorry” before using the badge and running through the door and up the stairs hoping no one would notice it was me.

    Apartment Set Up

Once we were on our own we began setting up our apartment with the things we thought we would need for the year.  Seriously the word “need” doesn’t really belong here because for the most part we could get by without some of the things we have ended up buying.

We do “need” the internet for email, finances and staying in touch with family.  We also were told that this mission is a “technology” mission so we need to be able to communicate with the Mission President and the other missionaries, etc.

Ed had made an arrangement with Comcast before we came out and all we had to do was go pick up some equipment at their office and then they would turn on our service.  Well…. Hook ups do not always go easily and there were a couple of days this past week that were frustrating to my sweet husband.  But, I am so proud of him and his perseverance to get everything working.  Of course we had to have a TV (because Elder Moulder doesn’t like watching things on a little screen) and a printer and both our computers set up with wireless access……the list of comforts just kept growing.

Flowers brought home by Elder Moulder for no particular reason.  Actually the person he bought them from asked if it was a special occasion and he responded, "No, I get them just in case...."

Our living room.  The window is facing east.

The one thing that has been a life saver was the purchase (on sale) of two comforters because it really did get cold here last week!!

Friday Snow Surprise

We knew that it was cold Friday morning going to work, but when we came out it was snowing!  This was unexpected and surprising. It was not anything that stayed very long, but it was blowing and kind of a weird type of snow Friday night.  

Sunday Meetings And Our New Branch

We were excited to meet our Branch President and the people we will be spending our next year with each week at worship services. The South Philadelphia Branch has a lot of young couples who are finishing up MBA programs or other types of graduate studies. Many were on spring break, so the attendance was low today.  

This is our meetinghouse.  It is branch new and is the Philadelphia Stake Center across the street from the temple.  This view is from our apartment next door.  We attend meetings here even though the South Philadelphia Branch we attend is part of the Valley Forge Stake which has stake meetings at another building farther from us.

We had a fabulous Gospel Essentials teacher names Todd Hemperley. Todd recently went to the temple for the first time a week ago.  He is unique because he is in a wheelchair with no arms or legs. He has little feet and operates his electric wheelchair with his left foot.  He has a wonderful grasp of what is most important. On the back of his wheelchair is a sign that reads:  I'M A MORMON.  ASK ME ANYTHING in big red caps.  He has asked us to sit with him on the front row next week so we can hold the hymnal for him.  We certainly will!

This is going to be an awesome mission!!

Evening view from our apartment of the famous statue of William Penn (on the top without a light shining on him) in downtown Philadelphia.