Blinq

No fishing hole for old men. But poetry.

The first question of the day comes by e-mail from Steven Stewart:

I thought Dr. Mattison was made rich by the asbestos company he ran, Keasby and Mattison.

      Ambler was the "asbestos capitol of the world "at one time.

It does get my blood purling to be challenged before my first coffee.

Yes, there is much in what he says. Dr. Richard V. Mattison, the man who owned the estate that is the subject of today's column,  was in fact an asbestos king, and Stewart was right to question whether I correctly described him as a drug manufacturer.

But my inquiry into the gentleman this week provided this sketch of the 19th C super-rich polymath:

Mattison was a chemist by training who made his name manufacturing making some great-sounding cures, such as Alkalithia for rheumatism and Cafetonique for dyspepsia and the yummy Bromo-caffeine, a headache remedy. It was that stuff that likely provided the capital to allow him to develop his asbestos business. His business began in Philadelphia, then moved to Ambler in 1881.

Apparently, he discovered by accident that milk of magnesia sticks to metal pipes, and he added some asbestos and - voila - had himself yet another fortune on the way.

In 1886, he and partner Henry J. Keasbey   switched the focus of their company to produce asbestos
and industrial supplies. He brought electrical streets lights to Ambler, put in a water system, built stately Victorian homes for his professionals, more modest housing for his workers.

And he built the mansion, named Lindenwald (German for Lime-Tree Forest), that in 1936 became a home for troubled Catholic youth. Sometime over the past few decades, a group of local anglers discovered the virtues of the giant lake on the property, once called Loch Linden, and each year have given the Sisters a contribution and then fished trout from the waters. Today's column is about a few now-aging anglers, and how planned construction has shut them out of their local spot for two years. And maybe more.

*

The second e-mail was a little lighter -- 32 lines of fishing poetry. Or no fishing poetry.

Keith C. Britton wrote this in November, 2006, from his note. Here goes:

Sitting Solitaire

Ring yesterday in Pennypack Park
Saw an old man sitting
Solitaire on a rock
Jutting
Out into the swollen river.
No pole
No lunch
Just an old man
sitting alone
Watching and
Maybe thinking
Of loves lost
Times passed
And tomorrows.
Returning
He was still
There
Lost in waves
Of yesterday
Of today
Of tomorrow.
Thinking
He might have
To move,
To day is not long
In a river
Forever moving onward
To the next bend
To the next old man
Sitting.

Audio Killed The Video

We had all sorts of video queued up and ready to go to illustrate Monday's column on Josh Winheld, the 29-year-old author of a memoir of his life with Duchenne, the most-common form of muscular dystrophy. But we messed up. You could barely make out his words over the din of his ventilator.

Thanks to the Gray Lady, here's six minutes of video on Josh. The New York Times featured the Cheltenham native today in a piece on new tactics to treat those with the disease.

The Times says this about fighting Duchenne:

Rather than concentrate only on a cure, some researchers are now intent on developing drugs that may alleviate the effects of the disease.

But, absent a cure, too many doctors around the country still assume there is little or nothing that can be done for the muscle-wasting condition, parents and specialists say.

“We’re in a stone age with Duchenne,” said Dr. Linda H. Cripe, a pediatric cardiologist at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. She describes Duchenne patients as “a group of kids that pediatric medicine had forgotten, a group of lost boys.”

Thanks For Sharing

What do you do when the guy in the stall next to you says "I Love You"?

Pray he's on the phone.

I don't understand how you can conduct business when you are, well, conducting business. It just seems wrong. Especially when you are in a public restroom, and the person next door is a captive audience for an intimate scene in your life. Do you have to share so generously?

"I hope you're on the phone," I said after he followed his "I Love You" with something about the groceries. Clearly I was intruding on his world, which was only fair.

"Yes," he replied after a second's pause. "Why?"

I looked down. Black loafers. Shined. Clearly not from the newsroom.

"Because I was hoping you were talking to someone else."

"Why?"

"Because I was hoping you weren't talking to me."

"No."

Suddenly, he wasn't so talkative.

Big Brother Falls

Craig Lovett, reigning Big Brother of the Year in Pennsylvania, died this week, I learned by email last night from one of his little brothers, Chris Conaway.

From Chris, who was writing from South Dakota: "I feel a profound sadness at the loss of someone who I considered a father to me and I only hope you can possibly help other people see how he lived and how much he actually gave back to the community and those around him. Craig was a great man who thought nothing of himself and always thought about the welfare of others before considering himself."

I'd spent an evening in May with Craig and his newest little brother, Pernell Francis, as "Perry" wolfed down a meal and a half at Tony Luke's. Craig visited Perry each week, picking him up at his South Philly rowhouse, taking him to dinners, and other events in Perry's packed life. The column's here. That's Craig and Perry, together in this photo, being honored by U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah this September.

Craig was a Big Brother for 36 years, helping four young men to their feet. He'd been a borough councilman in Oaklyn, N.J. He managed a cemetery in Cinnaminson the past 16 years. He also ran a tax preparation business. He fished and read avidly. He played Santa at Big Brother Christmas parties for a decade. He was a member of the Avalon and Aqua String Bands. His wife died four years ago.

What I remember is the softness of this exchange, toward the end of the evening at Tony Luke's:

Craig: "I've gotten an extended family out of this. Not only with the ids, but with the family. You never lose  track of them when they grow up. They stick with you like the mud. I've got four sons I'd never have had. I love them, and I think they love me."

Perry:  "You think?"

Flowers Flying Across The Room

You might want to put on the headphones and take a moment with this one.

Flower wilt, candies melt, dinners out make me feel like a lox.

But this is a Valentine's gift for the ages.

Years past, I'd go out and buy an opera for my wife. Not commission one, buy one. I'd look up favorite performances in Ted Libby's guide, then hunt one down at Tower's classical branch on South Street, or HMV, and now what do I do?

What will join Tosca and Il Trovatore and Aida and Cosi Fan Tutte and Peleas and Melisande?

The Drive-By Truckers doing Feb. 14?

Why not. The kids are out of the house. It's just us and the dog. Time put on those high-heeled sneakers.

Nude Beer and Chicken Feet

This week was to start off with a column about a historic dump -- the press room in the Roundhouse. It was suggested I try to capture the ambiance of the place called Room 619 on the occasion of our being thrown out of there by the new police administration. So much for history.

Apparently, the execution has been stayed. We don't have to leave the building, though there is some question whether we'll get to keep the room. But what a room it is. Or was.

It's been a few years since I've sat where Barbara Boyer now works the phone and her sources in blue.

But the place sticks with you.

The stale pistachio green walls, decorated with black and white photos from when cops wore hats and drove squad cars that looked like they'd been designed by R. Crumb.

The floors were some sort of no-tell, mottled brown and gray tile that had snuffed the life out of a million cigarette butts. There were towers of ugly file cabinets and spent Royal typewriters, pizza-stained Rolodexes and big-shouldered desks whose bottom drawers secreted stacks of skin magazines.

My first visit I was filling in for the regular Inquirer guys -- Tommy Gibbons and Bo Terry. There was an agreeable gent from the Daily News named Joe O'Dowd, and when his day was over, in came a white-haired, squat and silent type who worked the night shift. His name was Jack McGuire and he was an old-school guy who worked with pencil and paper, and I had the sense he viewed new Inquirer reporters from the main office as something to scrape off his scuffed soles.

It took hours before I realized that the giant glass vat on his desk was not stuffed with hard-boiled eggs, but rounded ice cubes for his tea.

I was talking about the place with city editor Chris Hepp the other day, when he shared a Jack story. This was back in the day when reporters from four papers -- the Inquirer, the Daily News, the Tribune and the Bulletin -- all worked the cramped press room, and lived in fear of getting beat. Chris was the Bulletin's guy, and it was late on a Sunday. All night, Jack had been quiet. He'd get up occasionally and disappear for a half hour. This would fill Hepp's head with horrors.

"It was a bad sign when he got up. It meant he was working on something. He'd file from a phone booth."

At the end of the night, when McGuire's shift was over, and the Bulletin's deadline had past, he got up from his desk, crumpled the sheet of paper he'd been working on, and marched to the door.

"Read it and weep," he announced, and threw the wad of paper over his shoulder like a grenade.

For the past week maintenance crews have been sweeping up, getting ready for a move may or may not happen.

Barb Boyer says the crews discovered corners that hadn't seen light in years. The room had been given a bit of a makeover since a group of young woman replaced the old boy's club. Boyer brought in an unfortunate '80s couch from home. The paper paid for the walls to be repainted, the bilious green replaced by a bluish-white.

But some things are hard to cleanse. In a closet someone found a single bottle of a libation called Nude Beer, whose label sports a picture of a buxom blonde in a black bikini. A Whoopee cushion turned up in someone's desk. When you sit on it, it spits out scatological insults, perfect for what one might think of one's superiors.

The last thing they found was a dried-up chicken's foot.

Public Affairs was apparently interested in it, and removed it from the room. Maybe for evidence, of a more storied time.

(Photos by Inquirer photographer Tom Gralish. Why, you may ask, is a second-floor press room called 619? Tradition. That was the number of the old room in City Hall where cop reporters made their calls.)

Loading Grandma's iPod

What do you get the girl who has everything, when that girl is your mother and she’s turning 80?

Apparently not Rick James singing "Super Freak."

"Too much hard rock and people of color talking about some kinky girl," Mom said from Florida after listening to the second batch of songs I’d loaded onto her iPod.

It is not easy making a running mix for your mother, when she’s so fussy about what revs her engine.

I thought I had nailed it the first time. That one had too much rap, she said.

What was I thinking?

I’d paid too much attention to studies that say the way to move that body is to build a soundtrack with tempos of 120 to 140 beats per minute, roughly the same as those of a well-exercised heart.

So there were lots of raucous grooves by Outkast ("Ms. Jackson") and Nelly ("Hot in Herre") and Black Eyed Peas ("My Humps") — light on the bad words because while my mom is proudly liberal, she is also a lady.

Turns out my mother runs on hope.

"I like that ‘She drove a Plymouth Satellite’ song," she said, picking up a lyric from the B-52’s "Planet Claire." "And that ‘Mr. Jones is back in town’ has a good beat. I like that." That was Talking Heads.

"But what I really liked was that song, ‘Stay Positive.’"

That one’s a gritty, mid-tempo number by a young British bloke known as The Streets.

"It was sort of inspirational," she said. "He sings about people who have a lot of problems, but it had a good message. It’s so hard to relate to some of these people — people in desperate straits, street people, junkies. I have empathy for people who try hard and can’t make it. It’s hard to relate to those who live on the street and smoke crack."

Mom plays her iPod Shuffle as she runs along a manicured lakeside path, well-watered palm trees sheltering her from the baking sun. She does a mile one way, then a mile back, moving so slowly that she keeps pace with her walking partner, Selma, who is 84.

The last time I ran with my mother, I had to do a bee dance next to her, continually circling so I wouldn’t lose her. A social creature, she nods to every soul she passes.

When the weather’s foul, my mom’s still at it, relentlessly rounding her condo’s hallway.

When my folks first started flying south, about 20 years ago, her new neighbors were not sure what to make of her.

"I had a woman who was in her late 80s. One day she opened her door and said, ‘You know, you’re going to wear out the carpet.’"

"I told her, ‘But I’m only here six months of the year so I’ll only wear it out halfway.’"

Mom said she’s starting to ease up. She used to run three miles. Now she does two. But she doesn’t miss a day. Her energy, she said, comes from her father, who played softball deep into his 60s.

"I don’t feel old," she said, pans clattering in the background. "That’s because I have a lot of discipline. I think that’s the secret. If you don’t have discipline, everything slips through your fingers. You’ve got to have a plan."

Her problem, she said, is that she has too many things to think about with the birthday approaching — menus, weather forecasts, travel arrangements, the health of friends, the health of the country. It keeps her up some nights.

"All right, dear, do you have enough? I’ve got to make dinner for your father."

Yeah, just one more thing, Ma. Happy birthday and thanks. I’ll be bringing down a real gift from your children and grandchildren when I visit for the weekend.

It’s a tiered necklace by some fancy New York designer, something pretty to wear because it’s important to look good while you’re running in paradise. Don’t worry. Nothing could slow you down.

I Hate New York

"Gone Fishing" is the name of the photo I traditionally hang here when I go on vacation. It could also be the name of the column I'm working on for Thursday -- or, maybe "Fishing Gone."

It's about a bunch of aged trout fishermen (the men are aged, not the trout) who are angry, angry, over the loss of their fishing hole of four decades.

An institution that does good has done these men wrong, they gripe in a way that only old salts in Navy caps can.

With trout season approaching, it's a tale of bait and switch.

(Sorry, it's early)

That's one piece I'm contemplating for this week. The other might just have to be a family story. I've been laboring over what to get my mother, who turns 80 this weekend. So far, I've made her a running mix for her iPod, because the old one had too much rap for her taste. She's got legs.

I hope the present will take her mind off the fall of her once-perfect Patriots last night. Nothing will help me. I just can't buy the Triumph of the Underdog theme when the underdog has an NY on its helmet. I just can't feel anything but loss. And hate.

How could I have bet on the game?

I don't bet.

But my college roommate, from Riverdale, was getting cocky. A gentleman's wager, he offered. And he wanted the points. I was a little hesitant. You don't trifle with matters of the heart. I remember the 1986 World Series: I made the mistake of calling him, clucking, seconds before everything went south.

Yet, my heart was only halfway in this one. Sure, the Pats play three miles from my boyhood home, but I have grown a little tired of the entitlement of New England fans.

I have to re-read that line to believe I wrote it.

But it's true. They expect victory. I grew up, certainly with the Red Sox, praying for victory, ready for collapse. Humility is a beautiful thing, especially in a winner.

So I didn't share the swagger. Then I went to a Flyers game with a friend from the neighborhood Saturday night, and we feasted for about an hour on New York and New York teams. "They're going to crush the Giants," he said, laying out exactly how and why my Patriots would stay perfect, and then I sent a message to my old roommie.

The wager will be one cd, mixed by the loser, that forms a musical tribune to the life and accomplishments of the winner. By this I don't mean, a tribute to the Patriots or Giants. I mean a tribute to the winning bettor. In other words, an indulgence too awful to contemplate.

He e-mailed back. Throw in a dinner at a restaurant of the winner's choice.

Now I've got to pay.

The problem here is that he lives the high life in L.A. and next time we meet it will be at some real-life Hollywood set where I will feel like Nick Nolte in Down and Out in Beverly Hills and will have to pocket the dinner rolls. But that's not the real problem. It's not going to be nearly as difficult as having to sit down and program 80 minutes of songs in tribute to my old roommie, who is once again a winner at my expense.

I hate New York.

Shut The Duck Up!

I'm not sure what's my favorite part of "Shut The Duck Up!" the mini-documentary shot by Drexel filmies and posted this week to YouTube.

It could be that Walt Sherman, the ex-Independence Park ranger whose life was nearly ruined by those drive-by quacking, tourist-movers, is wearing hunter's camouflage for most of this movie.

Or the fact you can almost see him becoming unhinged as he pinpoints his annoyance: "It's the loud obnoxious screaming, the horrible incessant quacking."

Or the scene where he's in his basement, methodically hammering the life out of those little noise-makers, as he explains his crusade to bring them off the streets and silence their plastic beaks.

The Stop The Duck! movement joins the YouTube revolution. Love the T-shirts. Zip that canard!

A Salty Local Custom

One more story on behalf of disabled people -- this one from Kathy Bright of Wayne, who complains of a particularly inhospitable Philadelphia habit:

My brother, who lives in North Carolina, comes to visit sometimes. He has been in a wheelchair since a car accident at the age of 18 (he is now 63). When I spend time with him I am humbled by his amazing serenity in the face of constant obstacles such as the ones you mention. To name a few: yes, the inaccessible restaurants, and bathrooms in those restaurants and other places in the city. Also, people who park or stop in front of curb cuts so he can't get up or down. People who won't get out of the way as he is coming towards them on the sidewalk. And the constant staring as though he is a freak. The hotels offering handicapped rooms, when he can't even get his wheelchair in the bathroom. I must confess that I cannot imagine being so patient and calm in the midst of constant barriers. My anger and frustration are almost incontrollable when I share these frustrating situations with him. But, my brother does not complain about these injustices.

The only thing that really bothers him, though, is the spit. I asked him why the spit. He said it gets on his wheels and then on his hands.