Sowing in Tears, Bearing Fruit

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. - John 12:24

It's been over six and a half years since my dear friend Glenn passed away suddenly at the age of 29. Though he died so young, he lived a full life, and I am still profoundly influenced by his friendship, though hardly a day goes by that I wish we had the opportunity in the present to continue it.

I got to know his wife Stella during their courtship. As his best man, I attended the last of their premarital counseling sessions right before their wedding day, stood near them as they exchanged their vows, and then spent many moments (both jolly and serious) with them together as a couple. I did not know Stella much before all of this, but came to know and appreciate her character and her faith, both of which were sorely put to the test as a result of Glenn's sudden passing.

From her grieving came the seeds of a new ministry, Fruit of the Vine International, which partners with ministries in Africa in ways that are sustainable, honoring to God, and compassionate towards the most vulnerable. I had the honor of serving on her board during its first year in existence, and several years later, the organization continues to do good work. Their annual banquet last night was well-attended, jam packed with friends of Stella and Glenn, and full of hope and purpose and warmth.

Alas, while I got a chance to share a few words from the podium about my connection to the ministry, I had to bolt, because my son got sick and so I had to rush him home. So I did not get to spend much time with Glenn's sister and mom, or with Stella, or with any of the other attendees. But I was glad I was able to go, if even for a short time, and glad to see how far God has taken this seed of an idea from Stella, borne with such faith at such a difficult time.

Losing Glenn has been a great tragedy for us all. I am thankful, in the midst of the pain, that there are good things that have sprouted up, especially as they are the very kinds of things Glenn was about and would be happy to be associated with.

31 the Opposite Way

My love-hate relationship with the 31 bus has been well chronicled in this space. And yet I go to the well again. Feel free to skip today's post if you're not in the mood for hackneyed prose about a boring subject.

The drill when I have to pick up both kids (which is about half the time) is that I take one of two buses to Aaron's school, and then walk Aaron four blocks to the closes 31 bus stop, where we will get on for about a half-mile, walk two more blocks, and then transfer to either the 21 or the 42, both of which make stops just a block away from Jada's school. If I time it right, and everything is reasonably on schedule, I can leave the office a hair before 5 and be home with both kids safely a hair before 6.

Alas, sometimes the 31 bus decides to just not show up when it is supposed to. This actually happened twice this week. Fortunately, both days were days Amy was home. And while I was loath to have to make her hobble down the street (she has a bum leg) to get Jada, I didn't have much choice, since the 31 not showing up essentially meant we would not be getting to Jada's school in time.

On both days, Aaron and I would wait until the last possible minute, hoping that maybe the 31 bus was just a little late, and if it would just show up now, we could get on to our next stop and still get Jada. What made me decide to give up and call Amy was that the 31 bus would come in the opposite direction. Strangely enough, if we take the 31 one way, it takes us to our next stop, from which we can go get Jada, but if we take the 31 the other way, it takes us to near our house, from which we can walk home. And so the 31 bus coming in the opposite direction, with the 31 bus we were waiting still not in sight, signaled to me that we were better off calling Amy, getting on the 31 bus coming in the opposite direction, and just going straight home.

The 31 bus we are supposed to board is headed for Center City. At that time of the day, it's pretty empty, since it's coming from residential neighborhoods and heading into the city's employment center. Conversely, the 31 bus coming in the opposite direction, which is the one Aaron and I took to go straight home twice this week, is pretty crowded. And, because it winds its way through some pretty rough neighborhoods north of where we live, it's a pretty low-income crowd.

I wonder what is registering in young Aaron's head as he sits on my lap or as we both stand, winding our way through some pretty bombed out parts of West Philadelphia, shoulder to shoulder with saggy pants and hoop earrings. I often wish the right 31 would have come, so we could be back on our normal route, with plenty of space to stretch out, en route to getting Jada so Amy doesn't have to aggravate her leg. But twice this week we had to go a different way, and that way, while different and a little more rugged, serves its purpose as well.

Stay Hungry, America

In light of our recent game of chicken in Washington over the debt ceiling, reading Alan Greenspan's 2007 book, "Age of Turbulence," has been quaint. I had to smile when he wrote about how seriously President Clinton took deficit reduction upon entering office in 1993, since deficit and debt levels back then were seen to be dangerously high but from the present day they seem laughably low in comparison.

I also appreciated Greenspan's treatment of the inherent tension in and yet superiority of capitalism over more centrally planned forms of economy. Capitalism is inherently messy (no one person or entity is calling the shots) and disruptive (every week in America, 1 million jobs are created but 1 million more are destroyed), and of course it produces winners and losers. But it has proven to generate the greatest gains to the greatest number of people, and where it is freest the most people have benefited.

Greenspan explains that the tension in capitalism is that we are simultaneously hungering for more and yet pining for stability. It is the hunger for more that pushes us in ways that not only benefit us individually but society as a whole: when we work hard in our vocations, we are rewarded with promotions and raises and accolades, and our companies and our customers and our society benefit from our extra effort. And yet, the constant cycle of progress, disruption, destruction, and birth creates volatility, in the form of dying industries and lost jobs and outdated skill sets. And so there is tension: the tension to let capitalism do its "creative destruction" thing, and yet to cling to the status quo rather than suffer any downside amidst the advance.

As individuals and as a nation, it is important to be sensitized to those who are most vulnerable to the adverse effects of our economic shifts. These pains are plain to see: the laid off worker, the middle-aged professional who has seen her industry pass her by, the shuttering of factories and entire industries as work gets outsourced or mechanized. It can seem unfeeling and cold-hearted to defend capitalism, let alone embrace it.

And yet capitalism generates gains we can be proud of, too, even if they may not be as easy to see. Without our inherent desire to push ourselves out of self-interest to do better, we would not have the proliferation of products and services that make our lives better. And I'm not just talking about iPads and cable TV stations and hundreds of kinds of deodorant. I'm talking about advances in medicine that allow us to beat cancer and live longer, competitive research grants that lead to astounding discoveries in energy efficiency and mechanical engineering, and even financial wizardry that allows capital to be deployed more efficiently so that businesses of all sizes can grow bigger and create jobs.

We don't even have to travel back in time to see the counterfactual of an economy that has yet to innovate its way to these markers of progress, for we have all too many examples in the modern world of regimes that stifle free markets and exclude entire groups of people from contributing their talents and ideas. The norm for such settings is high unemployment, high disgruntlement among youth, and high volatility.

Or, to use a less loaded example, we all know times in our lives when we (or others) have been hungry and when we have been fat and happy. When people are fat and happy, they get complacent and stagnate, and not only do they suffer but others around them do as well. (Insert a joke about your favorite entitled athlete here.) And when people are hungry, they push themselves and get better, and others reap the benefits of this. (To go back to the athlete analogy, there's a reason "contract year" numbers spike up from the norm.) So, to return to our point, while it's important to tend to the most vulnerable around us, it's also important to make sure that we don't set things up so that people stop being rewarded for pushing themselves to get better. Simply put, when innovation shrivels up, we're all in a heap of trouble.

God bless America for being a place where we can, out of a hunger to do better, innovate our way to more for ourselves and more for our communities. We are unique in the world and in history for encouraging such a mentality, and look at all of our successes, in medicine and entrepreneurship and the arts, that have blossomed from such fertile ground. However the rest of this era plays out, fiscally and geopolitically, let's hope America stays a place where we all can stay hungry and do something new and innovative about it, and let's hope more countries move into such a freedom.

We Are Woodland

Summer Sundays are not as well attended as during the rest of the year. And our congregation is already pretty small, and yet meets in a relatively cavernous sanctuary. So it wasn't unusual for this past Sunday's morning service to feel sparse. I didn't count, but I'd say there were maybe 75 people there.

And yet the time together seemed so rich and so varied. Something I cherish dearly about our congregation is that it is both diverse and warm. This makes for really meaningful times together: people are so different in so many ways, and yet we interact with each other's lives so deeply and genuinely. Consider these many strings God wove together just this one Sunday morning among so small a group:

* People mourning recent deaths in their immediate family

* People praying for relatives with significant medical issues

* People rejoicing in the reunion of a young family after immigration issues were resolved

* People giving thanks for a summer camp for kids that is going well so far, and asking for volunteers to help finish it out

Or may I describe us in other ways. We had people helping people pack up and move away, people passing kids' clothes on to new parents, and people coordinating meals for a family in need. We had doctors talking to homeless people, one non-English speaking believer bringing his non-English speaking non-believer friend to church for the first time, and four generations of one family greeting everyone in sight. We had newlyweds and divorcees, the elderly and babies, people running the gamut in skin color and income level and profession.

We are Woodland. And we may not be very rich or impressive in the world's eyes, but from where I was sitting this past Sunday, we are some kind of beautiful.

Lazy Linking, 51st in an Occasional Series

What I liked lately on the Internets:

51.1. Only in L.A. is it a news story where there isn't a traffic jam.

51.2. Latest occupation to get the schwag/events/hotties treatment from someone trying to get them to push their product: tire salesmen.

51.3. You can buy, you can sell, and now at half.com (my favorite site for used books), you can rent.

51.4. Penelope Trunk lays the smack down on Gen Y.

51.5. Note to D's and R's: we don't like either of you at record highs.

51.6. If you're a greenie, should you be for or against fracking? It's not a slam-dunk decision.

51.7. Now that the technology exists to discern facial expressions, will we ban them or will poker players now have a distinct advantage in life?

51.8. I'll admit: this post on designing a dream home for a celebrity kid was in fact a little dreamy to me.

51.9. If increasing housing density doesn't change most people's preference to drive a lot, maybe increasing fuel economy is the way to go.

51.10. Could it be we drive so much because they keep us from feeling lonely? [Hat tip: The Consumerist.]

Good Night

Evenings after the kids go to bed are a wonderful time of the day, but I don't actually do anything too crazy. It's usually read a book, do a Ken Ken puzzle, turn in early. It's what I need to decompress and recharge, and to be able to wake up early.

But one evening earlier this week was an exception. A dear college friend of mine was in town and asked me if I was free to get together. We met at my house and walked a block to Manakeesh, a delightful Lebanese bakery where he and I quickly scored the most delicious food and dessert at a very reasonable price. We regaled in the conversation of long-time friends with much to catch up on, in the wonderful atmosphere of an elegantly designed former bank building that was now simultaneously authentically ethnic and yet tastefully modern.

I even got reunited with a former student of mine, who works there and who said The Enterprise Center was instrumental in helping the restaurant get off the ground. That made me feel good.

Sure, I ended up going to bed much later than usual. But it was a good night. So maybe I should go out more often. If it ends up like that night did, I definitely should.

Girls Girls Girls

On my way back to the office from a meeting in University City, I stopped by Lauren Greenfield's photography exhibit, "Girl Culture." It is an unflinching and penetrating look at what girls and young women go through as it relates to body image, sexuality, and self-esteem. I got a chance to meet Lauren at a British American Project a few years back, and found her to be insightful and fascinating, so had marked my calendar to see her exhibit before it concluded.

I strongly encourage you to pay the exhibit a visit as well: it runs until July 31, and is located in the Arthur Ross Gallery near 34th and Walnut Streets. (Note: some of the images are of a sexually explicit nature.) If I may share a few quotes from the placards that I jotted down:

"I don't think they're responding to anything about me personally, just to the generic good looks they're used to seeing in magazines." - Sara, 19

"I might look older than I actually am, but underneath it all, I'm only 13. It's kind of scary. It's a hard feeling to not know where you fit in yet." - Hannah, 13

"If I don't dress well, I feel geeky. And if I feel nice, I feel like people like me." - Lily, 6

"I would rather be dumb than be a slut. But I would rather be a slut than be fat or ugly." - May, 18

"One of the hardest parts for me is that I'm known for my eating disorder. It's my identity, so what am I going to be without it? It's what makes me special. So I would just be ordinary without it." - Erin, 24

"Since the women's movement and stuff, things have changed a lot. A lot of things have changed for the better. But now there are these double roles that women are supposed to play in society . . . it's important to do all these things that just contradict each other." - Alison, 17

As a father of a little girl, I shudder at the complexities my daughter will have to navigate as she matures, and I lament the role we men have played in objectifying and demeaning women. Lauren Greenfield, camera in hand and probing commentary never far from her, has artfully captured the maelstrom that is girl culture. We would all do well to give thought to the wellbeing of our girls, and to pray for them to be happy and healthy.

The Emotionally Walking Wounded for Jesus

I am among the millions in this country who have at one point in their life sought professional counseling. Why, when, and for how long is of little relevance to this post. But I open my comments this morning with that fact because it occurs to me that the common assumption among many groups with whom I affiliate (Asians, Christians, young urban professionals) is that seeing a therapist or psychiatrist is rare, and that those who do are somehow damaged goods.

But I do not consider my experience to be uncommon, nor do I consider myself damaged goods. And, I find the prevailing sentiment and shadowiness to be unhelpful for those who are hurting, and inconsistent with what I believe to be true.

You don't have to know your Bibles well to know that such greats as David, Jeremiah, and Paul suffered from great emotional anguish, and yet were not prevented from being of great use for God and others. A foundational principle in the Christian narrative is that God's work is done in spite of and even through our human weaknesses, so that God alone is glorified, instead of the exploits of the best, brightest, and most put together among us.

The recent death of Betty Ford put back into the national spotlight the contributions she made to society, particularly in the form of publicly dealing with addiction. One can argue that many who check into the Betty Ford Clinic are not making a public confession of weakness but are rather checking off the latest on the to-do list for celebrities "keeping it real." But I am sure that the Clinic has been a salve for many and for their loved ones.

And, while seeing a therapist is mocked in such mass media as "Sex and the City" for being the cool urbane thing to do, it is still, in the real world, often seen as something to be ashamed of, something to avoid, or something that disqualifies us from being worthy of doing meaningful work. That's a shame, for there is great work out there to do, and God seeks all of His people, even and especially those of us who are the emotionally walking wounded.

City of Neighborhoods

Yesterday I took the kids to a birthday party in Mt. Airy. Between just missing our bus to the train station and mistiming how much time it would take to get to the train station loading area, we just missed our train. This is normally problematic on Sundays, since the trains only run once an hour. But my friends live between two train stations, so we waited twenty minutes and grabbed the alternate line, and I braced for the longer walk once we arrived in Mt. Airy (10 minutes instead of 2 minutes).

Alas, things complicated a little more, as it was announced that due to construction, the train we were boarding was only going to Wayne Junction and shuttling from there. This would further delay us. Just missing our original train was becoming more costly.

I hate waiting, and I hate being late. In times like this, I find it very hard not to stew on what could have been. Time is frustrating like that, in that you can't turn it back. So I started to stew.

But I have learned to take a breath and ask God to redeem the time, and to be open to maybe He has something different for me than my plans, even if I was the one who butchered them.

Sure enough, there were two silver linings to our unexpected detour. First, I randomly bumped into a former student of mine, so it was nice to see him and hopefully open the door to catching up more in the near future.

Second, because we were shuttling via bus to all of the train stops, we meandered our way to Mt. Airy via city streets, instead of dedicated rail space. Rail space doesn't cut right through neighborhoods, but is sequestered away by trees and space. Buses, in contrast, go right through neighborhoods, and so I was treated to a mini-tour of the neighborhoods between Wayne Junction and Mt. Airy.

As someone who spends almost all of his life either in University City or Center City, I am bound by the numbered streets running north-south and the tree streets (Chestnut, Walnut, Locust, Spruce, Pine) running east-west. It's a familiar grid, and when I deviate from it, I often get hopelessly lost.

But here I was not driving but being driven. And so I could take in the sights and street names with wonder and not with fear of missing a turn. I thought about how varied are the blocks that make up Philadelphia, about how every block had its characters and its stories, how many similarities and differences there were as we passed by so many types of places.

Our stop came soon enough, and the touring continued. While much of what we had passed by bus was pretty run down, now we were in a pretty nice part of town. Even my two little kids could tell things were different from our inner city neighborhood; in my kids' words, the houses were "fancier," "further from the street," and "more spread out."

Rather than a faster train and a shorter walk, in other words, we got more time to soak in this city of neighborhoods, and in particular parts of it we don't know very well. And so it wasn't hard to let go of mistiming our travels. God had better ideas for how we were to spend the afternoon.

T.M.I.

You didn't ask, but:

1. Last ten artists on my playlist - Justin Bieber, Eminem, Jay-Z, New Order, Third Eye Blind, Janet Jackson, Public Enemy, Wu Tang Clan, Alphaville, Miley Cyrus.

2. When my wife texted me from work one morning last week, "it's 9a and it's already a sh*tstorm around here," I wasn't sure if she meant that figuratively or literally.

3. I'm not sure what to do with Google+ yet.

4. Dinosaur King is too violent for my kids' age, is blatant in its commercialism, and has really bad dubbing. No matter: when I put it on on the weekend, the kids leave me alone and let me nap.

5. Any ideas for a a) cheap, b) easy, c) healthy, and d) good-tasting breakfast? I'm a creature of habit, and my current breakfast habit is a banana and a bowl of yogurt with granola. Anything better than that per my four criteria? (And, yes, those criteria are in order of importance to me.)

Bicoastal

Having California roots but living in Philadelphia is sometimes the best of both worlds and sometimes the worst. Best is preferring Philadelphia as a place to live but enjoying California as a place to visit. Having lots of excuses to hit the West Coast and lots of people to see when I get there. And having my perspective broadened by being able to see things in both places and in both ways.

Worst is not being able to see my mom as often as I'd like. Shelling out two G's and enduring two days' worth of travel each of the two times a year I bring my family to Cali. And missing out on gatherings of large volumes of people I'd love to see, like my mom's side family reunion next month or my high school class' 20th year reunion (at which none other than Shock G - aka Humpty Hump aka MC Blowfish - will be performing).

Well, you take the good and the bad. Next I'm in Cali I'll be sure to give a holler to all my peeps out there, and next you're in Philly please do the same.

The Ball Doesn't Belong to Us

Rarely do good deeds go unpunished. Christian Lopez, who ended up with the ball that landed in the stands for Derek Jeter's 3,000th hit, had decided that the right thing to do was to give the ball to Jeter for nothing more than a meeting and an autograph. Since then, he's been called an idiot for not extracting the maximum financial gain from his good fortune, and has been told he likely owes significant taxes on the Yankee paraphernalia he was given in exchange for the ball.

This touching Sports Illustrated column highlights Lopez's interaction with his father, who at first, thinking of the family's many financial needs, was against his son simply giving away this treasured collectible, but, upon realizing his son's insistence on doing right, supported him 100 percent.

As the column puts it, Lopez' dad, like all of us, "wonder about the difference between the right thing and the thing that's right for us." But to Lopez, the ball didn't belong to him, it belonged to Jeter, or perhaps more broadly, to the game of baseball. One can take this sentiment to the extreme, but I believe that there are many such treasures, tangible and intangible, that come into our lives, that really aren't ours to keep or to extract maximum personal financial gain from, but that belong to someone or someones else and are to be used for the greatest good.

The Christian concept of stewardship - of our time, our talents, and our treasure - is not meant to be a punitive one: you're supposed to share, gosh darnit, and if you don't, you're evil. No, rather, generosity and selflessness and sacrifice come from a posture of humbly realizing that "the ball" doesn't belong to us. There is greater satisfaction, happiness, and, dare I say, gain from forgoing a me-first approach to life and instead taking on a stewardship approach, which says that all we have and are is from Someone greater than we are, and for Something greater than we are.

From what I've read about Christian Lopez, I get the sense he is by no means rich in resources. It is from that fact that his father was likely at first reluctant to part with something of such great value for nothing in return. But the son's commitment to doing right, and to properly seeing that "the ball" didn't belong to him, helped the father realize that his son possessed something of far greater value: true character. Would that we take a page from this real-life story as we consider what has fallen into our laps, and what our Maker would have us to do with it.

A Banner Year

Feeling good about getting David Oh into City Council this year, after a rousing first place finish in the primary elections in May. After a strong freshman showing in 2003 and an oh-so-close race in 2007, 2011 is looking good. If you want to show your support, I have blue signs that you can hang on your wall or in your window. Just leave a note in the comments and I'll make arrangements to get signs to you. Thanks for your help. David will make a great City Councilman.

Yes We Ken Ken

Apropos to absolutely nothing to do with "musings," "urban," or "Christian," I am posting this morning to say that I am hopelessly and happily addicted to Ken Ken, which is kind of a mathy version of Sudoku. I have burned through all of my precious free time and then some racking my brain over these devilish puzzles, my quests for a full grid more often than not ending in bitter frustration. For someone who prides himself on being robotically efficient with time, this is a strange and uncharacteristic indulgence. Such is addiction.

Super Cuts

Living in Philadelphia, I can't tell you how often I have been approached by a Democratic friend or colleague and asked, with varying levels of exasperation, "how can you, with two small kids, possibly be a Republican when you see what the Governor is doing with public education?" To be sure, as a child of immigrants, you'll not find a stauncher advocate of education. And yet, my value for education is tempered in two ways when I consider my political preferences at a local, state, and federal level.

First, politics is more than just a transaction between goodies and support. Don't get me wrong: it is that. We were founded on the notion of opposing "taxation without representation." I think it was FDR who famously responded to a good idea from an advisor with the statement, "sounds good, now find me a constituency to back that." So our resource priority decisions should in fact reflect the will of the populace, as measured by advocacy and votes and persuasion.

But it cannot be just that. Sometimes, we have to support things that we do not personally gain from. Maybe it's because we believe in a higher value. Or maybe it's because we believe in a greater good. Either way, I am not necessarily compelled to support more money for public education simply because I am a direct beneficiary of it.

Which brings me to my second reason: you can't spend what you don't have. I have been sorely disappointed in our local school district and in the surrounding political discourse, because everything has revolved around victimization and finger-pointing and grandstanding, and not around making tough decisions to get lean in what everyone knows is a lean time.

Fundamentally, I am a fiscal conservative because I know how hard it is for individuals to subsume their immediate wants in the interest of good long-term stewardship of resources. We don't save enough for retirement, we over-leverage ourselves, and we take one-time windfalls and turn them into excuses to upgrade our standards of living (i.e. our ongoing expenditure levels). Imagine how much more tempting all of this is to do when we are working with other people's money instead of our own? Hence the real need to compensate, perhaps even over-compensate, by exercising some fiscal discipline in the face of very loud cries to not cut spending.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not an ideologically pure Tea Partier. The battle cry 240 years ago wasn't "no taxation," it was "no taxation without representation." Some taxes are worth keeping and even increasing. Compromise is the sign of commitment to public service, not of political weakness. But there are times when we have to make hard choices to offset the easy choices that preceded them. When that is the case at the local, state, and federal level, and courageous politicians do so in a clear manner, I support that.

Nesting in West Philly

Strangely, the thing that may have typified my commitment to living and serving in the inner city is our recent purchase of a really nice dining room table set, including hutch and buffet.

We are by no means indigent, but our old house, our spartan sensibilities, and our busy schedules have conspired to leave us with a home that is hardly full of the finer things. For crying out loud, we've lived here 11 years and still we don't have a dinner table.

Well, as of later this month, that will change. We picked something out over Fourth of July weekend, and in general have been focusing on making our house a home, whether it's thinking of curtain treatments or aspiring to more from our guest room than it just being a glorified storage closet to having something to put our china gifts in from our wedding 11 years ago.

As noted earlier, in a weird sort of way, it's a very real proclamation of our commitment to living where we're living. Tangibly, once you buy a behemoth dinner table, you don't feel as portable. And, it represents a settling in, an investment in our home location as a central hub in the life of our family. Heck, we may even have a housewarming party some 11 years late! Or at least not feel so embarrassed to invite company over and have to break out a misch-masch of tables and chairs. Come to West Philadelphia: home to the Huangs.

60,000 Hits

My YouTube page has already gone over 60,000 hits (who knew videos of mall rides were so searched?), but it was just recently that my blog reached this milestone. Thanks for visiting, for musing, and for sharing.

Filthadelphia

Philadelphia, my adopted city, has garnered some dubious "honors" of late, being named by Forbes "most toxic city" and placing second in Travel & Leisure's "Dirtiest Cities." Not surprisingly, the locals have taken umbrage. There's been a lot of "what do they know," a lot of "well, it doesn't matter what they think," and a lot of, well, Philadelphia attytood.

Well, at the risk of being accused of throwing my city under the bus, I have to agree that we are more than a little on the filthy side. I live in University City, by no means a slum, and yet I am daily disgusted with what I see (and smell) on our sidewalks, streets, and, yes, even stuck in our trees. People do notice this, especially outsiders who may be used to a higher standard of cleanliness.

And, for that matter, it does matter what others like Forbes and Travel & Leisure think. Non-Philadelphia readers form their opinions of Philadelphia based on lists like this, from which they make or don't make decisions to visit, do business, or move.

So how about we lose a little bit of the chip on our shoulder, get our acts together and pick up our litter (and pick up after our dogs - ewww!), spray some good-smelling spray all over the place, and call the press back for a visit once we've tidied up. Besides, once our visitors are here, we can give our attitudes a good workout by talking smack to them about our sports teams.

Sense and the City

Having to pick up one or two kids on the way home from work means always being in a hurry to get out of the office, get to my first bus stop, and get the process going lest I incur late fees. And so it wasn't unusual for me to be furiously pounding the pavement, a day's worth of work issues still swirling in my head, one early evening last week. As I emerged from my office building and prepared to make a hard right around a corner and down the street, a street musician was banging out a catchy beat and the whole scene seemed to be animated by it: other workers spilling out of their offices, while other pedestrians, bicyclists, and cars filled the intersection, all seeming to walk and talk and honk to the beat.

I turned the corner sharply just as a pretty young blonde was doing the same, and as we both abruptly halted our steps, the musician paused, if only for a moment, before resuming just as we do-si-doed and resumed our quick walking in opposite directions. It was as if this musician was providing the soundtrack to this whole urban scene, pulsating as both were with energy and movement and the occasional freeze-frame pause.

Having been downtown for two months now, I have to say that I like this aspect of my daily routine. Downtown areas that are successful are so precisely because of this vibrancy and crowdedness. There is a certain excitement about taking it all in: the riot of visual stimulus, the cacophony of sounds, the constant movement. Julie Andrews may have sung that "the hills are alive with the sounds of music," but city streets are alive as well, with sights and sounds that overwhelm the senses but somehow at the same time are not so distracting that one cannot have a private conversation or a personal thought. The city, in a sense, is a great place for the senses.

Well, except the sense of smell. Unless, you're near a bakery or a nut shop, Philadelphia can be a little stinky. More on this tomorrow.

American History Lesson

One can overdo the exceptionalism of our country, and yet it is still something worth taking pride in. Here in Philadelphia, I try to make sure my kids understand just how unique and great America's history has been. Perhaps they are a little young to get it all (when I asked Jada if she knew what the Civil War was about, she parroted a statement I had made to her earlier: "three branches of government?"), but early exposure is a good thing.

So I took Saturday morning of this past Fourth of July holiday weekend to take the downtown. First, we hit the National Constitution Center (kids are free all summer!), took in the spine-tingling "Freedom Rising" show, got sworn in as president, and learned about the aforementioned three branches of government. We also made Lady Liberty and Uncle Sam hats; the kids love their crafts. Next, we crossed the street to Franklin Square to take in the Civil War 150 Road Show and learned about Pennsylvania's intersection with the great "War between the States." The kids and I are suckers for stereoscopes of old images. Finally, we hit Chinatown just as a block party was getting underway. Love that there's a place in our city whose Chinese roots date back to the 1800's. (Sweet pastries for 75 cents are cool to have access, too.)

Time will tell whether America's future is worth celebrating, but its history is worth steeping in. And of course Philadelphia is a great place for steeping. Lucky kids.

Lazy Linking, 50th in an Occasional Series

Stuff I liked lately on the Internets:

50.1. Liu Bolin is still hard to see.

50.2. Hey Big Apple, why the big crackdown on your cyclists?

50.3. 69 percent of participating Economist readers said we're in a tech bubble. I am not one of them.

50.4. Love the way this data on top seasons by position in the NBA is laid out. And how about Magic owning the point guard position for a whole decade?

50.5. Traditional batteries going the way of the VHS tape. (And I would add the incandescent light bulb.)

50.6. Dammit, Oxford University, which is it - comma or no comma after the second to last thing in a list? (For the record, I always put in a comma.)

50.7. When considering how to manage our cities, we ought to ask more often, "won't someone think of the children?" [Hat tip: Tim Harford. Also from Tim Harford - "There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't."]

50.8. Remember when MySpace was the "it" site in 2005? (So long ago in social media time.) News Corp bought it for $580 million that year, and sold it last week . . . for a 94 percent loss. [Hat tip: the Consumerist.]

50.9. The Economist gives us two thousand years of economic output and aggregate human years lived, all in one chart. [Hat tip: Cafe Hayek.]

50.10. A chair made out of books.

Kudos to The Enterprise Center

Last week, I decided to sneak over to The Enterprise Center in between meetings to check in on a youth business and leadership camp being held there. I spent ten good years there, from 1995 to 2005, and started and ran the youth entrepreneurship program, among other responsibilities. I’m invested in a different way now, having served as a board member since 2006. So it’s obviously an organization that I think very highly of and take a lot of pride in.

My recent visit only confirmed my positive feelings, and made me happy for how much good the organization has done since I stopped working there. Coming off the subway stop, I walked past the community garden of The Enterprise Center Community Development Corporation, and thought of all the good work and good press that has emerged from that entity. Standing outside the building, as if waiting for me, was one of my old friends on staff, who has taken care of the building from a janitorial and systems standpoint for several years, and even after all of those years, he still takes pride in his craft.

Upon entering the building, I watched young people being checked in in an orderly and professional manner, and then entered our event center and sat in the back, like a fly on the wall, as youth sat at round tables awaiting the commencement of the program. Though it was summer and the young men and women talked freely and happily, you could tell they were taking this whole exercise seriously, a point also reinforced by the names of the tables, such as “Confidence” and “Risk-Taking” and “Networking.” I found out from one of the staffers that this is actually the first of three summer youth camps The Enterprise Center is on the hook to host.

I left the building beaming at all that this organization has grown into. And it’s not just the outward programming; technology, grant-writing, and accounting are all done much more professionally than when I was involved. It’s humbling, to be sure, to see how much better things are run now than when I ran them; but it is also a source of pride, that I was involved in keeping the thing going in hard times and setting things up so they could be built up to this degree.

Although what is really thrilling is stuff I cannot claim even peripheral credit for. The Enterprise Center is nothing if it is not an entrepreneurial entity, even as it helps entrepreneurial entities, and so the proliferation of innovative activities and high-end processes far exceeds what I could’ve even imagined way back when. In this regard, if I am taking pride, it is not the pride of congratulating myself for helping contribute to these successes, but rather of being able to say that I am affiliated with such an organization.

Kudos to all at The Enterprise Center, and good for Philadelphia and the whole region that this fantastic organization is here where it is, doing what it does, so well and in so many ways and for so long.

Happy Birthday, America

Happy 235th birthday to this great country and to this grand experiment of government of the people, by the people, and for the people. What was once sneered at by prince and pauper alike is now recognized almost universally as the preferred way of operating a nation and making public decisions. Here's to you, America. I close with a hat tip to our Founding Fathers, a salute to our men and women in uniform, and an exhortation to my fellow Americans of all ages, skin colors, religious beliefs, and walks of life to uphold the best of our nation's values and to be ever thankful for freedom and tolerance and prosperity.

Huang Family Newsletter, June 2011

Kind of a wild month for the Huang clan. (What else is new?)

Jada and Lee ran in Jada’s school’s 1-mile run, while Amy and her brother Matt ran in the 5-K (and placed second in their respective age brackets). Alas, the celebration was dampened by the fact that Amy hurt her foot at the end of the race, and has had to wear a boot since then.

Lee had business meetings in Harrisburg, Kentucky, and San Diego, and gave the Father’s Day sermon at his church. He snuck away from the family one Sunday to see his beloved A’s take on the local Phillies.

The kids finished their school years and went right into summer camps. Weekend excursions included birthday parties, the local dinosaur museum, and a visit to friends in the outer burbs. Jada had to get her two bottom front teeth pulled by the dentist, since her grown-up teeth had come in behind them instead of under them.

Lee’s mom seems to be doing much better, praise God. Previous nagging physical issues have abated, and a new van (with room for her wheelchair) means she can go out more to see friends and take in nature.