History in an Old Shoe

Recently I checked out a page on Facebook that is dedicated to my hometown, Alexander City, Alabama (affectionately, or lazily, called Alex City by locals).  I'd been on the page a couple of times earlier and found some interesting posts that allowed me a few moments of memory floods.  This time, however, I read a post about someone who had written a novel about life in one of the mill villages in Alex City in the 1920's.  Having been raised in a textile mill family, my interest was high.  The author is Bob Whetstone.  The book is Grave Dancin'. 

I did a quick Google search and found the author's website.  A former Birmingham-Southern professor, he has actually written a few books.  I found the page for this particular book and found this excerpt:



I was dumbstruck.  A chill sort of crawled up and down my spine. 

As a child, I would go and play in the workshed that my dad had built behind our house.  We always called this small one-room structure the "little house" - In an old, wooden toolbox in the little house, there was an old, tattered leather shoe.  The story behind the shoe is the story you just read from the excerpt from Grave Dancin'.  My father had told me the story many times - and often I would go to the little house, take the shoe into my hands and get lost in the stories that my imagination would conjure up from the little bit I knew of the history of the shoe.  When I took a closer look at the picture on the cover of the book, I realized that I knew that picture.  It was a picture that, for most of my childhood had resided in one of the hall closets - an oval picture - of my grandfather, Jeff Tapley.  I knew immediately that Dock Tarley from this book was actually my grandfather.

I reached out to Bob Whetstone exposing my thoughts and curiosity.  Sure enough, he is my cousin.  The son of my favorite Aunt on my father's side of the family - Mary Whetstone.  This was an unexpected family connection - which, being mostly estranged from my family for the past decade and a half, was both sweet and bitter.

Reading the book was slow and laborous.  Not because the book was poorly written or difficult to follow, but because each sentence sent my mind on a search through memories, stories, rumors - most of which I thought were long forgotten.  Turns out, these memories were still there waiting to be unlocked. 

This was a fascinating read.  I chose to read a few pages at a time, on the subway too and from my office in Center City Philadelphia.  I was reintroduced to my father's half-sisters and half-brother, as well as being reintroduced to my grandmother.  This was also the first real introduction to the personality and life of my grandfather.

Bob Whetstone is a kind and wise man - the same traits that I remember in his mother, my aunt.  The aunts and uncles are all gone now.  Some living into their nineties.  In a recent email, Bob shared with me that he had told his sister about our reacquaintance.  She sent back a message - inviting me to come back South where "people love you - at least your cousins do".  I was deeply touched.

I just received his new book, Cotton Mary.  This is about his mom - with the personalities of her three more "colorful" sisters.  I just started reading it on Monday.  And today I already know that Mary Whetstone is still my favorite aunt - but for many, many more reasons than I ever knew before.

Arlene Ackerman Learns to Play the Philly Way

When the Philadelphia School Reform Commission announced the selection of Dr. Arlene Ackerman as the CEO of the School District of Philadelphia, I was pleasantly surprised.  Being a former resident of San Francisco who maintains strong ties to the City by the Bay, I already knew of her reputation and believed that she could be the beginning of the answer to the problem that has been and is the Philadelphia school system.

Now, nearly three years later, I am ready to admit that the School Reform Commission was wrong and I, too, was wrong.  One can only look at the debacle which is currently unfolding over the no-bid selection of contractors for persistently dangerous city schools to understand exactly how bad this decision was.  So much is answered via Ackerman’s own words regarding this situation.

Our city has had a system for doing business in place for many years that has been blatantly corrupt and controlled by power- and money-starved so-called public servants.  It appears that Ackerman, in the name of doing the “right” thing, has joined that system.  In her own defense, she stated (according to the 12/2/2010 PI article), “We’re trying to break a culture that is hurtful in many ways . . . Change is hard.”  She was referring to the feeling of entitlement some businesses have regarding district contracts.  However, instead of working to change those systems by publicly challenging them, she chose to join the other old and established system that many of our leaders have held and still hold membership in – and just simply execute a no-bid contract.  Its business as usual in Philadelphia, it seems.  Ackerman seems to have taken the accelerated course in the Philly system of public service.  She’s a fast learner.

Not only does it appear that she allowed staff persons to take the fall for her over the contract decision until it was obvious that it was gaining a life of its own, but she reminded us of her other bad decisions in the process.  To further cover her actions, Ackerman seems to have changed her opinion of the job Tri-State (an approved women’s business enterprise) did at South Philadelphia High School.  It appears she forgot her previous praise of the project as a model to set the standards for the other schools.  This is a project that cost substantially more than projected because she insisted it be completed over a weekend.  In regards to the IBS selection, she said that she pushed the project to enhance the security at the 19 persistently dangerous schools because “if something happened, we would have been in the papers for failing to act.”  Obviously, she forgot that they had already been in the papers because they failed to act – a failure that had happened many times over.

I agree that there should be an urgency to the dangerous situation in our schools.  This urgency should have been in effect long ago.  It is more than obvious that there was enough information in hand to understand, for example, the seriousness of the problem at South Philadelphia High.  However, now she evokes the need for urgency because it helps defend her case in regards to no-bid contracting.  On top of all of this is the fact that the district had an original timeline for this project that called for it to be completed by November 30, 2010.  Now, the IBS contract runs to June 30.  So much for urgency.

So, I propose that it is time to move on.  There are several systems here that need fixing – one of those is the process that is used to select vendors.  It should certainly be repaired in order to provide greater opportunities for minority businesses.  However, of all the fixes needed there is a much greater system that needs fixing – and that is the Philadelphia school system.  The fact that we have 19 schools that are deemed unsafe and that it has taken this long to begin to provide some fixes is criminal.  Ackerman’s feet-dragging during the recent South Philadelphia High situation is well documented.  She waited way to long before she even spoke out on the issue at all.  Now, this once-crowned savior of our schools has just become another leader who does things the old Philly way.  She has become the kind of leader of which we must purge ourselves.  It is time to begin the search anew.  This time, let’s do it with the students in mind.