His Eye Was On the Positive

Ask a well-informed Philadelphian who it is that photo­graphs local society, and the answer will probably be a resounding “Fabian Bach­rach.” Few people know that for more than thirty years – from 1936 to 1967 – a Black photographer, John W. Mosley, was the photographer for mid­dle and professional class Black Philadelphians, and that virtually every significant social...
read more

The Day I Met Albert Einstein

With the opening of the newly completed Franklin Institute building on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadel­phia, I joined the Institute as a student member. This entitled me to the general membership privileges, such as visits to the museum and planetarium at any time, and the use of the library. It also entitled me to attend the monthly evening science lectures in the Institute’s...
read more

Letters to the Editor

A Day to Remember I really enjoyed the article “The Day I Met Albert Einstein” by Stephen Moylan Mac­Neill [“Pennsylvania Memories,” Spring 2001]. I thought it was very interesting that Albert Einstein came to Pennsylvania and visited the Franklin Institute after he moved from Nazi Germany. Mr. MacNeill had a great privilege to meet Mr. Einstein. I am twelve years old,...
read more

Bookshelf

Vietnam Zippos: American Soldiers’ Engravings and Stories, 1965–1973 by Sherry Buchanan published by the University of Chicago Press, 2007; 180 pages, cloth, $25.00 For generations of Americans, it was an icon with the decidedly distinctive click. Invented by George G. Blaisdell, the first Zippo® lighter was manufactured by the Zippo Manufacturing Company, Bradford, Bradford County, seventy-five...
read more

Philadelphia’s Settlement Music School Celebrates 100 Years of Magic

One hundred years ago, in 1908, two community-minded, socially-conscious single young women, Philadelphians Jeanette Selig (1886–1965) and Blanche Wolf (1886–1983), unwittingly created a school that’s become recognized as the largest community arts school in the United States, serving more than fifteen thousand students. In 1982, as the Settlement Music School observed its seventy-fifth...
read more