Greater Harrisburg's Community Magazine
Welcome to TheBurg Podcast, a weekly roundup of news in and around Harrisburg.
Nov. 7, 2014: This week, Larry and Paul discuss the election of Tom Wolf as Pennsylvania’s next governor, Paul’s story in the November issue about a top-ranked Harrisburg public school and Larry’s column on three kinds of government: good, bad and Italian.
Theme music by Paul Cooley, host of the PRC Show podcast.
Harrisburg public schools failed by a wide margin to meet academic standards set by the state-appointed chief recovery officer, according to state Department of Education academic performance measures released today.
None of Harrisburg’s schools met the academic goals for the 2013-14 school year set forth by Chief Recovery Officer Gene Veno in an April 2014 amendment to his recovery plan for the district. Several schools fell short of these goals by about 20 points.
The state’s “Building Level Academic Score” uses a 100-point scale to measure school performance. Much like a student report card, a score above 90 is considered excellent, while a score below 70 is deemed poor.
The following list shows each school’s performance, followed by a number in parenthesis that includes Veno’s goals for each school for the 2013-14 academic year.
Scores are based upon several measures, including students’ performance on state standardized tests, improvement since the previous year, graduation and attendance rates and, in the case of high school students, SAT and ACT scores.
School Superintendent Sybil Knight-Burney indicated during a press conference in September that scores would be poor, as she described the results as “very disappointing.” However, at the time, it was not known just how poorly the city’s schools had performed, as the state prohibited the release of the results until today.
Not only did school scores fail to meet Veno’s goals, many scores declined significantly from the prior year, before the recovery plan was put into effect.
Math Science Academy suffered perhaps the greatest year-to-year decline. During the 2012-13 school year, the school received an excellent score of 92, which last year fell to 75.9.
The trick-or-treat rush commences on Green Street in Harrisburg.
They came in waves down Green Street.
Farmers. Cowboys. Superheroes. Princesses. Lots of princesses. There was a Super Mario and a ninja turtle and an ebola patient whom I mistook for a surgeon, dressed as he was in surgical robes and a mask.
This was my first year living on Harrisburg’s trick-or-treat flyway, the path that many of the city’s children take after their mandated first stop, the Governor’s Residence, two blocks away.
I had been warned by neighbors that I was in for an onslaught, so my wife and I stockpiled enough candy–five or six bags–to meet what we expected to be the heavy demand. After all, how many kids could possibly show up during a two-hour trick-or-treat window?
A half-hour in, I realized that we were radically underprepared. With the candy bowl quickly emptying, I dashed up to Rite Aid on Maclay Street for reinforcements, then did so again a short time later. And we still ran out before the night was over.
We went through almost 500 pieces of candy, which, at one candy each (we were pretty strict about that), equals–well, this is math that even I can do.
But here’s the important thing. Nearly 500 kids, and they were, almost without fail, polite and well-mannered. Most were escorted by adults, who seemed even more gracious than the children. If a kid didn’t say “thank you,” he invariably was nudged by a parent.
“What do you say?” said a patient mother or father.
“Thank you,” responded a shy, little voice.
Yes, this is Harrisburg. This is what Harrisburg really is like. It’s a place of mostly decent people who work hard, raise their kids and try to be kind to others.
Or, to take the contrary approach, here’s what it is not.
It’s not a war zone, a place where lawmakers should fear for their lives or that is “dangerous for anybody,” which is the impression one might get if their only exposure is from PennLive over just the past few weeks.
Yesterday, on the same day that hundreds of appreciative, well-behaved children made the trek up and down Green Street, PennLive released the results of a word cloud poll in which it asked readers to describe Harrisburg. The results were overwhelmingly negative, with terms such as “cesspool,” “Detroit” and “doomed” among the most commonly cited.
“Clearly, many readers are down on the capital city,” wrote reporter Chris Mautner.
So, how did this happen? How did Harrisburg, in the minds of many newspaper readers, become synonymous with “delusional,” “corrupt” and “sad?”
OK, so here’s how it happened.
Yesterday, city resident Beth Johns, exasperated by PennLive’s relentless negative coverage of Harrisburg, sent us an email. She said that, after reading the results of PennLive’s word cloud, she decided to conduct an experiment. Using a website that makes word clouds, she created several of her own.
The first, presented below, is a word cloud of PennLive’s last 30 headlines (as of midday yesterday) under its Harrisburg tab.
As can be seen, the prominent words were almost all negative, including police, death, shot, murder, missing and robbery.
Johns then ran a similar experiment for the suburbs, pulling the last 30 headlines under the “West Shore” tab. Here’s that result:
Outside of geographic terms and people’s names, the most popular words were largely neutral or positive, including school, area, residents, program, hunters, homes, project and pet.
Lastly, Johns decided to run the same experiment using the last 20 news headlines from TheBurg, to see what the contrast might be. Here’s that result.
Sure, there’s some negative stuff. If you click on the image, you can see small words that say “shooting” and “robbery.” But most of the words, like the words from the West Shore cloud, are neutral to positive.
So, does life in Harrisburg consist mostly of murder, death, shot and robbery, while, on the West Shore, it’s all school, homes, projects and pets? Or are there greater similarities than differences?
At TheBurg, we try to represent life as it is actually lived here. Yes, there’s more concern here about crime, as there is in almost every American city compared to its suburbs. There are more people, far greater density and more poverty. However, for the most part, people here–their concerns, their activities, their aspirations–are not very different from the folks who live on the West Shore.
They want good things for themselves and their families. They want decent jobs and safe lives. They want their elected officials to act responsibly and their city to be an attractive, more prosperous place.
They don’t want people believing things that aren’t true, that Harrisburg and, by implication, the people who live here, are some type of cartoon of crime and dysfunction.
For the people who believe what they read in the newspaper or online, I welcome them to Green Street for next Halloween. Or, even sooner, to the Broad Street Market on Saturday. And to Italian Lake and to downtown restaurants and to Reservoir Park and to the city’s many vibrant urban neighborhoods.
There, they will meet the people of the city, not the cardboard cutouts fed to them. The people of Harrisburg are not looking for charitable descriptions. We know we have problems, just as we know we have strengths. We only want to be represented as we actually are, our city depicted as it really is.
Welcome to TheBurg Podcast, a weekly roundup of news in and around Harrisburg.
Oct. 31, 2014: This week, Larry and Paul discuss a cryptic statement from the City Council president, the formal announcement of a balanced 2014 budget, and handing out candy to trick-or-treaters. Also, an interview with Burg writer Wendy Jackson-Dowe, whose column this month centers on a Harrisburg pig farmer who developed a neighborhood for middle-class blacks in the 1950s.
Intro and outro music: “Cadillac Baby,” by Will Batts.
If you drive through the heart of Allison Hill, near 13th and Derry, you’ll see a varying collection of small businesses, bodegas, eateries.
Some are busy, interesting and well kept; others, not so much.
But those highly visible convenience stores, bars and ethnic food joints are not the totality of commerce on Allison Hill. A few blocks up, there’s another commercial district, primarily industrial, that once was a job center of the community.
Along S. 17th Street, there are the remnants of a formerly vibrant local economy—empty and under-utilized buildings where factory workers once toiled all day and night. In some spots, parking lots take the place of where buildings once stood.
Over the decades, there have been attempts to re-energize S. 17th Street. New efforts are being made today, and, in fact, some people see signs of hope for the revitalization of the corridor.
The Catalyst
A newly constructed building occupies one of the key blocks along S. 17th, not too far from Market Street.
The major health care provider to the community, Hamilton Health Center, opened its new building two years ago to centralize its satellite locations. The facility now has become the focal point of a flurry of efforts aimed at revitalizing that part of Allison Hill.
CEO Jeannine Peterson said that access to good health care is key to a healthy and vibrant community and sees the health center’s expansion as leading the way in the neighborhood’s rejuvenation.
“I believe Hamilton Health Center is an economic catalyst for the S. 17th Street Allison Hill corridor, attracting other businesses to locate to this area,” she said.
Hamilton Health invested $16.2 million in the first phase of its development, completed in 2012. It’s now proceeding with phase two of the project.
“Our development has allowed us to increase the number of jobs from approximately 100 when we moved into our new location to our current staffing level of 180 people,” said Peterson.
Neighborhood residents hold many of those jobs. It’s been vital, she said, to have the facility integrated into the community because workers often don’t have cars. So, they’re able to walk to work or take public transportation.
Nearby, Philadelphia Macaroni Company, one of the nation’s oldest and largest industrial pasta manufacturers, acquired the former Unilever pasta plant earlier this year. Philadelphia Macaroni’s S. 17th Street plant employs about 50 people and produces Knorr Pasta Sides and Lipton Soup Secrets products.
“We have made a substantial investment in the community, and it is operating 24/7,” said company spokeswoman Linda Schalles. “We expect to be there for quite some time.”
The Opportunities
Despite the anchor of Hamilton Health, the location remains a hard sell for those trying to attract businesses to the area, say developers and realtors.
Fairly or not, too many people equate that part of Allison Hill with typical inner-city problems like crime and drugs. And the gritty nature of the area doesn’t offer a lot of visual appeal.
That’s why much of the 17th Street corridor falls into the Keystone Opportunity Zone (KOZ), a largely tax-free zone designed to encourage investment and make the area more attractive to businesses.
Shaun Donovan is the economic development specialist with the Harrisburg Regional Chamber of Commerce and its economic development arm, the Capital Region Economic Development Corp., known as CREDC. In that capacity, he helps administer Keystone Opportunity Zones in Harrisburg.
Recently, properties along the S. 17th Street corridor were selected for KOZ.
“The reason we kind of picked them is because of their proximity to the Hamilton Health Center,” Donovan explained.
He added that neighborhood input was elicited before they proceeded. The KOZ expansion followed discussions with local residents, businesses and community leaders.
“In this particular case, they really highlighted the 17th Street corridor, and they also said that they were really looking for commercial and industrial redevelopment in their neighborhood, more than residential development,” he said.
KOZ parcels on S. 17th now include the former Coca-Cola building at 227 S. 17th St., the Shimmel School at 548 S. 17th St. and the Hajoca Building at 101 S. 17th St.
In April, the for-profit Lebanon-based Pennsylvania Counseling Services offered the Harrisburg School District, which owns the Shimmel School, $550,000 for the 58,750-square-foot property.
Recently, representatives of the group were scheduled to appear before the city’s Zoning Hearing Board seeking a variance for their drug and alcohol recovery, mental health treatment and truancy programs. Because it is school district-owned, the building currently produces no tax revenue.
“A lot of people support it,” said Bill Gladstone of the Gladstone Group, a realtor involved with the sale. “We have to get through the system.”
CREDC’s Donovan explained that, by offering abatements on taxes on things like building supplies, earned income, net profits and real estate, the KOZ can entice potential buyers to look at vacant properties in neighborhoods they’d otherwise pass on.
“A lot of those buildings have minor issues that need to be resolved, but again, the KOZ program makes it more attractive for the new owners to come in,” Donovan said.
Gladstone also represents the Chicago-based owners of the Hajoca Building at 101 S. 17th St., across the street from the Hamilton Health Center. Gladstone said his clients like the KOZ concept, but they are still lacking a tenant or buyer for the 1.6-acre site, which is listed at $625,000.
“Unfortunately we still haven’t located a tenant, but I don’t think that has anything to do with it being in a KOZ; I think it has to do with locating someone willing to be in that location,” said Gladstone, referring to South Allison Hill’s less-than-stellar reputation. “We have other challenges besides the KOZ.”
When City Council’s Community and Economic Development Committee met to vote on the establishment of city KOZs late last year, some residents objected because they felt that, given the city’s slowly improving financial picture, the more tax revenue, the better. Others supported the plan, saying that anything that would spur renovations on crumbing community eyesores, create and sustain local jobs and, in time, generate property tax revenue would benefit the city.
Donovan pointed to the Shimmel School property as an example of how a KOZ can take a non-tax revenue producing property and, over time, transform it into a revenue-producing property.
“It’s kind of wrong to say you’ve lost that revenue because, without the program, you’d have no revenue,” he said.
KOZ or not, the 17th Street corridor appears to be making incremental progress after years of heading in the opposite direction. Having completed its new building, the neighborhood anchor, Hamilton Health Center, is investing another $6 million in its project.
“We expect [our employment] number to climb to over 200 when we complete our phase two renovations in December 2014,” said CEO Peterson.
To other area businesses, more employees mean more people buying local goods and investing in their properties and improving their quality of life. Ultimately, that’s what brings a neighborhood back.
Reggie Sheffield is a Harrisburg-based freelancer and is reachable at [email protected].
November sees a number of critically acclaimed female singer-songwriters passing through our city. Our three featured artists range in renown, but they all approach their music with a strong sense of independence. While some may be written off as “one-hit wonders,” all continue to write and perform and will surely put on fabulous shows when they grace Harrisburg’s stages.
SAMANTHA HARLOW, 11/5, 4:30PM, LITTLE AMPS DOWNTOWN, $5 suggested donation: Nashville’s Samantha Harlow is a songwriter who possesses that long sought after one-two punch, a powerful voice that is just as capable of conveying emotion when raised barely above a whisper. With her backing band, she is country at its best, heartbroken with the right amount of attitude. But when playing alone, her delicate approach is just as heartbroken, albeit in a far more introspective register. This is an earlier show, so make sure to stop by on your way home from work.
ANNA NALICK, 11/9, 8PM, HMAC STAGE ON HERR, $15: Anna Nalick is most famous for her 2005 single, “Breathe (2am).” Like so many songwriters suddenly thrust into the spotlight, she quickly found her record label was stifling her creativity. So, she left major label Sony to produce her music independently. Although her more recent work has failed to receive the same kind of radio exposure, she is happy with the trade and will be stopping by Harrisburg’s HMAC on her fall tour. Her songs are infused with a dash of the gothic, backed by haunting arrangements featuring cellos, glockenspiels and toy pianos.
JANIS IAN, 11/21, 8PM, ROSE LEHRMAN ARTS CENTER, $34/$40: Janis Ian, the New York-based singer-songwriter, played an important role in my childhood. Her most famous album, 1975’s “Between the Lines,”was among my mother’s extensive record collection, shelved along with the likes of Carole King and Joan Baez. But her career did not end in the ‘70s. She has continued to record while advocating for the rights of songwriters and musicians through her criticism of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Never afraid to tackle political subjects in her songwriting, Ian’s performance should prove to be powerful, perfect for longtime fans and the newly interested alike.
Mentionables: The People’s Temple, The MakeSpace, 11/7; DRGN KING, Little Amps Downtown, 11/14; Robyn Hitchcock, HMAC Stage on Herr, 11/15; Bill Staines, Fort Hunter Centennial Barn, 11/22; The Hackensaw Boys, Abbey Bar, 11/28; Dave Mason’s Traffic Jam, Whitaker Center, 11/28
From left to right: Serena Stauffer,
Emily Kramer, Kelvin Reyes.
The arrival of summer, at least before I had acquired my job at a local restaurant, meant long mornings sleeping in below the gentle breeze of a ceiling fan and afternoons spent slathered in sunscreen by the side of the pool. One summer, it meant volunteering at a nursing home fifteen minutes away from my own home.
I was reluctant. I had been exposed to nursing homes at a young age. Both of my great-grandfathers lived in the same nursing home where I was volunteering and my great-grandmother currently lived there. Each time we visited, we could smell the horrible stench of the “food” in the dining rooms. I was also terribly shy and didn’t want to be interrogated by adults. But it was something my mom had insisted that my younger sister and I participate in; we would be giving back to the community as well as boosting our extracurricular activities list for college and beyond. In addition to all of this, we would gain a valuable real-world experience in dealing with a variety of people. I am sure that I created quite the fuss, but in the end my application was turned in and accepted, all on behalf of my mother’s prodding. I was left with no choice but to comply.
At orientation, fellow teen volunteers and I were instructed in the methods of privacy, adhering to the HIPPA law, and the importance of respecting and retaining the dignity of residents. We practiced putting the brakes on wheelchairs so the residents didn’t roll away. Most importantly, we learned to play along. Sometimes the situation wasn’t always what it appeared to be, but for the sake of ensuring the residents’ happiness, we were told to go along with it. I had seen nurses approach female residents who cradled dolls like they were their own babies. The nurses cooed and admired, much to the pride of the “parent” who was either perched in a wheelchair or a well-stuffed recliner.
Our first assignment was to head to one of the memory loss units to play a game called balloon ball, where we would assist the residents in hitting a balloon larger than a blow-up beach ball with pool noodles that had been cut in half. It was good for their hand-eye coordination. I remember that I was scared as the heavy white doors clicked behind us and we were now locked in. All the residents were sitting in a circle in the living room, and my sister and I took turns getting the balloon when a resident missed it or when it landed on the floor. One lady, a previous teacher, snatched the balloon away from the others declaring that she was the teacher, and that no one else was allowed to play. This was my first encounter, as well as my sister’s, with dementia and we were shocked. The nurse, I believe, smoothed the situation over, and led us to the door where she punched the code and the locks clicked open, freeing us.
One morning, behind the locked doors of the memory loss unit, I sat beside a withered old lady, her white braided hair sandwiched between her back and the wooden rocking chair. As a high schooler, I was constantly subject to answering the question on everyone’s mind. What was I going to do after I graduated high school? The white-haired lady next to me asked me this question. We chatted about my rabbits (always a good topic because almost everyone, as I had found out, had owned rabbits in their pre-nursing home lives), and I told her that I was going to go to college after graduation, but I was unsure of my major. She responded by telling me a story, laced with nostalgia, about a job that she had held for years after she graduated from school.
As we sat side-by-side, coloring pictures of chickens, sailboats, and fruit that were copied from a coloring book, our papers resting on a small, white plastic table, the round of the same questions began again, like a broken record stuck on the same lyrics. What was I going to do after high school? Again, I answered by saying I was going to college, my major was undecided, and then we talked about rabbits and her previous job. And then she asked again. And again. With each passing question, my answers became shorter and more concise. At one point, she apologized, saying, “I’m sorry dear, did I already ask you that?”
I smiled one of those big smiles, “No, you didn’t ask me. It’s fine.” I went on to tell her about my rabbits and my undecided major for at least the tenth time. This was the art of playing along. The lady was so sweet and genuine, I really didn’t mind. Besides, some residents were harder to deal with than others. Take, for example, a hundred-year-old woman sleeping in a recliner, waking every few minutes to ask, “How’d you do over Christmas?” and then “Who did you say your husband was?” to a sixty-some “friendly visitor” nearby who patiently explained time and time again that she was not married. Or the resident who aggressively pushed to know where the men were who left her there. (The nurses responded by telling her that the men left, to which she exclaimed, “WHAT?! That is NO way to run the place if you ask ME!”)
My sister was also coloring that morning, but with another resident. When I say coloring, I mean my sister was coloring, and the lady next to her had taken a hairpin out of her hair and was proceeding to hammer it into the plastic tabletop with a box of crayons. My sister, unsure what exactly to do, discouraged her from doing it, but it was to no avail. While volunteering, we couldn’t really carry much around with us, so my sister turned to the plump, white-haired woman in sitting in her wheelchair, and handed her the picture, telling her to keep it. The woman stopped her hammering and her whole face lit up. She clutched it to her chest, showed it to everyone who walked by, and took it with her when she went to eat lunch.
As I continued my volunteer shifts over the summer, getting up early each Tuesday and Thursday morning, I began to look forward to it just a little. The residents weren’t used to seeing younger kids and their faces brightened when they saw us- at least those who were competent enough to know that we were there. I began to enjoy bringing even a tiny sliver of happiness to their days, and their antics brought happiness to my own life, which I still recall with a smile. About an hour before lunch one morning, the group of teen volunteers and I were assigned to go to one of the memory-loss units. Usually, we colored with them, but on that day, the nurses decided that the elderly folks needed some fresh summer air so we shuttled wheelchairs a few feet away to the outside patio and parked them in front of an empty bird feeder and some overgrown grass. Most of the residents were asleep and could have cared less, but one man, who was able to walk and was situated on a stained wooden bench, appeared deep in thought as he surveyed the sky. He turned to me and made a comment about how fast birds could fly. “Yes,” I responded, “they are fast.”
“Why do you think the cops never give birds speeding tickets?” he said. He went on to say that someone needed to be giving traffic tickets to these birds, which happened to be unsuspecting robins flying overhead, and that if they didn’t slow down they would cause accidents. Whoa. I definitely wasn’t expecting that. It took me a minute to collect myself and control my silent laughter. “I guess they’re just so fast the cops can’t catch them,” I said, deciding to play along. Again, he grew quiet and contemplative. Then he posed another question. “Do you think… the mother bird and the father bird ever fight?”
“Well, I don’t think they do. I think they would try to get along.” More silence before another random question. “What would you do…if a bird walked up to you and said, ‘I’d like to talk to you about something?’” I chuckled as I imagined a human-sized bird, wearing a police hat and hopping up the patio toward me. By this time, I was laughing hard, and trying not to show it. “I guess I would try to talk to the bird and get along. Maybe we could be friends.” This must have satisfied him because he was silent again.
I realized that this tactic of playing along could be turned into an art form. It became easier with practice. I also surprised myself by how much this lesson would stick with me years after I had stopped volunteering at the nursing home. At school, if I didn’t exactly agree with the idea my group had for a project, I would just go with the flow. At a job I got a few years later, I worked at a pottery painting studio that was frequented by children and their parents. I was able to use this ingenious skill when interacting with the kids, especially the younger kids and their grand imaginations. I suppose playing along is really about being flexible: being willing to abandon the way you think something should be to please someone else. In that respect, it is also based in compassion, for if you do not care about someone, you would not be ready or willing to accommodate them.
Back at the nursing home, before I left for the day, the elderly man, with the metaphors for all things traffic related, was sitting quietly once again. As I got up to leave, he began yelled in displeasure, “I OBJECT to this! This fly did not pay his toll!” A small, black housefly was inching through the hairs on his pale arm. I wish I could have thought of a witty comeback, perhaps the fly had also evaded the cops, as the birds had, with his diminutive size and lightning speed. But instead, I smiled and most likely told the man to have a good day. He smiled too, and for that reason, and a bit of my own amusement, I was glad that I had decided to use my imagination and play along.
Serena Stauffer is a senior at Penn State University-Harrisburg, where she is completing a bachelor’s degree in English with minors in communications and writing. Outside of school, her interests include baking, reading cookbooks and trips to the beach. She resides in Lititz with her family, rabbit Shadow and dog Brandy.
There is something to be said for hidden talent, and the filmmakers behind “Pride” are a prominent example.
First-time writer Stephen Beresford and director Matthew Warchus, whose only other feature film was back in 1999, present an inspirational true story about a London-based group called LGSM (Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners), who, in the midst of their own persecution, raised money for the mining strike of 1984 to ‘85.
The story begins in London, at the tail end of the Margaret Thatcher era. Closeted pastry student, Joe (George MacKay), fumbles in his indecision of whether or not he will join the gay pride rally happening in the streets. It is clear that he wants to but is nervous about being seen. So, when he discovers a section of the parade holding buckets and asking for donations to support the miners, he finds his “in.” This is the mask he is looking for, the level of comfort he needs. After all, he’s just supporting the miners.
The miners are also undergoing persecution as they picket for their rights, points out Mark (Ben Schnetzer), who serves as the leader of LGSM. Growing up in Northern Ireland, Mark was taught that you should not just support the rights of one group of people, but of all people. He wants to raise money for the National Union of Mineworkers while they continue their strike.
Unfortunately, not all of the gay activists are willing to pitch in, as they believe that the average miner tends to be homophobic. So, LGSM finds itself pared down to a handful of people, including Mark, Joe, Mike (Joseph Gilgun), Steph (Faye Marsay, playing the plucky-natured “L” in LGSM), flamboyant and extroverted Jonathan (Dominic West), and his boyfriend, Gethin (Andrew Scott), a quiet Welshman who hasn’t been welcome at home in more than 16 years.
They quickly run into problems when they contact the union, which doesn’t want to give them the time of day. So, the members of LGSM sidestep the union and directly contact a mining village in South Wales. At first, their help is heartily accepted—until the village finds out what LGSM stands for—and then the response is divided.
Many of the villagers are worried about the connotations of a “group of perverts” helping their cause. But among the willing are Dai (Paddy Considine), feisty housewife-turned-activist Sian (Jessica Gunning), the boisterous Hefina (Imelda Staunton), shy-but-kind Cliff (Bill Nighy) and Gwen (Menna Trussler). They set about ensuring that the village gets to know the members of LGSM, uniting in their common goal.
It’s hard to tell which aspect makes this film so great—the uplifting story (it doesn’t err too much on the side of sentimentality, though it will carry you with its emotion) or the ensemble cast. In trying to decide which performance stood out the most, I came up with a list of about six actors. So, suffice it to say that each and every one of them contributes beautifully.
But, honestly, there’s not much to criticize about this film. “Pride” is a crowd-pleaser that doesn’t cut any corners to woo its audience, and it looks good from every angle. It provides plenty of humor, human interest, great ‘80s music, and a history lesson to boot. Kudos to Beresford and Warchus—I can only hope they continue to make films just as good.
“Pride” is now playing at the Midtown Cinema. Be sure to check it out!
Sammi Leigh Melville is a staff member and film reviewer at Midtown Cinema.
Midtown Cinema November Events
Moviate presents
BJÖRK: “Biophilia Live”
Nov 1, 2, & 3 @ 7:30pm. $5.
National Theatre Live Series
Recordings of live professional theatre productions.
Tennesee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire”
starring Gillian Anderson as Blanche Dubois
Sun 11/2 @4pm & Tue 11/4 @7pm. $20/$15 members
David Hare’s “Skylight”
starring Carey Mulligan and Bill Nighy
Sun 11/16 @4pm & Tue 11/18 @7pm
Broadway’s “Of Mice and Men”
starring James Franco and Chris O’Dowd
Sun 11/30 @4pm & Tue 12/2 @7pm
“Being Ginger”
Sun 11/2 & Tue 11/4 @7:30pm
A documentary about being a red head. Obviously.
Moviate presents
“Cinema Solariens”
Mon 11/3 @7pm
Atlanta Filmmaker James Harrar accompanies his films with live flute and kora.
Mommy & Me Matinees
Sat 11/8 and every second Saturday!
Brighter lighting, lower sound, stroller parking, and babies welcome!
Saturday Morning Cartoons
Sat 11/8 and every second Saturday 9:30-11:30am
Classic cartoons on the big screen!
“Half of a Yellow Sun”
Sat 11/8, Sun 11/9, & Mon 11/10 @7:30
The 2013 drama romance set in 1960s Nigeria
Foreign and Classic Film Series presents
Sun 11/9 @6pm and every 2nd Sunday
“The Little Princess,” Shirley Temple classic on the big screen.
“Private Peaceful”
Sun 11/9 @1:30, Mon 11/10 @5pm, Tue 11/11 @7pm
In this BBC World War I Drama, two brothers fall for the same woman.
Down in Front! Greatest Hits Edition
“Eegah: The Name Written in Blood”
Fri 11/14 @9:30ish
Our improv trio comedically re-rips apart the terrible 1962 monster b-movie. BYOB… you’ll need it. $5.
The Family Movie Series presents
“Hook,” adventure comedy starring Robin Williams, $5
Sat 11/15 @12pm, Sun 11/16 @2pm, Tue 11/18 @7pm
3rd in the Burg $3 Movie
“Jurassic Park,” 1993 Spielberg classic, starring dinosaurs
Fri 11/21 @9:30ish
Agatha Christie’s
“Miss Marple: The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side”
Sun 11/23 @4pm – FREE
The 1992 BBC Movie, starring Joan Hickson.
Moviate presents
“Fly Colt Fly,” 2014 documentary about the Barefoot Bandit
Sun 11/23 @7:30pm
“The Wizard of Oz”
Thu 11/27 @7pm, Fri 11/28 @7pm, & Sat 11/29 @2pm
A Thanksgiving tradition returns with the 1939 MGM classic!
Martha Wickelhaus’ son was ill, and his 19-month-old Labrador, Frankie, needed a temporary home. Wickelhaus didn’t post a plea for a foster home on Facebook, Craigslist or Twitter. Instead, her message on Nextdoor.com went straight to her neighbors and her landlord, and, from there, to Furry Friends Network.
“Frankie is now, for a few months, living in a great home with a big yard and a 6-year-old child,” Wickelhaus said with satisfaction.
Wickelhaus, of Midtown Harrisburg, has joined the growing legion of midstate residents on Nextdoor.com, the 21st-century version of over-the-back-fence conversations. While Harrisburg’s rollout so far has been largely in the city’s more affluent river neighborhoods and near suburbs, some Allison Hill residents also hope soon to capitalize on the power of neighborly social media.
Founded in San Francisco in 2010, Nextdoor.com is billed as “the private social network for neighborhoods.” It’s the cyber-place where neighbors do neighborly things—seek help, offer help, solve problems, promote block parties, get to know each other. In a carefully prescribed process, organizers draw neighborhood lines that make geographic and cultural sense. When 10 members enroll, a Nextdoor.com group is launched. It’s now in 41,000 U.S. neighborhoods.
Harrisburg has 18 Nextdoor groups within its boundaries and nearby, with such familiar names as Old Fox Ridge and Uptown-Italian Lake. Wickelhaus, a member of the Olde Uptown group, used Nextdoor to start a knitting group—Stitch ‘n Bitch, they call themselves—that meets at Little Amps Coffee Roasters or Midtown Cinema. In addition to finding a foster home for Frankie the dog, she once found a place to recycle cardboard boxes stacked in her basement from a recent move.
Users love the simplicity and targeted messaging of Nextdoor.com, which issues daily e-mails with new posts. With its laser focus on issues of interest neighborhood by neighborhood, there’s “nothing frivolous” to wade through, said Wickelhaus.
“I open it up to see if there’s anything I’m interested in,” she said. “If there is, I go and read more about it.”
Mitch Smith started the Engleton group, now up to 296 members, in late 2011. Unlike a Web page that needed constant upkeep, or even Facebook, Nextdoor is almost self-sustaining, Smith said. At first, some members used the group to complain, but the site has “transformed” into an idea-sharing space where neighbors find home maintenance help, post found or lost pets, and sell, buy or give away their stuff.
“We had issues in the beginning of people attacking other people over stupid stuff, but we’ve weeded them out,” said Smith. “’So-and-so parked wrong.’ Ridiculous. Or, ‘So-and-so didn’t shovel their sidewalk.’ Give me a break. There’s much bigger fish to fry in the city.”
Unlike some online forums, Nextdoor requires that members be identified by name and their addresses be verified.
“When people can be anonymous, they can be pretty disrespectful,” Nextdoor.com Head of Communications Kelsey Grady told TheBurg. “We don’t see that often on Nextdoor.”
Of course, a popular social media platform is sure to get the attention of governments and businesses seeking new communications outlets. Nextdoor.com currently partners with 240 cities and agencies, including police departments, which can broadcast notices without getting access to individual groups or their members. A partnership with Harrisburg is “in the works,” said Communications Manager Jen Burke.
Businesspeople often use Nextdoor for relationship building—think of the realtor keeping in touch around town—but, if they “get too self-promotional, people let them know,” said Grady.
Since neighborhood lines and interests rarely fall into neat alignment, Nextdoor members can also communicate with nearby groups. The Harrisburg Downtown Improvement District uses Nextdoor to promote events to a key audience—its Midtown-area neighbors.
“We’re a small nonprofit, so we’re not necessarily promoting on radio or TV,” said Marketing Director Leigh Ann Urban. “This is a great way to reach them more directly. Some people aren’t on Facebook.”
With its e-mail delivery system, Nextdoor engages all age ranges, including 90-year-olds who use e-mail to contact the grandkids, said Grady. And Nextdoor is working in diverse communities, she said.
“We’re doing really well in the South Side of Chicago, the 9th Ward of New Orleans, very rural areas,” she said. “We’re seeing it work everywhere, and our goal as a company is to see it work in every neighborhood in the U.S.”
In Harrisburg’s multi-ethnic Allison Hill neighborhood, some residents have approached Tri County Community Action about starting a Nextdoor group. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that the “digital divide,” as measured by desktop computers owned by white Americans compared to African Americans and Latinos, is almost nonexistent in smartphone ownership. Fortunately, Nextdoor.com has an app for that.
“It’s much easier for this community to access the Internet because of smartphones than desktops,” said Tri-County Communications Manager Lisa Landis.
DID’s Urban appreciates Nextdoor’s clutter-free message delivery.
“It’s not something that’s overwhelming, and it’s simple to use,” she said. “Whoever came up with it—genius.”
Rev. Susan Ashe (Hodge)
In the mid-1950s, a man named Elmo Hodge had a vision to develop a community of custom-built homes marketed to upwardly mobile blacks, a notion then unique in the region.
As a young girl, I recall my mother pointing toward a particular home and saying, “That’s Mr. Hodge’s house!” So, who was this Mr. Hodge and why should I care that it was his house? I wondered.
I would like to share a portion of his vision and journey, one that culminated with the creation of the Lower Paxton Township community of Hodges Heights.
For Everyone
Elmo Hodge was a pig farmer and trash collector who lived in Edgemont with his wife Sibbie and their eight children. His daughter, the Rev. Susan Ashe (Hodge), reminisced with me about growing up in Edgemont with her parents, four sisters and four brothers.
“Daddy raised pigs that were fed from the food scraps he picked up on his trash route in Camp Hill,” she said. “Some of his Camp Hill customers liked daddy so much that they would separate the food scraps for the pigs, and he sold his meat to the Swift Packing House.”
Her husband Charles told me how the Edgemont community would close down 25th Street each Labor Day. Mr. Hodge, an avid hunter, and other neighborhood men would cook wild meat and roast a whole pig. The women would prepare all the side dishes, and the entire community would have a feast.
In April 1945, Elmo Hodge decided to look beyond Edgemont, purchasing 137 acres of farmland in the southeastern section of Lower Paxton Township (near the new Bishop McDevitt campus) from the Anderson family, which caused a stir among the neighbors.
“These neighbors just couldn’t understand why Mr. Anderson would sell his farm to a black man,” said Rev. Ashe.
Mr. Hodge farmed for about a decade when a real estate agency offered him $175,000 for the land. At settlement, he found out that the developers were going to sell lots and houses to whites only, which meant even he wouldn’t be able to live there. Without a second thought, he turned down the money and walked out of the courthouse.
He farmed the land for several more years before deciding to develop the property himself, in the way he wanted. He became even more determined after people from the adjacent area signed petitions to keep him from developing it.
“Daddy dreamed of a community where people of all colors would be able to live together in peace and harmony,” said Rev. Ashe. “He then knew that the success or failure of this business venture to personally develop the property depended upon the availability of blacks to buy lots and build homes.”
Dream Realized
The Hodges Heights project began with 97 one-quarter acre lots. The parcels originally sold for $900 and eventually for as much as $2,000 per lot.
Elmo Hodge had a vision of a community of single-family homes, custom-designed with specific parameters. To provide a sense of those expectations, the following paragraphs were taken directly from a deed of sale dated Jan. 24, 1959.
“No permanent structure to be erected nearer than twenty-five (25) feet of the aside property lines, no house to cost less than fourteen thousand-five hundred ($14,500.00) Dollars, no tannery, piggeries, etc. No gasoline service station, taproom, hotel, nor any materials which are inherently dangerous, and neither garages for occupancy, nor dog kennels or chicken farms.”
For perspective, $14,500 in 1959 had the same buying power as $116,927 does today.
According to Rev. Ashe, her father originally brought a developer to the farm to discuss building homes and selling them.
“Daddy couldn’t get financed by the banks, so their deal never got off the ground,” she said. “His alternative plan was to sell the lots directly to prospective home owners, and they would secure the financing to build their custom homes.”
The plan worked.
Among the buyers were doctors, dentists, teachers, mid-level managers in the private sector and auditors. Many were proud graduates of HBCUs—historically black colleges and universities. The community was never a blacks-only endeavor, though the “original” residents of Hodges Heights were all black folks.
It is worth mentioning that the some of the children of these original families today are surgeons, dentists, a neonatologist, a Rhodes scholar, an investment banker (whom I babysat), tenured university professors, a truck driver, a professional sports figure, a colonel and federal government employees. What’s also noteworthy is that almost none returned to the Harrisburg area to build their careers.
Pride in Ownership
I sat down with my childhood dentist, Dr. Thaddeus Phillips, and his wife Marge. In 1968, they built their family home, where they raised five daughters and one son. They still live in that house today.
Dr. Phillips told me about the formation of the Hodges Heights Men’s Club, which functioned somewhat like a current-day homeowners association. There were annual dues, and one of the primary functions was to ensure property was properly maintained at all times—pride in ownership was the expectation.
Today, the club is called the Hodges Heights Neighborhood Civic Club.
“Dues are still paid and the club function has expanded to include providing gestures of comfort for those who may be ill around the holidays, giving gifts to high school and college graduates, having a Christmas luncheon and sometimes a bit of community activism,” said Marge Phillips. “Many of us petitioned to close a nearby landfill when radon was found in some of our homes, and we won.”
A resident who built in the 1950s added, “It was exciting to be able to build the home that you wanted and to know it was the first in the area to be an all-black, custom-built community.”
Elmo Hodge’s vision and dream has come to be. Today, Hodges Heights is a community that still boasts pride in ownership, and people of all stripes exist in harmony.
Wendy Jackson-Dowe can be reached at [email protected]. She would like to thank the Ashe family for sharing this important piece of history and pride for the greater Harrisburg region.
