Category: Life in the Big City

Philadelphia Inquirer’s new owner dies in plane crash

~ susie ~ 5 Comments

This is crazy. He just bought the paper this week:

Lewis Katz, 72, co-owner of The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Daily News and Philly.com, died Saturday night in the crash of a private jet at a Massachusetts airfield.
Katz’s death was confirmed by Inquirer editor Bill Marimow, who said he learned the news Sunday morning from close associates.

All seven people were killed aboard the private aircraft that crashed at Hanscom Field and erupted into a fireball, authorities said Sunday.

The Gulfstream IV crashed about 9:40 p.m. Saturday as it was departing for Atlantic City International Airport in New Jersey, said Matthew Brelis, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Port Authority, which operates the air field.

“There were no survivors,” Brelis said. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the people on board and their loved ones.”

The names of the other victims were not immediately released.

On Tuesday, Katz and H.F. “Gerry” Lenfest bought out their partners for $88 million, gaining control of the media company that owns the Inquirer.

“We all deeply mourn the loss of my true friend and fellow investor in ownership of The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Daily News and Philly.com,” Lenfest said. “It is a severe loss, but I am pleased to announce that Drew Katz, Lewis’s son, will replace his father on the board of our new company.”

Philly style

~ susie

Auto Repair Shop
What kills me about stories like this is when suburbanites sniff and say, “What can you expect?”

After spending 20 years covering suburban politics, I can say with some assurance that it’s much easier for corruption to flourish in the burbs. They don’t have very aggressive investigative journalism, and voters assume because politicians are white, they’re honest. Crazy, I know, but that’s the way it is.

My city

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

andrewjackson

We had a seven-year-old drop dead in school Wednesday. There was a volunteer nurse that day who performed CPR, but he died anyway. I read today that he and his family lived in a West Philadelphia homeless shelter.

A spokesman for the city Health Department declined to release the cause of death yesterday, citing privacy issues. “We saw nothing in the autopsy to suggest this is an infectious disease or condition,” James Garrow said.

The school has a nurse on Thursdays and every other Friday, the district said.

I don’t know that anyone could have prevented this child’s death, but it would be good to have those resources in case they might.

Home makeover

~ susie ~ 6 Comments

supercouch
My new sofa.

I have this couch that I pretty much hate. I’ve never hated a piece of furniture before, but there you have it. I got it for maybe $75 off Craigslist, the main feature being that the guy who was moving would drop it off and help me carry it upstairs.

For years now, I’ve been twisting my neck and feeling all crooked and hurt-y whenever I watch TV. I assumed it was because the couch was perpendicular to the TV, right? But a few months ago, I got Comcast to move my cable outlet to the wall directly across from the couch, and discovered it didn’t really help — this couch has no support at all. (You should see the assorted pile of pillows and props I shove behind me when I sit on the thing.) It is the classic Piece of Shit. It does not do the thing for which it is designed.

So I made a plan.

The plan involved putting money away from my freelance work until I had $300. There were a couple of setbacks along the way when I had to zero it out for car stuff, but this week, I finally got there.

Then I began scouring Craigslist. It had to be a quality brand name, and from one of the yuppified areas so I knew they took care of it. Yesterday I struck gold: An $1800 Pottery Barn sofa in beautiful condition, for only $250. (That, and $50 to the guy with a truck who’s going to bring it here.)

I never understood about quality couches until maybe 20 years ago, when I got an insurance settlement. At the time, I’d just been diagnosed with what a specialist told me was “99.5% likely” advanced paranasal sinus cancer, which would eat away at my brain, make me go blind and kill me. I thought, “Goddamn it, if I’m going to waste away and die, I want a comfortable couch to do it on!” So I went to Macy’s and spent $800 to get a really fabulous couch. (My son still talks about how he got the best sleep ever on it.) As it turned out, I didn’t have paranasal sinus cancer (they were plain old mold tumors) and got to enjoy that couch for many years, until finally it didn’t fit into one of my apartments. So I gave it to a friend, who still has it.

Anyway, I am hopeful that the new couch and I will have a similarly fulfilling relationship. The owners were selling it because they’re having another baby and need to turn the den into a nursery. The wife said her mother was upset because she slept on it when she visited and much preferred it to the Mitchell Gold sectional in the living room.

Then their three-year-old started to cry because he didn’t want the couch to leave. I tried to tell him I would take good care of it, but he ran off crying to his room. “He’s just tired,” his mom said. But I prefer to think that he has superior taste in furniture, and took it as a good sign.

See how that works?

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

philly_school_district_

Despite all the pissing and money about the district wasting money on outrageous teacher salaries and pensions, seems the real problem is the Santa Claus provision our Republican-dominated legislature ticked away into state law. This is, of course, contrary to the right-wing wisdom shared on our local newspaper site, but oh well! Nobody cares about schools, anyway:

Unless the Philadelphia School District raises more than $200 million extra in a hurry, Moody’s Investors Service warned it will cut the district’s bond rating — which is already down at Ba2, junk status, forcing the district to pay extra when it borrows money — because the district’s proposed $2.5 billion budget for the next fiscal year will “materially imperil its ability to provide students with an adequate education.”

Without $216 million in additional funding, Moody’s analyst Dan Seymour wrote in a report to clients, the district threatens to increase the average class size to 41 students and lay off more than 1,000 staff. ” This is credit negative because a further deterioration in education services will likely result in additional student flight to charter schools and other alternatives,” further reducing district revenues, Seymour added. 3 in 10 Philadelphia students already go to charter schools.

“Rising charter school enrollments have been a drag on the district’s finances, as state law mandates that public school districts pay the costs of sending students to charter schools. Driven largely by charter school tuition costs, the district’s costs per pupil have increased 70% since 2004. Further enrollment declines would exacerbate the district’s financial pressure as charter schools capture a larger share of the district’s expenditures,” Moody’s adds.

“The school district has very limited means of raising revenues and has cut costs aggressively, reducing teaching staff by 22% from 2004 to 2013, closing 24 schools in 2013 and cutting substantially again this year with further personnel reductions. However, most of the district’s remaining budget consists of mandatory expenditures, with charter school tuition and transportation costs, debt service, and pension contributions together comprising half of the district’s budget.”

Lawsuit over school assault

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

Bryant

This story makes me so, so sad. This poor little boy! Our school district is so overwhelmed, and so understaffed. And you know what makes me feel even worse? I read the comments section:

In October 2011, a nine-year-old boy transferred to a new school in West Philadelphia, but he quickly found his own personal hell there, according to allegations raised in a lawsuit filed last week.

Every kid new to a school might expect some razzing, but according to the lawsuit what began as insults and slurs by a handful of school bullies rapidly escalated into an exercise in terror that culminated in beatings, repeated humiliation and a brutal sexual assault in a bathroom at William C. Bryant Elementary School.

Named as defendants in the suit are the School District of Philadelphia, the school’s former principal and a former Bryant teacher. A spokesman for the school district, Fernando Gallard, acknowledged on Friday that the district had received the lawsuit but declined to comment.

The boy’s plight began soon after he entered fourth grade at the school. The boy, whose name is being withheld, was singled out by a group of classmates for “severe, pervasive, and continuous” harassment, states the suit, which was filed by his family in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas.