Philadelphia Day 1

We are in the city of brotherly love.  Cities are wonderful.  It's great to be able to get around on public transportation, to see beautiful art in museums and graffiti on the bricks of bridges.  We came on a slow train that even went backwards are some point, and yet we still got here in time to check out the Independence Hall area, the Philadelphia History Museum, walk by City Hall by way of a lunch at the Reading Terminal Market, stop in our AirBnB, hit the Art Museum, Whole Foods (our go to for a great date), and made it to a baseball game.  Phillies got crushed by the Red Sox....

Cities are wonderful for all these things that are possible in one day (and more), but there are differences between them.  I find myself wondering what it is about New York that I might prefer or what I might find more comfortable in Philadephia.  Certainly it is easier to get a seat here.  

But there is something unsettling that I'm still trying to pinpoint and the closest that I have come to it has to do with diversity.  New York is far more diverse, and the differences in the people here fall to a familiar line from my childhood of black and white.  And that is a much more personal line to be involved with. In New York, it is easier to hide the injustice behind the myriad ways it is dispersed.  There is such a large immigrant class that is working hard to make it, we can look past the idea of have and have not.  Maybe we think that there is some evolution to it through generations or through hard work.  But here, the years of wear are evident.  And when someone asks for money, it feels more personal, something unresolved from a past I never lived, but that my blood did.  New York makes it much easier to look away.  I am not connected to the struggles I hear of there.  They are new and old and ever changing stories.  Here they are stale and familiar.  

I'm sure there are other reasons that I still find myself loving loving New York.  But this one struck me today and I hope will stay with me as I return to the Big Apple.  Perhaps I will be able to see all differences more equally.  Or maybe at the very least, I will see them in a new way.