King of all .........

I hope you're all listening to my Innertube Radio program on Gtownradio.com
Morning Feed, only two weeks old, is already causing a stir. A prominent Philadelphia weekly newspaper is doing an article about me, and the program, and all my other interests.

I have begun to have guests come on the air and that is going quite well. Perhaps some prominent Hillers would be interested in joining me.

For the first time since his demise, I have thought of Tom Fleming. I think he would have
considered a guest shot on Morning Feed. It would have appealed to his playful side. I think he would have enjoyed himself and we would have had an interesting time discussing both non-controversial topics.... and the other kind. We could have discussed his racing career.

I once promised Tom that I would piss on his grave. He got a kick out of that. I spent a little time trying to find his present whereabouts in order to fulfill my pledge, without success, but, as time passes, so does my promise. Tom was wrong about a lot of things, but I'm gonna give him a pass. His most virulent attacks against me were so sudden and random, in between periods of affability, that I'm gonna chalk them up to the confusion and the sense of powerlessness that comes from the inability to master situations, both physical and intellectual, that he once could dominate.

I am often asked, "Why Chestnut Hill?". The easy answer is, write what you know. The secondary one-journalist division-is, outsiders can act as surrogates for an previously uninformed general public.

Fish out of water viewpoints are easy. Ignorant optimism, followed by discovery, recognition, disgust, conflict, and resolution by the outsider author mirrors the journey his heretofore innocent reader takes.

But a sense of microcosmic recognition is also important in works such as this one. For, as I tell Hill Tales to folks who have no prior knowledge of the place, they respond in two ways.

They are incredulous that the sort of culture, based on Apartheid- racial, moral,and political-exists within a Liberal, Multicultural, Northern City.

They wonder how a handful, many from outside the neighborhood, and from outside the City, have taken control, without protest from an informed, local populous.

Some, without any economic incentives, are the most virulent in administering power over a neighborhood in which they do not live, or earn.

And then there's Snowden. In a country where Global Warming and its' causes are an accepted concept to all save the most ridiculous Palinistas, the Hill's most powerful citizen, and the known perpetrator of offenses locally, owes his fortune to the most damaging, Earth destroying, workerer ravaging industrial process ever devised.

When I tell the uninitiated of Snowdens' involvment in Strip Mining, and show them the statistics of coal disease and poverty in Mingo County West Virginia, where his operations lie, then show them his vacant Hill properties, his tax scams, and his racist, blackmailing signs on the sweet Avenue that he now controls through the election of his tenants, employees, friends and lackeys, these intelligent people shit in their pants.

In other communities this guy would be exposed, shunned, shut out, picketed. In the Hill, his possible arrival at functions is as anticipated and hoped for as a shaft of pure light emanating from Gods' Own Penis, piercing through the Clouds of Despair.

But through the incredulity of my rapt listeners and readers, is the sense of recognition that they have heard this all before, writ larger in the socio-economics practiced in Washington and elsewhere. Some people are for sale, and all it takes is a guy with a checkbook and a boner for them to ask, "which hole?"

So, a cloistered subculture, like the Sopranos or the Mormons, coupled with the dance of money, pressure, and privilage buying off the greedy, threatened, and socially disadvantaged, is a mix of mystery and familiarity that is highly entertaining.

I once asked Dottie Sheffield, amateur horticulturalist and recipient of Snowden Largesse, why she defended him so. She gave the mantra so often heard," He has done such wonderful restorations!" (Actually just a couple). I asked her if she had ever ridden on the Autobahn in Germany. I assumed the answer, just as I assumed the actual ethnic orgin of her familiy's last name.
"Yes I have, and it's wonderful" she replied.
"It was built by Hitler, you know", I reponded.
"Well, good for Hitler", said Dottie.
"Thanks Dottie, I'll quote you on that" I replied.
And now I have. It didn't happen in some basement in Posse Comitatus Country, or a clandestine cross burning, but right here in Chestnut Hill.

The stories that happen right under your nose are the ones that must be told-by you.

Ed (I'll be giving out Richards' address and phone number on the Air- if my lawyer says it's OK) Feldman